Happy Hogmanay

Happy Hogmanay to you. Or in Irish athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh, Spanish, feliz año nuevo or Happy New Year, in English.

But look above for Hogmanay in Edinburgh.

This is something I wrote nine years ago. So here it is again and why not?

I have many happy memories of it at new year's eve parties and watching it on TV – letting the new year in. I had black hair so I did a lot of 'first footing' – that is going out with a lump of coal and knocking the door as soon as I heard the midnight bells. My brudder did it too as his hair was blacker than mine.

It means that the first one over the threshold has to be a stranger (I think) with black hair bringing fuel – that was all for luck even though I wasn't a stranger. I did it for others too and I was always welcomed with a kiss and a whiskey! My brudder too with his blacker hair and deeper thirst for the whiskey and the kisses.

Let me digress here, I'll come back to hogmanay later but I mention this as most of the New Year parties I went to over the years had the TV on so we would know when Big Ben struck twelve so we could sing Auld Lang Syne but: do you place your television (if you have one) in the corner of the room?

Why?

Don't you find you get a crick in the neck after a while?

We used to have ours in the corner, with the back towards the window.

I suppose this was very handy when something boring came on and we could avert our eyes up a little and see what was going on outside. Most of the time this would be something like a lamp post or a parked car. Later in the day a curtain as it was usually dark out there and in any case as it was a sin to watch TV in the day time.

I suppose the problem being that many rooms have a fireplace in the middle so think of this:

what if there wasn't a fireplace there and you could sit back and watch the TV sitting on your sofa straight ahead.

I would often do this and think 'wouldn't it be great if the TV was there? Or maybe a little higher and a little bigger just like the movies?'

I really did think those things but I didn't think it for very long.

Eventually I moved the television to a point in front of the sofa so I could view it straight on – it's at eye level and about eight feet away so I can see the detail of the picture. It's not in anybody's way with its back to the wall between two sets of book cases.

Here we are:

Our sitting room is about twenty five feet long – nearly the whole nine yards!! - and I cannot imagine trying to be involved in anything on television from that distance.

I have heard people saying that they don't want the television to dominate the room; why not? They watch it all the time – I don't; I sit in here and type crazy posts for the blog – but that's another story.

But when I do watch it I watch it.

Whilst I am at it - we didn't have a telephone when I was a child in fact we didn't get one till we were married and when we got one we put it in the sitting room – everybody else put the bloody thing in the hall, usually in the cold, but in any case people I knew with small babies couldn't have a conversation in the hall as their voices would carry up the stairs and wake up the babies.

When we bought our first house, in 1967, we put the telephone in the sitting room.

You'd ring people and they'd tell you off for waking the kids – well MOVE it then!!

Move it move it move it!

These days, of course, people use their cell phones more and in any case their land lines (ha ha, land lines!! As if that is what they are) are usually cordless.

By the eway Land Lines don't exist any more, a land line goes directly into the wall and across the street to the telegraph pole – land line – anything else isn't a land line.

But what happened?

Why were they put out there in the first place and why was the TV in the corner?

Who started these crazy rules?

Now that Christmas is out of the way for another year this week we expect Hogmanay, which is celebrated in Scotland. This year a lot of people were expecting it to be the first Hogmanay of an Independent Scotland but not to be (for a while, anyway) – so that is a current meaning of the phrase to be or not to be!

Hogmanay is held by a lot of Scots to be the most important holiday in Scotland – and for the Scottish diaspora – so if you are Scottish and are reading this let me wish a very sincere and happy Hogmanay.

One of the reasons it holds so much importance in Scotland is that Christmas was considered too papist by the Church (Presbyterian) of Scotland so they banned it.

It wasn't even a public holiday till 1958.

In Scotland it is customary to serve a steak pie with mashed tatties, mashed neeps and carrots on Hogmanay which is actually December 31^st.

For the uninitiated tatties are potatoes (pronounced bedadaters in Ireland!!) and neeps are – well what are they? I like to think they are parsnips but fear they are probably turnips.

I heard last week about a woman living down here with her Scottish husband and that she could not match his mother's cooking of the steak pie so she called her husband's mother to ask what the secret ingredient was and was told it was sausages!!!

We would always watch TV at Hogmanay and if I never get to spend it in Scotland I will go my grave disappointed – just as my dad did because he never went to the Grand National.

