33 sperms born from earth mother.

Florencio Avalos (above) alpha male?

There are few secular miracles in life and one of them is child birth; well not necessarily human child birth but any system of birth; I think the Panda must be the most difficult or they wouldn't have so many problems at the Chinese zoos and I would also hate to imagine the shenanigans two hedgehogs or even porcupines get up to just to have a child and male sea otters actually rape the female.

In the human being millions of sperms race towards those eggs – or is it millions of sperm? - and only one gets there and reproduces; as soon as it penetrates the egg the egg locks itself and no matter how those sperms knock on that egg the egg won't open. Can you imagine the frustration of the sperms after that huge journey swimming against the tide and gravity to be there and to be refused entry? Obviously the strongest and fastest one is the one who makes it – a bit like undocumented immigrants coming to the USA from Mexico; only the strong get in – but I digress.

If there are two eggs waiting there two sperms will be lucky and non-identical twins will be on their way to the birth canal – twins can also be born if two sperms hit that egg at the same time; if that happens the twins will be identical and they can be either sex or both as the fertilizer, the man, is the one with the female chromosome – both males and females retain one of their mother's X chromosomes, and females retain their second X chromosome from their father. Since the father retains his X chromosome from his mother, a human female has one X chromosome from her paternal grandmother (father's side), and one X chromosome from her mother.

The foetus, or the foetuses if there is more than one, gets nourished through the placenta throughout the nine months of pregnancy and the placenta feeds just the right amount of food and oxygen to each foetus – then when it is time the baby enters the birth canal and is born into this world.

When the baby is in the womb it is in a very safe place; the safest place it is every likely to be in and when it is delivered it is in another safe place but at first it needs looking after; so the journey itself from womb to the time the umbilical chord is cut is the most dangerous.

The safe place is only a safe place for a while as the feotus has to leave its very comfortable place or it will probably die.

If there are twins there is usually an alpha twin; evidence of twins in the womb reacting to each other has shown this, with one twin dominating the other.

The other day, when the capsule entered the womb of the earth where the miners were trapped, I couldn't help but think of the birth process.

There was a phallus shaped object entering the uterus of the earth and the miners gathered around to look at it; they were comfortable where they were, everything they needed had been fed to them by the very long placenta; they wore clothes suitable to the place they were in and their food was just the right amount for their dangerous journey.

Each of the miners knew it was the only way out; I can't think of a miner working underground suffering from agoraphobia but they may have been reluctant to enter the tiny capsule but as I said before their safe place is only a safe place for a while as the feotus has to leave its very comfortable place or it will probably die.

The miners were fed a very high salt diet to increase their blood pressure as a high blood pressure was needed for the journey; with high blood pressure it was unlikely that they would faint on the way up in the capsule; I think someone said if one of them had fainted on the way up it would have been fatal.

The stronger men were sent up first – the alpha male – Florencio Avalos, then the weakest and frail and then the others which included the captain who was the last to leave the ship – the afterbirth.

For a short while it would have been possible for someone from the outside to go down and look where the men had been; maybe a crazy photographer or journalist or even a scientist and I wonder if they did? Manuel Gonzalez went down first and there he is below being welcomed by the men; not much talk about that brave fella in the media.

An English Country Garden.

A Humming Bird.

The story so far in case you are not familiar with this blog: this is the first time for many years that we have lived in this climate; the climate of Great Britain with its four seasons.

We have been here for quite a few Christmases but that was only for a week at the most, but this time we are here all the time; there is no reprieve from this climate so we have to grin and bear it.

Some people like the four seasons, but I have never thought about it apart from appreciating it since we've been back. It was lovely to see the autumn leaves which had fallen from the trees and, indeed, I didn't mind sweeping them up and putting them into 'gardening' bags for the council to collect – they are due to collect this coming Monday and I have three full bags as there were a lot of leaves; and that was only from the front yard and the side where we park the car.

There is room for about four or even five cars at the side where we park and that is part of this property, so you can imagine the leaves, as the little car park is surrounded by trees; the car park or drive is about twenty five to thirty square yards and is surrounded by a small brick wall and a wooden fence which sheilds our rear garden.

