Life Changing Event.

Sir Winston Churchill.

Is there any one thing that has changed your life; if you think back and enjoy thinking back you may find it.

In script writing there is always a life changing event at the end of the first act and at the beginning of the second; without that life changing event the story would just drone on and on and in fact all stories are like that.

They have the set up, where everybody is introduced, the obstacle or the life changing event then the resolution. There are a lots of other things that happen in most screenplays like Rocky all at sea, with just a few minutes to go, then his trainer cuts his eyelids and he fights to a draw.

The screenplay is nothing new in fact that's the way stories are written since way before Shakespeare (look at Romeo and Juliet) right back to Sophocles.

In a movie it's usually on page 20 – about 20 minutes into the film.

There are things that change your life and sometimes those things that change an individual's life change history.

There was a man called Brendan Bracken; he was an Irishman who went to live in Australia, where his father was a builder, and he migrated to England to be Churchill's confidant during the inter-war wilderness years.

The greatest thing he did for Churchill was to make it possible for him to take over from Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister when all looked lost.

Nobody of any import wanted Churchill as Prime Minister; Chamberlain, The King, The House of Lords and The Labour Party wanted Lord Halifax.

When the time came for Chamberlain to step down he set up a meeting of the contenders in Downing Street to discuss the crisis. Lord Beaverbrook and Bracken found Churchill brooding alone in one of his clubs and warned him of the upcoming meeting.

Bracken, like Churchill, was an enemy of appeasement, and he deduced that the best thing Churchill could do in the meeting was to keep quiet.

I don't know whether Bracken was a poker player or not but his ploy worked. Chamberlain was trying to decide who was going to work with whom and probably wondered if Churchill would be able to work with Lord Halifax etc but Churchill just sat in silence.

After a long pause with Churchill keeping his silence Lord Halifax said that his position in The House of Lords would make it difficult for him to be Prime Minister. The next morning news came that Hitler had invaded Belgium and Holland and Churchill went to the palace to tell the king he was forming a government.

So not only was that a life changing event for Churchill, and Bracken, it was a history changing moment.

Now I can point to a few things in my life that changed things; this is apart from the personal things such as marriage and having children

I remember when I finished riding the motor bikes for the post office; I was nearly 19 and it was time. At 18 the usual thing was to be transferred to train to be a postman. It was something I really didn't want to be and when I was delivering mail one day, one of the companies I delivered to offered me a job.

It was a terrible job in a wallpaper and paint warehouse but it allowed me to be able to stay in bed till 7:30 and I didn't have to wear the heavy postman's uniform.

As soon as I started they sacked somebody else – someone who looked like me, as a matter of interest, and then after a month or so they asked me to leave. They didn't like my sense of humour: one of the supervisors said to me one day “Hurry up.” and I answered “Hurry up broke his neck.”

Only a joke but when I had the meeting when they told me I had to go it was brought up and I said it was only a joke - “well we don't like those kind of jokes!”

In those days you would just call the Personnel Department wherever you wanted to work and if they had any vacancies in their organisation they would invite you in – the forerunner of the HR department (Human Resources).

So I ended up working in the British Car Industry as a Material Controller; if they were manufacturing 400 Morris Minors that week, for example, I had to make sure that 2000 wheels, tyres, the nuts and bolts etc were there ready for the workers on the assembly line.

I was useless at the job and in the first week they had to send a whole assembly line of men home because I didn't order whatever requirements the vehicles needed. There were complaints from the cleaners too about my desk as it as always full of papers.

I met a young lad there who said he wanted to be an actor and my ears pricked up; he had all the answers and I was all ears and I made enquiries.

When the inevitable happened, and they called me in for a meeting to tell me I had to go, I told them I was going to The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and they said “...the Royal Acad . . . Royal Academy of What????”

Actually I went to Birmingham – London was a bit far for me in those days!!

I was always kind of show business inclined – I wanted to be a rock singer – but that was the event for me. I went ahead and I never gave up; the young lad with all the answers never did.

My parents always suspected I'd be an actor, my nick name was John Barrymore as a child, so I might have drifted into it in any case; who knows?

How I miss The Farmers' Market.

The Clock Tower at The Farmers' Market, Los Angeles.

I didn't think I would settle down over here so easily; I thought I would miss the good life of Los Angeles and the weather but since I've been back it has been quite an adventure. I have been bogged down with work and getting things organised, admittedly, but nonetheless I am satisfied here.

I have totally forgotten about Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and all the other publicity seeking personalities of Los Angeles who seem to have some kind of importance over there.

I have had my moans about the coffee over here but apart from some friends, whom I try to keep in touch with as much as I can, the thing I miss about Los Angeles is The Farmer's Market.

I have dedicated posts in the past to The Farmer's Market as we went there nearly every day for the best coffee in the world from Bob's Doughnuts; I was always looked after at Bob's and the girls there would make sure my coffee was fresh – fresco, I used to say as they were all Latino, many of them from Guatemala, and others were Chicano – which means they were born in the USA from Latino parents.

I'm not sure if Chicano is specific to the Mexicans or to all Latinos.

There is a whole Chicano movement: Chicano Art, Chicano Cinema, Chicano Music and so on; a famous Chicano musician was Ritchie Valens.

The reason I asked for fresco was because the girls at Bob's would try to teach me Spanish and I picked up quite a bit of it through the experience over the years.

I always figured that because I drank decaffeinated coffee – descaffinado although I can't spell it – it would not be as popular as regular coffee so would not always be fresh so they would usually make sure it was for me.

I would chat to the girls whilst they did my coffee, find out about their studies and their babies and their lives and when I left them in June that information ceased; I saw a little glint of a tear in one of the girl's eyes when I said goodbye but I never mean goodbye. I have worked with hundreds of actors and when the job ends we say goodbye not knowing if we will ever meet again and lots of times we meet on another job soon after or even twenty years later. So goodbye has never seemed so drastic.

