Last Day in Hollywood,

We are here in Hollywood for only one more day; tomorrow we take the train to New York so my next blog will come from somewhere between here and there – if they have wi-fi on board.

The apartment now is empty and bear and we will be sleeping on the mattress for the third night on the trot.

The mattress is in exactly the same place as the bed used to be and when my wife got out of bed yesterday morning she looked about eight feet high – I had forgotten I was a few feet lower.

Our moving sale didn't do very well – we sold the bedroom suite but nothing else big; we sold a lot of small stuff though and a few books.

The trouble was there is nowhere to park around here; you can only park outside if you have a permit so the stuff had to go to a thrift shop. Not many of them collect so we had to make many phone calls.

At one time it was the easiest place to park but Runyan Canyon became so popular that various people campaigned to get the parking stopped outside their houses - one of them Sheryl Crow; when she got the parking stopped everybody jumped on the band wagon so thanks Sheryl - thanks for the bad moving sale.

At the moment I am taking the rest of the stuff to the Goodwill thrift shop on Beverly Blvd in the Fairfax district as the people on Tuesday couldn't get it all into their van; I've done two trips and one trip to Glendale to drop some books in my friend's house.

I'm only writing this because my wife has nipped out and wants to come on the next run.

There she is above dusting the bed after we took the box spring and the mattress off - yes dusting!!

I will have to go and look for her now so until I write again when in transit – in the meantime there is our empty apartment - as empty as it was when we came here all those years ago; toodleloo!

The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

I have a few minutes to spare whilst waiting for a phone call so I can do a quick post.

I went to see the Beverly Hills Ear/Nose/Throat specialist about my loss of voice and he said I had swollen vocal chords – no polyps or cancer, which is a relief – and it was the result of a cold I had the week before.

I was told to rest it – which is something I didn't want to hear as I'm rehearsing my play which opens on Friday; 3 days from now!!!

As he is also a plastic surgeon he also said he could do something about the bags under my eyes – obviously he had to try.

So I am having to confine my rehearsals to this week. I got so far with it before the cold and loss of voice and I'm not starting from scratch but I am hard at it. I don't tend to learn all my lines till I have worked out how to play them and as it's a new play I am re-writing all the time in any case.

There are a few sound cues in the play with my voice and I had to wait till yesterday to record them; I can't try them out in any case for timing till I get to the theatre on Friday morning so I hope to see you there if you are in the area.

Hollywood actor and novice novelist!

I am supposed to be a Hollywood actor and novice novelist, according to the blurb about this blog, but I rarely take it any further than just having it in the aforesaid blurb.

So we will explore that slightly with this post. People with great memories of this blog will know that a few months ago, when I was in England, I announced that I am taking my new play to London and then to the Edinburgh fringe festival; well before that I am due to perform it at Santa Monica Playhouse in June this year – oh it is June; I am due to open next week on the 17th and this week I have completely lost my voice!!

Towards the end of last week I started a cough and yesterday I started to croak; today I woke up and could hardly make a sound.

I don't think it will last till next week and tomorrow I have an appointment with an ear/nose/throat specialist in Beverly Hills; what he will do I don't know.

Whilst hanging on today on the phone his message says he also specialises in plastic surgery, hair line transplants, non-evasive thyroid removal and – what am I letting myself in for?

So watch this space.

Presuming, of course, that my play opens in Santa Monica okay, and I get my voice back, we are due to leave here by train on July 1st and move to England then on to the Queen Mary to Southampton; Queen Mary 2 that is – we have had a great 16 years here and we are sad to go as we have so many friends, interests, a way of life and a culture we have grown to love – so why are we going?

Well I think I might get more work there; I know all my pals in the UK will be wondering how I'm going to get what they don't get; well I'm just putting myself into the pool to see what happens.

I am going to take the gold that I have found here and take it back – if it doesn't work we will come back. What gold? I hear you ask.

The first thing I learned here is that actors know it is a business and in the UK actors just don't.

If you look at the Internet Movie Data Base you can usually spot the British based actors; they're the ones who don't have photos above their names.

I looked up Martin Clunes today to see how long the series the TV series Doc Martin lasted and he hasn't got a photo above his name. He would sooner pay a fortune to an actors' directory called The Spotlight. Over here we use The Academy Players Directory which costs me $36 per year – compare that to The Spotlight.

The Internet Movie Data Base (The IMDB) is used by casting directors here; it can't be faked like you can with a resumé or CV; well I take that back as I'm sure it can.

So I hope to take my knowledge back there as the only work I seem to be getting here is in low budget independent films and voice matching, looping and dubbing on main features – that and my one man show.

Don't get me wrong I don't think it's going to be easy but I have a few ideas and at least I'm starting with a new play!

There are other consideration; there is no health service here and our family in Britain is getting bigger by the year and we want to be in on it; we have tears every time we have to part and that has to stop; it wouldn't be so bad if it didn't cost a fortune for the babies to come across.

But I'll still be the Hollywood actor at heart and I aim to be back a few times a year and I'll let you know how my voice progresses.

Memorial Day - one year on.

Burcot Grange (above) built in 1890 and my home for a while as a young child.

The blog has been down for the past few days due to some kind of bug and I am repeating a post from last year's Memorial Day as there are still things, anniversaries and people to remember.