Since we have been back, the winter has been relatively mild; not any where near as mild as Los Angeles, but we have seen a lot of sun; the sun is very weird here in the winter as it's so low in the sky it blinds you as you drive.

As I walk in this weather the fresh air hits me in the face and, because I'm walking fast, my body is warm and the thrill and comfort of getting back indoors is quite stimulating.

We are very fortunate to have central heating so the house is reasonably warm when we wake in the mornings and, indeed, I go in to the garden scantily dressed – but I wouldn't dream of sitting out like that.

I go out for a second or two to put food down for the birds and squirrels; when I do this I come back indoors and look through one of the windows, and the first thing I see is a robin; the robin must live close to where I drop the food as he or she is there in seconds.

He hops onto a step looking all around, then hops down to where the food is, takes a morsel, jumps back onto the step then flies up to the nest.

Then it goes quiet for a few minutes; next up will be a sparrow who doesn't come near the food but prefers to stay in the grass and look for seeds or whatever. Now as soon as I come in I hear the crows squawking above as if they are telling each other there is food.

The sparrow seems to ignore what's going on above but is hooshed off by the squirrel when he arrives; he eats more nuts than seeds and sits upright with whatever he is eating held between his two paws; apparently squirrels are either right or left handed. I was thinking of this when I was watching one the other day and wondering how we know that – and why!

As the squirrel eats, the crows above squawk louder and louder and I have seen a couple of crows land quite near to the squirrel to frighten him away; the few times I have seen this, the squirrel has eventually high tailed out of there with his tail – high!

As soon a he starts to run the crows take off again, their job done.

I can't stay there all day but I do notice over the hours that all the food goes; maybe the crows wait for me to go to eat.

The feeding of the birds and squirrels is only for my amusement; they wouldn't starve without me, but when it snows the state of affairs will be different; also if the ground gets hard with frost they might need me.

In Los Angeles I would see different birds on our balcony; there I would see humming birds; when you see a humming bird first of all they look a bit like big bumble bees but when you get close you can see how beautiful they are; they are the only birds who can fly backwards and that's amazing to see.

In Los Angeles, the crows eat the humming birds, so I am told, and I am also told that the crows eat 'road kill' here in the UK.

Above rock'n'roll Ralphs in Hollywood is a parking lot, and one day, whilst I was going into Ralphs, a crow flew quite close to the elevator door and flew straight into a class petition; as soon as it hit the glass it fell to the floor. I went over and picked it up and as I cupped my other hand around it I could feel he was limp, but eventually he came to and started to move. Then he turned his head right around and looked in to my face.

Someone came up to me and said 'he's full of fleas' but I could see he wasn't; then a woman came to me and disagreed with the first person and said she had nursed a few crows and they were very clean.

As soon as I felt the crow was fit I let him go and he flew to the end of the car park, by the Ralphs lifts again, and straight into the same window.

I had to pick him up again but this time, when he came round, I walked to the top of the car park, where there were no windows and when I let him go he flew off to freedom.

There were always crows by our building in Hollywood, and I noticed that sometimes they would make a clicking sound; I don't know what this meant but when I did it a few times to them I took a chance that it wasn't a mating call - but it seemed to make them quiet.

I don't know much about birds and nature and I'm sure the birds and animals of the wild don't know much about it either and don't know the names that man has given them.

One time in Hollywood I was standing on the top of a building having a few drinks with someone who was leaving the company in the building; he was keeping a couple of large owls. He worked for the wild life preservation people and it was time to let the owls go – had to set them free.

He brought one of them up to the roof and I seem to remember he had it wrapped in some kind of sheet and wore gauntlets.

The owl looked at peace and the other people that were there, inquisitively looked at the bird with caution and puzzlement; the fella holding the owl held it up and let it go.

The owl kind of dropped, then lifted up and flew into the distance flying north towards Mullholland Drive and a group of trees maybe a few miles in the distance. As soon as it took to the skies, other birds came from nowhere; crows, of course, and other birds which were a lot smaller.

It was as if the birds had the area under guard and as soon as they saw an alien – a bird of prey - they took to the skies; the owl steered its way through and a few birds went close to it but the owl carried on.

