Crimble.

to lighten things up here is a picture of our wedding all those years ago.

                      

Let's hope things will be different this time next year for everybody's sake. Then we can have, what people seem to think is the biggest priority this year, a Christmas.

But is it that important? Maybe for people's peace of mind, a link to a kind of normality – or as an American President said, normalcy! But every time you look at TV to see a movie or a play, you can see people in crowds, hugging, kissing and being normal and regular.

I don't think the hug or the hand shake will ever come back. Maybe in family circles but not generally. Maybe the fist or elbow bump? I don't know. The open-handed handshake was to prove you came as a friend and it stuck through the ages and maybe the elbow.

People in the south of England, in the London area mainly, would always greet you with a hug and a kiss. Men to men; women to women. In the midlands and the north, where they are supposed to have a friendly reputation, it doesn't happen so much. When you visit people in London, say meet some friends, the trend and the custom it to kiss your pal's wife. Maybe a kiss on the cheek but in the north, and this has happened to me, they think a kiss means you are flirting or trying to 'get off' with the wife so the next step is everybody throwing their car keys in to something so couples can pair off.

Of course, as I have said many times, I am no expert on anything and these are only my opinions and what I surmise as I lie in bed listening to the Today programmes on BBC Radio 4 every morning.

The Today Programme, by the way, is considered serious news in Britain. It has an obligation to devote a few minutes to tell the public what happened in Parliament the day before. This is supposed to be without political bias or prejudice although some people think it does have a bias but those people maybe don't know what playing devil's advocate is. Extreme left wing people think the BBC is too right wing and extreme right wingers think it's too left wing.

There are people in this world who don't know the difference. They say they are 'right wing' and have left wing views.

I like the BBC, I have always preferred their programmes from any other channel and that includes Netflix which I no longer subscribe to. I had it for years but when it became popular, using and making TV programmes and shows, I missed the movies I used to get from there. I don't know, it might still be the same in America where they sent, by mail (snail mail to use the expression) DVDs. I watched all the French films I missed over the years, all the film noir Hollywood classics, which are my favourites to this day, and now I miss them.

I also liked working for the BBC and they paid more money than ITV to an actor like me. Big stars – Tom Jones etc – would get big money from ITV, even though the quality was on the BBC, but to me not that much. It's hard to show comparison because what seemed like a lot of money in the 1970s sounds a tiny amount now but when you did a drama your fee was, shall we say, £10. That was the fee they worked on for the repeat fees and that would be for the London area only. As the programmes would be networked, shown on all the nation's stations, the actual fee would be £40. The same job on BBC you would get £40. Then when it was repeated or sold abroad the repeat fee was based on the original fee £10 ITV and £40 BBC. That's why when John Hurt won an EMMY for The Naked Civil Servant in America he told the press how much he was paid for the American showing which was only in double figures.

'Oy' an old pal said to me 'I work on the building as a chippie, a carpenter, and I put the doors in the houses.'

'Yes?' I said.

'Why don't they pay me every time somebody uses it?'

'That's a silly question' I said.

Happy Christmas.

Once Upon a Time . . 2.

 

Yes we're back at Once Upon a Time in America as I wanted to point out something strange.

First of all, I like discussing movies, they are as much a part of art as any other medium and in some cases they are more important. As you may see from the comments section I am not the only one who prefers good movies as opposed to blockbusters but I am very grateful for them; they pay for the films I like. Some of those are hits, of course, as I love The Godfather series of movies and what could be more satisfying than a piece of work that lots of others appreciate.

But I remember when I first started out as an actor I would be asked questions about my choice of work, warned I would spend a lot time unemployed and I remember that that was something I liked about it. I know now that some huge stars spend a lot of time not working. They don't worry financially about it but one very famous actor, recently, only worked two days in a twelve month period.

There was also a list of considered important jobs, I should follow, like a barber, a toolmaker or an electrician; amazing it was never something like a lawyer or a musician but I came to realise that all jobs are of the same so called importance. In brutal terms they are there to pay income tax and nothing else. However, it is widely considered that the farmer and the poet are the two most important jobs. The farmer feeds your body and the poet feeds your brain and maybe your philosophy. 

And you know something I think the actor is in the branch of poetry - as we interpret it.

If you say that to anybody they will say 'what about the doctor, the nurse, the President - well, we've all learned about the latter - but just think about it: the farmer or the poet. I know which one of them would never be on a bike.

The other idea of work is to 'put bread on the table' which must be a phrase from a Hollywood movie.

Getting back to Once Upon a Time in America - I do digress, don't I – when I went to live in America in January 1995 I met someone who could convert videos from the British system to the American one – PAL to NTSC. So I asked my wife to send my VHS copy over and had it converted.