It's Memorial Day here; Memorial Day Weekend with the actual 'day' being on Monday and who do I remember? I remember lots of people as I am fortunate to have a good memory. On a site in the UK called Friends Reunited I looked at the people in my class at school and there were just a few; one or two of them got in touch with me, the memory man, and one or two wrote to me that I had forgotten; so not too much of memory man after all. All the things I write on here are from memory and sometimes I look on the Internet for some details like the road where such and such happened; one guy I wrote to, wrote back and said he couldn't remember anything about school at all. If you mention his name to anyone from my class they certainly would remember him as he would sit back on his chair in full view of the rest of the class and . . . well maybe if I put that in it will be picked up as a metatag and draw porn readers to the site – so he forgot all about school did he? The teacher (male) of the class must have seen him but what could he do? What could he say? **** put that thing away? That boy is probably a grandad now and what would his grandchildren think? A year or two before that, a boy at school suddenly stopped coming to school; nobody said anything and we didn't notice that his name had been taken off the register; his name was Michael Holmes. He came to our house to play a couple of times and I got to know his sisters later on; after a few weeks we found out that he had fallen into the canal and drowned. It was a shock but the school didn't let us know; I don't know what age we were but I would guess around eight or nine; I was in the Junior School in any case – Clifton Road Junior School. Now I don't need memorial day to remember Michael as he springs into my mind quite often. What happens here this weekend is the same in Britain only in Britain this weekend it will bank holiday weekend – I think it was called Whitsun at one time and on this American Heathen word processor on this computer it comes out as a spelling mistake – there now I've added the word to the dictionary so it's officially in. In Britain remembrance day is in November and people wear poppies to signify the ending of the first world war at 11/11. That's when Britain remember their heroes. The heroes they remember, of course, are the dead from wars. I think they go back to World War One which started in 1914 and ended in 1918 and there is hardly anybody left who actually fought in that war – the great war the war to end wars. I heard recently that the last one died either here or in the UK. The other world war started in 1939 and ended in 1945; I have to put those dates as some people here have different dates when the Americans joined in; here they might say 1941-1945 and 1917-1918 – I have heard both and, indeed, people just might not know. I hate the idea of war as it has always been young men fighting old men's battles and even though I had a small amount of military service war heroes have never been my heroes; they are everybody's heroes and should be; they paid the ultimate sacrifice and they should never ever be forgotten - but my heroes have always been pioneers and not necessarily people who fight. I am more impressed by ideas and most of the long conversations I have are about ideas; once a week I meet a pal for breakfast who majored in philosophy and we have many an interesting tête-à-tête and I have read books by Nietzsche for example as a result of our meetings; I have another friend I meet once a week for lunch to talk about politics; I talk British politics and he responds with the American version; another friend I meet intermittently and we talk about the theatre. I feel quite privileged that I have experienced both worlds and can't think what I would have done without that knowledge; I would never have written my novel, for one, and I don't think I would have started my one man Irish show in the theatre – A Bit of Irish. But I have always been curious; I watched a film once called The Land That Time Forgot and I remember one line from it - Plato was right and I wondered who Plato was and researched it; I put this curiosity down to my lack of formal education so when I look back I don't regret anything about my education or experience. But the four men I admire the most (no not the Father, Son and Holy Ghost) are Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Roger Bannister. I really admired the way Ali stood up to authority, forfeited his world championship for his beliefs and finally, in the end, won. A lot of people disagreed with him including Jackie Robinson who was also a black pioneer in baseball – his own business, of course, but I know very little about him. John Lennon was just a hero because he was a singer; I stood within three feet of him once in a bar after seeing the Beatles at the Ritz Ballroom, King's Heath, Birmingham. Looking at him then, and you could see the Beatles were destined for something, I wasn't sure if he knew what was going on; The Beatles came from a middle class background; John wanted to be a 'working class hero' but he was middle class; they were art students and up to that time art students – students in general in Britain – liked jazz. When I say students I mean mature ones as the Americans tend to call everybody at school students as opposed to pupils in the UK. When I was a student – a mature one – we liked The Beatles. Later on John might have been misguided by Yoko Ono but I think he was a man that did more for peace than is generally realised; I know Beatles fans dislike Yoko and he loved her but I love my wife; I wouldn't take her to work. Bob Dylan I just find the most talented poet I have ever heard or read; I like lyrics by Chuck Berry and John Lennon but Dylan has so much imagery in his work - just look at any of his lyrics – look at these I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike I haven't known peace and quiet for so long I can't remember what it's like. There's a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door, You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars After losin' every battle. I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin' 'bout the way things sometimes are Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars. You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies. One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes, Blood on your saddle. I have been more influenced by Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran when I know, as an actor, it should be Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier. So who have I left out? Ah!! Roger Bannister.

Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile barrier in May 1954; I was a little boy watching my friend nearly drown at Moseley Road Swimming Baths and finding out that another friend had died. I lost a lot of time at school as I suffered from conjunctivitis (in the eyes) which developed into ulcers; I remember seeing the horrible white things on the blue of my eyes and I was told that this was because I rubbed them; I couldn't face the light and water would consistently run from my eyes.

So that was the end of my education as I failed the secondary exams - but that's only an excuse as I can clearly remember sitting to do a paper for the 11+ and not putting anything at all on to the sheet of paper.

Then one day on the TV, the news came on and it said that the 4 minute mile had been achieved; the race came on and there were only 3 runners in the race; the other 3 were invisible. Christopher Brasher was ahead with Bannister behind up to about half a mile and then Chris Chataway took the lead with Bannister second to him up to half way around the final lap and then on the final lap Bannister took the lead and made history; to a ten year old boy this was like an orgasm. Later in the year the Bannister/Landy Miracle mile and that was the best mile race I have ever seen – do yourself a favour and look for both races on YouTube. I won't give you the result of the latter race but John Landy of New Zealand broke the world record after Bannister and then they had to meet in the Empire Games. Have a look - it will bring a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat.

So I had to go a place called Burcot Grange - above; this is a very large house in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. It is a very large Victorian House and had been donated to the Birmingham Eye Hospital by its owners giving prolonged treatment of children suffering from inflammatory conditions of the eye associated with harsh city life. It was also a place where squint operations were performed and a lot of the other children had lost an eye. It was at Burcot Grange that I was introduced to elevenses which was a snack at eleven-o-clock; maybe a biscuit (cookie) and some orange squash. It was like being let loose as there were 5 acres of grounds; so we played cowboys with real hills, valley and bushes to hide behind. The other thing I did was run; I was going to be a Roger Bannister and I ran around those acres every day. My mother came to see me with a tear in her eye, and encouraging one in my infected ones, every week and I cried when she left and then forgot her for a while. Of course one of the nurses was my girl friend; she was nurse Hollingshead and maybe 15 years older than me. She wrote to me for quite some time after I left and when I did they presented me with a book by Enid Blyton called, something like, Around the Year. It was a nature book and they wrote in the inside cover to Christopher with lots of love from Burcot Grange. I still have the book which is at my daughter's in Suffolk. As we sat there in the sun the nurses would 'time' me as I ran around the grounds. I remember I could get around in about three minutes; one day one of the nurses, who had timed me, called another nurse and said 'Hey! Is it the four minute mile or the four mile minute.'