The guy told us that he knew that would happen and the same thing happened when he let the other owl go; that too flew steadfastly on.

It reminded me of the time I worked as an ice cream man in Wolverhampton, when I took the ice cream van to a new area and was approached by an Italian Mister Softie who didn't want me there and . . .. but that's for another day maybe; maybe.

Peter McParland

There he is at the top of the page, there; Peter McParland: he's the fella on the right with the Villa shirt and he's about to cross that ball out of the reach of the Chelsea fella with him.

He was in all the papers last week as it was his 91^st birthday and he's in them this week as he has died. He waited for the Villa to win again, after the disappointment with Man City and PSG, even though Villa played great in that game.

Aston Villa left winger. Number 11, and the last of the winning FA Cup winning team on 1957 to die. I always remember him with that number eleven on his back, like Georgie Best, which many people are mistaken as they think he was number seven 7.

Every time I saw Georgie play he was eleven with Morgan at number seven.

Peter McParland played in the days when, if the ball came across and the goalkeeper caught it, it was okay to shoulder charge the goalie into the back of the net, with the ball, as long as his feet were on the floor. This is why a lot of keepers punched the ball out which made for faster end to end football.

The goalkeepers since have been a protected species. One time there were not allowed to run with the ball in their hands unless they bounced it and I remember in one game Georgie Best timed his shot so well that when Gordon Banks bounced the ball, wee Georgie kicked it out of his hands and into the goal. NO GOAL, they shouted, you can't score a goal like that, you can't kick it out of the poor goalkeeper's hand like that. Not to Saint Gordon Banks.

But back to Peter McParland who was the first player I saw playing for Aston Villa when I entered Villa Park with my dad, who wasn't much of a football fan and who had taken me the week before to the dreaded Birmingham City who played Lincoln City.

The rest of the Irish in Birmingham supported Aston Villa and that's where we went.

So goodbye to Peter Mc P and thanks for everything.

Memorial Day in America.

 I wrote this some time ago and I am publishing it again as it reminded me of the LA I used to know, the LA I hope returns one day and there it is above.

Memorial Day in America is a national holiday; what you would call in Britain a bank holiday, and when I first moved there I would go to a big house in the San Fernando Valley (The Valley) to celebrate with a friend of a friend.

The friend was a guy called Hank; everybody called him Hank but his real name was Chaim – pronounced Hime, with that guttural sound on the aitch – but people called him Hank. It wasn't that he wasn't proud to be Jewish but Hank was easier for goys to remember and pronounce.  

Now 'goy' is a Yiddish word and if there was one thing I liked about Hank it was his use of Yiddish; I learned what a schnorrer was, a schlemiel, a schlepper and all the other uses of words not so complimentary but colourful and interesting.  

I also got used to hearing those words from his other friends and when I went to the world première of the movie Showgirls (don't ask) with him I met all the guys in the producer's office and learned their humour too.

When they heard my accent they'd say 'Where you fram – Joysey??'

In fact if there's one thing I miss about LA it's the Jewish humour – not Jewish jokes but Jewish humour – you know: Woody Allen, Seinfeld etc. 

The Jews here in Britain, seem to play gentiles ever since David Kossoff died. The closest thing Britain ever got to a Jewish series, since Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width was a series made by Indians called Goodness Gracious Me which had that fish out of water, matriarchal, Italian/Jewish/Irish feel to it, even though it was from a country so far away.

Back to memorial day and my pal Hank.

I went to the house twice in the valley and it was the same story each time; when we arrived we met Hank's pal and he would be sitting in the big house by himself. He would take us in to the rear of the house where there would be loads of food and drinks all set out on a garden table next to the pool.

'The others will be here soon' he would say 'Hey Chris – when we have time maybe you can explain to me the rules of cricket.'

And I would say 'They're quite simple it's . . . '

'When we got time' he'd say; then we would sit around and take a drink.

A little while later his daughter would arrive, by herself, and sit at the table. She had the same conversation each time and that was to do with the 'valley' seceding from Los Angeles.

That's all she was interested in and, in fact, one of the years they had an election and the people of the valley decided to stay in Los Angeles.

