Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

I got a few e-mails after my last post about the song 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and I have to say maybe I didn't quite get my point across; I'm not saying I want another Christmas song but I think the crooners should move on with different songs as we have heard 'Goody Goody' and 'Jeeper Creepers' - enough already.

But my brother writes and tells me that 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' was recorded by 136 people from Judy Garland to Bob Dylan and that the original version was too maudlin for Judy Garland's husband, Minnelli, meaning that have yourself a merry little Christmas as it may be your last.

He thought it was in that military film when the bloke got executed in the end but according to 'Bing' it wasn't – well actually it was, Pat, your first thought was correct:

As the soldier is brought from his confinement and tied to the execution stake, the music is Frank Sinatra singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and the moment the soldier is shot, it skips to a joyful recording of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

That was part of a review by Bosley Crowther Published: December 20, 1963 in the New York Times.

So BING is wrong and you're right.

I can't remember the Hark the Herald Angels bit but who could forget such a moment in a film; as I am writing this I looked on Netflix but it's not available and that is a shame as the film by Carl Foreman is a classic – a bit long but a classic.

Netflix is the on line video shop we use here.

My friend Jeffo in Florioda wrote to me and said - Well if I may boldly go against your argument, poetic license dictates the rules may be set aside. And we who write must appreciate that better than anyone. "To boldly go".......sounds much better than "boldly to go" or "to go boldly." Sure it violates the mores of grammarians, but so fucking what? It works so leave it alone.

As I said to Jeffo . . . . first of all I believe in nearly everything you say apart from the fact that I might not have got my point across; with regards to the splitting of the infinitive I am really nit-picking as I am sure I do it myself and also use bad English - the last phrase there in America would be 'use also bad English' - which to the ear, that has only been listening to English on the other side of the pond, strange. The strangest of all is the use of take and bring. On the other side of the pond it is take things to and bring things from.

Now when I say the other side of the pond I mean England as in Ireland they use the brings and takes the same as the US.

With regards to boldly go or go boldly - it depends on how good the actor is delivering the line.

Happy Christmas everybody!! The photo above is the LAPD arresting Kid Cudi here 18 hours ago - let's hope he played last night!!

Through the years we all will be together.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on,/our troubles with be out of sight . . .

Yes of course you know it and the guys who wrote it must have made a fortune out of the song especially at this time of year – every year it gets played over the radio and in stores incessantly; in other words it gets played over again – then over and over and over again.

It was recorded by Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and everybody from the Fly Me to the Moon club; you can easily tell them as they wear tuxedos or open neck shirts outside their jackets and they have sun tans, comb overs, wigs or dyed black hair.

These songs are standards and they are still being recorded – I mean I can't wait for Tony Bennett's latest or next version of Goodie Goodie!! Can you?

The first attitude you get from the singers who sing the standards (apart from Sid Vicious – bless him) as soon as they open their mouths to sing is 'Hey!!! I'm so good!'

Well they are good; we can all recognize that but please – somebody write them a new song.

What I hate is when they take a rock song and try and turn it into a standard – it's a rock song!!!
Leave it alone!!

Walking in The Grove, next to the Farmer's Market here in Los Angeles, you will hear music by these guys piped out all day long - Frank Sinatra, Jack Jones, Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin etc – even my idol, Bobby Darin was drawn in to put his version of some of these songs.

But let's get back to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; for years I have heard it and I still hear it and the line 'Through the years we all will be together' makes me cringe every time I hear it; the guy who wrote these lyrics was one Ralph Blane.

What was the matter with saying 'we will all be together' – why did he have to say 'we all?'

I know in songs like 'Doe a Deer a Female Deer' the line 'Tea! A drink with Jam and Bread' was written that way so that bread would rhyme with thread but Ralph Blane had a free choice and wrote 'we all will.'

So I was thinking about this and suddenly the penny dropped; maybe he wrote that because that was the way he spoke – spoke I say because he died in the nineties; I hope he is still resting in peace but his family will be aware of that song as the cheques are still landing in their letter boxes.

He could have spoken like that because that is the way America speaks; when I came to America I noticed that the Americans split the infinitive all the time; I always knew of the famous line at the beginning of Star Treck 'To Boldly Go . . .' as opposed 'To Go Boldly...' but I thought it was only in the writing but no; they split the infinitive so much here that I believe it has been accepted as correct.

Before I set out to write this I looked up who wrote the song and it was credited to Hugh Martin and the aforementioned Ralph Blane; as I mentioned Ralph Blane died in the nineties but Hugh Martin, who is still alive, said in an NPR interview in 2006, that Ralph Blane had encouraged him to write the song but had not had anything more to do with writing it.

Surprising what you learn when you look.

So have yourself a merry little Christmas and you never know - through the years we will all be together whether we split infinitives or not.

Socialised Medicine

Well my mother died sixteen years ago today – December 19th; it doesn't seem that long ago and I came over here to Los Angeles the following year.


I personally know of a few people who read this; my friend Jim is in Canada raising money for his film, my friend Jeffo is in Florida, my brother is somewhere in Afghanistan and another friend is in Wales – Dave.


There are lots of other people who read it but I don't know them; they exceeded all expectations in November and the numbers have gone down a bit for December but they are from all over the world – well the northern hemisphere as I haven't seen much from down under either from New Zealand or Australia.

Jim wrote in his blog that he was in or near the coldest part in the world; Jeffo wouldn't say that living in Florida would he and I have noticed that the UK has a lot of snow at the moment so I hope my babies drive carefully; my brother in Afghanistan is probably the coldest of them all; he is in a twenty foot container with bunk beds and he says it is freezing his knackers off.


Here it was seventy five today.


So good wishes to you all.

The last time I wrote in here I got a few facts wrong about the health care debate; the senate won't need two thirds majority to get this stage through; I knew it beforehand and I don't know why I wrote it but they just need sixty votes to prevent a filibuster but my prediction about the USA never getting universal health care still stands.


Now let me give you an expression which the good people of America know and which I'll bet very few people in Britain have even heard; that expression is 'socialised medicine.' I'll type it again 'Socialised Medicine!'

Socialised Medicine is what the people of America call the health care system which is used in the UK and Canada; I would think the Canadians have heard it, because of their proximity to the USA, but I'd never heard it till I came here; I had never heard the expression 'Black Irish' till I came here either but that's another story!

In the late forties when President Harry Truman tried to introduce a national health service to America the opposition got hold of a Madison Avenue advertising copy writer to come up with a frightening phrase and Socialised Medicine is what they came up with; so it's about as real as a Ploughman's Lunch; both invented by Mad Men!!

All – or should I say – most of my friends are to the left but even my most extreme left wing friends in America do not quite understand the free health service of the UK; some of them know a lot about it but the propaganda here tends to conjure up an image of a government run body with long dark green corridors where the patients wait for days to get long blunt needles stuck into their tiny babies' arms by unqualified politicians.

Maybe they think the people in the UK have to go to the doctors with some kind of book of food stamps to prove that they qualify to join the queue but no.

People have their own doctors which they choose themselves; the doctors like you to be in their catchment area, it's true, as Ronald Reagan said, but do you know why? Because the doctors in the UK after they've finished their morning surgery (called office visits in American) they go to the houses of their patients who are too sick to leave their houses.


In America if you are too sick to go to the doctors there is an answer phone, when you call the doctor, which says 'hang up and dial 911 if this is urgent' – that is the equivalent of 999 in the UK.

Nobody in the UK ever knows how much anything costs as it is picked up by the NHS and if you are nowhere near home you can pop in to a local doctor for treatment; if you don't have your NHS medical card with you they ask you for your date of birth and that is that.

The NHS gets paid for out of taxes but let me squash a myth here and now; I pay more tax here than I would in Britain.

If you live in a large conurbation, like various parts of London, you may have to wait for a while for elective surgery but not if you live in a remote area; you are allowed to travel to those remote areas, by the way, if you want to jump the queue.


On the BBC World Service the other day they interviewed people in various countries about their health service. I can't remember how much maternity leave the girl in Britain qualified for but the girl in the USA qualified for twenty weeks; TWENTY WEEKS!! Can you believe it – unfortunately that was without pay.

In Britain you get paid for your maternity leave; if you are really interested you can look it up.


Another story I picked up on the world service programme was about a woman who had cancer in the USA; she hadn't quite qualified for insurance from her employer so she couldn't get any treatment when she found out; eventually the insurance kicked in and she was treated and the treatment cost $190,000; she had to pay $38,000 towards this as the insurance didn't cover the full cost so she was left with the bill.

She did what lots of people here have to do; she went bankrupt.

So here's a phrase that people in the UK might not have heard which is quite common in America – Medical Bankruptcy.