I can just imagine the four mile minute. When I got home I would run around the block – where we lived – and I managed to get a sucker to beat. He was Roger and looked more like Roger Bannister than I did and I would let him run ahead of me so I could run along the back straight which ended just by the lane where we lived in South View Terrace on Moseley Road. So Roger Bannister is my hero; he ran for many years after that to keep fit although he retired from competitive racing early after the 'Golden Mile' to continue his studies to be a doctor where he worked at Northwick Park Hospital as a neurologist and later as Director of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and a trustee-delegate of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington. A few years ago I bought his book called The Four Minute Mile, of course, and just as I was coming up to the Golden mile on page 224 about the Empire Games, where he met Landy, I found the page was blank. The next page was there and from there till the end of the book many pages were missing and there was only an intermittent report from that section. I called Amazon, where I had bought it, and they referred me to the publishers, The Lyons Press, and when I called them they hung up on me. So there we are – there are my memories on this memorial day; I wonder what yours are?

Landy and Bannister Statue in Vancouver; the scene of the Miracle Mile.

My first bicycle; the Atomic Flier!

My bicycle resting in the sun today.

I was listening to the radio today as I was restringing my guitar and there was an Englishman called Robert Penn who purported to have cycled every day for the last 36 years and owns 5 of them; bikes that is.

The commentator said that even though he owns five bikes, has written a new book about them and uses the bike every day, he can't remember the first bicycle he ever owned.

I remember the first bicycle I owned; the first grown up one, not the little toy ones we got from Santa Claus in our giant stocking.

My first bicycle was called The Atomic Flier!

When I was about 12 or 13 we lived a very comfortable life in South View Terrace, Moseley Road, Birmingham, in a terraced house.

I attended Dennis Road SMBS; that is Dennis Road Secondary Modern Boys' School. These schools produced factory fodder for industry or shop assistants; some boys would be lucky enough to serve an apprenticeship if they showed an aptitude for something in particular; maybe a toolmaker, a butcher or a barber.

I wanted to be a barber as my dad used to be a barber in Dublin. It was the reason we lived in England as he couldn't get enough heads to cut to make a living.

I called in to every barber's shop in the area and I was very fortunate to have failed to get any kind of job that I would have eventually hated; just like my dad.

But back to the bike; even though we were quite comfortable living in our terraced house in South View Terrace, I couldn't afford a bike of my own. My dad had a bike which he would ride to work each day – a Raleigh.

A lot of kids at school had bikes; some with dropped handlebars, some with straight handlebars and some that were a very strange shape; rather like the shape of some of the Harley Davidson motor bikes we see now and again cruising around Hollywood.

A lot of these bikes would have their handlebars taped with a kind of white sticky tape; this would cover up various imperfections such as rust.

I had to walk to and from to school every day and it seemed like miles from the house; I could walk along Moseley Road for about two hundred yards or so then turned left into St. Paul's Road which went all the way down to Ladypool Road, which must have been about 400 yards and then another long walk through a park and into Dennis Road School; even if I'm wrong with the distances it was a bloody long walk.

Or I could go all the way along Moseley Road to Brighton Road and walk to the bottom till it became Taunton Road then do a right into Dennis Road and go into the school; this way took me passed Irene Tabone's house at number 12 Brighton Road. Irene Tabone the love of this 13 year old's life who was very well developed for her age, Greek and who smiled very sweetly at me every time I saw her.

In fact every time she smiled at me I melted on the spot!

I met her first when I was about 11 or 12 and we played and fought and wrestled and I would let her pin my shoulders to the floor – but we never really spoke after that formally; she just smiled sweetly when I passed her in the street; sometimes that would be very near number 12 Brighton Road.

One day my dad came home from work and said there was an old bike at the place he worked; all I had to do was to go and ride it home.

He was the manager of Lawley Street British Rail Goods Depot which was relatively a long way from where we lived but one day I made it there and found my dad's office; he took me across to the shed where my bike was waiting for me.

There it was leaning against a wall and I could see it hadn't been moved for years as cobwebs were attaching it to the wall; the whole thing was very rusty and it didn't have dropped handlebars or even straight ones; it didn't even have cable brakes and basically looked like this:

A very old bike with 'sit up and beg' handlebars but you know – at the time I was delighted with it.

I rode it home and got to work on it; I bought a bicycle pump, some white tape from the bicycle shop on Moseley Road and some 3 in 1 oil together with some new brake blocks and a sticker for the crossbar; the sticker said Atomic Flier!

After working on it over the weekend I proudly rode it to school on the Monday; I went the Brighton Road route and as I passed Irene Tabone's house I looked across to her door – but she wasn't there.

At school I told my mates I had a bike and heard one of them answer back 'you should see it!'

Yes they all came out at playtime and laughed at it; to a man – or a boy – they stood there and laughed and then one of them saw the sticker Atomic Flier! That was the cue for everybody to laugh; including me; suddenly I thought it was hilarious.

Irene Tabone attended a girls' school somewhere else – I don't know where – but because I now had a bike I could get to the corner of Brighton Road and Moseley Road sooner to gaze upon her beauty and be the recipient of her radiant smile as she walked home from school – all thanks to the Atomic Flier!

Roach Coach night in Venice California.

A typical view of Venice Beach.