Another guy told me it was his favourite film so I gave him the copy. He returned and said 'that was weird' – he had seen the film before, but never 'in that order.'

The film has a very well known opening. It starts with the sound of a telephone ringing and it rings a few hundred times as the action goes to montage scenes from the story including telephones being answered, which is strange to watch; it also had the thing of making us think it had stopped and then another ring. 

The film is set in 1920, 1932 1933 and 1968; and the montage flips from 1933 to 1968 then back 1920 for the start of the story.

The order my friend saw the original showing on TV went in date order and I am so glad I saw it as it was meant; someone at the television station had re-edited it.

 I like lots of films like that – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Slaughterhouse 5 – a lot of those movies, by the way, may have a character thinking back to days gone by but, if I can remember correctly, in Slaughterhouse 5 – the lead character, Billy Pilgrim, thinks forward.

Once Upon a Time . . .

 

Do you know I don't really have a favourite – a favourite anything. When I go to the supermarkets the machine will ask me if I would like to browse my favourites; I find that very strange to have a favourite anything that you can buy in a supermarket. Bit like window shopping at Tesco's or Ralphs and ogling the goodies that I used to look at in toys or bicycle shops when I was a child.

I spent the weekend looking at one of my favourite movies: Once Upon a Time in America. All three hours and forty minutes of it. But can I really say it's my favourite film? what about The Godfather or Annie Hall?

I read the other day that they actually cut two hours from it.

It was made in 1984 and is a masterpiece; terrific performances by Robert de Niro and James Woods – now how can I like James Woods when he is so right wing, or appears to be? Well it's his acting I like. It is a big performance but natural and that is the be all and end all for me. It's so well crafted and it slips into two or three time zones effortlessly. When I say natural I mean I believe it.

I think back to 1984 and figure what I was doing. I was doing a movie called Lifeforce which really wasn't well received here. It wasn't received well in America but when I moved there in 1994 a film editor, in the building where we lived, recognised me from it. When we were coming up in the elevator one of the days he welcomed his guest and introduced me and said 'guess what movie he is in?' and the guy said Lifeforce.

I went to a horror book shop in the valley one day, with a pal, and the guy in the shop wanted me to sign his DVD and VHS copies of the movie and when I met a movie director, casually, at a movie screening he told me he had met me before in the Horror Shop; maybe I should have asked him for a job?

The kicker was a few years ago, when I was doing my play at Jermyn Street Theatre, a group of guys waited for me one of the nights when I was going home. They were Lifeforce fans and had photos of me which I had never seen which I had to sign. I know about Star Wars and Star Trek conventions but Lifeforce?

When working on that film, and there were one or two actors who looked down their noses at the movie, two actors were brought in for one of the scenes. Two actor laddie types with perfect diction and big movements. The director thought they were wonderful when they came in but after a few takes he thanked them very much and off they went – they didn't use the scene.

I did learn a lot about natural acting when living in LA. They loved the perfect diction – which I never have had, in any case – but when it came to the work it was never needed. If the film is American and set in America why should they worry about some cinema in London, e.g.

The reason I put the movie on was to listen to the music of Ennio Morricone at the beginning when the character De Niro plays goes in to Grand Central Station in New York to open a case from a safe deposit box. When he finds it empty he buys a ticket to Buffalo and as the wonderful Morricone music swells the music changes to 'Yesterday' by Paul McCartney and we have gone forward 35 years.

I omitted saying it is at least fifteen minutes into the film and I was hooked. By the way, have you ever noticed that at twenty minutes in most films there is something called a Life Changing Event – and that would be the moment; end of the first act.

Not in my new film, of course, as that will only be 25 minutes long.

I have seen Once Upon a Time in America many times and I hope to see it again as it is like a great painting.

As we were watching it I said to my wife 'Wife' I said – only kidding. I pointed out that a section of the music was like some of The Pogues Christmas song Fairytale of New York which has to be one of my all time favourite Christmas songs. The bit that goes: la la la laa la (so happy Christmas) and when I was researching the movie today look what I found:

When Shane MacGowan of The Pogues was writing "Fairytale of New York", he had never actually visited the city, so he watched this movie countless times to get a feel for the New York City atmosphere. (The first bar of the Pogues song bears a strong resemblance to "Deborah's Theme.")

Tilly Fairfax.

 

Hi folks,

Yes it is a new blog: I've been following this one which came to be on Facebook – yes I still have FB, as some people call it but it is as far as I go. As with smart phones I think they're for the birds too.

I think about you all, especially those sitting at home by yourselves who would like to be with others and want to share, maybe even want to see good movies or TV shows.

I just watched a good movie Uncle Frank. It stars Paul Bettany and I watched on Amazon Prime – yes, get me I have a movie channel.