There were other people at the Farmer's Market; I would buy pizza from Patsy's Pizza a couple of times a week and one or two of the girls would sing 'Happy CHRIStmas' to me; putting a strong accent onto the Chris in the word so I miss those girls too; and sitting around other regular users of the market would recognise us – but never speak.

On Tuesday afternoons there would be a group of people who would come from the Bing Theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) where they screen old movies on Tuesday afternoons; we would sit with them sometimes and chat and they would tell us which movies they had seen and I would say that I would go with them one of the weeks but I never did.

Patsy's Pizza was the last place James Dean ate before he set off in his Porsche on the journeythat killed him; it was about this time of the year maybe September 30^th and if you go to Patsy'stoday – Patsy D'Amore's Pizza to give it the full name – there is a picture of Patsy with Frank Sinatra,

The Frank Sinatra picture at Patsy's Pizza.

one with Bobby Darin, another with Jackie Gloeason but nothing about James Dean although it's about the only place in Hollywood where there is no picture of James Dean; his picture and image is everywhere.

And here he is:

James Dean In Giant.

We would go to the Farmer's Market in the weekdays at about 5:30 pm to wind down and over the weekend at about 2:00 pm. It was the ideal place to sit and chat at the end of the work day and various things happened at different times for instance in the weekdays people would come for breakfast in the morning.

A famous film director from the seventies would take coffee outside Bob's at around 8:30 and he would be surrounded by his assorted hangers on and acolytes; what they talked about is anybody's business but they were always there whenever I went at that time.

It was a place for actors; I saw Nicolas Cage having breakfast once with his Elvis trousers and white Elvis shoes. I had a cup of coffee for one of the guys from Entourage and plenty of others.

Walking around The Farmers' Market in the early evening you would pass hundreds of tables with people sitting there eating and you could feel the atmosphere as you passed. We were particularly fond of the Gumbo Pot where they served Louisiana food. It was a great place to eat and on Mardi Gras there would be a Gumbo type band.

One band we saw a few times was Cowboy Soul; they were a black band and played country rock music. They dressed in black with cowboy hats and their wives, children and girl friends would dance just in front of the stage to add to the entertainment.

Every now and then The Farmer's Market would hold a car show which had the classic American cars; Thunderbirds, Cadillacs, Mustangs – people crowded around one of the Mustangs at the last show I went to: it was the one used by Steve McQueen in Bullitt!!! They called it the Steve McQueen Mustang.

So I do miss The Farmers' Market in Los Angeles – there is nowhere like it here!!

People dining and chatting at the Farmers' Market.

Oye! Leave my Guinness alone!!

Guinness Poster 1973.

There I am up there many years ago on a Guinness poster; it's been up there before but as this post is primarily about the black stuff I thought it fitting to use it today; that poster was in all the cities and towns of Great Britain and stood about twenty feet high. No matter where I went I couldn't miss it but I was hardly recognised from it. I remember one day standing at a bus stop in front of the poster and nobody blinked a eye lid.

I would hazard a guess and say it was around 1973; I did a Guinness commercial in 1972 – in fact it's on YouTube if you want to search for it – which was set in an antique shop. The idea was that I went into an antique shop with my pal mistaking it for a pub. I suppose it was quite funny, really, and the director asked me if I had any funny business to do whilst leaving the antique shop on the way to the pub next door; I said, “I can bang my head on the bird cage, if you like” and he said “show me” so I did.

Little did I realise that they would be shooting it from all angles and doing multiple takes so I think I must have banged my head on that bird cage about fifty or sixty times. I kind of 'headed it' like heading a football meeting it on the bit where my forehead met my hair line; so it didn't really hurt that much and in any case it was soft metal!!****!!!!

Before I get to my point here is a little excerpt from my last novel:

Dubliners have travelled to other countries and seen how they treat Guinness and sometimes have drunk something else rather than see their beloved black stuff being treated like any other beer. An Irishman walked into a pub in Birmingham, England, and asked for a pint of Guinness, one day, only to see the excuse for a barman put a pint glass under the Guinness tap and press a button; this opened the pipe that dropped a pint of Guinness into a glass; dropped being the operative word as this had as much to do with pouring and caring for a pint of Guinness as throwing a pint of paint at a canvas and calling it art; people have called this art, of course, just as the people from Birmingham used to call that drink a pint of Guinness; they were both wrong.

And here is a lovely looking pint of Guinness:

Guinness: the perfect pint.

I was in Herefordshire over the weekend and when I went to the bar I was delighted to see that they had a Guinness pump so I asked for a pint of Guinness; the barmaid reached into the cupboard behind her and brought out a can of Guinness. It was a strange looking can and seemed to have a silver bottom unlike the regular Guinness can – the one with the widget – which is black at the bottom and signed Arthur Guinness.

She opened the can and started to pour the Guinness in to a pint glass and it looked flat and rather like black treacle. I was stumped for words as I watched this demonstration. I eventually said “What are you doing?”

The barmade just smiled and said “Now I have to put it on here” and she took that flat pint of Guinness and placed it on a small metal plate, under the Guinness tap, and pressed a button.

“This is the surge” she said.

Something was happening to the pint; it was being 'surged' from underneath, somehow, and gas was being put into it and eventually the head formed and a lot of the Guinness went over the side of the glass and all over the floor.

“This is the way we do the Guinness here” she said.

I eventually gave her £3 for the Guinness and took it to my seat; it looked like a Guinness, it felt like and Guinness and you know what? When I took a swig of it it nearly tasted like one – nearly!!

It was explained to me that they didn't sell much Guinness and I told them I wasn't surprised if it was only nearly a pint of Guinness.

I have to say one thing for Los Angeles, if it didn't have a Guinness tap to sell proper draught Guinness pubs and bars would sell the can with the widget. In case you don't know Guinness, in 1991, invented the widget and I believe they won the Queen's Award to Industry because of it. The 'widget' is actually a plastic moulded device that sits at the bottom of a can until it's opened and then releases a little beer and nitrogen, forcing a surge of bubbles that settle to form the tight white head - in short, the perfect pint at home. (source TheDrinkShop.com).