Venice, in California, is so named, I suppose, because there are canals there with very nice houses on their banks but Venice is known for much more than than; it is a vibrant, independent city which attracts the hippies of yesteryear and the trendies of today.

It is a place where Starbucks and MacDonald's have yet to conquer although there is a Starbucks on the corner of Washington Boulevard but I think that comes under the city of Marina del Ray.

Movie stars and very rich Americans have houses on the beach front and those houses are not just houses – they are works of art. As you walk passed them you can see inside and see the very sparsely furnished front rooms. Maybe just a box or a sea chest and rope – that kind of thing.

On the first Friday of each month the food trucks, fondly called the roach coaches, descend upon Venice in a street called Abbot Kinney. There are hundreds of food trucks in Los Angeles and restaurants usually complain when they stop in the street near them. I don't think this is the case with the shop keepers, restaurants and gallery owners of Abbot Kinney; Abbot Kinney is the person who founded or developed Venice, by the way.

The food trucks line up in Abbot Kinney.

I went there last Friday and the place was packed; it starts in the evening at about 7:30 or so; I don't know how they decide who is going to go where or whether, indeed, it is organised at all, but as we walked from one end of Abbot Kinney to Venice Boulevard we had the choice of an assemblage of things to eat: there was an Indian truck, numerous Mexican trucks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, Japanese and others too numerous to mention.

We walked passed a barber's shop and inside a guy wearing a trilby hat, adorned with a feather, was standing at a microphone playing the guitar and singing. Nobody was having a haircut but people were sitting in the shop, and outside in the front yard, listening and maybe waiting their turn.

Other shops art galleries and boutiques were open and we could see the work in the galleries from the street; sometimes a one man show, a one woman show and some of the shops and galleries looked to be converted houses.

We went into one shop which sported minerals and smelled like The Body Shop and noticed that some of those minerals, like the ones we have in our apartment, are worth hundreds of dollars.

There was a boutique with trendy clothes but most of all there was all that food.

People tucking in to the wonderful food.

The trouble was we were simply spoiled for choice; I enjoyed what I ate but I could have had a lot of other things; I had a French Dipped Spicy Pork Sandwich and my wife had Dim Sun and Peking Duck in a soft Taco; maybe I'll have next time.

If you're in the area it's the first Friday of every month.

Here's one of the boutiques:

Halcyon Days on the Post Office Motor Bikes.

Here we have 5 of us - I am in the centre at the back.

Aged 18 the day before I was going on my SAS selection course I was forced into a bag and my hair parted down the middle - boys will be wags!!!

I was driving around here yesterday in the sunshine, with the sun roof open and really enjoying the bends in the road and listening to The Chieftains on the stereo, and my mind went back to the days I worked for the post office in Birmingham riding a motorbike.
I remembered doing the same thing then; the sun was beating down onto my crash helmet as opposed to my white hair but I got the same feeling of gratification which you get sometimes when you enjoy riding or driving.
Driving is possible to enjoy which is why I don't use freeways or motorways unless I have to; there have to be bends in the road and a certain amount of variety with regards to hills and valleys and because of this you concentrate on the enjoyment of actually driving.
I can't understand people who use cruise control and just sit there wishing the journey would be over – wishing their lives away.
Of course it's different if you're driving with children and their 'are we there yet' comments. I am all for putting DVD players in cars and SUVs (with head sets) for children to look at as more accidents are caused by parents looking at the children in the mirror, to make sure they're okay, than anything else.
There's a mini biography of me on the Internet Movie Data Base and it says that before I was an actor I (he) had the 'best job of his life delivering telegrams for the post office' – that is a true statement and I remember the time when I actually felt it and said to myself 'I will never have a better job than this ever' and I was right.
It was obviously on a summer's day and I had to go along a dual carriageway on Bristol Road South in a suburb south west of Birmingham; I turned left off the main drag onto a road, I have forgotten the name of, but it was full of bends, twists and turns and I was going down a slight hill; the bends were just right so I could fully open the throttle and swung left and right, banking over each time with the foot rests coming very close to the ground. What a job, I thought. I was my own boss – we all were when we were on the road – and I didn't have a care in the world.
Well I cared very much for a girl I used to meet in Rose's Cafe in Selly Oak; that cafe was on Bristol Road in the main high street of the Selly Oak suburb. It was a cafe with a great jukebox and I would drive everybody crazy by playing Love Letters by Kitty Lister on it – it just wasn't rock 'n' roll but listen to it today and see how great it sounds.
The office, we worked out of, was in Selly Oak and when we entered the yard at the back of the office we had to turn off the main street and if there were any girls looking some of us would let the foot rests scrape along the floor. The footrests were made of steel and the street made of concrete and what do you get when that happens? Sparks! That's right.
So the 16 and 17 year old girls would see us ride up and the sparks flying which looked very impressive to our youthful minds; especially in the dark.
I had another little trick I used to do: I would rest the motorbike on the concrete floor of the space where we garaged our bikes and open the throttle turning the handle bars slightly in. This would cause the bike to skid and spin around in a circle and as I would put the head lights on, it looked like the wall of death with those sparks flying, the engine revving and the supervisor yelling at me to stop.
When I stopped I took the crash helmet off and walked into the office feeling like John Wayne or James Dean; or what I thought was like them.
Of course I had filled the place with exhaust fumes but it didn't matter to me; I was young and I was going to live forever and in any case the exhaust fumes didn't bother me as I lit up a cigarette and moved to take my riding gear off in the locker room where we also drank tea and broke each other's balls.
We would drive the supervisors up the wall but what did they expect? We were mad headed 16 and 17 year olds with motor bikes on our minds half the time and sex the other half.
One of the supervisors was a very sexy girl from the north of Ireland who was in her late twenties and was the Brigitte Bardot of Belfast as far as I was concerned. She hardly looked at me but she would go weak at the knees if ever she heard the voice of Frank Sinatra. She dated one of the lads but he was a tall good looking fella who looked a bit like Elvis.
These supervisors were only in charge of us after six in the evenings when the proper supervisor would go home; they were actually telegraphists who received and sent telegrams by sticking the tape onto the telegram form (photo below), putting them into the telegram envelope and giving them to us to deliver; we got to know every street, alley, crescent and avenue in the Birmingham postal districts of 15, 16, 17, 29, 30, 31 and the suburbs of Rednal and Rubery.
There was a rock singer in the area called Jimmy Powell who suddenly shot to fame with a minor hit called Sugar Baby and another supervisor, called Tinkerbell Jackson, said that I could sing as good as Jimmy Powell as she'd heard me when I must have been singing to myself. 'You can sing better than he can – I've heard you do your Little Richard.'
Hummm, I thought, that's what she thinks of my Frank Sinatra, which I was trying to perfect for some reason!!!!
Most of the telegrams we delivered were to businesses and lots to weddings and birthdays but some were bad news; sometimes a supervisor or telegraphist would tell us it was bad news and to 'make sure the person is not by themselves.' Sometimes we would knock next door if we knew it was some old lady by herself to try to break the bad news gently. There were hardly any phones in those days – hardly any land lines don't mind mobile phones!! God however did we manage?
One or two people would scream when they saw us coming as they knew it was bad news; must have given some of us complexes.
The weather wasn't always so nice and sometimes we had 50 or 60 telegrams to deliver and maybe some express packets too which we kept in our paniers; it rained, the roads became slippy we would skid on a manhole cover and come off. We hit lorries, buses, cars and it is a wonder none of us were killed. We were taken to hospital, sometimes detained, sometimes in a coma or concussion but we all survived.
I was only taken to hospital once when a truck turned right in front of me without signalling as I was about to overtake him; as he hit me, one of the hooks that they use to tie rope to on the side snagged under my gauntlet and twisted my arm around. The driver didn't even know he'd hit me and was quite content to carry in driving which would have dragged me under the rear wheel but I shouted something very apt to stop him; the first thing that came into my head which was 'you stupid oaf!' Not a word I'd used before or since.
I tore the tendons in my arm and had a few days off work.
Accidents always seemed to happen in hazy lazy weather; we rode in the snow and ice and terrible rain conditions but it was the sunny days we should have been watching for.
There are no more telegrams now they have gone the way of the dodo and are replaced by every other means of communication. No more Rosie's Cafe in Selly Oak and no more hanging around in there playing on the one armed bandit and the jukebox.
The girl, I mentioned earlier, would come and sit with me every night and we would talk. Her friend would talk to the other telegram lads – they called us wags for some reason. I never asked her out on a proper date; I don't know why but I would get a kiss and a cuddle when I left her at the bus stop. That's what it was like in those days you just dropped them off at the bus stop.
A lot of my pals stayed on at the post office but it wasn't for me; I didn't like the job you had to do when they 'retired you' from the motorbikes at 18 – a postman.
I went to drama school to study speech, drama, dancing, singing and sword fighting and later on I went back to school to study sociology, English Literature and Film Studies and ended up writing this for you – hope you enjoyed it?