I took him the The Derby though even though we had a fight on the way back.

What about?

He said Peter Shilton was England's best goalkeeper and I said it was Ray Clemence – or was it the other way around?

Who cares we soon got over it.

We would watch Andy Stewart on TV; he would say words of welcome, something like 'nice to see you' then finish the show with:

Haste ye back, we loue you dearly,
Call again you're welcome here.
May your days be free from sorrow,
And your friends be ever near.

May the paths o'er which you wander,
Be to you a joy each day.
Haste ye back we loue you dearly,

Haste ye back on friendship's way. 

To be pedantic – that word loue is an obsolete typography of the word love – but I used it in any case.

During the show Duncan MacRae would recite the poem A Wee Cock Sparrow

Many years ago when I first met my wife, I was invited to meet the parents on New Year's eve – Hogmanay – and I went around there with my brudder.

We sat on the sofa and recited this poem. They looked at us as if we were drunk – we were!– here it is:

A wee cock sparra sat on a tree,

A wee cock sparra sat on a tree,

A wee cock sparra sat on a tree

Chirpin awa as blithe as could be.

Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra,

Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra,

Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra

And he said: 'I'll get ye, ye wee cock sparra.'

The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,

The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,

The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,

And he hit a man that was hurlin' a barra.

The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,

The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,

The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,

And said: 'Ye take me for a wee cock sparra?'

The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra,

The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra,

The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra

And the boy stood and glowered; he was hurt tae the marra.

And a' this time the wee cock sparra,

And a' this time the wee cock sparra,

And a' this time the wee cock sparra

Was chirpin awa on the shank o' the barra.

meaning of unusual words: (but you knew them didn't you?)
arra=arrow
sparra=sparrow
barra=barrow
farra=father
marra=marrow
shank=leg

That makes sense now doesn't it??

Well this should and you should know the translation:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne! 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

Sláinte (health)

Retrospect.

Guess the year.

This blog has been going since 2009, and this is post number 534 - that is a lot of writing. All the posts are there on line and I believe this is where you go https://www.blogger.com/u/0/blog/posts/7199522268850238755

if you want to read them all. I point this out as I am still getting some of those early posts being read.

Most days I can click on and see if there are any comments. The other day I noticed a post I wrote in 2012 about Lyons Tea Shops, had a comment. The comment was made on December 17^th 2023 by someone called 'Lolli' mentioning the tea shop in Clapham Common. If you want to read that post it is at https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2012/08/lyons-tea-shops.html

and there are quite a few comments.

Once or twice friends have mentioned they tried to put a comment and couldn't – well I'm not in charge of that; I can delete comments but that's about it. By the way I never delete comments unless they are ads – which come now and again as spam – I don't even delete if they are critical, in fact over the years I have only had one bad comment which was funny.

Another post on there, I have noticed, is this one https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-richest-country-in-world-you-meet.html

which is about the famous coffee shop on Sunset Blvd and the closure of another that has comments too.

This one I can't figure out as this has had loads of hits this week – not as many as the BBC, for example but 29 today and it's just a review of my play 'The 2 Side of Eddie Ramone.'

https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-2-sides-of-eddie-ramone-review.html

I, obviously put it up when I was doing the play but why the sudden interest now?

And why some hits for this one https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2011/08/kate-copstick-review-in-scotsman-for.html

another review of the play.

It baffles me.

Oh look, here's one from December 2^nd 2010 – I like this one, am I being flippant and what about th4e comments? Are yours there?

https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2010/12/qatar-cutter-katarrr.html

 

La La Land La La Life!

 

I was eating dinner a month or so ago, and my daughter suddenly said 'keep still' – I did.

I was wondering if I had a wasp crawling over my face or a spider.

I do remember that happening when we were at mass one day, when I was a child, and because the church was so full we were standing outside. My dad saw a wasp on the neck of a man and went across and slapped it. The fella was shocked, wondering if he should put his mitts up, and start dancing around, and theN he was told – I killed the wasp.

But this wasn't that.

My daughter dashed to pick up her phone with the camera and took that shot above.

I don't know what that was sticking between my lips, and still don't. I looked at her and without moving a muscle I pulled that face.

And so after about a week of Covid I am looking forward to a negative reading, the next time I take the test.

We were going across to Ealing to our other daughter's house to spend Christmas with her and the family but no – we are still positive so we will spend Christmas here with our son who also has COVID.