After that the fella's ex-wife would show up. She would sit with the daughter and the fella would say 'how about some food' and as we were helping ourselves the son would arrive.  

He wouldn't say hello to anybody but would get in to some argument with dad and the arguments would usually spring from the fact that mom and dad were no longer a couple, mom no longer lived in the big house and neither did the kids.

So each Memorial Day this fella would get ready for a big garden party that no one went to; the son was embarrassing, the daughter was a typical 'valley girl' and the poor mother would try and hold on to the remnants that once were her family.

Each time we went there we ended up playing darts and leaving most of the food.

One year, Hank brought along his wife – that was a new one on me and I think he married her so she could get a green card.

She was a make up assistant in the film industry and Hank and his pal were assistant film directors; they were always setting up one big film after another none of which ever happened and if there's one thing to know about the Los Angeles film industry it's that most people have a script in their pocket, a project they are working on and, as an actor, I have been offered stardom more times than I can remember.

It was usually 'I want your voice in my movie' – my voice? Maybe I can get in to it too aye?

Hank asked me to join him when Memorial Weekend came about again – some time in May, as a rule, before the weather got really hot and the sun reflecting on the pool would blind you with its glare and when I would go indoors to get away from it the image of the last thing I was looking at would stay with me – but I passed as it was just too embarrassing.

I never completely lost contact with Hank; he would call me every Saint Patrick's Day and offer his services as a nominated driver. He drove a 1963 Chevy Nova convertible with red seats and white body work and in the winter, even though it was LA, it was cold, as he couldn't get the hood to work – or the top or whatever it's called - so we were forever in the open.

When I started to do my one man Irish Show on St Patrick's Day in the year 2000 he came to see it and one year he brought along the guy from the valley.

'Nice show, Chris; listen when we get time maybe you can tell me the rules of cricket.'

'Yeh – when we get time' I'd say.

I did the show each year up to about 2010 and each year I'd send Hank a flyer and he would call to say he was available as a nominated driver.

As well as the Yiddish, Hank had a very rough voice with a thick Brooklyn accent; he would talk about his 'dawdter' and his 'mudder an' farder' and one day when his daughter showed up she turned out to be quite a beauty. It was strange to see something so beautiful with such a rough looking man – let's face it he looked like a gangster.

One year one of the flyers came back – not at this address, so I feared the worst.

Hank had called me one day, when I got back from New York; I saw his name on my 'caller I.D.' thing on the phone and meant to call him back but I was rushing out so I didn't. He probably wanted to know how his home town was.

I felt guilty not calling him that day as I knew what the returned envelope meant, which I kept in the car; one day when I was travelling through Culver City, I called at his address and what I had suspected was true.

The manager of the building told me he had died; he had a heart attack one day and that was all he knew.

All the stuff I knew died with him: his daughter, his mother in New York, his money worries, the very cheap places to eat he had found all over Los Angeles and his Chevy Nova convertible, which he called Betsy – all gone.

Took me a long time to get over the guilt of not calling him that day – but I did think of him just as I think of all my friends, like you, that I will call one day.

Just as one day I'll tell you the difference between baseball and cricket.

How to pour Guinness, eating in LA and that pesky Arizona law.

This is a follow up to the post I put up last time; written in 2010 so the dates and views are from then; I wonder, on this day September 28th 2024, if Los Angeles is the same paradise as Ieft.

Well the medics, Remote Area Medical, have left Los Angeles after treating over 6,000 patients and after a couple of other states they are heading for Haiti – and more power to their elbows.
One or two people have asked me how we manage to eat out so often – well let me tell you it is very cheap to live here and very cheap to eat out. Petrol is about £2 a gallon – in the UK the last time I was there it was that much per 2 litres.
Last night we went out to eat at a French Restaurant at the Farmer's Market and it cost, for two of us, about £25. We both had boef bourguignon and a posh bottle of water so it would have cost more if we'd ordered a bottle of wine, I suppose, but you can see how cheap it is.
On Sunday we had a curry and it cost around £23 but there I had a few pints of Guinness.
The Indian food is not great here but we have found a few places – the Guinness is not that good and it's better to have canned Guinness and pour it properly.
The Guinness I drank on Sunday was from the pub next door to the Curry Palace on Sunset Boulevard where they open the can and dump it into the glass upside down.