The Royal Family

Some members of the Royal Family - pretending to be normal.

This won't make any sense but there was such a big response to the last post about Prince William and his bride Kate and so I thought I would add a few random thoughts and see what happens; I see she is Catherine so is it Cate?
There are a few comments on the blog and I had quite a few e-mails; some against the royal family and some for – one quote described them as a bunch of inbred snoots descended from an oppressive lot of haughty prigs.
Well there is no arguing with where they descended from but I would guess that most of them would choose to be non-royal; can you imagine what it's like?
The thing is they are not snoots; by all accounts they are very nice – except Andrew. The younger one, Edward, defied his father and didn't go to Gordonstoun School like his brothers and he didn't join the military like them; I don't think he can fly Jet fighters or helicopters like his brothers and he married a commoner too and it seems his marriage has worked out; so far.
But by and large the people of Britain love them; mainly the working classes and the upper classes of course. I'm not sure about the middle class – the bourgeoisie – who try to ape the upper classes.
The upper classes have etiquette and good manners. The two things that I like. The middle classes are like Mrs Bucket, on TV, who call their living room their lounge, their lavatory the toilet and hold their knives, when they use a knife and fork, like a pencil.
They try to fit in with the upper classes and if ever they are invited to their homes they blow it by asking where the little boy's room is or folding their napkin or even putting the milk in their tea first; nobody in the world does this except for the British middles class.
If ever the middle class invite a rough member of the working class to their homes they run around after them putting doilies underneath their cups.
The upper classes of Britain have class; it's not acquired but taught. Prince Charles, and his mother, were trained for their role in life from a very early age which is why they can do the job when it falls into their laps.
Charles, and his aunt, Princess Margaret were very talented actors; very funny when in company and who knows what sort of a life they would have led if they hadn't been 'royal.'
In America the President has to achieve his greatness but in Britain the greatness of the royals comes with their birth and it is thrust upon them. As Shakespeare said: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
The Prime Minister who is the head of the government – not the head of state – is usually dropped into the job before he or show knows anything about it; read Tony Blair's autobiography – he wasn't invited to the wedding, by the way, and neither was Gordon Brown. Thatcher was and so was John Major but Thatcher is too sick to attend.
Before the Queen's mother, Elizabeth, who was a commoner, even though she was posh and upper class, you have to go all the way back to Henry VIII for the last commoner who married a sovereign and, you know, that didn't work out.
Of the 4 Queen's children, 3 of them had broken marriages; if Charles had followed tradition and married a fellow royal, his marriage would still be going and maybe that would have been the case for the other 3; Princess Ann married Captain Mark Phillips – divorced; Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson – divorced and you will know about Charles.
The reason I am interested in the Royal Family is because I am interested in history; the royal family in Britain is the most documented family I know and I find them fascinating.
My interest in the Royal Wedding is very low but the reason I believe there should be a royal family in Britain – as I have said before – is that I would not like the alternative.
The Queen is the most loved person in Britain but when the most hated woman in Britain, Margaret Thatcher, became Prime Minister it was good to know that there was someone she had to answer to.
I think Thatcher hated having to go to the palace and get her papers signed each week and hated the idea; maybe she was a republican.
There are a lot of people – some of them in the government in Britain – who are against the royal family and are actively seeking the overthrow of the monarchy; this is quite legal unless they turn to violence. I don't think that could happen in America!
After the American revolution George Washington was offered the Kingship and turned it down but it wouldn't have worked would it – because he was a commoner and like in Britain or any other country a commoner will never be on the throne; they wouldn't know what to do with it.