So on to other things:

I bought 2 films on Blu-ray which I love. The Glenn Miller Story and La La Land to add to my collection.

La La Land is the most wonderful and happiest of films. I was in a play in Los Angeles, once, for eight months, and the girl in our play was about the same age - and not dissimilar in looks - to Emma Stone in the movie, and she would experience the same trials and tribulations; terrible treatment at auditions and one such incident was when, in the movie, Emma Stone was giving it her all at an audition, really doing well, supposed to be speaking to someone on the telephone and having to show extreme emotion; just in the eyes, because that's where all acting comes from and then . . . someone knocked on the door of the audition room and, instead of ignoring it, the casting director beckoned for them to come in.

Emma Stone had to stop, just as it was going so well, as the intruder entered and we, the audience, could hear the casting director say 'I won't be a minute.'

I WON'T BE A MINUTE.

Can you imagine how frustrating that can be when you are working so hard? Okay, you who work in a factory or a bakehouse, you who don't think it's work at all you – you're in the minority, matey boy.

The thing is, the people making the movie probably treated the people in their film the same way at their auditions.

In happened to me in a different way as we travelled over to Dublin once, from London, to meet an executive at RTE. We were pitching a documentary about Chet Atkins and when we started to talk at the meeting, someone knocked on their door, came in, and the person we were talking to told the interloper she would only be a couple of minutes; I can't believe we stood for it.

But there are some wonderful moments in La La Land.

The first scene on the freeway with that fantastic opening song filled us full of delight and does, every time and will, the next time we watch it.

When you say to someone, do you wanna come to the movies to see – whatever film it is you want to see - and they say, I've seen it. That is not a movie buff.

My son has seen 'The Searchers' maybe a hundred times.

Sometimes, when I'm in a bar, and the television is on, and I can see the actor going through his moves, I look around the place and see that nobody is watching and wonder, what it is all about. All that work and nobody looking.

The other film, The Glenn Miller Story, I saw in the 1950s. I think it was released in 1954, when I was ten and I think I must have been at least 13 or 14. and it was the first time I saw the jazz drummer Gene Krupa and it wasn't too long after that when I took up drumming.

Not jazz drumming, I might add, but military. I joined the army cadets – the ACF, Army Cadet Force – and I eventually became the solo drummer and it didn't matter where we were on parade, I would spot my dad in the crowd.

Solo drummer meant I had to teach the kids to play the military drum. Same as any other kind of drumming; rolls, quavers, 4/4 time, 6/8 time, paradiddles  – the lot. I had to compete each year to keep my place. A few of us would play solo in the next room and we were adjudicated, supposedly, blind.

I remember when I first joined he cadets we went to Budbrooke Barracks in Warwickshire and as we were sitting in the NAFFI a young soldier, sitting near, said to someone I was sitting with 'Oy! When did your mate leave his nappy off?'

Hi America – Diaper.

Two of my grandchildren are in the army cadets – well one is and the other was on the RAF equivalent, but they were in the CCF – Combined Cadet Force – where the teachers are the officers.

The trouble with us, when we went to various barracks, the NCOs and officers would treat us as regular soldiers even though we were hardly children, so if we didn't salute when passing an officer, or didn't do it properly - OY: THAT MAN THERE!

Looking at The Glenn Miller Story the other night brought it all back to me.

So Happy Christmas.

Colin Campbell in Family at War.

I wrote his before and thought I would put it up again - edited - as it seems to have attracted some interest recently.

This is a kind of mish mash of stories about disappointments – not to me as I have rarely been disappointed. I've always prepared myself for one. I remember I was with a casting director in Los Angeles who actually did some casting – most of them just suggest you to a director and then you have to meet/audition. This was for a voice for a movie of which I did loads when living there – still receiving residuals even now. I voiced David Bowie, Bill Hunter, Jason Statham, a voice in Cat Woman (when I met Sharon Stone) a load of voices in Time Line and Kangaroo Jack.

The first time I met the casting director she said 'ok you got it; Thursday and Friday and maybe a day next week.'

I said 'great.'

'Is that all?' she said.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, people usually – well, usually looked pleased!'

I said 'Well I am.'

She would have seen the same reaction if she had told me that out of the hundred people they'd seen for the leading role it was between me and the other guy but the other guy got it. I always thought of it like making a sales call and being told no – try somewhere else.

