Guardian Readers and LA Flea Market

I wrote this on my Facebook page today:

Guardian Readers: just lately it seems that people like Banks and Farage use the phrase 'Guardian readers' as if we're some kind of weird specimens from Mars or Snowflakes from Hampstead. I have read the Guardian since the 1970s for the great journalism. John Arlott was one of the greatest and Neville Cardus was too.

There they are above.

In the 1980s one of my favourite journos was James Cameron (no not that one) who corresponded with me – hand written as did the chess correspondent.

And before anybody says that was then and this is now, there are still great journalists contributing and not all from the liberal left – on Saturday there was a piece in the Journal by Katy Balls, of The Spectator (the Tory speccy), so not just one sided and they even pay 'rude boy' Owen Jones.
The greatest thing about The Guardian is that nobody owns it unlike The Telegraph which is owned by someone who owns The Ritz and one of the channel islands; and by de way - who reputedly doesn't pay tax!

The Times is owned by the Murdoch empire and The Mail – oh who cares who owns it – it supported Hitler in its day – but that was then and this is now. What they do now is bad mouth the royal family.
The greatest guy who ever wrote for The Guardian and The Observer was Clive James.

That's what I wrote or, to use an anonymous (to me) American writer 'that's all she wrote.'

Going on – in the 1920s there was a publisher in London called Grant Richards; he was a bit of a dandy, never without a monocle or a handkerchief flopping out of his top pocket (no he never had a monocle flopping out of his top pocket). He lived his life regretting the writers he either didn't or couldn't publish. He lost James Joyce's first book Dubliners as he wanted to edit it but Joyce would not let him – good old Jimmy.

Richards published works by George Bernard-Shaw and A.E. Housman - A Shropshire Lad , Housman's most famous work, was included and, when he was approached by Neville Cardus, who sent him a scruffy packet of news-cuttings, he published Cardus' A Cricketer's Book, even though he knew nothing about cricket, saying anything that came out of The Guardian stable was worth backing on general principles.

So there that's what I have to say about The Guardian today.

Now I do not want to mention the name of the famous actress who is interviewed in today's copy of the paper so I won't but there is a lot of paranoia in the article; she keeps thinking her phone is being tapped or interfered with – it's an unfortunate expression as the poor woman is one of those who was a victim of Harvey Weinstein – that Adonis of a man who women would fall over themselves to be with – I don't think.

Why is it all the ugly fat bastards think they are god's gift to women? I mean can you imagine poor Mrs Trump having to wake up each morning beside that great big lump of a leviathan – oh I think he's great for the economy – they said that about Hitler.

Hey that's twice on this page he is mentioned.

The actress was married, one time, to a restaurateur who, when I met him, was an actor and played a small part in one of David Lynch's films; he was English and when I said I saw him in it, he came out with the line we all use 'I had more than that in the movie – it was gonna be a series but ya know!'

What I found strange was that he was English and the gonna and the ya know kind of stuck out a bit.

His ex- wife – did I say they were parted? Well yes – would come to the flea market in Los Angeles and I would recognise her and wonder about him.

He was fine and spoke nicely about David Lynch but I saw him many times at that market and we never said another word to one another; I found out that he was also a song writer and I was going to mention it to him but when I saw him the next time he skulked behind a car, looked in the side/wing mirror and adjusted his hair; then he patted his head on top to see if he could get that bit of a quiff to lay down. When he did this it came back up again, just like the boy in the strip Hergé's Adventures of Tintin .

So he had to pat it down again.

This would have been enough for me but as he walked towards me he went behind another car and started slapping his head again. By this time I ducked behind another car as he came passed. I was going to throw him a comb at this point but the thought did cross my mind that I should throw a sock full of dog shit at him instead.

So there we are for today – always remember, when you are on your soap box, what Shostakovich reputedly said to Pablo Picasso “it's okay being a communist if you don't live in a communist country.”

The Sofa, the pulley and the manager.

There we are on my favourite ever sofa. I put the photo up on Facebook recently because I like it.