Are William and Kate boring? Really?

I hear NBC have scaled back on their coverage of the Royal Wedding because they have found out that Prince William and his future bride, Kate, are boring. Someone on the radio said that William was like the boring friend at college – I have no idea as I know very little about either of them in fact I had to look up her name just now on the Internet.
When I got back from London a few people asked me if I heard much about the royal wedding when I was there – well the answer is no. I suppose there must be a lot of talk about it in the boonies and the burbs but I didn't hear any; in fact I hear more here in the USA on the radio and TV.
If it had been Prince Harry that might have been a different story; he's a more interesting character. He's a rugby playing blokey bloke and I don't care what anybody says - he looks like his father!!!!
Of course what I mean by that is that he looks like Charles. Look at the nose – it is certainly the royal hooter. If there was any doubt about his parenthood he would have been 'disappeared' at birth – haven't you read the history of the royal family and with the use of DNA these days I'm sure he's been verified.
But the big story there is that there is a national holiday next week for the royal wedding and that goes on top of the week off for Easter. So people are leaving Britain in droves this week for vacations, holidays, trips, cruises and the like and tourists are entering Britain in equally as many droves just for the wedding.
What they will see of the wedding beyond what's on TV will be very little.
But why are America – from what we see on TV – so fascinated with the royal family?
They have the wrong idea about them in any case! A lot of people I have spoken to think that Prince Charles is some kind of sissy. I won't go any further than that but he went to Gordonstoun School – I paraphrase from Wikipedea which describes it as a school based on the traditional private school ethos, modeled on Eton and Oxford, with a philosophy inspired by Plato’s The Republic and other aspects of ancient Greek history.
This is most notable in the title "Guardian", denoting the head boy and girl, the adoption of a Greek trireme (photo above) as the school's emblem, and a routine that could be described as Spartan. There is a high emphasis on militaristic discipline and physical education, particularly outdoor activities such as seamanship and mountaineering.
The school has had a reputation for harsh conditions, with cold showers and morning runs as a matter of routine, and physical punishments, known as "penalty drill" or PD, in the form of supervised runs around one's house (dormitory) or the south lawn of Gordonstoun House.
Charles called it Colditz in Kilts!!
So there we are – enjoy the royal wedding and here he is Carlos de Gales himself – the first Prince of Wales to actually speak Welsh; does he look like a sissy to you – don't answer that!!

playing with Arturo Valdez.

The journey back to Los Angeles was a bit of a pisser to say the least; it really is no pleasure to fly these days and having to change flights and travel into London didn't help.
We had a very pleasant drive from Great Finborough then the inevitable wait in the queues in the airport, the bother of the security check, the wait for the flight, the change of planes in Washington DC, the delay there and another long flight so – it was good to be back in Los Angeles.
The first thing I did the following day – we didn't get back till after midnight – was to go to El Compadre restaurant on Sunset Boulevard for some Mexican food. The waiters, as usual, were kidding me and asking if I would like some tequila but I am not an early in the day drinker any more; I used to have a lunch time drink sometimes when I lived in England but not here; I know what alcohol does to you in the sun.
After El Compadre I popped in next door to see Arturo Valdez the guitar maker also known around the world as the guitar repairman to the stars. He has worked on thousands of guitars owned by people such as John Lennon, Eric Clapton and John Denver. He also worked on one of mine.
A good friend of ours died last November and she left me her old guitar; I think the guitar, a Spanish one, is around 50 years old and the case has luggage labels from some very old airlines and ships on it.
When I tried to tune the guitar the keys crumbled in my fingers so Arturo put new keys onto it for me and changed the bridge. Now it sounds absolutely wonderful.
So I needed a new string for it and went into see him and he thanked me for a catalogue of the Eric Clapton Auction recently at Bonhams & Butterfields on Sunset I had given to him before we went away.
We got to talking and he showed me some guitars and I had a little play on a jazz guitar he had just made and then he asked me if I liked flamenco guitar playing and of course I said 'yes.'
He put the padlock on the shop door and we went into the back where he showed me a wonderful flamenco guitar which seemed to weigh less than a pound; he had made it from cedar wood.
“Sit down” he said and I sat in a chair close by his chair where he proceeded to play the guitar.
It was like sitting with Segovia; I sat there mesmerized by the dexterity of his fingering and the sound emanating from the instrument. As he played he also smacked his nails on to the body of the guitar which made it sound as if someone else was doing it; when he finished playing the first piece he handed the guitar to me!!!!
Now what was I going to do with it?
I played a few plinkety plonk chords – it was probably like Tiny Tim following Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall but I played. Not with the adeptness as he but I played for a little while.
After his next piece he handed it to me again and this time I played and sung I Will the Beatles song; it's a little high for me to sing quietly but I got away with it.
Each time he took the guitar back he played even better; one of the pieces was classical and when he handed it back to me again I played and sang Crossroads Blues; it's only 3 chords and I can sing it quite well.
He was impressed with my voice and mentioned it to me when I saw him again.
So it was good to be back in Los Angeles – as I walked away I wondered if I could ever grow my finger nails that long let alone even play half as good as he plays.
I couldn't get a picture of Arturo but he is on the internet at http://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/arturo-valdez being interviewed and he plays too!!

Cameron and Clegg - the 2 C words.

The 2 'C' words.

