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.
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