I'll repeat here what I said there: when Fred MacMurray, the Hollywood movie star, died, his wife was left a widow for about fourteen years and then when she died, all of their belongings were put into auction, and that was his sofa; we bought it and got it at a good rate. He was in one of my favourite films Double Indemnity where he would call Barbara Stanwick 'baby' throughout and that's what I would call my wife as we sat on that sofa, and ever since, no more than a mile or so from where the classic movie was shot and set.

I bought other things at that auction too over the years: I bought Liberace's candelabra; I didn't keep it as I bought it on behalf of someone else. I think on that day there was a piece of paper, ordinary lined exercise paper from the UK – you can always tell as their paper sizes are different – and on that paper was the lyric, written by John Lennon in his own hand, to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ; it went for a fortune, well a fortune to me. Maybe around $25,000 and well worth it too as other sales, consequently, are much higher than that. When the hammer went down on it there was a burst of applause.

I think we also bought stuff from the Anne Miller estate when she died and it went up for auction – what's that? you never heard of her? Your loss!!

Most of her stuff was jewellery and monogrammed make up utensils etc. – one sale had an Oscar which was won by Charles Coburn. I held it, posed with it etc. but no photos. They don't sell Oscars any more as they are the property of the Academy who give them out - hang on Oscar® - that's better. 

That one would have found its way to Kevin Spacey who would buy all of them and donate them back to the Academy – there we are, you see, not a bad man after all; fancy him making a pass at another man – tut tut.

Look at the picture (above) and just passed us is our front door; it led to a walkway outside which was five floors up, looking out on to a court yard which was beautiful when we first moved in but a new owner of the building decided to dump the plants and beautiful fountains and left some false kind of plants down there on the concrete.

It took two goes at laying the concrete as it wasn't flat and in the El Niño rains, around the year two thousand, the rain water ran under some of the doors on the ground floor and ruined some of their stuff.

Us? five floors up and a flood? You wouldn't believe it but yes.

The owners did something to the French Windows so that the water out on the balcony rose above the bottom of the door and into our apartment – so our carpet was ruined and replaced.

When it was being replaced we had to put all our stuff in to the bathroom, on the balcony and through that front door. I put my guitar in to the bath with a few other things.

The chief carpet man was a keen guitarist and kept asking me a lot of questions about my guitar and I would say 'would you like to play it' and he would say 'no signor, I have to lay the carpet.'

I left the guys working on the new carpet as I had to get to rock'n'roll Ralphs and when I got back I went into the bathroom and could see he had played my guitar. Maybe he thought I was a professional and was a bit shy to play in front of me – that thought has just come to me now.

I can't believe that I sat in Arturo's guitar shop on Sunset Blvd (another post) as he very expertly played flamingo guitar to me, on an instrument he had just made with his bare hands and he would play that guitar with his nails clicking on the plectrum board and other places on the guitar and when he handed it to me, a guitar player of . . well let's put it this way - I was to a guitar what Steven Seagal is, or was, to acting.

What I can't believe is that I took the instrument from him and played. 

Played accompanying myself as I sang Robert Johnson's Crossroads and The Beatles I will! 'hey you got a great voice' said the great man; nothing about the guitar playing.

Back to that door again; that is the door that that sofa came through. It was too big for the elevator/lift so we had to haul it up on a pulley on the outside of the building.

I had a friend who had an open truck and he, me and Nobel, the manager of the building, hauled it up.

'Pull. Pull. Stop. Hold it. Lower it back down. Pull. Too far. Etc. 

Our voices echoing through the building. A building we lived in for may fifteen of the seventeen years we lived in LA.

And Nobel the manager? The first sight of Nobel was of a Sikh with long white hair in a pony tail, and a beard. But he wasn't a Sikh at all. He had an Indian accent but said he was British. He also said he was 99 years old – he wasn't but he told everybody he was and when I told him my name was Sullivan he said 'pleased to meet you, Mister Callaghan.' 