So I wondered why they just didn't have the draught Guinness at the pub and it was explained to me that unless they could sell a barrel of Guinness every 48 hours it wasn't feasible to sell it at all as it goes off.

But as to the surger here is what I found on the Internet:

Always complaining that your pint of the black stuff is never as good as that black nectar you supped in Ireland? Well, celebrate this St. Patrick's Day in true Irish tradition with the Guinness Surger Starterkit.
The Surger Kit is a revolutionary system that uses ultrasonic waves to stimulate the molecules in your pint of stout so your sad can of Guinness is transformed into a cream-brimmed glass of velvet. So, how does it work? Well, refrigerate a can of Guinness for at least three hours. Pour a little water onto the tray at the top of the Surger unit. Next, pour your can of Guinness into a glass at a 45 degree angle. Now, place you glass of freshly-poured Guinness onto the tray of water on the Surger unit. All that’s left is to hit the button on Surger unit. Sit back and witness the miracle of ultrasonic waves. In a matter of minutes, you can enjoy a Guinness just as good as the fresh draught served at The Storehouse in James's Gate.

First my coffee now my Guinness – this is going to get serious!!

Guinness - the pathetic surged pint.

Wake up and smell the coffee!

The dreadful M25.

It's an old expression wake up and smell the coffee but it's a truism; it means take notice of what is going on around you. I like to wake up and smell the coffee even though I usually drink Earl Grey tea, in the morning and don't touch coffee till the afternoon. Why the Italians are so proud of not drinking coffee after ten in the morning is beyond me so I can't see Starbucks doing any good business there.

However, I must say, I only drink decaffeinated (tea and coffee); I know people will think that's not the real stuff, that's not coffee you can't drink coffee unless it makes your heart beat fast.

Well there are other ways of making my heart beat fast!

My brother, replied to my post on Americano coffee saying 'going into Starbucks is like going into prison for sex; you know you're going to get some but you know it's going to be rough.'

But when I say wake up and smell the coffee I am talking about taking your time through life. I have done a lot of driving since being here and most of the time has been on motorways.

I started in Southampton, went up to London and I've been to Suffolk, Edinburgh, York, Birmingham and more than once to some of those places.

When I went to Edinburgh I could see the wonderful city almost immediately and when I went to York I saw it straight away.

In Birmingham last weekend I didn't see it at all; I got out of the car in Tamworth, which was about half an hour's drive from Birmingham, a few minutes from a motorway – a freeway in America – and in Birmingham the motorway seems to go right into the city centre. So when I got out of the car there it was as if I was in outer space and landing on a satellite.

At one time, when I worked for the post office on the motorbikes, I got to know all the routes for the whole south part of the city – that is stretching from the east side right over to the south west – postal districts 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 and a lot of the outer places and last weekend I didn't know any of it. I will presume that the suburbs are still the same but what saved me on Saturday was the old district numbers still on the street signs.

And what are the district numbers? They are what preceded the postal code (UK), zip code (USA) and the PIN code (India).

But you know – it got me to where I wanted to go faster than any other way and to get to the place in the centre of Birmingham from London I used the magical Spaghetti Junction.

Here is a map of it:

that is the original Spaghetti Junction.

Now it seems to me that we are using these motorways and missing where we are and what we can see, what we can hear and what we can smell. In other words we don't smell the flowers in those places we don't smell the coffee.

In Los Angeles I used to love to drive up Vine Street and come to Hollywood and Vine – even the name gives me a tingle; I would see a great building there called the Taft Building and I used to love to drive down Fairfax on my way to the farmer's market. I loved the architecture.

I mean look at The Capital Building – a stack of records piled on top of one another; the same architect designed the big restaurant at LAX airport; look at it:

The Capital Building, Hollywood; home of Capital Records.

There is an awful notorious motorway which circles London called the M25 – all motorways are prefixed with an M by the way - it is an awful motorway. It has a clockwise direction and an anti clockwise direction and in theory you can take any direction to reach your destination.

Now you will know what I think of the private motor car (whose days are numbered I have to say as it just can't go on) and motorways have been built to service the private motor car for the past 60 years in the UK.

Motorways are not meant to be pretty but on some of them you can see trees, some countryside and maybe some buildings - but not on the M25.

A few months after it was built they discovered it wasn't wide enough so they had to widen it in some places, then general maintenance meant more road works and repairs and it also attracted big trucks and when you use it you don't smell the coffee or see the trees you are up the arse of lorries and vans and you smell their exhaust fumes as you weave your way through the multitudinous traffic cones that spring up every ten miles or so.

If you look at the M25 at the top of the page you will see that there is another 'ring road' closer to London called the North Circular Road and South Circular Road and this does the same job but is not a motorway. That is a smaller circle to go around but people have actually been sent to the outer circle to go all the way around London to go the other way. For example the people in west London who want to travel east travel all the way out west to the M25 and then go all the way around to where they want to get off. Most of the time, even when they've travelled 100 miles they are still only 15 – 20 miles from the city.

Sometimes it is faster to go all the way round on the hellish motorway and you can save time but . ..

and this is the big question:

What is time?

Time is the one thing the lag is thinking about; the poor prisoner in his cell. Nothing is more important to him than time whereas to us the free people – free from that kind of prison perhaps – should never have to think of time and if we do? What are we but prisoners to the old enemy time.

So you save an hour by travelling around that monstrosity which will eventually spread exponentially as more cars are sold and more of us want to buy them and what do you do with that hour?

Nothing.

You may think you are doing something as you look at the garbage on TV, dangle little Johnny on your lap but why didn't you go the other way?

Last night instead of going around the M25 I travelled through London; I passed the British Library which half the people on the M25 probably don't even know exists; I passed Saint Pancras Railway Station which truly is one of the most wonderful buildings in London; I drove to the north of Bloomsbury where the likes of Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and EM Forster were part of The Bloomsbury Set – oh how a little drive through London gives you food for thought.

Hope all is well on the M25!!

Americano - the scourge of coffee drinkers.