But you don't need a movie channel to read this blog. It's about a young lady who is in the body of an older lady – not that old, by the way - who is going through the change which is a little more than a menopause. 

It's a change: children getting older, getting independent in some departments but not others, adventures around the corner – give it a go. Also very well written, by the way

https://therealtillyfairfax.wixsite.com/website/post/taken-for-granted

this will also be on my blog so I will send that link too.

Botham

 

I read an interview the other day with Ian Botham. He was a great hero when he played cricket for England and a sight not to behold these days when he took his seat in The House of Lords. The interview was published as a Q&A and when it came to the inevitable question of Brexit his quick answer was 'Forget it mate, we won.'

First of all 'we' and secondly he and they, didn't win. They lost – they lost confidence in a great idea, an idea of a peaceful togetherness with the other peoples of Europe, lost faith in their trust of others and became suspicious of them claiming that a non-elected body was making the rules when we actually  voted for MEPs - but all that is water under the bridge. By the time the UK try to rejoin the EU I will be water under the bridge. So it won't affect me at all. I don't live near a lorry park in Kent and I can carry on making my little films and entering them in the festivals all over the world – including Europe. The irony is, of course, that Botham was of the opinion he was getting rid of an unelected organisation and for this he joins another – The House of Lords.

But it's amazing how boyhood heroes suddenly become arseholes. I remember Clint Eastwood at one of the 'nasty party' conventions bringing a chair on to the stage and started talking to it, rather like someone at a drama school audition.

'My Lord I have letters here from France' – of course if that joke ever travels from this page it won't be in America. You see in Britain French Letters is another name for condoms.

Eastwood talked to the chair pretending he was speaking to Obama telling him where he went wrong. I loved Clint's films and love him as a director. He changed attitudes in Hollywood as he would never shout 'action' as most of the time he would be doing horse operas or big movie westerns. He had worked with many a director who would use the big voiced 'Action!!!' only to see the horses bolt as soon as they heard the clapper.

I have to say most of the people, who were heroes to me as a child, and whom I have met, have never let me down. I have written on here a couple of posts about Roger Bannister and he was the nicest man you could think of. One of my favourite actors, Tony Curtis, greeted me as if I was an old friend, as if we had a history and it was the same when I met Rod Stewart. He said, Chris, you were always my hero and you haven't let me down – of course I'm kidding there, but we had a couple of drinks together then parted company with a 'be lucky' farewell from both of us which made me laugh at least.

By the way I found out that one of Marlon Brando's favourite actors was Tony Curtis. I remember telling a New York antique dealer, when we were talking late at night over glasses on wine, and how do you learn the lines and who is your favourite actor and I mentioned Tony Curtis.

'Oh you mean, my mudder and my farder, Tony Curtis?' sometimes, some people think they know all about acting and who it is fashionable to like and that is all they know.

I think the reason why Brando liked him was because he could smile – so you smile now and look in the mirror. 

Does it still look like a smile? Well fake it.

Be Lucky.

Whatever happened to great movies?

 There I am in an episode of The Angels in BBC – or was it called just Angels. Now why is that up there? Well why not.

In London, you have to be six feet high to be a cop – in Los Angeles it's probably four feet six. I say that because most of the cops there seem to be shorter than I am but there we are.

Above, I am playing a cop who is supposed to be a certain height but it doesn't matter as it is only TV – or movies. Paul Newman was shorter than me but look how many cops he played – and I don't mean at table tennis.

I wrote this a few years ago but someone wrote to me recently and said they liked it – so here it is again and just as relevant:

I remember in 1978, I was in Scotland filming a Shakespeare for the BBC; we were in Glamis Castle which is mentioned in the play Macbeth, and, to use a phrase, I was the only person in the cast that I'd never heard of.

The cast was peppered with famous actors from the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), who were mostly very nice to me apart from one or two who thought they were God's gift to the theatre and to acting – in fact if you look up the play on YouTube - As You Like It (1978) Helen Mirren - you should see me sword fighting in the first few shots which is followed by a piece of very bad acting and sweating.

By the way 'As You Like It' is known to some people in the profession, namely casting directors, as 'as you' – it saves them saying the 'like it' part!! I kid you not!!

One of the members in the cast was David Prowse who had, just before that, played Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars; this didn't mean much to us as most of us hadn't seen the film but one day, a load of kids found out we were filming and came up for autographs.

The RSC actors sharpened their pencils, so to speak, but the kids wanted David. They knew what he looked like beneath the mask as he was well known in Britain as the Green Cross Code man which he had played in a series of road safety films on TV; he was surrounded and the rest of us kicked our heels.

