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??

Halloween v Bonfire Night!

October 31st - I have to write a post today - Halloween:

They say there are half a million people on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood about now but who are they? The movers and shakers of the film business; bank managers, finance directors, casting directors, bank clerks, politicians and anybody else you could name and most of them are dressed as ladies; apart from the females, of course, as most of them will probably be dressed as Michael Jackson.

They spend thousands of dollars on their costumes and I have seen people standing there in their glory, being adored and being photographed by a lot of people.

An image comes to mind from a couple of years ago of a man standing there in a dress that resembled a peacock; there were feathers, fans, fantastically looking streamers glistening in the evening neon as other people, dressed in their drag, snapped photographs of him; I had my little, then, four year old grandson, modestly dressed as a skeleton, with me and I pushed him gently towards the fella, and the photographers immediately turned their attention to my grandson and, whilst they continued to take photos of the original man, they started composing a two shot of the pair of them.

Big smiles on both of their faces, of course, and the little fella was really enjoying it but I could see a little wince of the green eyed monster from the man in the million dollar dress so we moved on.

The amount of money that people spend on their costumes to wear just once is something that I can't quite get my head around. I mean has Halloween always been that big a celebration here?
Halloween is a thing that started in Ireland – but I can't remember anything about it when I was a child; I can't remember anything about it where we were brought up in Birmingham, UK either, in fact the only thing we celebrated there was November 5th – Guy Fawkes Night or, as it is more generally known – Bonfire Night.

On that night an effigy of Guy Fawkes is burned on a bonfire and people throw fireworks at each other.

Guy Fawkes, as you might know, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament back in the year dot and he was a Catholic and against the Protestant Government. So when you think about it my parents, newly over from Ireland, and Irish Catholics to boot, joined in with the locals burning of an effigy of England's best known and most famous, or infamous, Catholic!!!

In the preceding weeks to Bonfire Night we would collect wood and anything else that would burn and, together with our neighbours the Jacksons, we would build a big bonfire at the end of our garden each year.

Then we would stand around with the wonderful heat from the blaze on our faces, eating chestnuts and other goodies and look at the fire as if hypnotized by it; at some point, during the evening, the Guy, which is what he was called the effigy, with the definite article in front of his name, was put on top of the fire. On really big fires he would be up there all the time and we would cheer when he started to burn.

People going about their business in the streets would see kids with prams or strollers standing about the street corners with their guy sitting in the pram and when they approached the kids the kids would say 'Penny for the Guy?'

It was a form of begging of course and sometimes there was nobody in the pram! I do realise, of course, that some Americans don't know what a pram is and I'm not sure what they call them here unless they use the full perambulator??

I don't know what the law is in England now, but we would buy loads of fireworks; Bangers, Roman Candles, Squids, Catherine Wheels; Jumping Jacks and the like and the fireworks would be lit whenever anybody wanted to light one.

Of course they were usually the grown ups who lit them and they would give us, the children, sparklers to hold – till they went out. Then if you touched them they would burn your hand really badly – so you didn't touch them.

On lots of fireworks there was tiny writing 'Not to be held in hand' and of course these were the ones you didn't hold. Some fireworks you could hold but the one I was given to hold one day must have had the 'do not hold' warning; but who could see the warning in the dark?

I stood there like a happy idiot holding a firework with a stupid look on my face and as the thing burned in my trembling hand I got the feeling that something was going to happen so I let it go; like a chicken livered little kid I let the bloody thing drop. A nano second or an atom second later – whichever is the shortest – it went bang!!

So I was right to let it go; it burned my hand and my arm all the way up to the elbow. If I hadn't have let it go it would probably have blown my fingers off and how would I have played the guitar then? How do I play it now? Not good.

What does this have to do with Halloween, I hear you asking? Nothing you might say and you would be right – I have digressed again.

So back to the Halloween party on Santa Monica Blvd – I have never been to Brazil or the carnival there or even to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans but that it what is happening at the moment on Santa Monica Blvd. If you open this up you might see a Fire Dancer on Stilts with candle nipples although it is hard to see.

Hollywood, London and Edinburgh.

Well didn't I forget to write a blog today (yesterday now) after saying the other day that Thursdays was my best day for hits; so all those Thursday people missed out or, should I say, I missed out on their hits.

So what is this really?

I write it down here and it comes out there; on your computer. I don't think we stop and think about the wonders of science and technology; I get hits from India and China in seconds and replies to e-mails almost straight away from there too. It make me wonder why I don't get replies from people just down the street as fast.