You will gather, by now, that I didn't really start out to write that lot – it just came to me.

Look at that man above in the poster for Family at War! That's Colin Campbell. Family at War was a wonderful TV series made by one of the greatest television companies; Granada Television. It was, as it implies, about a family: three brothers, two sisters, mother and father, close relatives and friends. It was first shown in 1970 and in 2018 the TV channel Talking Pictures.

I was at drama school, when they were making it, and sometimes I would travel all the way to Manchester to do a walk on for £6 per day. After a few 'walk ons' they gave me three lines for which I got more money.

Colin Campbell played one of the sons, David, which was the best role and he was the best actor in it of his age. There are other fine performances too but he was the chap.

A few years later – 1991 – I did one of the Ruth Rendell Mysteries (Inspector Wexford with George Baker) and Colin Campbell was in it. He played a very small part as a cop in the office. I didn't see any of the episodes so I don't know if he was a uniform cop or what, but he did quite a few episodes.

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was quite tiny – even smaller than me! He also had a limp. I remember saying to Wexford's partner (his cop partner) 'you do know who he is, don't you?' and he shrugged his shoulders no. It wasn't as flippant as it might sound as he was interested – now who was he I have forgotten even though he did 50 episodes of Wexford.

I met Colin later through a mutual friend, as we would go to our pal's plays, premiere's etc. and he was a nice bloke. He still had some kind of limp, which I think I read about and it may have affected him somewhat; I said he was tiny but in Family at War he fills the screen. He was giving a stellar performance as David Ashton most weekday afternoons in Britain in 2018 and it sent his STARmeter on the Internet Movie Date Base up to the 27,000s – that might not seem important to some actors but you won't get an agent in LA if you are not in the top 100,000. 

Colin was down in the 200,000 not that long before. He was famous again which is a shame as he died on March 1^st 2018 aged 81. nine months before becoming famous again; but what is fame?

It is a funny old business when casting directors can dismiss actors like Colin Campbell and leave him to his few lines in Wexford once in a while – the other actors in Wexford hadn't heard of him either and when I watch him I often wonder if he knew the series, Family at War, was coming on; RIP.

But there are loads of disappointments – I went to Dublin many years ago to do a Guinness commercial. I particularly remember it for a couple of reasons, one the song they used, which was recorded by the pop group Blue Mink famous for their song Melting Pot – in our case it was Get Together With a Guinness Right Now.

We worked in a pub in Baggot Street, Dublin. I went in to the loo and someone had written on the wall Sometimes I think I'd like to be the Saddle on a Bike. I remember thinking how wonderful that scanned.

The other thing I remember it for, was the girl who was in it; we'll call her Mavis. 

Before filming starts the artists, the actors, the talent, or whatever you want to call us, gather on the set, which in this case was the customer side of the bar, and rehearse the scene for the camera. Three blokes and an attractive girl. The girl had been in make up and was wearing rollers. The three guys included me, and two other well known actors of the day; we were cast in London and flown over the previous evening. The director was an Englishman and most of the crew were from Dublin.

After we ran through the scene the girl had to go back to make up – she was a local Dublin girl. The director asked for one of the girl extras to take the girl's place whilst Mavis was in make up. The 'stand in' was very nice and we all got on well together and then it became obvious that the director preferred the stand in as opposed to the girl who was being made up, quaffed and dressed.

'Get rid of Mavis' he suddenly said to his assistant.

“What?' said the assistant.

'Get rid of her – Mavis'

Of course her name wasn't Mavis – but what an arsehole.

 

Nobel.

 

                     The gardens of The Highland Garden Hotel.

I'm writing another novel, well I have only just started – maybe about two to three thousand words. I don't know what happens but I've started, that's the main thing, and my characters will show me the way, and that is true.

If you write every day the whole thing will come to you.

I have written two others, and they didn't sell well on Amazon, but here we are years later, and I have seen them going for hundreds of dollars on ebay, and I have often wondered where the catch is there – is it a con?  - who knows, and who cares?

I called it The Callaghans and it put me in mind of a man called Nobel – or even Noble - who was the manager of the building where  we lived in Los Angeles. He was a dear gentleman, with very long white hair, Indian accent, and he would always claim to be British and said he hated The Beatles and their M.B.E. As they didn't deserve it.