If anybody came here straight from Dublin they would kill the bartender for doing that.

It makes the Guinness look like slops and it doesn't settle at all properly.
Guinness won an award for the design of the can and the widget inside to make the Guinness taste and look as close to draft Guinness as possible. The draft Guinness in the pubs here leaves a lot to be desired and to be honest nobody here has ever tasted a real pint of Guinness. They may be used to what they drink, and if they ever visit Dublin or even London they might not like the real stuff – a bit like people who are only used to eating processed food not liking the real stuff.
It's the same with the cheese – it's all processed – and there is no real dairy industry as the milk and cream have to be processed more than I am used to.
The milk – when I was there – in the British Isles is pasteurised and here it is homogenised; in Britain it was possible to save the cream from the top of the milk over many days and churn it into butter; if you tried that with the milk here you would end up with cramp and no butter.
Anyway, apart from the dairy and the Guinness, the food here is great. They haven't quite cracked English food and their version of Irish food with actual lumps in the mashed potatoes would cause another potato famine if it was introduced in Ireland.
I haven't drunk wine for a few years, by the way, which was the best decision I ever made – just whiskey and beer and the beer is usually Guinness. So none of those red wine headaches any more and I also object to drinking beer straight from the bottle so if that's the only choice I don't drink.
The area we live in is very nice; we overlook Runyon Canyon and see plenty of palm trees, humming birds and a lot of greenery.

In this shot you can see the welcome you get when you get to the gate of the canyon which might frighten people who are scared of snakes away but I have been over the canyon hundreds of times and I've only seen two or three snakes. I've seen plenty of other things there though like a woodpecker. I have heard them all my life but here I actually saw one.
There are also loads of butterflies and a morning yoga class just as you walk through the gate.

The other photo is on the way down the canyon and you can just see the roof of our building – right at the part where the canyon disappears; the flat roof.
All the talk here at the moment is about the new immigration law in Arizona where cops will be able to stop people, who they suspect is an illegal immigrant (what they call illegals or illegal aliens) and ask for papers. The chances of them asking me is quite remote so they will have to racially profile people with brown skin – the Latino.
The Latino does a lot of the work here by the way, and the Latina; they sweep the streets, do the gardening and do a lot of the manual work the Americans won't do and if they don't do that you can see them selling oranges on street corners. Of course I have heard that the gangs rip them off for, what can only be called, protection money.
What you don't see the Latino doing is begging; there are lots of beggars here after spare change; they are not called beggars they are called pan handlers – is that the politically correct way I wonder?
Santa Monica, I would say, have the most beggars around here; nearly as many as San Francisco, and you see all races begging except for the Latino. Some people just come up to you in the street with their regular decent clothes on and ask for money. Sometimes it comes as a shock, if they're well dressed, and another place you find beggars is at the traffic lights.
At the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard people are dressed as Jack Sparrow, Superman, Batman (he gets into fights) and other movie characters and they have photos taken with tourists who tip them – so they're begging too; in the richest country in the world.
The Los Angeles police are reluctant to get involved in immigration issues; they don't want undocumented immigrants being too scared to report crimes – I've always equated undocumented immigrants with sperms; the strongest come here and survive.
The Arizona law – which comes into force in a few months – signed April on 23rd by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, is similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants.
Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.
This was pointed out to me by someone who supports the Arizona law but I don't agree with any of it; just because someone else does it doesn't mean we have to.
If the border between Mexico and the USA was open or easy to pass through like it is between the UK and the rest of Europe there wouldn't be an influx of Mexicans to the USA; they would come here to work in the richest country in the world and go home at night or weekends or whatever. People don't really want to leave their own country; they want to stay with their friends and extended families; sometimes they want to, like me, but that is another matter.
So what do people really have against immigrants – maybe the way they look?

Another week in America and Remote Area Medical.

I love living here; I really do. I love Los Angeles; it is a wild, happening crazy city and there is always something to do.

It's a great place to eat and if you mention that there is a new restaurant or coffee shop that's opened people are all ears; they gather around. This applies to all classes as here everybody eats out a lot – we eat out about three times a week.