So there are two phrases that the good people of Britain are learning today - Socialised Medicine, which is what the Yanks call the British National Health Service, and Medical Bankruptcy, which is what you get in America for not earning enough money and getting sick; and by the way America; Yank is what the people in the UK and Ireland call you; in a likeable kind of way, of course, as they are fond of you but they really should feel sorry for you for the way your government treats you.

And there we are – my little message for today; oh by the way we have health insurance provided by SAG, the actor's Union, and Aetna, provided by my wife's company which costs us a few hundred a month.

Don't get me wrong – America is a great place to be; but to use a phrase known in Britain – a great place to be healthy.

The Health Care Debate.

I was going to write about the frustration of the health care debate but what's the point? The USA will never reform health care to any decent satisfaction; the public option is a thing of the past and the latest proposal of extending Medicare to younger people is also going the way of all flesh; younger people by the way would have been 55 and up.

Joe Lieberman, who is an independent senator from Connecticut, a state which has a lot of the health insurance companies, has decided he isn't going to support it; this is after he said in recorded interviews a few weeks ago that he would.

The public option would be support from the government for people who couldn't afford health insurance; the Republicans and the blue dog democrats didn't like this as they said it would affect the insurance companies and their profits – this would be news to anybody from Britain where people in their droves buy health insurance from private companies like BUPA either individually or through the companies they work for.

I mean you don't think The Queen and the Royal Family, the Lords and Ladies Dancing, the ladies in waiting, the Princes and Princesses and that crowd actually use 'the health' do you?

They wouldn't be seen dead in a public hospital (got to be a joke there) and prefer to go to the private sector where the Emirs, Sultans and Sheiks of the world go and pay many thousands of pounds per day for their treatment; in fact probably thousands per hour.

So I don't think – and what do I know? - that the public option would have affected the insurance companies one little bit; I mean the post office, which is the cheapest way of getting mail delivered, doesn't stop people using FED-EX and the other private mail companies does it?

So let's go back to Lieberman; he was the man who stood for Vice President of the USA on Al Gore's ticket in the year 2000; to all intents and purposes he could or should have served a term as the Veep and didn't but now he finds himself with the power to make or break the democrats health care bill – so how did that happen?

At the last election he lost the Democratic nomination in his state and stood as an independent against the person who they replaced him with and because of his name value he won; he said he would support the democrats in the senate giving them the sixty senators they needed for a super majority.

A super majority means that the Republicans wouldn't be able to use the filibuster to stymie any of the Democratic sponsored bills.

I seem to remember George W. Bush using phrases like 'it should be an up or down vote' on the things he wanted passed; an up or down vote means bills could pass on a simple majority without the filibuster; Leiberman's vote is needed in this case as the senate needs a two thirds majority to get the bill through and the two thirds majority stops the Republians using the filibuster; a bit like the penalty clock in basketball.

A filibuster, by the way, is when a senator gets up and speaks for hours to prevent the vote being taken – a bit like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr Smith Goes to Washington' - well I never particularly liked Jimmy Stewart, Disney and all that crap and I don't particularly like Joseph Lieberman.

But what do I know?

By Chopper from Cannes to Nice; very nice!

Well yes it was very nice going from Cannes to Nice in a helicopter but at the time it didn't really feel like a pleasant experience; I went four time to Cannes to try and sell the series: three times I had to catch a chopper from Nice to Cannes and the other time I travelled by train catching it at Cannes and going west to Marseilles before heading north to Calais going through Lyons and Paris..

When I say I had to catch a chopper it was because we were partying so much there that I would have missed my flight from Nice to London if I'd have travelled by coach and the three times I choppered to Nice I travelled with a terrible hangover.

The train journey was good and I travelled on the high speed train at a million miles an hour all that way of about nine hundred miles or so and arrived in Calais smack on time – then after the ferry to Dover the London train was delayed – figures!!

But let's go back to the cutting room in London; one of the partners in the distribution company was an ex editor, and a good one too, and he helped me put the finishing touches to the movie; we tightened up the continuity and made some sense out of it but looking back now it needed a lot more work and when I have the time I'll do it just for the sake of it; we also found that a piece of the cutting copy was missing.

In the film I run up to a door leaving my car door open, only to find that the door I ran up to was locked. I walk back to my car and give the door a kick. This put a dent in the door and as I stood there I suddenly realise that there is a dent and do a kind of subtle double take; the original editor had cut that out – just a little bit of sense needed there as it was very funny! So the first thing me new editor said was 'you've got to find that clip.'

We looked and looked but couldn't find it – it ended up on the floor of some cutting room at one of the film schools; this is why I believe there are comedy editors and drama editors.

On stage an actor times his laugh; he knows exactly when to come in with the next line after a laugh and to be quite frank some editors don't; they just stop the laugh dead in its tracks as the audiences strain to hear the next line.

The next job after the fine cut was the sound edit and I had to find a sound editor – nobody wanted to do it.

I had worked on a film with Giles Llewellyn-Thomas called 'Terence Walker on the Moon' – I saw a bit of a movie on a flight once called 'The Astronaut Farmer' with Billy Bob Thornton which looked very similar; anyway I got in touch with Giles who promised to do the sound editing for me; it's a very shitty job and I was forever grateful.

I don't know how much he knew the new way to serve Guinness but at that time Guinness had introduced draft Guinness in a can; it was almost the same as the draft you bought in the pub and they achieved this – and won the Queen's Award for Industry for it – by putting a widget in the can.

Our afternoons were spent very happily drinking the various cans of Guinness I bought and this seemed to be enough of a payment for Giles – he wasn't a boozer but I might have been on a temporary basis.

We had two deadlines to meet: number one was the dub when we would go into the dubbing theatre and put all the sound affects and music onto the film and the second appointment was with Universal Studios to put the whole film directly onto broadcast-able video tape directly from the negative. This cut out a lot of the printing and colour balances which usually takes a long time. I figured if was supposed to be for TV what would be the point in making any other format than tape.

I had to take the cutting copy and the negative into the neg cutters and I left a bit of space on the cutting copy for the missing piece of film and when we first saw the shot it fitted exactly – and it was funny!

So we met our two deadlines, drank many a pint of Guinness and I rented a theatre in Soho for the first showing.

As none of the actors had been paid I figured I owed them, at least, to try and get casting directors in to see it. Most of the casting directors in London were within a hundred yards or so of the theatre I had booked and as I'd booked it for 1.00 pm I thought I'd stand a chance of getting a few of them in. I bought a load of wine and some finger food – but only one casting director turned up; but why wasn't I surprised?

Most of the actors in the film were new faces and I think I decided there and then to go to Los Angeles at the first opportunity – which I did; but not before I went to Cannes.

There seems to be a festival every month in Cannes; the film festival is world famous but they also have commercial festivals, a music festival but the two I went to were MIP and Mipcom; the former the month before the film festival in the Spring and Mipcom in October sometime.

The first time I went it was to MIP and the distributors paid for my apartment and from then on I paid my own way; they paid a lot of money to have me registered with MIP and Mipcom too.
I thought it was wonderful but most of the people who went there moaned and groaned. I had never worked very hard in factories or down the mines but going to Cannes wasn't like work to me; work to me is hard work that hurts your back.

My hosts – and I don't mention any names on here much – were drunk from morning to night; the lady had a brandy for breakfast the day she took me out to the local market and drank pastise (a kind of Pernod) for the rest of the day; I don't know what the guy drank but he was the same.

I wasn't exactly a teetotaller there but I didn't drink before the evenings.

One time I went to Monte Carlo (above right) and we ate at the famous Café de Paris (which is the picture to the left above); we were suddenly with the jet set eating wonderful food and seeing all those rich people with their amazing French clothes accents and hair styles waiting for the next Formula One Grand Prix to come along and fill their Principality with gasoline fumes.

We couldn't get into the Grand Casino, I'm sorry to say; we were in the building, which seemed to be totally made out of marble, but to get into the casino we needed some kind of ID; two of us had our passports which were acceptable but one of us didn't – there were three of us. He was asked if he had any other form of ID and when he said only his press card we were shown the door so fast it was unbelievable!!

We had to go into a casino next door or so and I won a load of money playing black jack.

There were plenty of parties in Cannes and I went to a party on a boat one night and we were watching a film on a TV monitor with Jools Holland – he was the piano player with the band Squeeze.

Jools was talking in the film and then I heard his voice too – so I turned around and he was standing behind me. I introduced myself and we had a chart and a drink and then it was time for me to go to a bar in one of the hotels; so I said my goodbyes and went.

I heard later that when I went out a few people went to the port hole to look at me walk along the plank back to the quay to see if I was going to fall into the drink; didn't realise I was that drunk.

At the bar in the hotel – I think it was the Carlton – there was a black piano player who knew me and when I walked in he started playing Danny Boy.