We got on quite well – me and David, well Dave, you know how it is - in fact I gave him a lift in my car one day and, whilst I can't remember where we went to or came from, I recall the car leaning over sideways when he got in, as he was, and is, a huge man.

What we were witnessing, and we didn't realise it at the time, was a new world order in movie making, pop music and general technology.

If you get the chance to look at the original Star Wars you will see that a lot of the technology in that movie was old hat by the time the second movie came out and because of the technology Star Wars and the like were discovering and using, the great movies of the early seventies – The Godfather (I & II), Taxi Driver and dozens of others - were on the way out only to be replaced by children's films.

Now you might not think they are children's films but what else would you call super hero movies? Films adapted from comic strips? Graphic novels?

There are those that have asked what happened to the movie business, what happened to the business after those great movies of the 70s – there's only Woody Allen still going in the same way, I mean look at these films:

  1. The Godfather - (1972, Francis Ford Coppola) (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino)
  2. The Godfather part II - (1974, Francis Ford Coppola) (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro)
  3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - (1975, Milos Forman) (Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)
  4. Apocalypse Now - (1979, Francis Ford Coppola) (Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall)
  5. Chinatown - (1974, Roman Polanski) (Jack Nicholson, John Huston)
  6. A Clockwork Orange - (1971, Stanley Kubrick) (Malcolm McDowell, Patrick McGee)
  7. Star Wars - (1977, George Lucas) (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford)
  8. Jaws - (1975, Steven Spielberg) (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss)
  9. Taxi Driver - (1976, Martin Scorsese) (Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster)
10. The Deer Hunter - (1978, Michael Cimino) (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken)
11. Annie Hall - (1977, Woody Allen) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton)
12. Network - (1976, Sydney Lumet) (Peter Finch, William Holden)
13. Rocky - (1976, John G. Avildsen) (Sylvester Stallone, Carl Weathers)
14. Patton - (1970, Franklin J. Schaffner) (George C. Scott, Karl Malden)
15. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - (1977, Steven Spielberg) (Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr)
16. M*A*S*H - (1970, Robert Altman) (Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland)
17. The Exorcist - (1973, William Friedkin) (Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair)
18. American Graffiti - (1973, George Lucas) (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss)
19. The French Connection - (1971, William Friedkin) (Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider)
20. Mean Streets - (1973, Martin Scorsese) (Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro).

There will be some people – and I have no idea who they might be – who will not like any of the above  but I'll bet your favourite is amongst them – I think I love them all apart from you know what.

But the 70s wasn't the only decade of great movies; look at the 60s:

 1. Lawrence of Arabia - (1962, David Lean) (Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness)
  2. Psycho - (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) (Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh)
  3. Dr. Strangelove... - (1964, Stanley Kubrick) (Peter Sellers, George C. Scott)
  4. 8 1/2 - (1963, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale)
  5. 2001: A Space Odyssey - (1968, Stanley Kubrick) (Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood)
  6. Once Upon a Time in the West - (1968, Sergio Leone) (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson)
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird - (1962, Robert Mulligan) (Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)
  8. Midnight Cowboy - (1969, John Schlesinger) (Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight)
  9. Bonnie and Clyde - (1967, Arthur Penn) (Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway)
10. La Dolce Vita - (1960, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee).

Only ten there but that's because I didn't want to fill the page with charts – I love all those movies and nearly in that order so what happened?

I have nothing against Star Wars but it's a kids' film – the same as Dr Who; it's for children; I have yet to see an episode but again, I have nothing against it.

But look at them – look at those movies; the film business will never be the same again it out technologised itself (I know – no such word).

I know they tried to make Batman weird or more grown up but watching it you have to buy in to the fact that the hero walks around in a bat suit – come on!!!!!

I know it's technology gone mad but when other innovations were invented they died down a bit after they'd got use to it.

When talkies started every movie seemed to be a musical; coloured movies gave a kaleidoscope of colour as happened on TV later and the zoom lens left a lot to be desired in some of those great 70s films above but they got used to it and this time it doesn't appear to be ironing itself out.

Will we ever see the likes of Lawrence of Arabia again? I doubt it.

One of the biggest flops in 2013 was The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp; it was a huge budget but back in the 40s and 50s directors like Raoul Walsh used to knock out cowboy movies like that in a matter of weeks.

The Lone Ranger series on TV was made for the price of the parking fees on the new one so what is going wrong? Why would The Lone Ranger cost so much money – maybe because they like to use a Lone Arranger these days?

The same happened to pop music with the invention of the boring over technologised stadium super groups . . . but that's another story!

height!

This is a funny old post, I'm warning you. I am probably thinking out loud, and writing as I speak – to paraphrase John Lennon.