I'm due to go to London next Thursday for a couple of weeks; I have three things I have to do there. Number one to go to our grandson's Christening on November 8th; I haven't seen the little darling yet; he has two teeth already and I feel terrible as I missed timed my last trip there and missed the birth – his name is Conor Ruben Johnstone.

Then I have a meeting with someone to set up my one man show at the Edinburgh Festival next year; this should be straight forward just putting a face to a name, have a chat and take it from there. I will probably commit but there are numerous things you need to know when you take your show there. The last time I went I was always receiving bits of bad news from the managers of the venue I took the show to.

For instance I had to pay public liability insurance; this was to be expected, I suppose, but I had to pay nearly ₤200 for my one hour per day. Everybody else had to pay the same rate too which means either the insurance company or the management of the theatre made a lot of money as there must have been at least fifteen shows at the venue.

Some managements make you pay money to the PRS for the songs you sing or the music you play – either live or recorded – and sometimes you don't. I suppose the places where you don't have to pay are usually the places with a music licence and they pay PRS with their licence fee.

I do some songs in the show which I wrote myself and I arrange some traditional ones and that money comes back to me as I'm a PRS member so it's nice to know that someone has my back.

The other plan I have is to shoot a pilot for a comedy series in London in the Spring of next year; I'll be looking for a DP or, as they say in Britain, a DOP – Director of Photography. He's the most important guy in a film crew.

A friend of mine did his first movie with Michael Winner in New York many years ago; everybody called him Mr Winner and the only person he called mister was the DP; so my friend realised straight away how important the DP was.

In England a film crew usually calls the director 'governor' or 'gov' for short; they don't do that here. When Michael Caton-Jones first came here he tried to get them to call him governor but they wouldn't.

Apart from that the film making is exactly the same here as in the UK; the crews in Hollywood have the reputation of being the best in the world – so do the crews inLondon. I have no preference but I have noticed that a lot of the big budget movies get made in London; things like Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series and the James Bond series to name three and a lot of films made in Hollywood do their post production in London too; some films made in London get their post production here by the same token.

But it usually has nothing to do with which place has the better crew – it's usually some kind of tax break or other incentive.

They were all set in Scotland to shoot Brave Heart some years ago but suddenly the Irish Government came in with a deal for the film company and the production went there; they even supplied the Irish army as extras. And what happened to the Scottish money? They made Rob Roy.

By the way no news about the bloody street incident from Sunday evening; it shows how many violent incidents happen here that don't even make the news. Today two people were shot at a Synagogue in North Hollywood and the police cordoned off Sunset Boulevard at about 4.00 this afternoon and surrounded a motel to no avail.

My wife works near there and didn't notice a thing; also two aircraft collided in mid air off the Californian coast; the crash may have involved a Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter carrying nine crew members. A search has been launched and debris has been spotted about 15 miles off San Clemente Island.

So we're not without incident here – there's usually some kind of news circus going on but there's not much happening on that front at the moment. The owner of the Dodgers, Frank McCourt (no relation to the late great writer) and his wife are filing for a divorce and of course we have Polanski hovering in the background. And we've just heard news that Dennis Hopper has been diagnozed with prostate cancer - so our thoughts are with him.

So that's it – didn't quite make Thursday; it's a coldish Los Angeles night at 59° and the forecast is 74 for tomorrow leading up to 80 on Sunday.
This is going on at the moment here in good old LA:

How to write a novel in the mean streets of Hollywood.

I mentioned before how I write a novel; I was going to say how I write novels but I've only really written one. I tried one about thirty years ago but it rambled on so much that it was really only an exercise to learn how to type; that, eventually changed when I started a diary which I kept from 1971 till about 1998 when I first went to New York.

The start of the diary coincided with getting a typewriter; someone gave it to me and I had to write something, I suppose.

It also coincided with the birth of our second daughter and the emotions and anticipations together with the final dramatic rush to the hospital twenty miles away makes it good copy to read thirty eight years later. The other thing interesting in the diary is the small talk – the chit chat; complaining about the cost of petrol and the rising cost of property. I have to say our house cost us two thousand, five hundred pounds and in 1971 the price of our house had doubled and when we eventually sold it we sold it for six thousand pounds.

I wrote in my diary how guilty I felt as a socialist making so much money out of the simple price of a house and looking back on that it looks ridiculous. At another time we bought a house for twenty five thousand pounds and sold it two years later for seventy five thousand pounds. At the time I started my diary that prediction would have looked overoptimistic and looking back on that seems as unbelievable – but I digress.