I had more drinks in there and the piano player went leaving me sitting on the piano stool.

With the courage and bravado of a drink I played, maybe, eight chords of a boogie which is the extent of my piano playing, and then I stopped; 'Messieur!! Messieur!!' they shouted for me to play but I had to let them down; when I sat back down at the piano Jools Holland sat on the stool next to me “hello Mate” he said and launched into a boogie.

It was absolutely wonderful; the people around the piano went wild, I clapped my hands to the music, like the drunken idiot I must have been, and that was one of the times I had to get a helicopter to Nice.

From that hotel I went to the Casino in Cannes and won enough money to pay for the whole trip – again playing Black Jack; “Why don't I move here?” I thought to myself as I made my way back to my apartment; but I didn't I went to Los Angeles where it is very hard to get a bet on.

I never did sell the idea of the series; it was a well tried formula, a buddy series, but there were others on offer too.

The film itself sold to Finland, some airlines and other places in Scandinavia. It also sold to a cable company in England called British Satellite Broadcasting but before they showed it the company was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's BskyB and they didn't honour the deal.

Filming a pilot!!

I'm not sure but I think yesterday was the coldest day in Los Angeles since I've been here; it's now fifty five degrees which is about as hot as it will get today and I see the low for today is forty one - yesterday was thirty seven; now this would be a summer's day in other parts of the world but this is Los Angeles in California here I come; the land of the sun and a lot of people here are just not used to it; it's really sunny, by the way, even if it's cold.

I was out at the flea market on Sunday selling my wares, which is what keeps me going between acting jobs, and it was like standing at Hemel Hempstead; which is one of the places I used to go and sell which is near London.

Our maladies seem to be over so I am back to ducking and diving for work the same as any other actor; I am booked into The Surgeon's Hall at the Edinburgh Festival next year for three weeks at six-o-clock so if you're in the neighbourhood come and see the show.
I've already written here that I plan to shoot a pilot in the new year in London for a comedy series; I don't think that's going to cost too much these days; the last time I did it cost me a fortune.

That was around nineteen ninety or so and then we had to shoot on film or the old fashioned video tape; taping then was not as acceptable as it is now with the way technology has taken off with High Definition etc.

We shot the movie on sixteen millimetre; I just dived into the project and took it from there but I had a lot of fun in fact so much fun that I'd love to do some of it again – some of it but not the excesses.

I wanted to direct something after taking over as the director on a movie I was in; that movie needed six additional scenes to make sense of the plot and they asked me to do it. I got on well with the Director of Photography (the DP) and as he was a documentary DP and wanted to get into drama I showed him my script and we decided to go ahead.

He was the cautious one and I was the hot head – as I said I just dived into it.

I knew actors so I could cast easily and play in it myself and he knew crew; the idea was to give people a promotion: we had a camera operator who was usually a focus puller, a focus puller who was a clapper loader and a clapper loader who was usually a camera assistant.

Of course people who don't know sometimes play down the importance of the clapper loader; the clapper loader has to take the film out of the camera, put it somewhere safe and put more film into the camera. Can you imagine shooting a multi million dollar movie (Titanic) and spoiling the film whilst changing it??

The sound was different; sound men are thin on the ground so we had a few; one of them went on to do Shakespeare in Love and loads of other movies.

Of course I was new to the game but I knew how to direct actors and I knew how to rehearse which usually does, and did, help us to discover things. I watched a lot of formulaic TV to get an idea how to set up the shots and if they were impossible I usually accepted it.

The other thing I did was to open an account with the Rank Organisation (J. Arthur Rank) to get the film processed; they didn't know me from Adam but they gave me a lot of credit and processed everything I gave them; of course they retained the negative so there was nothing I could do with the dailies or the rushes they gave me apart from look at them. I liked the excitement of dropping the film at various 'drops' around London who would deliver the film to Pinewood Studios to catch the evening 'bath' and I loved picking up the rushes the next day wondering what the film looked like.

I also got to know that there was such a thing as mag stock; 'where are you getting your mag stock?' I was asked and I kind of shrugged: 'mag stock?'

Well when you make a film visually you also have to record the sound; this is usually recorded on a Nagra Tape Recorder onto quarter inch tape; then when you edit the film on a Moviola or Steenbeck editor you thread the film using the perforations on the edges; so where are you going to put the sound if it is on quarter of an inch tape?

You have to get the sound transferred to mag stock which, if you are using sixteen millimetre film, will have to be the same width and it fits onto the Steenbeck (which we used).

Let me digress here to say that I have a pal, Jim Makichuk, who writes a blog, which you can access from here, about the move he is planning to produce; in fact he is producing it as he is in the planning and the raising money stage and he puts photos and things onto his blog – so I am planning to put photos up today and show you the Nagra, the Steenbeck and even the Moviola; the Moviola was the innovator and they are now collector's items; and there are the photos at the top of the page - the NAGRA on the left, then the Steenbeck at the top and the Moviola on the right.

After we finished shooting and then some re-shooting I had to settle down to the business of editing. I had appeared in an award winning student film called The Swimming Pool and I kept in contact with the students; one of them being the editor.

So I got in touch with him and he was the only one who wanted paying and he edited the film for me at the film school and I had to travel there once a week to pay him and see what he'd done.

It's not a good way as he had done too much by the time I saw it and I had to ask him to, for one thing, watch the continuity. We didn't have a continuity person on the shoot so we tried to do that ourselves and it showed; so he would re-do that for me then he would put it onto video tape and send it to me.

Later he came into London and we used the film school attached to the Royal College of Art in Kensington; that was fun!!

What we would do was go to the Royal College of Art at around ten thirty in the evening and go in and see someone leaving the cutting copy of the film. Then we would go the pub for a couple of pints and go back to the Royal College of Art having left a back door open and then we would work through the night without their knowledge.

I know we were breaking some kind of law but we didn't do any damage (honestly gov) and in any case I think the statute of limitations has passed.

Then we showed the film in the bad state it was, with no effects, fades or anything to a distribution company and they liked it; they liked it so much that they let me have use of their cutting room which was at their office – it even had, besides the Steenbeck, a Moviola!!

Now I needed to do a fine cut and a sound edit and a dub and, according to the editor, some post-syncing as he didn't like the sound in one of the scenes.

All this spelled money so I went to the bank and asked them to increase my overdraft and they did.

By then I had lost my partner – the DP – and the editor who didn't live in London in any case.

The bank agreed to back me in the production of the film and I paid the bill at Rank, which was at around $5,000 and I paid about $3,000 to my former partner to reimburse him for anything he might have spent.

Next time I will write about the post production and trying to sell the film and the idea for a series in Cannes.

HMO v PPO and Guerilla style filming!!

Hopefully I'm back to normal after my 'almost' flu; not so for my wife who has pneumonia; this is the third time she has had pneumonia and they are the same symptoms each time so you don't need to be a doctor to diagnose it but as in the previous two times the doctor was the last person to cop on.

It's a bit like going to the barber; the barber knows how to cut hair and get your hair to look the way he wants it but we all know our own hair better and as in the case of the doctor we know our own bodies.

The girl who answers the phone at the doctors arranged for the x-ray when I suggested my wife might have pneumonia and yesterday another girl from the doctor's office called to say she had it and ask if my wife was allergic to any medications.

I know it's fashionable to knock the American Health System and the insurance companies but it's no wonder they are fashionable to knock as they deserve it: both of them the insurance companies and the health service.

We have HMO insurance; we didn't know the difference between HMO or PPO when we came here so we elected for HMO. There are two doctors at the practice (or the office or whatever you call it here) and the senior partner only takes PPO and Medicare patients. Our doctor is the junior partner and handles the HMO patients too; this means he literally sees you for about four minutes then disappears; he doesn't say where he is going but sometimes he goes to the phone and talks to his PPO patients or tells the nurse or the receptionist something who will come back into the consulting room and tell you; sometimes he comes back (are you following the world series? he might say) and says something else and then he is gone. Very rarely bringing the consultation to an end; we have to guess that!

Since we have been here we have had four doctors and we were spoiled by the first one; he was eighty nine years old and when you went to see him for your annual physical he would give you a thorough examination: everything from looking into your ears, your mouth, even under your foreskin; obviously he didn't have many of those examinations in America because the average American doesn't have one.

You can't help but notice these things at the gym; it's not just the Jews and the Muslims without the valuable prepuce but the average WASP too as it is the American misguided policy to barbarically take it away within the first few days of a man's life; maybe they love to hear the screams of the little kids that get it done – I don't know.

Anyway my wife is now on the mend as she is being treated properly but I can't keep her in unless I hide her clothes. I know she has a deadline at work so she goes there every day and comes back to sleep and I know it would put a lot of stress on her if I insisted on keeping her at home but she is warm there and not doing anything physical.