Robert Mitchum (top) and Robert Ryan.

There are lots of strange things about being back here; lots of things I am trying to get used to; just like when I first moved to Los Angeles.

For example when I moved there I couldn't find any Battenberg cakes; no cherry Bakewells; no Eccles cakes, fresh cream doughnuts – in fact no fresh cream at all. The fresh cream they give you is in an aerosol-can and you spray it; takes a lot of getting used to but you do.

If you buy fresh dairy cream in a carton there it seems to be made from homogenised milk – in fact you don't get fresh milk as you do in Britain and the cheese you will know about and that's a whole other story in itself; in fact one of the pleasures of being back here is the quality of the cheese.

One of the great things about living in Los Angeles was my favourite coffee hole The Farmers' Market (see previous posts) and the wonderful coffee they served and one of the worse things about being back here is the standard of the coffee; everywhere you go they serve the dreaded and tasteless Americano coffee.

Now who's idea was The Americano? It is tasteless mud! It is the equivalent of keeping a pot of tea simmering for hours and then when you want a cup put a spot of tea into the bottom of a cup then fill it up with boiling water.

When you make a pot of tea you put the tea leaves into the pot, then pour almost boiling water on top of them then leave the tea to brew or mash, for about 5 minutes.

Coffee is made the same way – you make it in a pot and it brews.

Americano is made by adding boiling water to espresso coffee – it's not brewed. And this is not an age thing; we have known espresso coffee all our lives. It was used in the coffee bars in the 50s and 60s in fact I remember the lyrics of the Lionel Bart song Fings Aint What They Used To Be:

'Once our beer was frothy but now it frothy coffee....

well fings aint what they used to be.'

I can just about stand coffee from a cafetiere – apart from all the mud at the bottom of the cup – but what happened to the good old cup of Joe? Coffee from a percolator, a coffee machine or just a plain old filter where you drip the coffee through to the cup.

There was a place I used to use here which gave you an individual filter and you waited whilst it dripped through before drinking it.

In a survey, a few years ago, it was found that coffee is carcinogenic; it went on to say that if it is filtered through paper it has the opposite affect.

Since I've been away all the horrible coffee shops have emerged in the UK; Cafe Nero, Costa, Starbucks and all the other equally guilty places.

There was a Campaign for Real Ale in the early 70s in Britain – remember the phrase Watneys' the Scourge of the Drinking Classes? Watneys introduced keg beer to Britain with Watneys Red Barrel, which was a keg bitter.

Keg bitter is pasteurised to stop fermentation and carbon dioxide is added for sparkle and keg beer didn't need the traditional long pump we see at the bar; but customers suspected that their beer was getting weaker and they were right – so CAMRA came along (The Campaign for Real Ale) and now you can get a decent pint in most places. In the 70s, sales of cask beers began to rise as there was a growing appreciation for the traditional methods of brewing. It is a testament to the success of CAMRA that the "classic" keg bitters of the sixties are now extinct. (source: http://retrowrow.co.uk).

But it's happening with the coffee in the shape of the Americano – be warned my friends. And it's happening with Earl Grey Tea; Twinings have changed their recipe – why????

The photos on here? These are great actors and all enjoyed their cup of Joe!

Lee Marvin: did a naughty thing with coffee.

West Ealing Railway Station - action!!!

Okay I've only been back here for 5 minutes and I'm complaining about this and that – never the weather – but I can't help seeing what I see.

You see that picture above? That was taken at West Ealing Railway Station and, as you can see, on platform 4 - in America that would be called track 4.

Many people – many, many people get on the train from that platform to go on the 15 – 20 minute journey to Paddington Station, in Central London, and a lot of them, as I have said before, have dumped their cars in the streets nearby to the chagrin of the local people and some of those people, as I said the other day, may be from Scotland or Cornwall.

The multitude that regularly pass it probably never look at that sign but tourists look at it and wonder where Action Main Line Station is. They probably think that is the place where there is action and get their maps and Satellite Navigation Devices out and look for – in vain I have to say– Action Main Line Station.

I can imagine the amount of calls to the railway stations asking about the place and the irate robots at the other end of the line saying 'I'm sorry I didn't understand you; please repeat your question' and the caller shouting 'AGENT! AGENT!! AGENT!!!'

Then when a real person answers the phone the caller is told that there is no such place as Action Main Line Station from platform 4 or anywhere else, and that the caller must mean Acton Main Line Station and then the caller saying 'No! It definitely says Action.'

But the poor caller would be put in his place because he only set eyes upon it and the agent, who is probably in the Falkland Islands, never has.

The Falkland Islands, did I say? That's a figment of my imagination – Britain has been sending them a million a day since The Falklands War so why would they work in a phone bank?

Action Main Line Station doesn't exist; it is a figment in the mind of some sign writer with a sense of humour or a figment of my imagination.

Next time you are at West Ealing Railway Station and on platform 4, have a look at the sign for yourself and you will see it is as above – unless they change it.

Is the private motor car the worst ever invention?

First of all, the title of this post was in answer to a question put to the eminent historian A J P Taylor when asked what was the worst invention of the 20^th Century – without hesitation he said 'The private motor car' and if you think about it he is probably right.

I think in a way we would all agree with that as long as we could keep our own car and get rid of everybody else's.

Without the private motor car there would be no need for freeways/motorways which destroy all in their way; there is no aesthetic qualities to a motorway; they are purely functional and their one use is to get you in your private motor car somewhere quicker than it would take you to walk – or take a bus.

Without the private motor car we would all have to take a bus – or a plane - or even the heights of luxury on trains or ships and if you have read my posts of late you will know that I have recently travelled 5,000 miles by train and ship.

Of course the Queen wouldn't take a bus; she would have to travel in a horse drawn carriage together with the President.

Just look at the pictures on this page; at the top you have a row of Edwardian houses which are typical of the houses in the London suburbs; I am currently staying in one and the photo at the top of the page was taken from the door step.

These houses are very large inside with high ceilings, big rooms and small back gardens; I don't know how many square feet there are in them; in fact the owners probably don't know; in America they would know to the inch.