He was hard of hearing but never used a hearing aid and would cup his hand around his ears with a big 'what??' if he didn't hear what was said.

Before we moved in I called him on the phone and said 'it's Chris Sullivan here' and he said 'hello Mister Callaghan.'

Always a bit of humour.

He would always complain about The Beatles getting the M.B.E. - bloody Beatles, he would say.

I gave him a lift somewhere one day and there were others in the car too, as we had a big Chevy Nova. We went to a pharmacists and there was an old woman in there who was trying to spend her Ralphs Card as if it had any value. She was getting really upset and wanted her purchases as she called them. I found out she didn't live far so I gave her a ride home.

I said to Nobel 'the poor women was trying to use her Ralphs card in there' and he said 'what do you mean, she's your accountant?'

I have never figured out how he deduced from what I said to what he thought I said.

He was actually about 80 years old and did some work, in his youth, with Albert Schweitzer, the French theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary, in the leper colonies in Hawaii.

When he was in hospital I would go in and cut his hair and beard. He was in the same hospital, The Good Samaritan, where Robert Kennedy died after he was shot in the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Blvd.

A couple of times when I would cut Nobel's beard I would nick him on the lip and he would pull a terrible face but he was always very grateful.

He was a hoarder and would never throw anything away – his apartment was full of stuff: mattresses, shopping carts – you name it. The owners promised to clear the apartment if he would vacate it and that's what happened and he went to live in a home. But they kept taking him to hospital and I think the move – making him homeless - killed him. He just gave up.

The last time I went to cut his hair, at the hospital, he was fast asleep and two ambulance men came in and woke him up to take him back to the home. 'you can't take me away' he said 'I'm dead.”

He actually thought he was. But he did die fairly soon afterwards. I didn't have anything to do with things after that as he didn't have a funeral – he was burned by the city in the monthly cremation; that happened to a lot of people I knew in LA. Nobel knew that was where he was going.

He had two bank accounts with around $250,000 in each account as I used to draw his money out of one of them every month and put it in to another account to pay his rent – I don't know what happened to all that money but I have my suspicions.

Why and Where.

   

                   

Do you know I can't remember if I ever put this up; I remember writing it but I can't remember who I wrote it for. So let's hope I haven't sold it to someone who wants their money back. In any case, as you will see, if you're paying attention, I have added to it.

I remember in the wonderful tributes to Seamus Heaney, his pronunciation of the wh words; whale, wheat, why, when and the wonderful while or whilst etc.

Seamus pronounced 'why' correctly, as most of the Irish do as hwahy – try it!

The aitch is on the breath of the double-u as the lips pucker themselves together for the double-u plunge – fun isn't it?

By the way, as we are at it, aitch is pronounced aitch – not haitch as I have heard a lot these days.

The other place where it's pronounced correctly is Inverness in Scotland; in fact it is said that the best pronunciations of English are in Dublin and Inverness.

Wouldn't believe that would you?

But that spreads to the rest of Ireland and Scotland; thick accents notwithstanding.

The leader of Sinn Féin was on the radio this morning with a vocabulary to die for and using it like a beautiful tool to confound, mesmerize and confuse English journalists into hypnotic states.

When people like Noah Webster come along and try to change the spelling of the words to make things simple for the Americans they are obliterating the origin of words. I mean why did he take the 'u' out of colour; the 'u' tells us where it came from – 1250–1300; Middle English col ( o ) ur Anglo-French ( French couleur ) Latin colōr- (stem of color ) – I mean why didn't he leave things as they were? It was a pain in the arse, when I lived there, that I eventually ended up confusing the two.

Someone said to me at a party one night that the 'U' was only put in to words by the English to be flashy or pedantic; I didn't comment on that at the time and I won't now.

When I said 'people like Noah Webster come along' I mean what I say 'come' along, present tense, as they still do; I knew a teacher there who wanted to see Americans spell catalogue as catalog – now what looks better on the page in this day and age of shortening everything, BTW, the former or the latter?

Yes, BTW, my little joke – or joak, to use a private family joke!