So what am I doing? – sweet FA!

By now I should be starting on the film I said in a previous post we would be shooting guerilla style – but no.

Let me take you back and fill you in; in April I was supposed to be doing an Irish film set in Belfast but shot here in Los Angeles; I agreed to do this for very little money way way below my usual fee. It was a goodish script and for some reason I was going to play one of the only two Englishmen in it. At the table read in a cast of about twenty only about five of them could do an Irish accent.

The table read was at the film company's office and afterwards I was very pessimistic about the whole thing as the acting and the Irish accents were atrocious.

I came back from London after doing my show there ready to shoot here and was told that they had shot half the film but wouldn't be getting to my part for about a month as they were raising more money; September was put back to October, then November and so on.

In the meantime a friend of mine wanted me in his Internet series which we would shoot guerilla style – just setting the camera up in the street and getting on with it; we have shot hundreds, if not, thousands of feet of film doing this – well the equivalent of feet in High Def.

My friend asked me if I knew an office where we would shoot a lot of the first four episodes and I immediately thought of the office where we had the table read; so I sent the woman (the writer/director of the Irish film) an e-mail and asked if there would be a possibility of filming there. She wrote back and said of course; then she wrote and asked me how much we would pay.
As I was going to do a film for her at an ultimate low budget rate I was a little surprised she wanted anything. I wrote back and said how about $100 and she wrote and said $200 would be better – per day.

I put it to my friend who said if the office is right that would be okay; so we went to see the office which I wrote about before in a previous post and he liked it so he set about writing the script with the office in mind.

When I was in London a few weeks ago the woman sent me an e-mail and said I should tell my friend to get worker's comp insurance and ask permission from the owners of the building and get a licence to film; this is after me telling her we would be shooting guerilla style!!!

I pointed this out to her and she said we couldn't have the office unless we adhered to what she wanted so we called the whole production off.

I told her what she could do with the Irish film, of course!!

By the way here's a tiny URL for Chris Jones' book on Guerilla Film making - http://tinyurl.com/yfhoz4d

A Nice Thanksgiving Tale.

Hey I had so many hits the other day about my Bill Sparkman story that I think I might have to start paying for the Statcounter!!

Anyway - here we are the day after Thanksgiving; I have a nice little Thanksgiving story to tell which will warm the cockles of your heart; that is if you've got a heart.

I had always heard of Thanksgiving from the movies and I had heard Americans mention it but it never really meant anything to me.

The first Thanksgiving I spent in America was in 1995; before my wife arrived I was living in Silverlake in digs with a few characters that made it into my novel. I asked somebody what it was about and the girl I asked started to tell me about the Revolutionary War; then someone interrupted her and told her she was completely wrong; and of course she was. I was told it was to commemorate the time the first settlers here broke bread with the Indians but maybe it wasn't.

Sometime during the first years of the Republic congress wanted an American holiday established and when they were looking for something to celebrate they decided on the story about the Indians. They had celebrated the harvest festival in the 17th century with the Indians in Virginia. Then when FDR was President they decided that the fourth Thursday of the month would be the day and not the last as some Novembers have five.

Some of that might not be right but it's near – I heard about the FDR bit on NPR over the weekend.

If you look on Wiki you will see that Thanksgiving is not celebrated in many other countries; Canada and America and a holiday called Thanksgiving in Grenada. In England and Ireland, the countries I know, turkey day is Christmas and at Harvest time the kids take food to school and have some kind of feast but never a holiday.

I can't say I am emotionally involved in Thanksgiving; I don't have the mindset for it but at one time I would never ever consider working over the Christmas Holiday; and that is nothing to do with religion. In England I can't remember the last time I heard anybody mention Jesus at Christmas apart from Carol Singers who would sing at your door if they saw a light on.

The trick was to pretend you were out and hide in the back room as the singers would come around nearly every night. Half of them didn't know more than one Carol and would go away if you gave them money and sing the same song next door.

I remember one old grump who came out and started shouting at the carol singers as they had woken his kids up; I don't think they had but I'm sure his shouting did.

In 1995 I spent my first Thanksgiving holiday here and a friend of mine told me that the Laugh Factory in Hollywood was the place to go for out of work actors; you just had to book ahead.

I called them up and booked a place and on the day not only were there a few people like me there but also every 'down and out' in Hollywood was woofing down his food and ignoring the comedians. The comedians kept shouting "Laugh! It's free!"

But I have to say, notwithstanding what I've said above about my mindset and emotions, Thanksgiving is a great holiday. It has no denominational religious aspect to it at all and is very welcoming to all classes and creeds. TV Stars serve food at missions – they did that day at The Laugh Factory although I did recognize any of them – a man of the cloth is famous for giving dollar bills out in the street to the homeless and people spend a fortune travelling home.

When my wife joined me in the USA in 1996 we were invited to a friend's home, we went to a restaurant one year and for a few years we went to a house full of an extended family and friends from Israel. It was a bit like having a meal with all the stereotypical families from the movies; all shapes, sizes and ages.

The other thing we have been doing for years on Thanksgiving is to deliver 'Meals on Wheels' to seniors but this year we didn't do that; we both have the flu. Well close to the flu; we are coughing, sneezing and spluttering all over the place and we didn't want to spread that to the seniors of Hollywood.

We were also invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving lunch and we had to duck out of that too. So yesterday we spent the day indoors feeling sorry for ourselves. We took a few phone calls from our children in London and Suffolk and then at about 6.00 last night my cell phone rang; it was my friend that we had let down for the meal and he told me he was doing his own 'meals on wheels' delivery and to come down to the lobby.

I slipped on my track suit bottoms and took the elevator to the lobby; I couldn't really see much but when I opened the front door there was a basket of food nearby topped with a small vase of flowers; in the distance my friend said “I'm not coming near your virus.”

I thanked him and off he went.

So we had the Thanksgiving meal after all – mashed potatoes, succulent turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and all the trimmings which was very welcome and very enjoyable – now isn't that a nice Thanksgiving tale?

Philip Larkin

Ok ok; I misquoted Philip Larkin so I'll research the two poems and print them here. He was an interesting character; a librarian all his life, the poet laureate of England and we didn't find out what he was really thinking till he died; but there again you don't know what I'm thinking; or maybe you do!!!

This be the Verse - by Philip Larkin.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

and:


Annus Mirabilis by Philip Larkin

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Totectors in Rushden not forgetting Chicken Tikka Masala.

Here we are back in Los Angeles where the weather is great; one thing I noticed about being in Britain is that I didn't get indigestion at all and I'm always getting it in LA; I'm used to eating spicy Indian food as the best place for a curry, outside of India, is in Britain. In fact the national British dish of Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding has now been replaced by Chicken Tikka Masala; two equally tasty dishes, I might add, but only one coming from Britain.

I tend to eat a lot of Mexican food here and maybe that's what causes the indigestion or the fact that when I eat at lunch time I have to woof it down which is not good. I mention food as a friend of mine pointed out that my recent trip tended to be a food vacation!!

So after answering e-mails and my snail mails I am now at liberty to write here and one of the things I have noticed is that I have had lots of hits from all over the world.

That little blue logo to the right on this page is the company that do the tracking; it comes in fits and starts as sometimes it will give me a date from about ten days previously and put 'various' or 'numerous' hits from a particular computer but the others register on there almost immediately. I have to block my own computer from registering a 'hit' because there would be no point in that.

I get lots of American hits, of course, and many from the UK but also from Pakistan; Noord, Netherlands; Serbia; Tamil Nadu, India; Nordjylland, Denmark; Munchen Bayern, Germany and Japan.
One of hits from the UK was from a small town called Rushden which brought memories back to me; not great memories but maybe character building ones.

Rushden is a town in the East Midlands in the county of Northamptonshire; we used to live in a village in Northamptonshire called Brafield-on-the-green from the mid seventies to the mid eighties. It was not a place to run out of money but I did.

I wanted the best of both worlds so moved there with my wife and children to give them a rural upbringing and be within easy reach of London; it was just over an hour's journey on the train and about the same by car depending on traffic.

In 1979 I had a huge tax bill and my acting work seemed to dry up. As I needed to find a temporary job I went into a company called 'Manpower', which was a 'temp' agency in the town of Northampton itself, and I was offered a job in the warehouse of a boot factory (Northamptonshire is famous for the best footwear in the world) in Rushden called Totectors; the name comes from the fact that they manufactured safety boots – toe protectors – with metal toe caps; they produced all styles of footwear, with the magic steel toe cap, from training shoes through casual loafers to big boots.

My job at Totectors would be packing – but Rushden was around twenty miles from where we lived; no problem if the car was working okay but it wasn't.