These streets were built before the popularity of the private motor car so no allowance has been made for it.

Look at this photo:

First of all let me tell my American friends that you can park on either side of the street in Britain; in America you have to park on the side of the street you drive on.

The street in the photo is full of parked cars; the street itself is about 150 yards long – maybe a little shorter – and there is no room for two cars to pass each other; so if you are half way along the street and the person coming the other way is half way along too, one of you has to reverse for about 60 yards.

Not much fun!!

I know you can see a few parking gaps but the photo was taken yesterday - Saturday; in the week there is hardly a space.

All this because of the private motor car.

So what can be done about it? Very little.

There are about 10 million cars in Great Britain (which is the island) with a population of people running around 60 million; that means that there are 50 million potential customers here to buy private motor cars – some of those 60 million are children, of course, but there are probably 2 million kids reaching the age of driving, 17, every year.

So the car ownership can only get worse.

People park in these streets, by the way, and go to the railway station around the corner to go into central London; some go to Heathrow Airport as the station around the corner gets you there in 20 minutes or so; sometimes people leave their cars for a few weeks whilst they go away on their holidays.

This could never happen in America as the streets have to be cleared for a two hour period every week for road sweeping – not here but it's about time.

Another thing is in America you are not allowed to take your car permanently to another state without registering it there; I think it's okay for a couple of weeks but when you move you have to have a state drivers' licence and vehicle tags for the state you are in.

It can't happen here as there is only one state. So somebody from the north of Scotland is quite entitled to park their car outside somebody's front door in Cornwall; as long as there's legal parking.

What they plan to do in Ealing, which is where the photos were taken, is introduce a permits only status around these streets but I can only say 'be careful what you wish for.'

If these streets wanted to accommodate the private motor car properly they should do a couple of things; firstly make them one way streets; this would put a stop to the 60 yard reverse for a start. It might encourage the boy racers to put their foot down, which would be a drawback.

Secondly: get rid of the front gardens at the front of the houses. They're tiny in any case, as you can see in this photo, which would widen the roads.Of course the local council would have to compensate the house owners – and where would they get that money from? Why from the council tax paid by house owners of course!!

Just a thought!!

York, York Minster and Dick Turpin.

One of the gates to the city of York.

We went to York recently which is about 200 miles south of Edinburgh; it is a city I had always wanted to visit and I wasn't disappointed.

One of the reasons I wanted to visit York was that I knew it was a walled city and I wanted to see the city walls; I also wanted to see the little inky dinky streets with the tiny fairytale like bent buildings and the historic magnificent York Minster; it is a wonderful building and it takes some time to actually walk around it.

There were one or two disappointments and one of these was the appearance of charity/thrift shops and a pound stretchers shop within the city walls and some other franchise shops; but there were only a few of these.

Recently, in our lives, we have eaten a lot of Italian food and we longed for a French meal and found a nice little French Restaurant where the food was a delight.

I will presume there was a French cook but there were local waiters and waitresses and I asked one of them if they knew where Dick Turpin was executed.

Dick Turpin was a famous Highwayman of the 18^th century, famous for the phrase, I suppose, Stand and Deliver; he was also famous for his ride by horse from London to York which is about another 200 miles, in less than 24 hours; his horse's name was Black Bess.

Of course a lot of his exploits were legend and maybe some of them should have been attributed to other highwaymen, especially the ride, and it has always amazed me that a movie hasn't been made about him – he truly is the stuff of legend, like Robin Hood, but, unlike Robin Hood, there is proof that he actually existed.

The waitress in the French Restaurant didn't know anything about him and he was the first thing I thought about when we decided to go to York.

The waitress called another waiter in and he said, “Dick Turpin? - No! They hung him in London!”

Well they didn't – they hung him for being a horse thief at York Racecourse – his body was stolen by body snatchers to add to the legend; so why no movie? There was a British TV series in the 70s or 80s but no movie.

Come on Jack; look him up on Wikipedia and get your script to me!!

The legendary Dick Turpin jumping a 'toll' gate on Black Bess.

Very near to our hotel was the gate of the city and we went around the walls looking through the battlements, imagining we were in the olden days and looking across the (dried) moat to modern cars and life.

The City walls of York - it is a 2 mile walk all around.

There was also a Richard III museum and I almost started to recite 'Now is the winter of our discontent' but stopped through modesty.

It was a rare show of modesty, I might add; when I visited the Taj Mahal, in Agra, I tapped danced on the marble floor and played the drum in a tiny Indian village.

A 'rare' show of modesty which I will fight off the next time it raises its ugly head!!

York Minster Cathedral; completed in 1260.

Follow up to Modern England and our smiling cat!!

Ealing aftermath.

Well after my post with my opinions about modern England I had quite a few emails in response to it; I'm glad to say that people agreed with me so I obviously don't have many hangers and floggers in my readership.

It might be an idea to put your comments into the comments box if you want to throw things open to others where we might generate a discussion. I don't censor any comments whatsoever so whatever you write will be up there.

The other thing I have not asked people to do before is to 'follow' me; then you will get your picture, logo or whatever at the top of the page and be able to leave comments easily; do that if you wish.

A few blogs ago, I had some emails returned. These are the emails that go out automatically when I write a post; these emails were returned from the same source namely the American Military. It was the post with the word 'cock' in the title and I got in touch with them and they thought it was spam as the URL was from Columbia; well . . . . it wasn't.

The URL is actually either from tinyurl.com or someone called deliver it who put my blog directly on to Twitter; the reason for this? Twitter have a maximum of 140 characters including spaces so if you want to point out a news item on Twitter you need a small URL so you go to a tiny web site and convert it.

The last post, for example, had a url this seventy eight characters long - http://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2011/08/modern-england-my-opinion.html and that is a bit long to put onto Twitter or even the notification email that goes out.

There was something that I didn't point out the other day and it was the fact that there was no rioting this side of the border; it seemed to stop there. The young people in Edinburgh, where we are, were doing other things, had other things to do or were . . . . again I don't know.

