height!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . . well what is it like?

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

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

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

Well there's no answer to that!

Pauline

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

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

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

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

Not always cheerful some times a curmudgeon.

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

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

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

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

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

At that time I must have wondered why she called.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

R.I.P.

The Dreamer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spam

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

Churchill and the Magpies.

See that above?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Empty London.

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

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

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

They are looking out for themselves and their jobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dystopia.

You'll have to go along with me for this as it only might go somewhere. I will type it, check for spelling and typos then copy and paste onto the site.

For the past twenty or thirty years there has always been a Bruce Willis to come along and put things right. He would confront some Lex Luther figure who would hold the antidote to the virus and take it from him. 

Luther would have been demanding a trillion dollars. $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. 

Yes that's what it is in a British trillion but as there are only one thousand millions in an American billion they would put a trillion at $1,000,000,000,000.

Just twelve zeros and trillions do exist even though in Britain that word is hardly ever used – even though it's almost the national debt. The USA's national debt being about fifteen of that 'F' word which has risen by about Two Trillion (TT) since PINO has been in charge.

My daughter has a friend called Pino which, I believe, is Sicilian and that's a good bet particularly as his father was from there. In this case PINO, as you know, is President in Name Only.

And there is no Bruce Willis here to help us even if he goes up in a rocket to stop the Haemorrhoidal Thyroid of an Asteroid aiming for the earth. 

In other words it doesn't matter that there is only a PINO who thinks he is in a movie arguing and fighting with the staff of his government about what to call the virus.

In other words we are in Desolation Row.

I put that on Facebook yesterday and was very pleased when a friend replied Cinderella is already sweeping up!

It meant that someone is on the same page which I think is what's right and wrong about things - it's great that someone knows it's a Dylan lyric and terrible when you realise that even at this stage there are those who don't know and don't think it's important in any case. And we do need both.

We might say everything is relative or what's best is only according to taste but no matter what your politics are if Mars decided to attack the Earth we would all join forces to fight the red devils – no it might not be PC or even be racist to call the people from Mars red anything.

But I digress.

At the moment we are being attacked by aliens – POUS is still arguing at the top but all the way down to the very bottom people are arguing about whether the virus came from someone eating a baboon in Zimbabwe or a penguin at the north pole.

They will give huge theories they got from a friend at London Zoo and then be shot down by finding out that there are no penguins at the north pole – or dry cleaners in Cambodia (Look Back in Anger III i 50; John Osborne) for that matter.

So if this was a movie the opening scene would be like something above, maybe with some distant echoey music, maybe an old 1930s song, and an old newspaper being blown across the empty London streets.

We would need an existential hero rather like Rick Blaine, from Casablanca, or even Woody Allen actually trying the virus and finding out it gives virility and enhances Manhood in the offspring of all who survive it.

In either case it would be an existential hero as they are needed to save the world even though they say 'I stick my neck out for nobody' – as they don't want to change things even though they know that life is meaningless but they know it might mean something to somebody.

The thing about this crisis in this crazy world (Casablanca again) is the same as the financial crisis in 2008 will be a temporary change to world socialism except the USA – it was only a part socialist policy in 2008 when a lot of money was thrown at the banks - but in Britain at least, it will be fully blown this time.

It has to come now and again and maybe forever one day.

This time all the private hospitals in the UK have offered their services to the NHS at cost, a very large proportion of the work force will be paid by the state – even the self employed eventually – people will not be required to work, a basic payment will be made to everybody, except the self employed (I'm kidding), and the banks will charge and give zero interest then the whole capitalist system will break down.

Out of this a hero will arise - hold it hold it where am I going?

During this PINO will give everyone a cheque for $1,500 and achieve, what he doesn't want but is going the right way to achieve it and that is - Dystopia.

Indian or Native American.

There are lots of things you, or we, don't know about America. We lived there for seventeen years and there are still things I don't know. One of the things I learned on the way back to London, the last time I was there, was on the in flight radio, and this is when I had been back in London for about three years: I found that the American horse racing industry dope their horses as a matter of course. 

In the UK it is treated the same as with human athletes - cheating.

In America they wouldn't dream of letting horses race without medication, i.e. doping. They reckon the poor horses will burst their lungs if they raced without being treated.