My daughter was talking to one of the school mistresses at her son's school, the other day, and she asked her about the basketball court and the school mistress said - don't you mean the multi-sports hall?

Give me a break!!

Seamus Heaney also pronounced Drogheda the way it's spelt without the 'g' but the very posh English say Droyida – they also pronounce Daventry as Dayentry and a town in the north east of England in a funny way too but I think they do that as a test for 'pretenders.'

Do people in other languages have this kind of trouble? I mean do the Mexicans have Mexican Spanish and the people from Quebec and various African countries have their own French spellings? Are they allowed to say actress in their languages unlike us; The Guardian always refer to females as actors – I know a lot of women don't like the word actress but it isn't exactly a word like poetess or authoress is it? It always seemed silly to me, when old dames die like Dame Wendy Hiller, being described as the actor Wendy Hiller. It seems okay for someone like Germaine Greer or even Vanessa Redgrave but Wendy Hiller?

I was listening to Billy Connelly was on the radio and he, as a Scotsman, pronounced his 'wh' properly; the big Yin is not too great at the moment with his prostrate cancer and his Parkinsons but soon responded when Michael Parkinson, and old chum of his, said that the big Yin wasn't compos mentis.

Ironic isn't it, and he would point it out, that he shot to fame on the Michael Parkinson Show in the 70s. 

He came on to that show, the first time, and told one very famous joke and that joke, that one solitary joke, made him a star.

When he got back to Glasgow, after the broadcast, he was spotted at the airport and a crowd of people saw him and started to clap; there were only about 4 TV stations in Britain at the time and he hadn't quite reckoned how many people were watching and how he would affect people. 

I remember thinking he was the funniest person I had ever seen and when I went to see him live in the theatre he was even funnier; he wasn't restricted by language and he could say anything he liked and that's the problem with censorship – it's for the narrow minded; I mean what's the matter with a word; what harm can it do? If we welcomed words, rejoiced in their original spelling and meaning, things would be easier for everybody; there is not one name you can call me which would cause me offence. I know I'm white, reluctantly middle class, medium height to short, regular looks but I've been called lots of things in my life. When I first started on the post office the old sweats would ask me if I was going on my holidays – they were referring to the bags under my eyes and I hadn't quite worked out what they meant. 

Then I was called the Mekon (I have a big head), the green man (I was usually pale) and the incredible hulk. I didn't figure out the last one till fairly recently; apparently I looked like the guy who played him on TV in the 70s – the David Banner side to him.

I do feel it for Billy Connelly as my mother had Parkinsons and I do realise that the Americans, with their lack of patience for foreign accents, have never seen him at his best but I have and I'm not putting that joke down here – you can look it up.

                            BILLY CONNELLY

                               (THE BIG YIN)

Edinburgh 2010; at the festival and risking life on the number 27 bus.

I wrote this post in 2010 and someone looked at it the other day which reminded me and it made me smile. I had been at the Edinburgh Festival with my show A Bit of Irish with many visits to the poetry nights in The Captain's Bar where I did some of my own stuff together with some by WB Yeats hoping some of his enormous talent would rub off.

When reading this remember – it is before Brexit and before Trump; oh how lucky we were but that's what life is about when you never know the future.

This will finish off the Edinburgh blog; that bus above, as you can see, is the number 27. This bus is a wonderful bus; it runs every 10 minutes and took us into the centre of town in 15 minutes from where we were staying in a place called Viewforth.

The fair would cost £1.20 each way but a daily ticket would cost just £3. The daily ticket could be used all day on as many buses as one would wish to use; the buses have wheel chair and push chair access and certain seats near the front are reserved for senior citizens.

In the evenings the buses are limited to one every half an hour but we knew the time table so didn't have to wait too long very often.

So what is the matter with this seemingly wonderful bus service from Lothian Buses?

The drivers don't know how to apply the brakes properly; that is all except one and that was Bernard.

When Bernard drove the bus you could get out of your seat and feel safe as you walked to the door but when the other drivers drove you risked your life as soon as you got up.