I usually go to the Los Angeles Festival of Books at UCLA every year and one year I listened to a talk by Walter Mosley; it was a fascinating talk and, apart from being very entertaining, it was very useful and informative for a budding writer.

His philosophy was that you sit down at your desk and write; and you go back to your desk every day for many months and write. And it's no good saying you don't have the time; if you have time to watch television you have the time to write; if you have time to go to a game, go to the coffee shop, go to a bar – anything – you have time to write; or you don't want to.

Then, after many months, you will have a novel, a story and then it is time for the re-write.

When I wrote my first novel this is what I did; I also gave myself a kind of schedule; I wrote at certain times of the day. Usually I would start my day with a climb over Runyon Canyon and as I would be doing this I would think. I loved that think as I climbed over the top and as I went down the other side – a lot faster I can tell you – I couldn't wait to get home and start to write.

Of course the ideas were never as good as the ones that came to me as I sat at the keyboard but they helped with the shape of the whole story. I think it was Joseph Campbell who said that an idea goes onto the page third hand: first of all you get the idea – it comes to you like a man on a magic carpet entering your mind – then you think of the idea and straight away something has happened to it; it has been filtered by your mind, your intellect or whatever and then when you put the idea onto the page – or even tell someone about it – the idea is third hand. I think that's what he meant by it at least that's the way I interpreted it; and I'm sure it was Joseph Campbell and I gave it a great deal of thought after I listened to one of his lectures.

He was an expert on all myths but was a particular expert on James Joyce; he claimed to have read Ulysses thirty or forty times; I've read it twice and I have listened to the BBC version of it with Stephen Rea playing Stephen Dedalus and Norman Rodway playing Bloom and then a few years ago I saw the film Bloom with Stephen Rea in it again only this time playing Bloom himself.

So back to the writing – other things that influence me when I am writing are things that are going on in my life; within the past couple of months two friends/acquaintances/ work mates had strokes. The work mate worked with my wife and has since, unfortunately, died, and the other guy is a neighbour who seems to be doing okay considering the circumstances.

So a character in my current novel had a stroke; I needed something to happen to a character so another character could take his place running poteen in rural Ireland in the fifties – and it worked out well.

Other things I use are things that have happened to me, or someone I know or knew, over the years which brings me to the point - at long last I hear you saying.

Yesterday I had a long day; I got up at 6.30am so that I could meet the lads at the beach for our Sunday morning breakfast and bike ride. I get up at 6.30 as I always give myself an hour to get showered, check the e-mail (addiction), check the news on NPR and the Internet (addiction) and sometimes it takes more than an hour.

Then in the afternoon I went to an auction to buy some silver so I could sell it next week at a profit – there are lots of things actors do for a crust. The bottom line is the silver went for too much money for me to make a profit; I went as far as $250 but the other guy was going all the way and so I dropped out.

When we came home we put the TV on and dozed off in front of it; I was woken by ABCs At The Movies (glad they got rid of the other two young guys) and it was too late to start cooking as we like to eat at about 7.00 – 7.30 which gives the food plenty of time to digest.

So I decided to go to El Polo Loco for four juicy thighs of chicken; I had some coleslaw left over from the night before so after a few funnies on America's Funniest Videos I went to the El Polo Loco on the corner of Sunset and La Brea.

When I got into the parking lot on Sunset Boulevard the whole place was lit by floodlights with a fire truck taking a lot of room; on Sunset itself was another fire truck and numerous cop cars.

The firemen were using a high pressure hose pipe cleaning the pavement – something funny just happened, by the way: I put the one word side walk in and the spell check changed it to pavement!!!! - anyway I walked towards the gap in the parking lot and a cop, wearing a black cowboy hat stopped me from going through; I told him where I was going and he told me to go around the street way along La Brea.

As I walked down La Brea it was quite obvious to me that something serious had happened; there were blood splats all over the place and I had to avoid them as I walked.

When I reached Sunset it was lit up like a Christmas tree and the street cleaning was continuing. The manager of El Polo Loco was standing just inside the door with a mop and the floor near the door, in there, had just been mopped.

I asked the him what had happened and he said “A guy – shot I think came in then went next door (the Chinese Restaurant??) and passed away in the street.”

Everybody in El Polo Loco was going about their business as usual; I was asked what I wanted and ordered four juicy thighs; I helped myself to salsa and when my number was called I picked up my stuff and went.