I was speaking to someone yesterday about dying hair red – my daughter, in fact, and I mentioned that I played Richard I in a play some years ago and the director wanted me to dye my hair red. 

When I went to the hairdresser – my hair was black – they said said it would be too difficult and it would ruin my hair. I don't know how you can ruin someone's hair but they said they would have to bleach my hair before applying the dye. 

So I had to wear a bloody tight fitting red wig for the four or five weeks. They wanted me to grow a beard too and so I had to apply make up every night – all that to get me to Richard I.

Richard I was five feet eight inches – which was tall for those days (doze daze) and it got me thinking because that is roughly my size. Very slightly bigger – or higher – than my dad and my son and my brothers (bruds). 

If that was tall for then what will the average height be in another eight hundred years? We can see the consequences of the increase in height every time we go into an old building when people even as tiny as me hit their heads on the ceilings and doorways. I mean can you imagine someone hitting their head on a seven foot ceiling? Someone at the average height?

But I have seen people very tall at the gym in the shower. I don't take long looks at them – by the way I don't go any more – but I know that their genitals are not necessarily bigger than anybody else's and can presume it's the same with really great big tall women – when I say presume there, am I telling more about myself than I want to?

Now here is the question – if we, homo-sapiens, are getting bigger and babies are getting bigger with their bigger heads and the average size of genitals are not growing in proportion with height are we in danger of seeing the end of natural births? The end of natural births will mean less births, I should think, with more caesarians and more birth deaths of mothers.

Makes you think, doesn't it. Or maybe it doesn't.

It's a strange thing height. I would never, and I have never, wanted to be any other height. I mean can you imagine meeting, shall we say, George Clooney and finding him over six feet? He must be about five ten, or so, but if he was four feet ten or I was suddenly over six feet it wouldn't suit it's like . . . . .

. . . . well what is it like?

There is fella on TV here in a show called Pointless, which is the British equivalent to Jeopardy but not as good – I like it but not as much as the former which I used to record if I was out – the fella is near seven feet on Pointless. Like the late lamented Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan; they are not welcome in theatre, cinemas or concerts. I have been sitting in a theatre, as it is filling up, seeing my wonderful view change into the view from hell when Gulliver takes his seat. He can't help it and neither can his Amazonian wife. 

In every day life it doesn't matter as we get used to it, I have had and still have very tall friends but when I talk to someone, some kid, who doesn't seem to be growing fast enough and who is, obviously, going to be short and they are depressed about it I say there are certain things that tall people can't do like get under the door when you've locked yourself in the lavatory, maybe get into a racing car, unless it's made for you, a space ship, be a jockey or even make a comfortable parachute jump.

'But, I don't want to be a jockey, I want to play basket ball.'

Well there's no answer to that!

Pauline

Pauline died the other day. Last Saturday, as a matter if fact. She was one of our neighbours. I don't suppose anybody will be writing about her but I will:

On Friday someone knocked the door and said they would be putting some scaffold around the end of the building as there had been problems with the Television reception and they wanted to get up on the roof to fix the ariel up there – the antenna. I didn't even know there was one up there as we have cable.

He wanted to know whose laundry was on the line out there as it would have to be moved out of the way of the scaffolding. I told him it was Pauline's who lived out of the front door, into the next door on the building and the first apartment on the left on the ground floor.

Off he went and a little while later I had to go out and as I did he came passed with Pauline; she carrying an arm full of laundry looking very smart in a black blazer and being her usual Glaswegian cheerful self.

Not always cheerful some times a curmudgeon.

She was obviously ready to go out when the TV service man came – after a bit of humour she disappeared into her part of the building and that was the last time I saw her.

Over the years, we have been here six years, I have been in her flat a few times. I went and fixed up her telephone when she was having trouble with it. An easy job as it was a break in her cable.

There was another time she called and said she's dropped her keys in to the dumpster which is where we dump our garbage and recycling.

'what am I going to do?' she said when she called sounding desperate.

'I'll come down' I said 'but what can you do?' she replied.

At that time I must have wondered why she called.

I had a little stick with a hook on the end. It is ostensibly to open the door to the loft but we also use it to open the kitchen window as it's the 'other side' of the sink and opens too far to be reached.

The dumpster wasn't really that full – maybe a quarter to a half and it wasn't the garbage side, which would have been mostly plastic bags, but the recycling. All individual cans, bottles and the like.

I looked over and couldn't see the keys at all.

'You'll never find it!' she said.

Maybe I should give up, I thought, but I never give up – that's why I am still an actor, I suppose.

On our honeymoon in Portmarnock, just north of Dublin, we were on the beach and my wife lost her engagement ring – at the start of a sand storm. I found it propped up by a couple of shoots of, maybe, grass and when I gave the ring to my wife she threw her arms around my neck as if she had suddenly had her life saved.