We have been in the UK since July 13th when the ship came in and our cat, El Grande, has been in quarantine since then.

Animals coming into Britain have to be quarantined because of the rabies law. So far they have kept rabies on the other side of the English Channel but now there is a tunnel. . . . .

Here is a picture of our cat – it has been on here before but look; he's smiling for you.

The smile of our cat.

Modern England; my opinion!!

The situation in Ealing, west London.

What a title aye? Bit pretentious perhaps but my opinion is just that – my opinion.

People who read this blog on a regular basis will know one thing about me; I am not an expert on anything. That has never stopped me giving an opinion, of course; I know a bit about acting, a little bit about directing and I used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music – I could tell you the songs on the 'b' side of a hit record from the 50s and 60s but all that has gone now.

Sometimes I hear an old song on the radio and immediately I can tell you that A One Way Ticket to the Blues by Neil Sedaka is on the 'b' side of Oh Carol. - let's hope I'm right!!!

I used to be quite an expert on military side/snare drumming in fact I used to teach it many many years ago, I was a solo drummer, and I also taught map reading.

I taught those 2 things in the Army Cadets; this was not the private schools' version which was the Combined Cadet Force (CCF); we were attached to a regiment and in our case The Royal Artillery.

At one time I was even in a gun team; those are the big guns which took (I think) 8 of us to operate. I think it was called the L70 – I may be wrong there too and I think I was number six which meant I was behind the big gun and had to run around if the aim was changed drastically.

Here's a picture of an Israeli L70.

Yes Number Six – maybe I should have gone into the TV series The Prisoner (in joke there for Prisoner fans)..

I think the army cadets attracted a lot of inner city kids who didn't want to join The Boy Scouts and who kind of thought they were going to have to do 2 years national service and it gave a lot of us the chance to get rid of the jingoistic and militaristic feelings men get when they are youths; but the camaraderie you get with a military organisation is life lasting; you learn how to get on with people and learn self discipline.

Watch that word camaraderie as I think I will be using it later.

I am not going to advocate the return of national service – the draft as they call it in America – because I saw what the end of it brought; it brought us artistic freedom, it enabled the youth of the day to develop a taste for something and anger against the establishment and it brought us The Beatles!! who nearly ended the class system; before The Beatles all the people on TV spoke with plummy accents; another one of my pet projects.

The parents of The Beatles generation have been described by Tom Brokaw, amongst others, as the greatest generation – the greatest generation produced the 'baby boomers' who still rule the roost; make no mistake about it; Steven Spielberg, Paul McCartney et al are still with us and still call the shots no matter who Justin Beaver is.

So where am I going with this?

We have returned to the UK after spending 16 years in Los Angeles; we spent two and a half weeks in England and then left for Edinburgh and since we have been up here all hell broke loose in England with the riots.

Who are those kids? Those kids in the riots aged between 11 and 17? Forget about the one or two middle aged professional idiots who were found looting and the gang members in Birmingham who fired guns at the police, concentrate on those kids; who are they?

Those kids weren't here when we left for the USA 16 years ago but they are the children of the greediest generation of them all. Thatcher's Britain with the 'loads a money' mentality; the Keith Joseph, via Milton Friedman, economic policy which seemed to be a miss interpretation of Adam Smith's classic economics.

Before then John Maynard Keynes economic policies were used but when stagflation came along the economists didn't understand how that could happen – high unemployment and high inflation?Couldn't happen, the Keynesians said.

According to the preaching of Keynes that couldn't happen but maybe they forgot that 60 years after the lost generation the 2,000,000 people, that died in world war one, who didn't retire in 1976 and leave 2,000,000 vacancies for the school leavers.

In the early 70s inflation seemed to be a hobby and when those 2,000,000 jobs suddenly didn't become available for school- leavers unemployment increased!!!! They couldn't retire in their masses because they didn't live!!

The greedy generation, who have produced these kids, are around 40-45 now and their kids are the children who have been forgotten; so what did you expect?

We hear the opinions of the so called pundits as to why these kids were so unruly but a lot of them belong nowhere.

Their parents spent all their loads a money and left their kids to fend for themselves and those who didn't spend it just threw money at the children with no love.

Since we have been in America something strange happened in English schools; some politically correct teachers or parents or both got rid of team sport; so where do boys get to play football and cricket?

Where do the girls get to play netball and hockey?

Where do they all experience the camaraderie of belonging to some kind of organisation?

Nearly everybody likes to belong to something – look at the camaraderie (that word again) amongst the homeless. They have moved the homeless out from their tent city (more like blanket city) in London and I have read interviews with some of the homeless saying that the thing they say they miss most is the camaraderie.

The kids who used to play team sports at school left school and joined football teams at youth clubs or sports and leisure centres; a lot of kids actually returned to school just to play the team sports if they couldn't find a team out of school.

Boys could play football and cricket at all levels right up to the millionaire professional; I mean I even played and I was terrible.

There were always opportunities, and always will be, for people who wanted to play middle class games like tennis or track and field sports – those people will always find a way and it's a bit of a waste of time introducing things like fencing or other minority sports to state schools.

That's not the whole reason they are rioting and looting; one of the reason they do that is because it's fun. It's great fun to smash a window; if ever I have worked on a movie or TV show and a window needs breaking people seem to line up to do it.

If they had other things to do which were as much fun they would be doing it and not rioting; it doesn't have to be sport; if they were all geniuses they would be holed up in their bedrooms, contemplating their navels, inventing or discovering things by themselves – that's okay and that's what the geniuses are doing.

A good upbringing and a good education cannot be taken away afterwards so, for arguments sake, the private school cannot take the education back if the parents don't pay the school fees!

By the same token a bad upbringing and the lack of education has a permanent impact and it could be too late for all of those kids; they truly are the lost generation.

If you are unfortunate enough to live in a place which has been a victim of the riots ask yourself what you have done in the past for the youth of your neighbourhood and what you are going to do about them in the future.