3rd Street is full of restaurants and there was an article or series in the LA Weekly some time ago where the writer tried to eat his way through all of them; he ate through all kinds of ethnic food and all kinds of meat including goat – which I ate once and found delicious – so this post is not meant to be anti-American.

I received an e-mail the other day from a friend in England and he said how great it was that the Obama Health Care Plan had been passed by Congress.

Indeed it is wonderful that it is on the books but it wasn't the health care plan that Obama set out to achieve; there is no public option.

Most of us here don't know what has been passed and how it will affect us but what we do know is that on the day the bill passed the shares in health care insurance companies shot up – so they think it's a good deal for them.

Everybody will have to carry health insurance whether we can afford it or not.

Now let me tell you how many people in this country, the richest country in the world, are without health insurance – 40 million.

If these people are sick they have to buy Robitussin from the pharmacists and hope for the best; if they suddenly have appendicitis they find themselves $25,000 or so in debt which usually ends up in bankruptcy; in fact the majority of bankruptcies here are for medical reasons; they call them medical bankruptcies.

So whether the Obama Health Care Plan is going to have any legs is anybody's guess.

Last week the Remote Area Medical team came to the sports centre here in Los Angeles - you will see above at the top of the page ordinary middle class people waiting outside.


On the first day, Tuesday, they carried out procedures which included 95 tooth extractions, 22 oral surgeries, 470 fillings, prescriptions for 140 eyeglasses, 45 mammograms, 43, HIV tests and 96 Pap smears.

You have to ask yourself why the equivalent of Doctors Without Borders are in the second biggest city in the richest country in the world? And I think I have answered that earlier.

In Los Angeles 22% of adults are without medical insurance; that's why they are here.

I have to conclude that it may be too late here for a national health service or any kind of universal health care – or what they call here socialized medicine; I hope I'm wrong.

Remote Area Medical – or RAM – was started by Stan Brock; I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was was born in 1936 in Preston, Lancashire, England.

He was educated at Canford School, Wimborne, Dorset. His father, a civil servant, was posted to the British Colony of Guyana.

He was known on TV for a show called Wild Kingdom and seems to have had, so far, an amazing life – wrestling with anacondas in the Amazon Basin for example.

When RAM were here last time there was a problem as they couldn't bring doctors into the state unless they had a Californian licence to practice; so the doctors without borders status had to be kicked into touch.

So each time they visit a state they have to advertise for volunteers; I think we might volunteer next time; not because of our medical expertise – even though Margaret is a qualified nurse (in the UK) – but to help organizing the queues etc.

They need to people to stand in line for somebody who has to relieve themselves or go to another queue and, you know - it'll be an experience.

At the sports centre they have notices saying 'line for fillings,' line for extractions,' 'line for spectacles' and all the other ailments.

There have been interviews on the radio with some of the doctors – on kpcc.org if you fancy listening – and one of the doctors said that it is just like being in the third world; the poor of the third world are the same as our poor.

Stan Brock shows up to each venue and uses a loud hailer to organise things; he said he sees many things but gets the greatest satisfaction when he sees people newly fitted with glasses; it's as if they've been given sight from being blind, I suppose, and I can easily understand it.

There are very sad cases; a doctor said there was a patient who had diabetes and hadn't taken her meds for six years; the doctor said she was dreading the results of the examinations as the organs will be in failure.

The RAM will be travelling on next week to Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and other states and each time they will be looking for volunteers.

Here's a letter from Stan Brock - http://www.ramusa.org/about/letter.htm - if you want to write a screenplay what better subject could you want?

The Comedians

Jack Benny

Dave Allen

Johnny Vegas

Norman Evans

Well thanks very much for the support – I had a lot of private e-mails about the show and about the progress of my voice and in the finishing up we had a good weekend.

I am writing this at three thirty in the morning as we are rushed off our feet with packing and arranging things for the big move back to the UK; it's going to be an adventure for us as we are taking the train from Los Angeles to New York which takes three days, before taking the ship.

We have a stop over in Chicago for six hours so we must take advantage of that; I don't think I'll have time to take in some blues but if there is a chance I'll try.