Now it so happens that on most buses you have to get out of your seat before the bus reaches your stop; if you don't the bus will start off again before you have the time to get off.

So when you see your stop coming up in the distance you get out of your seat and walk up the aisle to the front of the bus; this is the cue for the driver, except the aforementioned Bernard, to apply the brakes hard which turns your walk into a trot and sometimes even a little run.

If the bus has to stop at the traffic lights before the bus stop, the driver will have to stop at the light and then accelerate again to get passed the lights and to the bus stop. This will send you on a walk back down the aisle to where you just came from - backwards.

You can prevent this by grabbing on to a bar, if you can, and if not you have to wait for another bar to catch or just hope you might bump into someone on your journey backwards who is big and soft.

Or you can fall backwards onto the floor and bang your head!

This doesn't apply to Bernard, of course, as he would be able to drive the bus with a pint of Guinness on his dash board.

All this might sound like fun and indeed it is if you are fit enough but to see really old people go into a trot down the bus and then see them careering backwards makes you want to cover your eyes or dive to try and rescue them.

The old ladies struggle out of their seats and then seem to have a lease of life as their little legs pump away moving their bodies forward at a speed they have probably never experienced since they were teenagers.

There was a middle aged woman, one day, applying lipstick when the bus went into the full Monty; the full Monty is when the brake is applied for the bus stop, then just before stopping at the traffic lights the lights change to amber before the bus has made its final stop and then it accelerates to the bus stop then stops fiercely again. The lipstick went up and down the woman's face but I find it very hard to describe what happened to the woman sitting across the aisle who was picking her nose; not a pretty sight!

I am not saying that every driver on every bus in Edinburgh drove like this – they just seemed to be. I only ever used the 43, the 10 and the 27 although I used the 27 every day and it happened every time – except once when we met Bernard.

On the last night we had to get our stuff out of the theatre pretty damn quick; so we put all the props into one plastic box; the guitar went into its own box and we had to return a table I had borrowed from the pub back to them.

After that I decided it would be a good idea to get a taxi so after a few pints in the pub – and I sang two songs for which they gave me a glass of black grouse whisky for – we had a cup of tea with a Palestinian shopkeeper I got to know and then caught a taxi. The taxi driver took us on a different route from the one we normally took and we landed in heavy traffic; well, we didn't fall for that trick so when we stopped in that traffic jam we decided to get out and pay him off. So we walked to our usual stop and there was the number 27 bus being driven by Bernard.

I didn't know Bernard was the driver of the year at that point but I was carrying the box of props and my wife had the guitar and the bag of costumes; it was easier that way as the box was giving Margaret trouble when we 'ran' from the taxi to the bus.

So when we made our move to get off the bus we couldn't grab the bars as we walked along the aisle but Bernard drove that bus lovingly and smoothly to the bus stop where he stopped it without even a slight jerk.

 I look forward to risking things again in Edinburgh one of the days where maybe I'll meet Bernard again.

Alan Turing - Aspergers - Suicide.

A few months ago on the BBC there were plenty of trailers for a new series.

The series was about the greatest person of the twentieth Century – Icons (in fact I think that was the title). Each episode would be introduced by a celebrity, who worked in the same field as the subject and they had episodes of Artists and Writers, Sports Stars etc. Thinking back I think there were six Icons of the century in each episode and the BBC audience would vote. They were voting for people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King; Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.

The following were the winners of each category:

ARTISTS & WRITERS WINNER. Pablo Picasso. Pioneering, genre-smashing modern artist.

SPORTS STARS WINNER. Muhammad Ali. Legendary Boxer.

ENTERTAINERS WINNER. David Bowie.

SCIENTISTS WINNER. Alan Turing.

EXPLORERS WINNER. Ernest Shackleton.LEADERS WINNER. Nelson Mandela.

Then they showed a final programme when all of the above were introduced and Alan Turing won.

Alan Turing turned out to be the Greatest Person of the twentieth Century.