Now if I was going to write a song or a poem about this I could rhyme treated with cheated – but I digress!!

I don't know what they have to do when they enter horses in Britain like The Grand National or The Derby – or as Jimmy Cagney sang the English Derby Cup.

Another thing I noticed when I first moved there was they don't use Frisco as slang for San Francisco. They call it 'The Bay Area' – all of it San Francisco, Berkley and other smaller places near there.

One person I knew in the UK described someone as coming from the 'Bay Area of San Francisco' which is really like saying the England part of London – back ways around.

One of the first auditions I did there for a movie was to play some kind of white man missionary in a film about the old west and the fella auditioning with me was an Indian.

I can't remember his tribe or nation but he was quite intellegant, tall and proud but wouldn't accept being called a 'Native American.' 

He said that came from some white professor or some government body. He didn't mind being called a Native but not American and in any case preferred Indian.

I was talking to a Navajo one time, and wrote on here about it, and he too didn't like the term Native American but then the name Navajo was given to his tribe by the Spanish. The Navajo (with the J pronounced as aitch) are called Diné or Naabeehó but they settle for Navajo. 

Their language is almost impossible to learn unless you learn it from birth which is why it was used in the second world war as a code – only the Navajo could speak and understand it – they were the code talkers and there is a feature film about them.

Of course when the speakers and heroes returned to America they went back to their usually alcohol fuelled squalor.

The Indians are an amazing race and have come on a lot since then.

The other thing about America is when people refer to it as 'The States' – I don't mind the US but it's America.

In fact I think it's a bit non-U to call the place the states which I won't bore you with here.

What else bugs me about the two nations separated by a common language?

Oh yes – when I first went there I met a lot of English people who would refer to America as one of the colonies – I kid you not – but I must say it was only within the first few months and mainly in Missouri where I heard it.

There was a time when a friend of mine was doing business with an Englishman. When she introduced me to him, and before he even opened his mouth, I knew he was putting on a public schoolboy act.

He too was referring to the place as one of the colonies and would refer to Sri Lanka as Ceylon. Straight away I spotted a phony – I don't want to confuse my American friends here as public schools in the UK are a unique selection of the private schools such as Eton and Harrow. Winston Churchill went to Harrow and the current incumbent at Number 10, Johnson, went to Eton. These people aren't the aristocracy, in fact most of them are the sons and daughters of rich people and they aren't the upper classes either and never will be. Johnson father was in trade – heaven forbid!

This phony I got to know, used his accent and his way of walking and standing to try and con the friend.

He was going to supply money and backing for a project and disappeared.

Like I'm going to do now.

Toodle Loo.

Today March 9^th would have been my dad's 107^th Birthday; RIP.

Two women and the middle aged white man.

Look at the two women at the top of this page; those were the two women who argued about me and, hopefully, the only two whoever did. Maybe it's the reason I have always preferred women to men.

I heard a story recently about a guy who had to meet someone in a bar in Australia. It might have been in the outback but the guy was a journalist and had to meet another guy, a stranger, as he was researching something and the custom in the bar was to drink a lot of beer as fast as you could to prove how much of a man you are – or even were!

The journalist had heard this before and heard stories about men coming in with their wives or girl friends and other guys in the bar wondering why they were talking to their spouses instead of standing with the guys guzzling beer. 'Come over here, ya baaastard, and drink with the guys' etc. 

When the journalist had enough to drink he said he would like to go but the guy looked at him and said 'No! You're going up to the bar and getting another couple of beers.'

The journo said 'No! I want to go.'

The other guy, looked the journo in the eye and repeated what he had said before but this time with more than a little look of menace in his eyes.

The journo went up and got the beers and the other guy started to drink as if he hadn't been menacing at all.

Now what this has to do with the fact that those two women above fought over me which might have made me prefer the company of women as opposed to men I have no idea; the Australian story just came to me. But it might be true. In my dotage I still prefer my women friends to the men. Men are boring talking about shit and not listening. I spent an hour or so with two men in a bar in Northampton as they told jokes. They must have been thinking about the next joke when they were being told one so, I suppose, were performing for me and the more they drank the more the jokes became stale and you can tell what that would be like when I tell you that the first gag was crap.