I'm at Heathrow Airport at the moment; my word processor, OpenOffice, has Heathrow down as a spelling mistake with a red line underneath it. OpenOffice is great apart from it's limited spell check and I much prefer it to Microsoft Word which costs money – OpenOffice is free and even though I have Microsoft Word now too I much prefer this.
There are lots of free hot spots here for wi-fi but when you log on you can't get any service and the ones that are there too cost something like £11 per month to get on.
One thing about £ signs and $ signs: there are dollar signs on all keyboards in the UK and no pound signs on the keyboards in the USA; why not?
So I am sitting in the middle of the waiting area surrounded by workers from Pret a Manger which is some kind sandwich retail chain of the UK.
One of the workers told one of his girl work mates “I got a BMW now.”
“Have you?” she says “bring me a photo tomorrow and you can take me out for a zoom!”
“Not working tomorrow” he says “It's my day off!”
“Well you had it then incha?” she replied.
Then he says “what's that white haired bloke doing there? Taking down everything we say?”
“Which white haired bloke? This one?” and she pointed at me.
“Yes” he says “what's he saying now?”
“What's he saying now.”
“What is it?”
“What?”
“What he's saying.”
“What's he saying?”
“What's he saying now.”
“That's what he's saying” she says.
“What?” he says.
“What's he saying now.”
I'd better get up and go type somewhere else.
I've got to know a few quirky characters here in the news – one of them being the deputy Prime Minister; a man called Clegg; he went to a very privileged school called Eton where the very rich people of the world send their kids – rich Americans, Africa leaders and the Neauvo Riche but not the sons of the royal family I hasten to add - until Diana came on board.
After he left Eton, Clegg's dad managed to pull a few strings and get him a job in a merchant bank – well an internship which to a millionaire's son is the same thing. The Prime Minister, Cameron, was also at Eton and he got his first job at Conservative Central Office.
The day before Cameron's interview somebody from Buckingham Palace called Conservative Central Office and told them that Davie (Boy) Cameron was a good egg and that they should give him the job.
The pair of them – the two C words (Clegg and Cameron) - have very annoying vowel sounds. They don't have an upper class accent like Prince Charles or RP (received English) like, shall we say Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness or even Christopher Lee, they have terrible grating whiny and nasal kinds of voices like blunt pieces of chalk being scraped across blackboards and you have to throw cushions and pillows at the screen every time they come on television.
It has been a shot in the arm for the British economy with many television sets being smashed by people who didn't have something soft to throw at the screen when they came on, and smashed their sets by throwing furniture at them.
It seems Mister Clegg wants to pull the ladder up behind him – if you know what that expression means. He wants the old boy network to stop; he wants some kind of legislation or employment guidelines to stop the privileged few from getting a gee up from their influential mummys and daddys; or even their nepotistic Uncles.
He spent the day yesterday (Tuesday or even the day before yesterday as I notice it Thursday here) answering questions to the news media and talk shows and being pummelled by even the light weight pundits – of course his hoppo, Davie Boy, the other C word, is in Pakistan at the moment and will probably make as big an arsehole of himself as he did the last time he visited the sub-continent.
He was last seen in a punkawallah's hut looking for a dictionary so he could spell the word legacy for his memoirs.
I am now on the plane heading for Washington DC.
Maybe I'll write from there or just post this as it is -
In DC now – the same as any other airport on earth – or the planet, as people say these days which I hate – I hate some things, don't cha know!
The post of Deputy Prime Minister didn't really exist till Tony Blair gave the job to John Prescott to throw a gesture to the left. John Prescott came through the union ranks and was active in the Seaman's Union and was part of the old Labour Party; the party of Harold Wilson, Clement Atlee, Bevin, Bevan and Tony Benn!!!
That's one of the reasons Thatcher was voted in 3 times, even though more people voted against her than voted for her; as Kenny Everett used to say:

You will vote for her again
cos you won't vote for Tony Benn.
Another reason why she was voted in 3 times was because the 80s in the UK was a very greedy decade – Give me the money was a famous phrase from Harry Enfield.
But back to John Prescott; there used to be a famous fighter in the 60s or so in Britain called Johnny Prescott; no relation to the former Deputy Prime Minister, who kind of harked back to Johnny, the no relation pugilist, on one occasion; on the hustings, during one of the election campaigns, a member of the public threw an egg at Mister Prescott's face; Mister Prescott, with a right cross, chinned him and sent him sprawling into the crowd. It was headlined in all the newspapers, TV news and Tony Blair called him and asked him to apologise; he refused! He said he would sooner resign than apologise and Blair had to accept that – it is also thought that it won him a few votes.
What would it take for one of the C Words to throw a punch? Maybe they'd have you hauled away by one of their subalterns first!!