I wheeled the dumpster out of it's little shed, to where I could see it easier but I wasn't getting in. I remember when I was in LA I had an audition and I had learned lines and had them recited on a walkman. Before I got into the car, I dropped some rubbish into the dumpster, in the parking lot, and as I did I dropped the walkman into the rubbish. So I had to get in which I did reluctantly, as I was dressed quite smartly.

With Pauline I was in my shorts (not my boxers) so that wasn't a problem but I didn't get in I tipped the dumpster onto its side and I saw the keys. I fished them out with my little hook and gave them to Pauline who threw her arms around my neck as if she had suddenly had her life saved.

She had lost her husband about ten or so years ago and lived totally by herself. She had friends but no relations. She was aged around seventy was a vegetarian.

Most of the days, at around eleven, gulls would fly around the garden. Maybe about ten or fifteen would fly round and around and they came every day as Pauline would put food out for them, the magpies and squirrels would have to take second place till the gulls went. Sometimes the pigeons would get pushed out too but they are here all the time.

Since Pauline died I have seen her flowers out the back. Grown and nurtured by her and never thinking they would last longer than she did. I see the birds arriving and she's not there for them any more. Likewise the cat that would sleep on her sofa most days before going home.

Her car is still at the front of our building. In the front passenger seat is a 'veggie' magazine and on the back are some plants – maybe a present for her friend that she was due to meet on Saturday. Due, as I say, as she didn't turn up. Her friend must have called her a few times with no reply and then, on Monday, called the police.

The police came around the back and when they pushed the window wide they could see Pauline was sitting on the floor the other side of the bed.

R.I.P.

The Dreamer.

I am the one on the right; winging as usual aged three and three quarters and my brother, on the left, is about 18 months. This was taken in Dublin - maybe the time I was sent there for my own good and that wonderful woman is our mother.

I wrote on here recently, about the birds in the garden and how the magpies teased a cat and the pigeons. I looked out again today and there was another magpie with a large piece of something, that it couldn't quite carry, so it pushed it towards a pigeon and the pigeon picked it up and walked away with it blaming the shaking of the morsel on the curse some Greek God that had cursed it with the lean forward it had to do with every step.

I don't know what the pigeon had done, in his creation, for his creator to give it that affliction. A bit like the monkey with a tail stuck to its posterior – what did it do to get like that?

When the pigeon started to chomp on whatever food it was, the magpie could see that it was a bit smaller and swooped over and flew away with it as the little babies still need feeding and protecting even though it is July.

Looking at this reminded me of the time I took the eleven plus at school. It was called that because it was a way of separating children into those that went to grammar school and those that went to a secondary modern.

The idea was the grammar school pupils would be expected to have a better education than the secondary modern ones and get jobs in offices or apprenticeships and the secondary moderns ones would have to get jobs in shops, factories or building sites.
In any case the secondary modern pupils would probably misbehave and disturb the classes.

There has always been an argument that it was a bit young for a life changing examination and 11+ (which is how it is notated – I put it that way because I know what's coming up) forgetting that you could always take the exam again as 12+, 13+ and even 14+.

Also there were entry exams for Art School, Technical School and Commercial School.

There was plenty of opportunity but not for me.
I didn't like school much and every time I went I felt out of place. For one thing I suffered with Conjunctivitis and lost a lot of time from school because of it. What was the point of going to school if I couldn't see.
We would go back to Ireland a lot of the times and one time the doctor told my mother to take us back to Dublin for the air. I was quite ill that time and later it was felt that I had had an attack of tuberculosis.

This came out after a Heaf test ** when it was decided that because of a shadow on one of my lungs, I didn't need the vaccine as I had fought it off without the need for it. 
This might have been inherited as TB or consumption was rife in Dublin with bodies dropping like flies in the streets at the start of the 20th century.

The time came for my 11+ examination and I spent the whole time looking through the window. The teacher who was supervising this told my mother that I did two things: one was look out the window and the other was write my name at the top of the paper and nothing else.

Well I'm here to tell you, as I know you have been thinking about this, that the window was quite high and you would need to be six feet six to see through it and I don't think they allow names at the top of exam papers.

But when I went to secondary school we were put into an annex and I could see through the window quite easily. I had a wonderful view of a brick wall and the tarmac of the playground.

I think this gave me practice for the rest of my life as I have always day dreamed and fantasised. I always loved the movies and when I was at the junior school – where I took the exam – I would pretend that all the kids at school were actors and we were waiting to be called to go and be in the film. 
I did not use the word act or anything else I would go off and be in the film. 
I would ask to go to the lavatory and as I walked across the playground I would be in another world – the world I am still in right now.