It's no good turning a fire hose onto them or putting them in gaol – I don't have the solution I am not an expert.

Kate Copstick review in The Scotsman for Eddie Ramone..

This is another review; this time it's from Kate Copstock who, I am told, is not always easy to please and it's in The Scotsman which is nothing to be sneezed at.

So thank you Kate if you read this.

Theatre review: The Two Sides of Eddie Ramone
By Kate Copstick Published: 22/8/2011

This is a sweet, sad, lovely little play - partly the comedy act and partly the internal monologue of one Eddie Ramone, once a Big Comedy Star and host of a game show, now playing the cruise ships on autopilot (him, not the ships) and going over and over in his mind the train of events that led him to this point.

A tiny piece, but telling, it is written and performed by Chris Sullivan, an actor known to fans of Emmerdale and Bergerac. His is a face you can believe has lived the whole life of Eddie Ramone and the performance is wholly believable, nicely underplayed and cleverly nuanced. The change in Sullivan as he crosses the dramatic line from internal monologue to stand-up is subtle but tangible. This is a lovely gem of a show - a proper fringe play and very well worth an hour. The story Eddie tells is unexpected, and Sullivan absolutely takes you with him on Eddie's journey. Go. You won't regret it.

• theSpaces at Surgeons Hall (venue 53)

Posters in Edinburgh - I AM NOT THE BOY and Cock-gate!

Guinness poster from about 1973.

There are loads of posters around Edinburgh of me advertising my show; not getting blasé about it but I tend to ignore them after a while. When the Guinness poster was all over Britain in the early seventies I learned to get used to it and that was in every city and town throughout the UK. I remember standing underneath one waiting for a bus talking to a drunk and we took no notice.

That poster was around twenty feet high but these are A3 and I have often wondered why nobody has ever drawn a moustache or a beard on my face; maybe even a pair of glasses.

So yesterday I came upon one and someone had put a sticker over my mouth which said 'I AM NOT THE BOY.' - I thought 'I've arrived!'

A bit later on we found a lapel badge 'I AM NOT THE BOY.'

There is a campaign here called Cock-gate; little symbols of a penis and a pair of balls have been stuck to loads of posters - again I was left out; I trust I don't offend anybody by showing this

most of all the publishers of this blog; if it disappears after today you will know why.

These people have a show here and may win an award for their cheek – if you look up 'cock-gate' on Google it will explain all.

If I see another review I will put it up – sorry this is so short but you know the Woody Allen joke – 'that restaurant is terrible; the food is awful - and such small portions.'

I AM NOT THE BOY poster.

Review: The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

Still flying in Edinburgh.

Hi folks: here's a review from the publication Three Weeks.

Sunday August 14th, 2011 22:47

ED2011 Theatre Review: The 2 Sides Of Eddie Ramone (Chris Sullivan)

In this thoughtful piece, Eddie Ramone (Chris Sullivan) reflects on the strange duality of a comedian’s life where one moment he may be the darling of a crowd, and the next, sitting alone and gloomy in a darkened bar. His initial 15 minute stretch of bad stand-up is revealed to be purely an act when he begins to slip between his “autopilot” stage persona and his ongoing internal thoughts. He holds the rapt attention of the audience throughout the story of his personal life, but the true interest of the show lies in the contrast of his shallow stage persona with the gradually revealed pain and sorrow which colour the life of even some the most successful show-people.

theSpaces at Surgeons Hall, 6 – 27 Aug (not 7, 14, 21), 6.00pm (7.00pm), £5.00, fpp307.
tw rating 3/5
[zg]

Tags: Chris Sullivan, theSpaces at Surgeons Hall

Sections: by Zulekha Grace - ED2011 Theatre Reviews - tw rating 3/5 | No Comments

Trevor Nunn, Jimmy from Liverpool and 100,000 wet fringe fliers!

"Flying" in Edinburgh.

Well here we are in Edinburgh and I have never seen so much rain. Ordinarily I don't mind a bit of rain here because it doesn't exactly rain hard in Britain as opposed to Los Angeles where it comes down like a monsoon but when there are things to be done outdoors it becomes a bit of a pain; the rain, this is.

It's dangerous for the street performers; the fliers and posters peel off the walls, water runs down the necks of the people working outside trying to grab the week when their earning potential is high and it eventually becomes frustrating.

We have been putting posters around a kind of totem pole in the middle of The Royal Mile and they stay up for maybe an hour before people put posters over the top of them. One of the days last week when it rained really hard for 24 hours most of the posters were washed off the walls, the hoardings and our totem pole – which is one of about eight I might add.

As the posters peeled to the floor, to be taken away later by council sweepers, one of my posters from the last day without rain appeared under the sludge like the grand masters appeared under the sewers of Rome for that brief second in Felinni's film Rome. As with what happened in that film my poster disappeared soon thereafter by someone putting something over it.

So it was a welcome bit of sun on Saturday when I headed towards The Royal Mile to stand in front of some posters of myself and hand out postcards.

In Edinburgh at the moment there are approximately two thousand people handing out fliers; they do not work very well as most of them end up in a bin at the top or the bottom of The Royal Mile. Also people doing half of their show in the open or going around dressed as a character from it are not cost affective; it's a bit of fun but that's it.

People are constantly told to be selective as to whom they are giving fliers to but they are not, hence the full bins and the 100 thousand wet fliers in the bins.

The one thing I did not notice on Saturday were any official 'paid for' posters of my show in any place apart from the exterior of The Surgeon's Hall where I am appearing; I called the poster company a few times and sent them a few emails but I had yet to see even one.

So when I saw a couple of guys putting posters up on my way to The Royal Mile I stopped and had a chat with one of them; he was Jimmy from Liverpool and I told him I hadn't seen any so he asked me for a post card and when I showed him one he said he had seen some of my posters and would put them out 'tomorrow – where do you want them?' I said 'around here.'

We exchanged phone numbers and he said he would let me know.

Around the corner from Jimmy I went through a crowd of leaflets and fliers and as I passed one of the venues I saw Trevor Nunn going in – he had walked through many people giving out their stuff and they didn't recognise him so left him flierless.