I had a battery which wouldn't take a charge and no money to buy a new one.

Notwithstanding the risk I accepted the job; I would charge the battery over night, install it into the car each morning and then park on a hill at the factory so I could run start or jump start it to get home at night; then take it out when I reached home and do it all over again the next day.

I know this sounds risky but not to me especially at the time; I have been known to go on long journeys with a cracked radiator, stopping every so often to fill it with water, so I really didn't see much of a risk; it was winter, however, so I knew the car would have to start quickly in the mornings, or it would flatten the battery, and on the way home I would have to get it going as soon as I picked up speed on the hill I was hopefully parked on in Rushden.

I worked at Totectors for about three or four months and maybe a couple of times the car didn't start at the bottom of the hill. When this happened I had to push it back up the hill to run it again. Fortunately people passing by would invariably give me a push and I would eventually get it going; I also had to buy petrol at petrol stations on hills.

But the job opened my eyes to that strange part of the world which is very rarely visited by a television camera or written about. I get the image of darkness about the town as I would arrive in the dark and go home in the dark. We would go to the pub for lunch, some days, for a pint so I managed to see a bit of the town that way.

The Northamptonshire accent was a strange one and the Rushden one even stranger; for instance they would pronounce computer as compooter; I know the Americans don't use the 'U' sound in words like Tuesday (neither do the people from Northamptonshire) but compooter!!!!

So there we were coming up to the year 1980 and I was keeping myself from falling into queer street by actually struggling to get into work each day; the people at Totectors knew I was an actor, which was a novelty for them; a couple of times my wife phoned me and as I had to be called over a loudspeaker to come to the phone a buz went around the place as they thought it was for an acting job. I was offered a full time job with them on more than one occasion.

As it got nearer to Christmas the boss called me over and told me that the custom at Totectors just before Christmas was for everybody to go to the firm's Christmas party; I remember thinking what a decent fella he was to think of me at their party but I thought too soon. He was merely telling me that there was no work for me on the day of the party but if I wanted to I could come in and clean the vans – 'no thanks' I said and went to my own party – such is life!!

Lunch at Harriet's in Bury St Edmunds and In the Thick of It.

So here we are in Ealing after a splendid few days in Suffolk; the weather here is as miserable as ever but we can’t have everything.


On Sunday we had a break in the weather which enabled us to have some fun at the birthday party in my daughter’s garden; we had an old fashioned camp fire with hot dogs and roasted marsh mellows. My son in law had built something called a thing so he could keep the food hot. A thing? I have no idea what it might he called: three pieces of long sticks tied together at the top and then spread over the top of the camp fire so can hang a billy-can or a dutch-oven over the top of the camp fire so you could help yourself to the nosh.

He had put a few big onions into pot till they caramelised then maybe four million chipolata sausages on top of that. On the table was a pile of hot dog buns duly split so you could dump your hot dog and a fair splatter of onions onto one.

I think there were about ten children there at ages from five to seven except for my youngest grandson who is two; all went well with the eating till Harry, aged seven, said “what’s this stuff on my sausage?”

The fool there, the fool being me, said onions!! “Oh I don’t like onions!” he said and then another kid said the same thing – “I don’t like onions!” went around the tiny throng like a baton in a baby relay race and the next thing you know we were exchanging hot dogs 'with' for hot dogs 'without.' Little George ask for his hot dog to be without sausage or onions; just a bun and ketchup which I obliged cheerfully swallowing the little chipolata.

Then Monday we went to Harriet’s in Bury St Edmunds; Harriet’s is a café in the centre of the medieval town and is a part of old England; something Philip Larkin would probably write about in his very cynical talented way; he was the one with the famous lines ‘they fucked you up your mom and dad/cause they were fucked up too;’ the ex poet laurite of England was also famous for a better couplet about virginity saying virginity was lost somewhere ‘between Lady Chatterley and The Beatles first LP.’ That’s probably the virginity of England which was never the same after The Beatles first put their fingers up to the establishment. If you’re a Philip Larkin fan I’m sorry if I’ve paraphrased but I have no reference books to hand and, at the time of writing this, no access to the Internet.

Thinking about it though England has never been the same since the lifting of the ban on the DH Lawrence classic and the anarchic comedic influence of The Beatles; I know I was there as you’ll see in a previous post on this blog.

So there we were sitting in Harriet’s with the strains of Glenn Miller and The String of Pearls playing in the background and the waitresses wearing their black and white pinafore style uniforms sending many a shudder down the spines of all red blooded males especially the ones just out of school.

We sat at a round table which would be big enough for two people to have one cup of coffee and a scone and we struggled to eat four lunches in the tiny amount of room provided; but that is middle England so what do you expect?

Harriet’s is a lot bigger than the café in ‘Wythnail and I’ but I think you get the picture.

The last time I was in there four of us and two children sat at a table which was bigger and rectangular near the edge of the large room ; my wife ordered a tea cake and pot of tea and the rest ordered something similar but not the tea cake.

After a few minutes the manager, in his black suit, marched over and said “Who’s having the tea cake?”

My wife raised her hand; he strategically placed a very small paper napkin and a knife in the middle of the table with a look that said ‘This is for the person with the tea cake and it’s not to be touched by anybody else.”

We all looked at it to see if it was going to move and then we looked at each other and giggled. I can just imagine the staff being trained on their first day at Harriet’s in the way to serve the person who ordered the tea cake. Obviously on the day the tea cake specialist was not available and so it was left to the manager himself to be the specialist!

So as I head off back to America I think of the comings and goings of both countries; each one with a population thinking their country is the better of the two; one of the countries saying theirs is the best country in the world when most of the population haven’t been anywhere else and the other knowing theirs is not the best but not the worst either; but I know which of the two has the best television service. The BBC makes programmes as good as The Sopranos every week; whilst here I saw a BBC film drama with Lindsay Duncan playing Margaret Thatcher in a movie about her downfall, which was one in a series about English women and I saw a couple of episodes of a political satire series called 'The Thick of It' with Peter Capaldi; it will never be shown in America – the language is too rich; according to today's Guardian last week's episode clocked up just under a century of 'fucks' in the thirty minute show; it's full of great dialogue and the fucks add to the mix.

chapter 47; A Jew in Tunisia - part 2.

Here's another part of the same novel - some time later but still discussing Tunisia; this time Alfredo has gone missing and the narrator talks to a gay actor who also shares the house.
I'll put one more excerpt up maybe around Sunday. These are not necessarily the best or my favourite parts - they just spring to mind.
By the way the usual trouble with copy and pasting with the margins - I think!!!! But you should be able to follow it if you keep your eyes on the inverted commas,
Till Sunday.




47
I didn’t plan to tell Betty about Alfredo’s disappearance so when I got back to the house I went into his room and put the little light on next to his bed so that she would think he was in when she got back from her weekend with Harold.

Gene was in the kitchen and I asked him for a lift up to Griffith Park; that was the only other place I could think of to look for Alfredo. I don’t even know what I was expecting to find and just felt a bit guilty, I suppose.

He had a convertible and we drove with the top down to Griffith Park which wasn’t very far. The car had been left to him by a friend who had died of AIDS. I didn’t pursue the subject; I figured if he wanted to talk about it he wouldn’t need my prompting.

“What happened to Alfredo” he said.

I didn’t know if he was referring to him being missing so I just said “In what way?”

“He started to tell us stories in the kitchen in the evenings and then one night he just stopped. When we saw him again he wouldn’t even say hello.”

“Didn’t one of you complain?”

"Complain?”

“Yes” I said “Betty said he was frightening you.”

He laughed at this.

“Frighten us? We were enjoying his stories. He’s quite a story teller - why would she say a thing like that?” he said.

“Beats me.”

And it did beat me.

The car park at Griffith Park was full. Gene looked around for a place to park.

“You don’t need to hang around” I said.

“It’s okay, man” he said “this place looks cool. Hey! Look at James Dean. He was bi-sexual
too.”

“Are you bi-sexual?”

“No” he said “I’m full blown gay – I was referring to Alfredo.”

“Wow! You think so?”

“Yes. We got the impression he was. He mentioned a rich Arab that pursued him in Tunisia.”

“The guy with the metal toe caps?”

“Yes” he said “it was the way he described him. A nice little ass, is how he put it.”

“He didn’t describe him like that to me.” I laughed.

“Well he wouldn’t to you, would he, you’re too straight!”

Round by the main observatory building we could see the sculpture of James Dean.

“Over there, man, look!”

He pointed to the wall by the observatory steps and it was where they had filmed the knife fight scene for the movie ‘Rebel without a Cause.’

A family car pulled out from a line of cars and Gene made for the space.

Most of the people there were Latinos; they were making their way back to their cars after family picnics carrying ice boxes and portable furniture; some of the smaller children were being carried by their daddies with their mothers following behind pushing push chairs full of picnic and barbeque equipment.