** The Heaf test, a diagnostic skin test, was long performed to determine whether or not children had been exposed to tuberculosis infection. The test was named after F. R. G. Heaf.

Spam

Hey folks! Just a quickie – I am getting a bit of SPAM in the comments section lately; nothing to worry about as I keep my eye on them but ignore it. Love, Chris.

Churchill and the Magpies.

See that above?

That's our garden. We have an apartment so we have to share with others but it's usually as empty as that. We have a couple of benches and, in all that green, there are thousands and thousands of birds.

I have just bought a 35mm camera and some film is on the way so I should, when it comes, be able to take better photographs than this:

I've always hated digital cameras they have turned a load of people not interested in photographs in to a load of people who think they are photographers. I don't boast that I am a particularly good photographer – even though I have taken one or two good snaps in my time – but the photographs from the past, which are interesting to me, are the rejections; these days those rejections are rejected at source.

Now what is this about? Every morning at dawn that Magpie gets on the tree, which is about 60 feet high, and looks around the garden to see what is going on. He may be the male or the female but for the want of political correctness we will call him a male as the male and the female of the species are different.

He looks around and near the ground is his spouse. They have just had some babies – some chicks – so at dawn he looks around.

Around here we have Red Kites flying about but they usually appear on overcast days and as you can see today is a beauty.

Also wandering about is a crow. Now this crow would come into the garden with his spouse. He would land on our roof, about 3 feet or so above the camera shot, and when he would see the coast was clear Mrs Crow would arrive. They would go up by the trees and walk – yes walk – the whole length of the garden which goes on a good few yards behind the camera shot. They are looking, when they walk, for little bits of worms coming up for a drink but today there is only one crow. We don't know what has happened to Mrs Crow maybe she is a late crow; we don't know.

As this is happening there is a television beaming across the nation with a man called the Prime Minister answering questions from a grilling he received from MPs the evening before. When each question is asked a look of confusion appears on the man's face. It is a strange face as it has the look of a schoolboy with moused up hair trying to make its mind up which way to hang, rather like the testicles of a condemned man about to hang from a rope. 

He blinks a few times at each question and thinks of the time when he wanted to be another Churchill and the saying 'be careful what you wish for' comes to mind as he must have wished for some kind of crisis so he could do his Churchillian 'cometh the crisis cometh the man' act but the crisis is totally out of control and he knows it as he tries to defend the reputation of a ne'er do well, a mountebank, to be precise, of the first order.

And in the garden the crow, by himself today, as I said earlier, is skulking around by that little toadstool, you can see there, which is actually a water bowl for the birds which, if I think of it, I fill with water.

Mr and Mrs Magpie have spotted the crow as he seems to be heading back down the garden with a look towards the trees to the left of the picture. That is where the baby magpies are hidden in their nest. So the two magpies fly close to the crow – let's face it they are all in the same family of animals, both types of crow – so they know what he is after.

One magpie is to the right of the crow, as he walks past the trees and the water dish for the birds, and Mrs. Magpie is to the left. They stand at a distance when the crow veers to the right of the picture. The magpies then move so they look to be in a pincer type of position, ready to attack Mr Crow when, and if, he is foolish enough to try to get to the other side.

On the TV the would be Churchill wishes he was handling such a crisis with Field Marshal Montgomery leading the field but no - he is trying to use the word fantastic as many times as he can in a sentance with his fantastic cabinet, his fantastic plans and his outrageous ambitions.

The Magpies manage to win the day and later on they will train their little babies to fly, take them to the top of that tree, and when that happens I hope to have some ASA 200 in the camera and let's hope I get a clearer shot next time.

My pen in my hand and some paper in the other.

Well I am sitting here with pen in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, wondering what I am going to put into the paper from the pen – of course neither of these things exist, any more, as they have been replaced by a keyboard and a screen.

Time goes along and we are in a lock-down and not allowed to go anywhere without permission from the police.

At the bottom of the garden there are three of my neighbours and we take it in turns to dig the tunnel.

We figure if we start digging near the back fence, which joins all our gardens, we should be able to sneak through and get as far as Pinner Green by Christmas; 2021.

I have never been a fella who feels cooped up when at home as lots of times it wouldn't worry me if I never opened the door again. I have everything I want here, all the things I have purchased over the years: guitar – in fact two guitars, a banjo. six harmonicas, at least, a pair of drum sticks but no drums.

Never bothered me before; I used to be the solo drummer when I was in the army cadets between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. One of my duties was to teach the drummers joining the band how to play a military drum. In the breaks in the canteen – the NAFFI – we would sit around with our sticks and practise our paradiddles and quavers on a table. So I can do that but when I have recorded songs, here, I have used a drum machine. Although once in a while I would use my fingers on the desk, a packing case and on one song I slapped my bare knees; now that hurt.