I didn't realise till that moment that he was about the same size as me but . . . he was dressed almost the same as I was too – dark blue cotton jacket, jeans and a pair of pumps; he is heavy around the eyes, like me but he has a beard. Unerving!! Maybe he was the version of me on the road that I didn't take and I was the other version of him? Who knows?Let me add for people who don't know, that Trevor Nunn is one of the most influential people in the British Theatre – in fact the International theatre having directed on Broadway and The West End and he was one of the artistic directors of the RSC – The Royal Shakespeare Company.

Trevor Nunn, the one guy who could change any of their lives with the offer of a great acting job, was not even approached by a single person giving out fliers – as for me??? I should have had a post card in my hand and as he climbed the steps of the venue I should have shouted gently 'Trevor?' and as he turned around I could have put a flyer into his hand; but I didn't!! L'esprit de l'escalier; – or more like L'esprit le boulevard??

So I went up to The Royal Mile and as you can see above I held my hand up and waited for people to come and take them from me hoping they might be more interested in coming to see the show if they took a post card from me instead of having one forced into their little mitt; I did this for about an hour.

On the way back I saw, coming the other way, Trevor Nunn and he passed me again. But I wasn't having Le spre l'escallier again so I ran into the middle of the road and passed him. Then when I got to two telephone boxes I dodged ever nonchalantly between them hoping to be walking the other way from him but this time with a post card in my hand but as I did this he had the same idea of going between the two boxes and I put my post card straight into his hand – 'there we are' I said ' I recognise you but you don't recognise me!'

'What's this?' he said – then he saw it 'Ah!' he said ' best of luck with this' and gave me a hug!!!

No he didn't give me a hug but gave me two pats on the back from the front – nearly a hug!

I didn't think I would hear from Jimmy from Liverpool again but when I walked up the street on Sunday the streets were full of my posters; Jimmy turned out be genuine and even called me to ask for more posters and he did it for the oldest reason in the world; he recognised me! Unlike Trevor!!

So Trevor, my terrible twin, might see one of the posters or even read the post card I gave him and come and see my show; but I doubt it.

By the way – no I don't know why they call it The Royal Mile but that's what it's called so I call it that too.

The glamour of the fringe!!

Gullane.

I did some rehearsals last week in a beautiful village on the east coast of Scotland called Gullane; it's about 20 miles from Edinburgh and could probably qualify as a small town.

I have a cousin who lives there, Patrick Tuite, and spent time there in my youth with my brother and Pat's mother and father; Tom and Peggy Tuite.

It's a wonderful village and we bought some meat in the local butchers which came from local farmers; we also bought some black pudding and white pudding and I had some for breakfast this morning with a sausage and egg. I have to say it's not as good as the white pudding you get in Ireland but I would, chauvinistically, say that wouldn't I?

I must have been about 16 when I was there as a youth with my brother – also named Pat – and we managed to get a job at a visiting fairground. We collected the money on the dodgem cars; this involved going from car to car, standing on the bumpers and leaning across to the young girls, trying to impress them and taking their money. Then we would jump, very dramatically, to the next car trying to impress those girls too; if they were girls.

We would hold that bar at the back, the bar that took the power to the ceiling of the structure which pumped the power into the cars. The bars were quite safe to hold onto but if you went from car to car and held the bar an both cars at the same time you got a nasty shock down your arm and up the other. When you're feeling this sensation you are trying to look sexy as the girls can see you leaping from car to car like Tarzan and they probably mistook that yell of pain from the electricity for a Tarzan yell and probably looked at us with a whatareyoudoing look on their faces.

The people who worked full time at the fairground tried to teach us how to give the punters the wrong change.

The idea was that the people in the cars gave you their money; the cars are ready to go as everything has to be quick so you give them the change quickly after showing them the correct amount in your hand – when you turn your hand over, you keep a tanner between two fingers, and they will just dump the change into their pockets and drive away without checking it.

A tanner by the way for anybody under about 50 was a sixpence.

We didn't swindle anybody a) because we were honest and b) because we couldn't do the act of prestidigitation even if we had wanted to.

Our cousin Pat, by the way, and I'll call him Part to distinguish him from my brother Pat, as that is what his name sounds like in a Scottish accent was even tempered, tall and always wore a black mac which was double breasted and belted. In fact from a distance he looked like a cop.

When the day came for us to get paid we went up to the boss for our money and we were sent on a wild goose chase from one person to the other.

Then we reached Mister Big – the boss - and he said that "ye're no' getting paid today; come back tomorrow!"

We knew that they would not be there 'tomorrow' as the fair was moving on – and we told them that.

"Och!! ye thank we gonna make off wicha bliddy muney do ye? Eh? See you - wicha blidy money . . ."

Pat and I then realised we either had to go and forget about it or stay for a kicking!

A shout “Hey Christy – Pat?”

We turned around and it was Part; dressed in his copper's mac.

"Who's thart?" said Mister Big "the blidy polis??”

"That's our cousin."

He took a queer look at Part.

" Yer cousin!! Yer blidy cousins . . . Here!"he said "here's your blidy money."

And he gave us the money.

Off we went with Part.

He is still in the village and we bumped into him in the street before we even went around to knock on his door.

His mother Peggy, our aunt Peggy, used to be Ronnie Corbet's housekeeper as he lives in Gullane.

Her husband Tom was from Dublin, my mother's younger brother – they died within a day of each other – joined the Royal Air Force as a lad and retired, with Peggy, to Gullane. He worked at Muirfield golf course and Part worked at the other golf course in Gullane. The whole place is crazy about golf.

When you see young kids with a basketball in Los Angeles or a football in London, in Scotland you see them with golf clubs; they play golf on waste ground, parks and anywhere they can hit a ball.

I don't know if many golf champions are Scottish but it surely is the national sport of Scotland.

After we met Part in the street the other day we walked up to where the fairground used to be – and there, lo and behold, was the visiting fair once again (above).