As Shakespeare said What a piece of work is a man!

Those two women? My mother and my granny. There she is on the left, my grandmother Mary Tuite, nee Fay; born in Dublin Ireland and on the right Esther Mary Sullivan nee Tuite, also born in Dublin.

My granny emigrated to Manchester with seven of her eight children leaving one child back in Dublin. That one child? My mother – Esther Mary Tuite. She was old enough, in her twenties, not to be ruled by her father who wanted her in by 10.00 at night at that age and that's why she moved in with her friend May Davies.

Now May Davies was a name that was always banded about our house as she was my mother's best friend but we never met her. We didn't meet my dad's best friend either and he was called Joe Picard.

My granny moved to Manchester and when my mother was pregnant she sent me to Manchester to stay with her.

Maybe it was too much for her to look after me at the same time as trying to work I don't know and maybe granny suggested it in any case.

My mother came to Manchester to have the second baby and I would be two years and two months old and I can remember standing on the table being dressed by both of my parents as we were going home and my father was arguing with granny. Granny wanted me to stay – isn't one enough for you, she said. It was okay for me, being spoiled by my grandmother, getting her picture taken with me and treating me to whatever I wanted. That picture for the next twenty years was in every one of the houses of the siblings – seven altogether don't forget. I was also told that my Godmother had her photo taken with me too and that she wore a glove on the left hand to hide the fact that she wasn't married as people would think I was her child.

So a complicated how do you do, don't you think!

I did notice that when we left the house in Manchester it was very calm and that is the way to settle arguments.

Exit!

Here we are many years later and those two women are gone; my granny was only 18 years older than my mother and died when she was 55 and my mother died when she was 79.

My father decided where I would live. A very kind gentle man and definitely in charge who wouldn't stand nonsense from either sex.

These days we hear the description of the people who run the world and it boils down to the middle aged white man – sometimes in a suit – but always the middle aged white man.

And of course the middle aged white man has made a mess so far so is it time for the middle aged women to run the place? Is it?

You'll have to think about that. I watched the recent series of Endeavour on TV here and the episodes were set in the 60s. The university lecturer was very badly written. He ate in a very lower middle class home with his meat and two veg, a small dining room piece of shit table and behaved like a salesman at home with his wife or a bank manager wondering if it was the night he has to jump on her when they get to bed or is it the night when they do the jigsaw puzzle.

At work when Morse, the detective, talked about the murder the lecturer referred to women as some kind of species from outer space. For example they do this, or they won't do things like that as if working with a woman was some kind of drudge.

I remember when I worked for the post office as a postman, for the short time I did, that the office of about 100 postmen had one woman and one immigrant – a Sikh. The men had a complaint about each of them.

Mr Singh would grab all the overtime and the woman wouldn't load the vans.

To me? One woman, maybe twenty five years older than me meant one thing. A shave every morning with after shave. Told you I have always liked women.

Of course it was some middle aged old bastard of a boss (a PHG) who would take her outside for a smoke all the time. Would make sure she got a lift to her walk (her mail round is called a 'walk') as her bag was a bit heavy and maybe even more - I didn't know. 
I was always looking for a way out: a job on the vans, a late start (I had to be in there 5.00 am) anything. I would meet old school mates and when I told them what I was doing they'd say 'well it's better than walking the streets!'

It's no good writing about it here or even showing it on TV – you had to be there. If you want to know what it was like back then it is better to look at some old TV on Talking Pictures or a channel that also shows old TV shows as you really had to be there and ask yourself, which we didn't at the time, how did it ever get like this?

So I didn't really reach a conclusion here did I? I didn't think I would when I started but I will say that I don't think I have ever been sexist – I know that as a young man I would look at the young women but the older you get you still look but with age comes appreciation of age.

I was, as I said before, going to write about Los Angeles here, but when I went to have my eyes tested the other day I told the optician about my Heath Robinson photo – this one.                                

Only my little joke about Heath Robinson as my distance glasses were away getting replaced so I tried this joke and the lens worked but . . . .

I also found the photos of my granny and my mother which started me off so I have to apologise for such a long post – unless you enjoyed it of course!