The upshot of it is that I am not using either of my guitars, harmonicas or drum sticks; why? Because at the moment I have so much time to spare that I haven't got the time.

I am editing my little film but nine times out of ten when I sit down to do it I notice a joke on Face Book, or a comment I have to answer or a brilliant saying will come in to my head and I have to put that in my 'news feed' instead. Unfortunately, like a drunken insult, it doesn't look so brilliant in the cold light of day.

I was talking to a pal of mine the other day, shooting the shit and reminiscing, putting the world to right and the thought came to me: I was like this as a child! My folks would send me out to play and I would stand at the bottom of the garden looking at the house. My dad would come out and say 'go and play!'

It was the same when we went on holiday. I liked the caravan (sorry my American friends a caravan – a trailer??) who knows - and I liked the tent when I went away with the boy scouts – I just found a photo of me when I was 5¾ so you can see how inquisitive I was; I look quite satisfied.

That was when I had been at school for 12 months. 

I hated school and that was a school photograph. That was the one my dad carried around with him in his wallet. I remember when I first saw it as I can't remember looking at it when I looked like that I also remember school at that time and I hated it. I couldn't see the point of going there. I suppose I found out all the kids there spoke with a different accent from me and maybe that confused me. 

I walked to school with a neighbour and on the way we would walk down St Paul's Road, in Birmingham, which had a railway bridge going across. The roadway, under the bridge, was very small, maybe just about enough room to drive a car through, but my mother wanted me, when I went by myself a year or so later, to cross the road outside Doctor Cronin's surgery. 

I could never, even at that age, figure out why it would be safer to cross the road by the doctors. Maybe she thought if I got hit by a truck the doctor would come out and save me. So I would walk with the gang of kids and their mams and let them go ahead to cross the road where it narrowed and I would nip over through the morning traffic by the croakers – salvation or bandages.

I have often wondered if this place, the UK, became something like Yugoslavia, with several fighting factions, that we would be figuring out a way to get to Pinner – half a mile away. Would I go over the gardens, sneak through the trees or get into the River Pinn and swim there. The River Pinn, by the way, is hard to see, as it's in a ditch at the side of some roads. It's near our current doctors' surgery which would please my mother but the fact is I would have to walk down the river as there probably isn't enough water around there to sustain me – it gets a bit deeper by the doctors so if I get into difficulty in the water the doctor can come out and save me.

Empty London.

I have tried, over the years, not to make this blog too political. Once or twice people have wanted me to give their cause a mention, and I think I did once, but I might not agree with the cause so never again. 

Good job I'm not a newspaper taking all kinds of adds, but I prefer to waffle on in my own way.

The current shut down all over the world is being made political, not by me, but by – now let me think: ah, politicians. 

They are looking out for themselves and their jobs.

Whenever there have been other epidemics and pandemics, shall we say, in Africa and, shall we say, Ebola, the medical teams move in, people like Doctors with Borders, get the military to build fields hospitals, and take it from there.

Ebola was a killer, a real frightening one and we can only imagine how the people that died suffered in their agony and pain.

But this latest Coronavirus, Covid 19, is being handled terribly in the UK and America. Now why is that? How can anybody say their man, their politician from their political party is doing better than the man from the other party. How can people justify accusing someone of something sinister just because they ask the right questions in parliament and then call them Mister Smarty pants or Clever Clogs?

I'm not answering any questions here by the way. 

I know the reason they didn't ask me to sort the situation out is that I wouldn't be any good at it so why give it to scheming politicians?

If you think about this one it reminds me of some of the films of contagious diseases - in fact one of the movies is close to this one and has been noted by the experts (**&).

A bit like 9/11: it was used in many thrillers and people took no notice. 

Obama noted a few years ago that we weren't ready for a pandemic as we had no stuff.

The UK doesn't produce anything at the moment, doesn't make anything, apart from music, games and movies. In fact the creative industries bring more money into the country than most other industries which are service industries and includes tourism.

We don't produce anything that could help us deal with the virus not even face masks. We (I'm fed up of using we as I think we are doing a lousy job) are not even good at preparing for anything; we send soldiers across to other countries without enough armour or tanks and whatever is needed to kill as many people as the armies like to kill.

Now the governments are running scared because we might run out of money, have a recession which might give them an excuse for more austerity.

We have just spent the last few years fighting about Brexit and now we (not again – not me) don't have to pay the 13 Billion to the EU. 

If it was so important to save that amount of money, as the EU was bleeding us dry, where did all the money come from that is now being spent or promised?

Since 2010 this government has borrowed £870 Billion – nothing to worry about though as the national debt started around the time of the Napoleonic Wars and will never ever be paid off – Never!