The fact that a film about Turing's life had been released a couple of years ago with the super actor Benjamin Cumberbatch playing Alan Turing did no harm to the election.

The film was called The Imitation Game and kind of intimates that Alan Turing did it all by himself when it was actually a team effort from the Polish version of the Enigma Machine with the codes already broken by Polish cryptologists and mathematicians. Turing adapted their codes and built a machine to translate the messages and also guess some messages which were in plain text.

The women who worked at Bletchley Park had to learn Morse code as, indeed, I had to in a former life and found it quite a hard code although I learned the numbers very quickly but (to be honest) I was too idle to learn properly.

To take nothing away from Turing's feats, the film, which was quite a good one, used some silly Hollywood type tricks. One was the same as the one in A Beautiful Mind where John Nash is at a party with friends and when he sees an attractive woman enter the bar, with her not so attractive friend, he suddenly whoops that he has discovered the theory of equilibrium.

In The Imitation Game Alan Turing, as played by Cumberbatch, whoops 'we're going to shorten the war' – or words to that affect when he hears one of the Bletchley girls say something about the German on the other end of her line using the same greeting at the start of each message.

The fact that Alan Turing was able to work on the Enigma Machine was that he was a genius: he was a mathematician and cryptologist.

He also had Asperger's Syndrome. 
I first found out about Asperger's when I had a subscription to the New Yorker magazine whilst living in Los Angeles.

A contributor told a story about his own Asperger's, before it was generally recognised, of a trip he made from his school in Upper New York State to Yankee Stadium.

His class were told to write an essay about the trip and whilst the rest of his class wrote about the Baseball Game, mixing in the journey, the Bronx, and the game itself; he just described the bus and its décor. He didn't get the full message and that is what Asperger's is – they don't get all the messages. They are literally just like Spock in Star Trek – and, by the way is that an Oxford comma back there after Bronx??

Asperger's is a kind of autism – it's the spiral that starts with total none communication with the world. No speech, no understanding, nothing. It can be like the character in Rain Man played by Dustin Hoffman to Steven Spielberg who is reputed to be on the spiral.

I have known a few people with the condition and, just for the record, I am not in contact with any of the examples mentioned in this post – especially Stephen Spielberg!!

All of the examples of Asperger's, whom I have met, have a plan for suicide. Now I don't know if this is a symptom of it or just a coincidence. Robin Williams had Asperger's – he hung himself; more to the tragedy is that there was evidence of him trying a few things before hanging himself like marks on his wrists.

One friend told me that his plan was to row out into the middle of a lake with a gun. Then he would get rid of the oars, shoot holes into the boat then shoot himself in the head.

Another friend wrote and asked me if he committed suicide on Stinson Beach in Northern California would I go to his funeral?

Alan Turing committed suicide in the 1950s long after he helped shorten World War II.

There are theories that he was murdered by the CIA – MI6 – MI5 or whatever and the theory of it is that as he was an homosexual and was open to blackmail by the Russians and the secret service killed him to prevent the blackmail.

There was a spy, sometime in the 1950s again, who had the unfortunate name of Vassal. He was gay and was subject to blackmail and forced into spying for the enemy.

But Turing died from Cyanide poisoning.

Here's another piece of information: Alan Turing would take an apple to bed with him every night and on the day he died he was found with a half eaten apple and cyanide poisoning.

Maybe if he did kill himself, and there is speculation to the contrary, he took the cyanide then a bite of the apple to get rid of the taste, help the poison go down – I don't know.

But if you bite, deep into an apple, you will get a bitter taste from the tiny black seeds. Unlike the sweet tang of the fruit, the tiny black seeds are another story. They contain amygdalin, a substance that releases cyanide when it comes into contact with human digestive enzymes.

I leave it to you your honour. 

                       The Enigma Machine

Who's training Whom?

First let me explain why I am wearing that tee shirt: I only ever sleep in boxers and when I get up I usually do my ablutions and wear an old Hawaiian shirt I have had for years and a pair of shorts till I take a shower.

I hate tee shirts, don't know how people can sleep in them as I feel I'm choking when I wear one.