I also want to try and get on a tourist bus for a guided tour of the city. I am much more interested in seeing where Al Capone lived or where the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred than trying to blend in with the locals. Tourists look like tourists; it's the way they carry their cameras and the way they try and blend in and in any case there's nothing wrong with being a tourist.

Back to the weekend: I really enjoyed the show and learned a lot. I didn't break any box office records but I had decent houses and a lot of my friends came and it was great seeing them after the show.

Nothing is written in stone but I think the script is the way I like it.

For those who don't know what it's about – and why should you? - it's about a comedian who has an 'out of body' experience and sees himself doing his act; he eventually realises what he is which is just like the other 'old school' comedians of his generation with their old ways trying to be hip.

The old comedians would never touch the microphone like the newer ones do today; the new ones walk around the stage with the microphone in their hand which is something you would never see Jack Benny do as he knew what to do with his hands.

There is a famous play called The Comedians by Trevor Griffiths which is set in a comedy school. It was a hit in the West End and on Broadway in the seventies. It deals with the young comedian who doesn't know what to do with his hands taking the microphone off the stand and holding it; some of the play is very funny and sad and has scenes of the 'students' taking the mic off the stand and leaning against it.

Isn't it strange that it's pronounced as mike and spelt mic?

My comedian, Eddie Ramone, also uses the Eff word for the first time on stage as he is trying to be 'dangerous' as he puts it; I got this idea from seeing a very famous comedian at a roast using it like the other younger comics do and it didn't seem to fit; he looked embarrassed.

The top picture is of Jack Benny whom I mentioned earlier on; he was a sophisticated American comedian known for his impeccable timing and poise.

Then we have Dave Allen; an Irish comedian well known in the 60s and 70s who would sit sipping a drink that only looked like whiskey (his drink was champagne) and he was the epitome of relaxation.

Next one down is a modern comedian Johnny Vegas, who also gets a lot of work as an actor, who is a typical northern comedian rather like Norman Evans who is in the bottom photo, who specialised in being Norma Evans too.

All funny and I certainly do not compare myself with any of them; the hardest part of my play is standing up and doing the 'stand up' comedy bits.

This is totally different from being funny in a play or a movie – I always knew it was it has just been confirmed to me that's all.

Oh why not – here is a picture of me as Eddie Ramone.

Eddie Ramone

Bill Sparkman of Clay County, Kentucky.

  

Me and my pal Nick, in the street, recently,  

with Shaftesbury Avenue in the background.

I wrote this in 2009 when I lived in Los Angeles and today I found it, read it and that's why it's here. The photo - a couple of months ago after a roam around Soho.

I heard an article on NPR this morning (in 2009) about the death of a fella called Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Kentucky.
Bill Sparkman was a Census Bureau worker for Clay County and he was found on September 12th hanging from a tree with the word 'FED' scrawled on his chest; now when they say scrawled I don't really know what they mean unless it was on his actual bare chest which makes the whole thing even more macabre.
The people in Clay County overwhelmingly voted for John McCain in the election last year (2008) and have been protesting against President Obama ever since; they see him as a big spending socialist. 

To me, and to anybody from Europe that sounds comedic; we have lived under so called socialists, they have always been in our governments, and Mister Obama is nowhere near being a socialist; if he lived in Britain he would be on the right wing of the Labour Party.

But to get back to Bill Sparkman; he was, apparently, a man who had gone back to school to qualify as a school teacher and, indeed, worked as a substitute teacher; the census only happens every so often – five years is it or ten? - and he had started his census work recently; he had also been diagnosed with a form of cancer – non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The FBI have said that his death is either a homicide, a suicide or an accident. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in all your life; how could a man accidentally scrawl something onto his chest and then hang himself – some accident!

Here is direct quite from Yahoo News: 'Al Cross, a former reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who covered the area for 30 years, believes that the conditions underlying the murder go back much farther and much deeper - and are more local - than the spate of recent ire.'

Today I'm going to write about illegal alcohol in Donegal, Ireland; not that I know too much about it but I know what I want my characters to do in the next part of my novel. One of my heroins gets involved in the distribution of poteen and I want a little adventure to happen now so I'll get on with that.

Toodle oo!!