On a train in England

At the moment I am on a high speed train speeding through the great green expanse of England – or will be soon – we have just left London Liverpool Street Station and on our way to Suffolk; we are going to a tiny village called Great Finborough which is near Stowmarket – an old market town as you will deduce from its name.
I am due to do my play The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone in Edinburgh for 3 weeks in August and whilst in London I went to a small pub theatre to have a look at the space as they offered me a slot there for July 23^rd to try it out before going to Scotland.
At the moment the train has stopped at the station in Stratford; now this isn't the Stratford in Stratford-upon-Avon where the Royal Shakespeare Company hang out but the Stratford in east London made famous many years ago by Joan Littlewood and her theatre group in Gerry Raffles Square – I believe Gerry Raffles was her partner in the venture and they produced plays by Brendan Behan, Lionel Bart and many others and some great actors. At the moment Stratford seems to be famous for the upcoming Olympic Games and I can see the buildings ready for the games as I look through the window I can see plenty of work and a wonderful round of delights to come next year.
I will be trying my play out first of all in Santa Monica as they offered me 3 nights there in June – so by the time I get to Edinburgh I should know it – I hope.
Yesterday I met the guy who runs the Edinburgh venue and he offered me a nice spot for a bigger poster – I hope that wasn't the lager talking so I sent him an e-mail this morning telling him that I would be taking him up on the offer.
We were in a pub in Great Russell Street, in Covent Garden, very near the Royal Opera House which is truly a beautiful white building and newly refurbished; I don't know if they still get funded by the Lottery Fund but it's well worth it; unfortunately it costs a fortune to get in way much more than regular theatre seats in the West End.
This means, of course, that the man in the street can very rarely afford to go there. Now you might say that the man in the street isn't interested in opera well I have to tell you that this man in the street loves it. I worked with a couple of opera companies many years ago; not as a singer, I hasten to add, but as a technician.
With the D'Oyly Carte company I did the sound; they specialised in Gilbert and Sullivan operas which is not grand opera as there is spoken dialogue. I didn't have to pick them up with a microphone or anything like that as their magnificent voices would carry over the sound of the orchestra and into the auditorium.
I had to play the announcements, which were pre-recorded – you know 'ladies and gentlemen would you kindly take your seats as the performance if about to commence.'
Usually the person who did the lighting on the grand master very sophisticated lighting board would do the sound which only be used for effects and music but with the opera companies and ballet troops the lighting cues were many fold so they needed another person to do the sound.
Now we are stopped at Colchester; it is the oldest recorded town in England and is also famous for a military nick; that's the place the army send you if you’ve been sentenced after a court marshal. It's not only a military prison as they have soldiers there too. I can't remember what regiment is there – maybe an Essex regiment. I was there years ago when I was in the Army Cadets and remember seeing a prisoner or two being marched around the parade ground by a sergeant on the double and the prisoner didn't have any laces in his boots.
We were only cadets and very young too; I looked younger than most and one of the regulars turned around to me and said “Oye! When did you leave off your nappy?”
I didn't say a word back, of course, but my mates decided it was a good excuse for a fight so we went outside and had a scrap; can't even remember if we won.
So back to the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company; as I sat in the control box there were a few tape recorders at the back which I would use for the announcements and when the company manager from the opera company came in all he saw was tape and immediately thought I was going to record and pirate the opera. Nothing could have been further from the truth because even though I loved the opera we had The Beatles White Album in the control room – nuff said??
But I worked with the Sadlers Welles Opera Company too on Grand Opera and that was really exciting and gave me a lifetime of pleasure.
The opera singers with their wonderful voices didn't always sound like that – most of them were Italian, of course, but I remember one singer who had a wonderful bass voice; I was backstage this time and had to knock very loudly and angrily on a door. It had to be a really hard knock and I had to use a hammer. The singer, with the bass voice, didn't speak with a bass voice when talking and he had quite a thick London accent.
“Give it a good bang there son – a really good old smack!”
I wondered who this was and turned quickly to see the aforementioned bass singer.
“Nice one, son” he said, walked on and came out with his wonderful voice.
So now we are nearing Ipswich and I thought I would be posting this on the train as it said there was free wi-fi; I looked on there and, in fact, it does say it's free but in order to use it free of charge you have to pay £2.95. Now what's free about that?

Being Irish and liking The Beatles

The original Dubliners

Here I am again – thinking; well I was thinking about something and what it is that identifies us to where we come from; I mean why are some people, a whole race of us, Irish? It's something in us isn't it's something in the soul – or even the sole.

The Welsh, Irish and Scots are basically Celts although there will be somebody to argue with that and say that the Celts are in the Baltic states or the Caucuses or some other wild place. The Celts are supposed to be wild and – I suppose I would have to agree with some of that as I've seen some really wild buggers on the west coast of Ireland and in Scotland. I don't think I've seen much wildness in Wales and there is another part of the British Isles that are supposed to be Celtic and that's Cornwall.

Up to the age of 5 I led as sheltered a life as any preschool child and spoke with the accent of my parents. We were an Irish family living in England but I only met Irish people; my parents' friends were Irish, their children were Irish and our grandparents were Irish and we all spoke with Irish accents; what else?

Then when I went to school I suddenly found that the kids and the teachers spoke differently; what was that strange way of speaking? They had English accents and I had an Irish one. So started my life of mimicry, I suppose, as I didn't want to stick out as being different.

I spoke with an English accent at school and an Irish accent at home; when I went to Ireland, which we did 3 times a year, they would call me English; that was my nickname. When I played football in the streets the other players would shout at me to pass the ball “Over here English!” they would say.

I would shout back “I'm not English, I'm Irish!”

Then I would return to England and school with an Irish accent again and when we played football and they wanted the ball off me they would shout “Over here Irish!” and I would shout back “I'm not Irish – I'm English!”

Can you blame me for growing up confused?

After a while what I was didn't matter; I got on with life till I was asked what I was and I had to say – Irish.

It's in us we're Celts.

In the 1960s my cousin loved The Dubliners and I loved The Beatles. I don't know if he'd ever seen The Beatles, and I'm sure I'd never seen The Dubliners, but we went our separate ways loving our Beatles and our Dubliners.

Even though I felt Irish, when the chips were down, and I had been thrown out of one or two pubs for rowdy behaviour – sometimes with my dad – I suppose I felt English till I actually discovered The Dubliners just like my cousin Eamon; they were magnificent.

I bought as many of their records as I could and that led me on to buying a lot of other Irish stuff.

I saw The Dubliners at the Barbican in London and people of all ages were actually dancing in the aisles. The rhythm was so infectious and tribal that I couldn't help but get out of my seat and kind of 'move' – it wasn't dancing but the whole of my body felt stimulated by this bunch of bearded big bellied middle aged men.

So I think the big thing about identity and knowing who you are owes a lot to the cultures of where you are from - namely the music.

I went from there to learning a lot of Irish music so I could sing it and accompany myself on my guitar and banjo; I was never a singer but I learned to sing and eventually made a CD – A Bit of Irish which is 16 Irish favourites but I had to lie about them being favourites as one of the songs was The Wild Colonial Boy, which I think is Australian and another one The Coombe I wrote myself.