This morning, before I got up, my wife put all my shirts in to the laundry which included yesterday's shirt and my Hawaiian one. So I looked in a drawer and found the above tee shirt.

Now I am going to write a little story for you and the photo is relevant.

My little office is about ten feet by ten feet. You wouldn't believe there's a hundred square feet in here but that's the way it goes. I don't use desks, I have two tables which are next to each other in an 'L' shape.

Behind me, and the camera taking the photo, is the window, and as you can see there are two screens in front of me; one is a PC and the other a lap top so I have two keyboards on a tiny table which is just above my lap.

This morning I put my camera on the tripod, set the camera and asked my wife to take the photo. I knew I had this tee shirt on, of course I did, but forgot momentarily till I looked at the shot much later and not only do I have the name of a show I did about ten years ago on the front it has it on the back too.

Here is where I sit when I do any writing, it's comfortable and last week I sat here, eating dinner and watching Chelsea play Arsenal which was free to watch on YouTube.

A couple of months ago I came in here, started to type, when I heard some tapping behind me. Tap tap tap; just like that: tap tap tap tap tap; tap tap tap tap tap.

I turned around, saw nothing then turned back to write.

After a while tap tap tap tap tap; tap tap tap tap tap .

This time when I turned I saw a tiny bird on the window ledge – well it wouldn't be a human being would it at this height.

It looked a bit like a dunnock – small bird - and it was pecking the glass. On the window ledge inside there are photographs and maybe, from outside, he or she could probably see its reflection and it kept on pecking on the window pane. When I walked over there he flew off and into the tree which is about five yards away.

After a while he came back – I think we'll call it a he. He started tapping again then he came to the right side of the window and started jumping up and down. He seemed to be stretching his neck. I wasn't sure if he could see me or himself in the reflection and was bumping himself, or heading himself or what!

Then he flew away – a few times he came back: tap tap tap – then I go to look at him and he flew off again.

Eventually we cottoned on - we bought some bird seed, put a handful out on the ledge and he ate it.

Once in a while a magpie has been there and, whilst they are not huge, they look it on our little ledge. But they don't come very often even though they are very prevalent around here. We watch them bring their young up, teaching their babies how to fly by trying to get them to jump to the top of tiny plants in the garden but the little dunnock keeps coming.

If there is no food there he will tap tap on the window then fly away. We will put food there, close the window and the blind till it's almost shut, then he comes back and eats some of the food.

My original plan was to put a computer on each table but as the PC is quite slow (it isn't wireless) I put the lap top in front and in order to be able to see the screens I had to nearly close the blinds which is why the bird came in the first place.

Here he is – that's as close as I could get. Hope you can make him out.

Two Guys in North Hollywood.

The last post was supposed to be about the following story but I never plan these things. I start writing and I just waffle on till I finish then I copy and paste; so this is what I meant to write last time:

When I was in Los Angeles my agent called and told me that someone wanted to see me about doing a play called The Homecoming by Harold Pinter; now I love Harold Pinter's plays as the dialogue is so real even though it looks unusual on the page and people don't always know what the play is about as most of it is in the subtext. 

For instance there is such a thing as a Pinter Pause although you might not see it in a dictionary. Let me look and see.

Well it isn't in a dictionary but it's on Google - The Pinter Pause. Pauses run through all of Pinter’s work – and they occur in The Homecoming a whopping 224 times. The “Pinter pause” is typically found partway through a line of speech. It’s not a prolonged or pregnant pause of the kind that’s often used to draw attention to a particular moment.

Well there it is and it mentions the very play I am talking about. I did The Caretaker many many years ago by Harold Pinter. The dialogue was so cleverly written that after more than 50 years I can still remember some of it - “There's a café just along the road; I used to go there quite a bit. Oh years ago now but I stopped. That's was before I went away just before . . .”

There we are and I didn't cheat.

The play was going on at the Lee Strasbourg Institute in West Hollywood and I had to go and meet a couple of guys in North Hollywood – the valley.