“Maybe you see bi-sexuality where I don’t?”

“Maybe’ he said “– takes one to know one you mean?”

“No” I said “Alfredo’s a writer. He assumes certain opinions and attitudes to see what the other fella thinks.”

“He spent the night with the rich Arab.”

“He what?”

“He spent the night with him.”

‘Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. He didn’t say they slept together - Let’s go and look at James Dean.”

“You go” I said “I have something to do.”

I walked to the cars and he followed.

“What are you looking for?”

I told him about Alfredo.

“That’s okay” he said “I’ll help you. But let’s look at James Dean first.”

We looked. It was useless. Alfredo’s car was nowhere to be found and the park itself was many many acres and far too many acres for us to cover in a month let alone a Sunday evening; it was beginning to get dark and it would be Alfredo’s second night out and missing.

Gene knew he was missing and I did and no one else on earth either knew nor cared. Just as I had suspected earlier: any of us could go missing and not be missed.

We drove back to the house and he told me more about Alfredo’s Tunisian adventures.

“I heard him telling you about the motor scooters showing up at the chip shop.”

“That’s it” he said “that was the night.

He was alone in Tunisia and got involved with a Scotsman called Archie. This was a big Glaswegian boy in his thirties. He wasn’t a skin head he was more thinning on top, which was how he put it.

Archie was on the run. He had been arrested for drunken driving in Glasgow and on the day before his court case he took a flight to Tunisia on a package trip - you know for the one price you get your hotel and fare in one for a fixed time.”

“I’m familiar with that.” I said.

“Archie’s time had run out in his hotel so he was looking for somewhere to sleep and as
Alfredo had two spare beds in his room he let Archie have one for a couple of nights. He said
he didn’t get a wink of sleep as Archie snored the night through.

On the night of the motor scooters coming to the coffee shop he had gone up the road a piece because the bathroom was out of order; when he got back Archie was standing outside saying he’d got no money and didn’t want to get involved in buying food and said he wanted to go back to the hotel. Alfredo was after an adventure and gave Archie the key to the room. He said it wasn’t far to the hotel and knew the way back so Alfredo let him go and joined the younger crowd in the coffee shop.

There he met the guy with the Gucci watch; he spoke English having been to school in
England and Alfredo found him charming.

They were all Muslims so there was no chance of a drink and that was the real reason Archie had gone back to the hotel as he had left a bottle of whiskey in Alfredo’s room. In fact he had a few bottles in there as he sold them for forty pounds each the following day as whiskey was hard to get.

So they all had a good time and at the end of the evening – which in fact was early morning - Alfredo ended up on the pillion of Mister Gucci’s Vespa.

He took him back to a very large house a few miles away which was Gucci’s parents’ house and he was very well looked after; they ended up having breakfast together in Hammamett.

He didn’t say he had slept with him – on the other hand he didn’t say he hadn’t.”



Alfredo hadn’t told me about that bit – he told me about admiring the Arab horsemen on the beach and the Gucci guy following him around Hammamet but he told me he knew where his sexual preferences were when the pen swapper’s sister had cornered him in the shop.

It was none of my business – I had taken on the responsibility of looking for Alfredo as I thought he was in trouble but I couldn’t help thinking of one thing he had said to me: ‘it would have been ironic if I was gay and let an Arab arse bandit fuck me.’
*************************************************
from The Storyteller by Chris Sullivan - all rights reserved (c) Chris Sullivan 2008

A Jew in Tunisia

I think it is about time I put an excerpt from my novel here; after all that's what the blog is called.
This is chapter 32 as you will see; It's about half way through the novel and my anti-hero, the storyteller himself, Alfredo, is philosophising to the unknown narrator - there are no chapter titles but you could call this A Jew in Tunisia; there are no paragraph indents by the way; in the novel I indented each speaker when they were telling stories but the system won't let me so hang in there.
32
I came home very late one night – in the morning really at about one-o-clock and Alfredo was standing in the kitchen. He was waiting for me and had a look of anticipation on his face.
“I’ve been on the bus again,” he said.
“I got a taxi – pity you didn’t tell me.”
“No” he said ‘I went out to see what it was like this time of night.”
“And?”
“It was fantastic” he said “I’m going again. Tonight there was a big black man sitting in front of me and he turned around and said “You got the time man?”
“Another story? I said.
He nodded; “Hang on!” I said “Let me get a drink.”
There was a pot of coffee on the stove and I poured a cup.
“You ready?” he said and I sat down at the table and nodded my head.
“The black turned man around and said ‘You got the time?’
‘It’s eleven-o-five.’ I said to him.
‘Hey’ the black guy said ‘you from London?’
‘No’ I said ‘Dublin.’
‘You been to London?”
When Alfredo said this he was looking passed me as if he was looking at the fella on the bus.
“Yes’ I said ‘I lived there for a while.’
‘How’s that Mister Fish? You know Mister Fish?’
‘Does he make shirts?’
‘That’s the guy’ he said ‘he had some wonderful designs.’
‘Have you been to London?’
‘No I used to hang out with him in New York. Hey! You an actor?”
Alfredo liked this question. He carried on.
“No’ I said.”
When he said that he winked at me!
“You should be.’ he said ‘You sound like that guy that played Hannibal Lecter.’
‘Anthony Hopkins?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I know:’ I said ‘Brian Cox?’
‘That’s right’ he said ‘that’s him.’
The woman next to me got off the bus.
‘Hey! Shall I come and sit around with you – will I?’
‘Yes come around’ I said.
‘You would do well if you were an actor. You would do well. You look like a movie star. You may be as good as Brian Cox.”
Maybe Alfredo exaggerated this bit as the only actor he resembled was Charles Laughton – but I didn’t say anything.
“This man was in a bad shape” he said “and it surprised me that he was fairly fluent about personalities.
‘I was hit by …’ The fella went off for a bit and looked in the air."
As he said this Alfredo looked way passed me again and looked as if he was in a trance. He loved to act; he should have been an actor. As he spoke he used his emotions and gestures.
His voice cracked as he said:
“I was hit by Kathleen, - what was her name? She a movie star named Kathleen. I was hit by her a couple of years ago. Ran right into me sh’ did!
I’m trying man – you know what the statute of limitations..?’
‘Yes’ I said ‘it means you must file your claim within a certain amount of time.’
‘The lawyer said you just got in the door he said.’
The man looked out the window passed me then turned again:
‘Are you sure you ain’t no actor?’
‘I’m sure.”
That’s what Alfredo said to him but he should have said yes. He went on:
‘Hey man. Keep in touch. I try to be good. I try to keep quiet and mind my business. I went up to Chicago, man – I robbed the bank. My mother was dying and I robbed the bank. I went right in there and cos I was so big they gave me the money. I had to do three years, man. I try to keep quiet now.”
As Alfredo said this he really acted the role.
‘Times are hard’ I said.
‘You want some money, man? Here I give you some. Here!’
He reached into his pocket.
‘No no no no’ I said.
‘I’m staying at the Panama Hotel: room one-one-eight. You come and see me. We go and get sumpen t’eat; we can talk.’
‘Yes we must.’
The bus travelled a while and we were in silence.
‘Shall I go see my lawyer?’
‘Wouldn’t hurt to remind him about you.’
‘Might sort my life out if I get some money from Kathleen. She a bitch - she dint even check to see if I got to the hospital. I had to teach myself to walk again.’
‘Did she break your leg?’ I said.
‘Yeh, my tibia – you know the tibia?’
I looked down and his knee reached the seat in front. I pointed ‘Yes! That bone there!’
‘You’re right man. You know.’
I could see that the bus was nearing my stop here.
‘Got to get off” I told him.
‘Okay then, man.’
We shook hands as we got up and I moved passed him.
‘Panama Hotel, room one-one-eight’ he said.
‘Okay.’
I knew there wouldn’t be much of a chance of meeting up with him. It was just impracticable. In any case I already had a shiralee at home with you.
I walked to the bus door. He called out ‘Hey man: room one-one-eight. My name’s Mitchell!’
I shouted back Alfredo Hunter.
‘Okay Alfredo Hunter’ he said.
‘Room one-one-eight.’ I repeated and I got off the bus.
I walked to the traffic light ready to cross Sunset Boulevard and waited for the lights to change. As I
waited the bus came passed and Mitchell waved. I waved back and walked up the hill to the house
and here I am now.”
“I never see any of this on any bus” I said.
“You never look!”
He went to the fridge, grabbed his ice cream and spoon and walked into the garden.
I poured another cup of coffee lit a cigarette and joined him in his usual place: standing on the deck
at the guesthouse looking at the stars and eating ice cream from a gallon carton. There was a slight
chill in the air, as October had arrived and it got that way then, so I was surprised that he was just
wearing a tee shirt.
“What are you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he said “maybe inspiration. When I look up there I see nothing but the moon and the stars
in the heavens. I can still hear, of course, and I can imagine what’s going on around me but it doesn’t
take too much to cut it all out. Then I see the stars and I am alone; alone with thoughts of what I am
going to do next; maybe a little plot line or a piece of dialogue; maybe to forget it all and top myself.
I can stare at the wall inside my room but the décor would drive me mad even with the light out, but
out here I can feel the stars. I can feel them …