When I first met him he told me he was almost one hundred years old – he would say he was 99 and looked toward his hundredth birthday.

He lived in the penthouse, and you could see, by going inside, that every time one of the tenants left he would empty their apartment into his.

To enter through his front door, you had to go in sideways, as there were mattresses in the hallway, and the rest of the apartment was full of similar items, apart from two seats in front of an electric heater, with a couple of bars of red heat drawing us closer to it.

He always promised that if my children came across to stay, he would be able to put them up; where, I don't know.

In later years some of our children would stay in the hotel around the corner, where many actors would come and stay for the pilot season – that mythical time when casting directors have actors in to audition for roles in the new plethora of series, either crime or comedy.

If you were a selected actor you would have to have at least three or, maybe four, call backs; then they would make you sign a deal. It would be something like $500 per episode for the first season of about 13 episodes, and then the next year maybe a 15% rise (or raise) and before you knew it, you would be expecting to have your life changed because of all the money you would be expecting to earn. This is before you have been offered the job.

Sometimes you might even go into rehearsal and shoot the pilot, for which you were paid handsomely, and then they would drop the whole idea leaving you back to the eggs for breakfast lunch and dinner.

You could even go as far as having the episode you are in broadcast, but if it wasn't well received it would be dropped straight away with no explanation to the viewers.

They did this to protect themselves in case the series was a huge success and the agents would be in to see the producers to triple your salary, or take you out of it.

If you did a full series and then the series is extended to 100 episodes, it could go in to syndication. Then you would be paid a fortune for the series to be shown forever. For example the TV series Seinfeld was screened its last episode in 1998 and went into syndication and this is where the contributors make a fortune – Seinfeld, himself, makes $400 million for each cycle of syndication; can you believe that - $400 million.

In the UK? Nothing like it at all; the top paid actor at the BBC is one of the stars of Casualty who is on around £250,000. If they repeat an episode of Dr Who for example, the Doctor would get £1,000.

That hotel, by the way, was called The Highland Gardens Hotel, and it is the place where Janice Joplin died in 1970; back then it was called The Landmark Hotel and the room, in which Joplin spent her final hours, is still a rentable room, and her fans seem to know it. The closet contains a small brass plaque, commemorating her life, and the walls are heavily decorated with fan art and notes, comprising a shrine to her.

But getting back to Nobel, at one time he was a nurse and worked with Albert Scheweitzer, the Nobel prize winner, at his leper colony in Africa, and had connections in Hawaii. He wasn't anywhere near 100, maybe 75 and he kept falling ill.

He spent some time in The Good Samaritan's Hospital on Wilshire Blvd where they took Robert Kennedy when he was shot at an hotel on Wilshire Blvd.

Nobel got to calling me Mister Callaghan – I know he was deaf but he could hear sometimes and maybe Sullivan sounded a bit like Callaghan to someone who is hard of hearing.

I would go to the hospital on occasion and cut his hair – one time, when trimming his beard, I caught him with the scissors and he pulled a terrible face, almost screwing it up in a ball. I was mortified - not a peep out of him just a painful face.

He would use strange phrases – if he met English people he would talk of Beatles – shouldn't have the MBE.

One time I was giving him a lift, somewhere, and I went into a large pharmacists on La Brea Avenue, where there seemed to be some kind of fuss.

A little old lady was trying to spend her store card, mistaking it for a debit or credit card, and the store manager stopped her. She didn't have credit or debit cards and was getting upset.

I explained to her that her card was worthless, which she eventually accepted.

She must have been older than Nobel and I offered to take her home – it wasn't far away.

I took her back to the car and I told Nobel I was taking her home and he said 'What?? She's your accountant?'

We dropped her off and all was well.

One of the times he was in The Good Sam - as they called it - I went, as usual, to cut his hair, but he was fast asleep.

I didn't want to disturb him so spent the time sitting there looking at him sleep.

Two ambulance men came into his room and woke him up; they had to take him back to the care home, and when they woke him, he looked at them and said 'you can't move me from here; I'm dead.' And went back to sleep.

The poor old sole actually thought he was dead.

He did die not long after that and whilst writing this I can't believe I've never written about him before.

When we first found the apartment building, in Hollywood, we looked at it and he very kindly showed us around and and I called him back to say we would take the apartment. When he answered the phone, I said 'Hello; it's Chris Sullivan.' And he said 'Oh hello Mister Callaghan.'