I had been up for a few roles where my agent was told I was a nice guy – charming, easy to work with – all of that but the role I was going for was a nasty piece of work and the character was eighty years of age. I wasn't going to wear 80 year old make up or anything like that, but they (the agents) wanted me to turn off the charm.

The character was Max and he really was nasty. It was played by Paul Rogers who won a Tony Award for it when he played it on Broadway when he was about 50 years of age – so I wasn't intimidated by that when I went along to see the The Two Guys in North Hollywood.

I had in mind that I was a nasty piece of work which meant I didn't want to flirt with them or try and impress them; I'd be good mannered, pass the time of day but be serious; I wouldn't frighten anybody with my smile. I remembered once I went for the role of the father in the Oxo commercials in the UK and the day after I left the casting session I got a call from them; a callback. So I went in to work that day – I was doing something for the BBC called Goodbye Darling with a very selective cast Renee Asherson, Faith Brook and TP McKenna to name but three (which I just got from the IMDb) and I told the pal I had at the time, Tom Georgeson, that I had a callback and he said 'no way – you're not a dad' and I said I've got three kids at home' 'you may have' he said ' but you're not a DAD; you're just not.'

I understood what he meant, I just wasn't the type. A bit later on that day my agent called and said 'they changed their mind' 'why?' I said

'it's your eyes!”

'what???? my eyes?'

'you have the eyes of a killer. If you don't smile there's a look of a killer in your eyes.'

I told Tom – 'told you' he said.

But they were right – I did a small movie once 'The Swimming Pool' in Bournemouth (which seems to have disappeared without a trace) and I didn't blink throughout the whole movie – yes I looked like a killer.

So I was bearing this in mind when I was heading over to meet the Two Guys in North Hollywood.

This was in the days when I had just started to carry a cell phone but I never used it; it was stuck in my pocket. After I parked I found my way to the place where I was headed, all Raymond Chandler and bright Pulp Fiction sunshine and shadows and then it started to rain – not pour just a flicker and when I got to the place there was a note on the door 'please call 555 1212 (good number that 555; used in every movie, the 555 bit, up to fairly recently – yes every movie). I didn't want to be doing that. 

I didn't know how much a call would cost and my phone could only stay in my pocket free till I used it as that meant I had accepted the terms. I looked around; this was some way from the city of North Hollywood closer to the valley and I could not see a payphone.

It rained a little heavier so I made the call 'hi' – 'you have no door bell?' I said 'who's this' the voice said 'who's this!!!' 'are you the three-o-clock?' he said 'no I said I'm the actor.'

They buzzed the buzzer which buzzed me up.

The two guys were in the living room – one was the lead actor (playing Lennie, I suppose) and the other was a lot older; the director.

'what was all that about?' I said 'it's raining out there.'

'take a seat.' so I did.

I looked at the pair of them (killer eyes; don't forget killer eyes.)

Small talk but no smile, no pleasantries, one word answers nothing more.

We read the whole play – the guy playing Lenny was quite good, had an acceptable British accent. Never English accent, by the way, they always say British.

I have to say – I read it really well; so did the other guy. There was a lot of tension on the air. He read the other roles too. I hadn't read it before but I was a good sight reader and I played it cool. Not much humour and when we finished it was 'Whew!! Wow. That was good man.'

Now was the time to let go, be nice, maybe smile – but I couldn't.

Mister nasty just sat over there on the sofa.

They felt awkward; I could tell.

'If I offer you the role of the younger guy' said the director – 'how would that be? I mean this guy is eighty if he's a day.'

'Paul Rogers played this on Broadway at fifty.' I said.

'yes well we can't take those chances.'

I tried to be pleasant but it didn't come. I remember doing a play on the stage where a tear came into my eye at the end of a scene and when I went off, the tear was still there; I had to take a few breaths and long one out to come to my senses.

It was the same with those two guys.

The director did call a week later 'that was an outstanding reading' he said 'but we just can't use you.'

'Keep in touch' I said.

And hung up.