Did somebody ever say that they could feel the stars ‘shitting the light down on them?’ That’s a grand
expression even if nobody said it. Sometimes when I look at the stars, like on the night of the
Bloomsday Blackout, I think of what I had been doing previously: the girl showing us her drawers on the stage whilst she read her lines popped straight into my head and I knew I could write a story about
her.”
Then suddenly he said “Your boy friend was here today.”
“Who?”
“Patrick! He asked about you.”
There was a certain innuendo in his voice.
“He’s not that way inclined” I said “he has grandchildren.”
“Doesn’t matter a God dam; people have turned gay at all ages and marital status. I had a fella after
me once.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh. I was adored once, you know.”
He hadn’t shaved again and looked filthy and slovenly.
“Bit of Shakespeare that.”
He had his hands in his pockets and he turned around to face me.
“I’m going into a hole” he said, “and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going into a bout of depression. Did you know depression is a potentially fatal disease? Most of
us who have it commit suicide. Without knowing about it you have stopped me a few times; I don’t
know why!”
“Maybe because I’m stupid.”
“Could be,” he said in all seriousness. “You’re just a thick Mick, really and life is simple and Catholic
and straightforward. It must be wonderful to be ignorant.”
He had a good nature so I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me.
“Maybe I just love you.” he said.
“Now who’s on the turn?” I joked.
“Not that way; you’re like a brother.”
He took two spoonfuls of ice cream.
“What did Patrick want?”
“What do you think?” he chuckled.
“Money?”
“Yes,” he said, “or your arse.”
We both laughed at that. I knew that it wouldn’t make any difference what I said. He would go into his
hole. He would spend vast amounts of time alone in his room looking at his lap top computer, as if
he was waiting for a message from it, and listening to the Jewish music he was so fond of; if he turned
the music off he would have the company of the ticking and the squeaking of the floorboards. His long
walks with the dog in Dog Shit Canyon might take him out of his depression temporarily or give him
ideas as to how he could kill himself but as he had a great affection for the dog he wouldn’t kill
himself and abandon the dog in the park. So he would go back to his room and be a slob and watch the
worst programmes on television whilst stuffing himself with ice cream to wait for the other side of the
hole.
“When did I stop you?”
“I suppose I was all set to do it and I thought about you; thought about how hopeless you are and how
lost you always look in this foreign land: dressed as if you are taking the DART across Dublin on a
cold winter’s day. Look at you! Do you know if you travelled the United States and arrived at some
small town dressed like that someone would come along and beat you up?”
“Someone would come along?” I said.
“That’s what I said. Someone would come up to you in a bar or a restaurant and just beat the shite out
of you. You should get yourself some jeans.”
“Maybe I should dress like you? Like a hippy!”
We both laughed.
“Are you still off the medicine?”
“Yes, he said, I’m going to start taking St Johns Wort.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“I read a lot,” he said “if I get out the other side of this hole, IF - - I’ll start taking it. Or I may go back
on the medication.”
“Might be a good idea to go on the medicine.”
“Thank you doctor.” he said.
“Fuck you.” I said.
“I was sitting in the cantina the other night” he said “the night you came back with Christine and I
didn’t mean to spy. I was sitting in the dark just smelling history in there and I couldn’t help hear you.
If I had moved about, I would have disturbed you. If I had let you know I was there by coughing or
something like that I would have disturbed you that way too. I was trapped in there. I’m sorry.”
“Why did you ask for the jam?”
“I don’t know. I just fancied some jam.”
I wasn’t sure whether to buy that one. I changed the subject:
“So when were you adored?”
“I’ve been adored all my life.” he said “I was better looking than you. It was in Tunisia.”
“Tunisia?”
“Yes: a Jew in Tunisia; could be the title of a book.”
“When was this?”
“Only a couple of years ago: January ninety-three. I was living in San Francisco at the time my
mother died in Dublin. She died and I couldn’t make it back in time for the funeral. I had no money.
By the time I got the money together she was buried; we’re quick at burying our own us Jews.”
“Was it sudden?”
“Not really. She was old and it had to happen sometime, I suppose. I was full of guilt when I got
home and nobody made me feel any better so I fucked off.”
“To Tunisia?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you come straight back here?”
“I had to hang around for legal reasons in case the will was contested. So I went to a travel agent and
asked for the first flight out of Dublin – first package deal; somewhere not too far.”
“And you got Tunisia?”
“Yes. But I enjoyed it. I liked the idea that I was a Jew and they didn’t know it. My white hair is not
exactly Jewish and I don’t have a particularly Jewish name. Some of them thought I was an Arab, as I
have this sallow kind of complexion, and I’m sure some of them guessed I was Jewish, but I thought it
would have been ironic if I was gay and let an Arab arse bandit fuck me.
The weather was glorious after the few miserable days in Dublin with the fucking rain. I would walk the beaches some days in the sun and the Arab boys would ride their horses down the beach at full pelt. I still have this vision of a horse belting along the beach with an Arab boy on its back holding on for dear life and yet, at the same time, under complete control; as he passed me I had to squeeze my eyes to see through the powerful sun and as the back of his shirt, inflated by the speed of the horse, ballooned out behind him, it looked like a mirage. Maybe I could even see smiles of delight on the faces of both horse and man as they became one. I was sorry at the time that I didn’t have some sort of movie camera to capture it; but I’m not a cameraman, I’m a writer, and I captured it up here forever. One day my pen will manifest it back to life. The fella with the pen has the power of life and death over his characters so if one of my characters is depressed I can put him out of his misery and get him to take his own life. I can make him do it as painlessly as possible so he can slink off into the after life in peace. I don’t have to give a reason: I can make the Arab boy decide that life will never get any better than riding that horse along that beach at that particular moment and I can get him to throw himself off for no better reason than that he wants to choose where and when to die. I wish someone could put me out of my misery.”
He liked telling stories. It gave him vigour and he sat down on the top step of the deck and took a
mouth full of ice cream.
“Were you attracted to him?”
“I was attracted to the horse.”
He laughed.
“I went to a place called Hammamet and one day I was walking down a street and an Arab shopkeeper wanted to swap pens with me. I had asked him where I could get some good couscous and, after we swapped pens, he said ‘take my sister with you’ but I didn’t. I bought some coffee in an out door café instead.”
“The next day I went to the same café and the waiter treated me like a long lost brother. He didn’t hug me, or anything, but patted me on the shoulder a few times. That time I had a couple of cups of coffee and a fruit filled pancake. From there I went for a wander and found a bench to sit on and saw some kind of official government car. It was parked in the street and was blocking traffic. The people stood back and looked on in awe at this wondrous site. Can you imagine it: a big posh car standing there so superior with people looking at it as if it was some kind of coronation coach waiting for a queen? I looked around and saw an Arabic fella looking at me: he was very well dressed with his Gucci watch, French jeans and a very smart pair of cowboy boots with metal toecaps; it was the boots that drew my attention to him but when I looked up to his face he was looking at me: I looked away immediately.
The car was there for some time and I waited on the bench wondering what the government official would look like when he appeared. The fella with the boots didn’t move from the spot. Maybe he was wondering about the government official too or maybe he was going to assassinate him but he kept looking at me and I started to feel uneasy. It crossed my mind that he was an Arab and I was a Jew and maybe he wanted to expose me or maybe he had, in fact, taken a fancy to me. Men tend to stick together in Tunisia till they meet a woman to marry. They hang around in coffee shops drinking coffee till all hours. They sit outside and inside these coffee shops – not like the one I was at eating the pancake – but huge dark places and they talk and play board games and the like.
So I was sitting on this bench waiting to see if I’m going to see a celebrity coming out. I’m waiting with the rest of the people in Hammamet and the poor people are passing in front of me looking towards the big car with the flags on it.
There was a fella walking who had no feet. He had some Wellington boots on and I could see they were folding over making it impossible for feet to be in there. I looked at him as he walked passed and he walked passed the fella with the Gucci watch and the French jeans who was still looking at me.
All this time Gucci had his hands behind his back and, as the fella with no feet went passed him, I noticed he had put the Fedora, he had been holding, onto his head and he posed for a few minutes. I either got bored with waiting for the celebrity or got cold feet so I upped and went to a small market, close by, to buy a bottle of water. When I looked up, after I picked up the bottle from the shelf, I saw the Fedora behind one of the lines. He was buying water too. I could see him closer and he was around twenty-five or so and looked very rich. I let him get served first as I walked off to look for something else.
Now I might have been imagining all this or it might all have been a coincidence. He might have been setting me up to get beaten by his friends or might not have noticed me at all but when I came out of the supermarket I couldn’t see him so I had another wander and found a big place called the Medina which looked like a castle from the outside. Inside it was full of shops: it was like an antique centre but with thousands of trinkets, shoes and leather bags – you name it.
After a few minutes of window-shopping I saw the Fedora again. He was looking at me from across an aisle. Now that wasn’t my imagination.
Then I heard ‘hello!’ I looked around and there were two girls sitting outside one of the shops. It was the ‘pen swapper’s’ sister from the day before and her friend.
‘Hello’ I said.
One of the girls grabbed my arm and gently led me into the shop to look around. I had a look and everything in there had been recently mass-produced. Models of Arabs on camels, little saddles – you know the kind? Actually there was quite a good chess set I thought about but there was nothing in there for me, not really, so I turned to go out. The pen swapper’s sister blocked my path to get out. She was very beautiful, maybe about eighteen years old; you know how beautiful some of the Arab girls can be? She wouldn’t move from the spot and when I tried to go around her she stood closer to me and looked at me with those, those – they must have been almost violet eyes! I’m not joking but I’m sure I felt my sphincter go and I felt so weak. She could have done anything she liked to me and I half expected a hand on my dick any moment but she suddenly let me pass. She must have seen some kind of panic in my eyes. So any doubts about my sexuality I had in the episode earlier had disappeared.”
“Did you have any doubts?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“No. I think I might have been flattered: a man of my age with a younger man following me.”
“What age?”
“Ah ha!” he said.
He wouldn’t tell me his age.
“Might have been after your money?”
“No. He was rich. I was adored once: when I came out of the Medina the Fedora was still waiting but
I got a cab and went back to my hotel.”
So I learned a little bit about Alfredo that night.

Pie and Mash, Spivs, the Drayton Court Hotel and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Here I am still in London one of the premiere cities of the world with not a lot to do; the christening went well yesterday but the pub where they held the reception afterwards left a lot to be desired.
It is called The Drayton Court Hotel and there is an old expression here 'couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery' which I think would be a good way to describe the place. A piss up for anybody wondering is a booze up, a party with nothing to do but drink, which would seem easy in a brewery hence the expression.
For a start off it wasn't cheap; when we arrived at the hotel we were given a glass of Champagne at the door to the 'function' room - provided by my daughter - and then people mingled with each other and talked; quite a nice atmosphere, but it was a dimly lit miserable looking room with hard furniture designed by committee for every pub in London. You see it might have been called an hotel - and I make no apologies for using 'an' there - and it might have been an hotel but now it is a pub with 'function' rooms.
The next thing that was supposed to happen was the serving of the food; well that didn't happen. Some food was put on to one of the tables but not much; they said the rest of the food would be 'right in' but 'right in' didn't happen.
The first lot of food went cold waiting so they took the first load of food back into the kitchen to warm it up; people looked around and one or two started asking questions.
Were we supposed to go up and help ourselves?
In the corner of the table was a load of chips; it was quite easy to see that they hadn't been fried but were oven chips bought frozen and bunged into their oven.
When the rest of the food arrived the first lot was cold but after what seemed like a day and a half the food was eventually there together so we went up and helped ourselves. It wasn't bad but I could see an Indian take-away across the street and was very tempted.
So if any of the forty or so people in the room were planning to get married soon and needed a function room I can't see them trying the Drayton Court - it seems a good pub, by the way, as the Guinness tasted great and the place has a little bit of history.
It is the oldest pub in Ealing, so I am told, and in the nineteen twenties Ho Chi Minh is reported to have worked there as a chef which I have confirmed with Wikipedia.
Talking about old places I was planning to go to the oldest pie and mash shop in London one of the days but now I'm not so sure. It is in the east end where the cockneys come from and is called Manzes Pie and Mash Shop; I went there last time I came but it is only open between about 10.00 am and 2.00 pm. The last time I got there a little late so I only saw a few people; there was a spiv on the next table to me and even though I'm well aware of what a spiv is I think it was the first time I actually saw one in the flesh.
When I first moved to LA I won an award for playing a spiv in a play; a spiv would be the fella who would be able to get anything for you. For example during the war he would be able to get you the little luxuries you missed because of rationing - silk stockings etc. The spiv would also dress very smartly but in a flashy way. There is a character in the St Trinians movies called Flash Harry who is a spiv played splendidly by George Cole. He is due to be played by Russell Grant in a new St Trinians movie and I dread seeing it; I'm sure he'll be very good but the St Trinians movies were of their time.
The spiv sitting near me in Manzes Pie and Mash Shop wore a detachable collar to his shirt and wore a very flashy tie pin and cuff links; his hair was greased back and he ate his pie and mash with great dexterity holding his knife, as the cockneys do, like a pencil. He didn't eat his peas by piling them onto his knife, however, unless I didn't notice, but as he ate I could see that he enjoyed what he was eating. The shop also sells jellied eels - but I don't think I ever want to try them.
By the way I think the bit about the peas on the knife is a wicked rumour spread by the upper classes but the closest they get to meeting the working classes would be when they meet taxi drivers.

The Estuary Accent.

Off to London in the morning; I always look forward to it but I'm really living in denial.

We are due to leave home at 6.45 am and due into London at 7.55 am their time on Friday; that's almost midnight Los Angeles time so no matter which way you look at it we will be travelling for seventeen and a quarter hours. This includes the three hour wait at LAX and the change of planes in Chicago.

Apart from the extreme change in climate in London there is an extreme change in accents. One thing about an Englishman is that as soon as he opens his mouth you know nearly everything about him; you will know how educated he is, where he is from and what class he is. They try to say the class system has gone in Britain but it hasn't.

People in America tend to use the word 'Brit' when they are really referring to English; if someone wanted a British accent in their movie and I went along and used a broad Scottish accent it probably wouldn't be what they wanted. But what Americans don't always realise is that there are literally hundreds of English dialects and that's not including the very many Scottish and Welsh ones not to mention the people in the north of Ireland who consider themselves British too – but I won't go into that as it's a sore point.

There was some kind of discussion on line when someone from Britain used the word arse and an American wrote in and said it was rather snooty for him to use that way of spelling it when they should have used ass; well in Britain an ass is a donkey as a kid is the offspring of a goat.

What they didn't realise was that the roughest cut throat from the back streets of Liverpool, Birmingham or London would spell it that way and those people would jump on your head if you suggested such a thing to their faces; snooty? I don't think so.

Of course the people of England sometimes try to hide their background by changing their accents too but there are certain words that the upper classes would never use and a certain pronouncing of other words that would give the game away. For example an upper class person would never ever use the word toilet or lounge (as a room); they would sooner their children call it a shit-house than a toilet; shit-house is course but toilet is vulgar and a no no. They also have their own way of pronouncing deteriorate, scone and many other secret words they won't always tell us – see "HOW TO GET ON IN SOCIETY" (1958), BY JOHN BETJEMAN in my post on September 26th.

Clive James said that when he first arrived in England many years ago he thought that if you woke an Englishman up suddenly in the middle of the night he would be talking normal. I was having breakfast a few weeks ago with my friend Jim and he said the same joke. Now if you think about it what normal would it be? The Australian normal for Clive James or the American one for Jim? In fact Jim is Canadian but he doesn't have much of a Canadian accent; he doesn't say eh much and I don't think he rhymes about with oat or boat.

There is a TV show that started in Britain called The Antiques Road Show; it is very successful in America too but if you get used to the one in America it comes as a bit of a shock to see the British version; on the British one they seem to be battling to see which one of them speaks the poshest. It's ironic that one of the original appraisers who made the show very popular was Arthur Negus who spoke with a broad west country accent. His accent and voice were so familiar and interesting that the impersonators made a good living impersonating him.

Lately, because people in England tend to give the game away when they speak, a new accent was formed; this is called the estuary accent. Nothing to do with the Thames Estuary, although it sounds very Londonish, but estuary meaning a little bit of two accents neither posh nor common; I think it started as a mix of London, received pronunciation (BBC English) and a home counties accent; those are the counties that surround London.

It's a fairly recent phenomenon but I think it started with David Frost or Eric Idle – listen to them; neither common nor posh.

So I will try and write this from London if I can stop listening to accents.

One thing I won't find there will be the crazy things that happen in Los Angeles – I mean look at this photo – would that happen anywhere else??