When I got outside I was prepared to go back the way I came but all the cops and fire fighters were gone as if nothing had happened. I went to the parking lot the front way and the fire truck was just leaving. Nothing on the news when I got home but I wasn't surprised as there was no sign of them at the location.
There is nowhere in my novel for that experience – maybe the next one!!

Guerilla Film Making - scouting a location.

Well it's very nice that a few people read this blog; I have noticed that I get the most hits on Thursdays so if I can't write too many through other commitments I will, at least, write one for Thursdays.

I don't plan what I'm going to say I just say the first things that come into my head – as you've probably noticed – and then hope to flow into something interesting. I realise, of course, that what it interesting to me might not be interesting to you but I try.

If you've read blogs on here before – are they called blogs even if the whole thing is called a blog? - if you read the blog before you may have noticed I wrote about guerilla film making and that I was getting involved with a guerilla film soon; actually I said it would be over the 'next' few weeks; well not yet; everything is not ready yet mainly the script. It's being written as I write this. Three episodes came this morning and they look very good. I'm not playing the same character that I played in London I'm playing someone more powerful and he is a crook so that'll be nice.

I won't delve into what it's about but even in guerilla film making some things need to be organised and my pal the writer/producer/director wants to film in an office and I know a film company that has an office on Los Feliz Boulevard; so I asked the writer/producer/director there if we could use her office.

The reason I know her is that I'm supposed to be doing an Irish film for her which is now on hiatus while they raise more money after shooting half of it.

So after a few e-mails back and forth I took my friend into meet the woman in Los Feliz. It was in a building full of offices and, as it turned out, is ideal for the filming; when we got there I walked right in and did the introductions and then we had a look around – really nice. I knew it would be ideal; we sat down on a sofa in the outer office and as the door to the hallway was open I said hello to a rather tall Chinese girl who was walking passed; she asked me if I would like a home made oatmeal cookie and what do you think I said? Of course I took one and then we were offered a cup of coffee to go with it from our host which we accepted.

So then there were four of us sitting in the outside office chatting and the tall Chinese girl told us she was a hypnotherapist who had just moved into the building; I don't know if she was going through the building with her cookies to drum up business but when she found out we were in the film business and that we were actors she started asking us if we knew various stars who needed hypnotherapy; she would say “Oh so and so could do with help and I could help her to lose weight.” or “If you meet so and so can you send her in to meet me and I'll help them too.”

For some reason, yesterday afternoon, we were on top form in the humour department as we found the whole thing very funny and the poor girl didn't know if we were being serious or if we were joking half the time; my mother would have asked us if we'd swallowed a knife we were so sharp. The woman, whose office it was, looked at us as if we were two nut cases so maybe we were the only two who found it funny.

So my friend has an office to shoot in - which really pleased him.

I have quite a few friends who are writers; three of them have shot trailers for their movies to try and help them raise the money, another is trying to raise money for his movie in the more conventional way and another writes scripts for other established writers who just don't have the time to write them. Another friend is a 'script doctor' and gets paid a lot of money (sometimes more than the screenwriter) to tidy screenplays up – he won't tell me which scripts he has doctored as he is sworn to secrecy. Maybe one night I'll get him drunk and get it out of him.

One of my pals who has made a pretty good trailer sent me an e-mail to today and he thinks things are looking good for indie film producers – I hope he's right. He says he has got his ear to the ground and listening to the guys who are supposed to know what's around the next curve and he says that a few studios are going to close as 'branding experts' are replacing the heads of production – and they'll spend roughly the same amount of the annual budget on fewer pictures (big 'tent-poles' like Transformers).

Three hundred pictures a year, as opposed to six hundred, means more available screens - films will stay longer.

Name actors want to work so they'll be plying their trade in smaller budget films so the field will be open for small companies to make more intelligent, adult-theme films.

That's his opinion – you never know he may be right and there'll be hope for all of us.

See ya!

Twitter and Stephen Fry.

Well it looks like I am getting quite a few people to read my blog; the only person I have actually told about it is Jim Makichuk; he has put a link on to his site and, as you can see, I put a link to his site here; the only other person I have told is my wife, Margaret, who hasn't read any of it yet.

So I get a couple of hits per day from Jim's site but the rest come from one of the words I type and from Twitter; I'll deal with Twitter later.

I had loads of hits from all over the world (and many other places) when I mentioned dubbing Anthony Hopkins's voice the other day; I also mentioned the movie Season of the Witch which was what the supposed dubbing was for and these two things were the words or phrases that drew a lot of attention to my site.

In the Internet game these key phrases are called meta tags and they are there to attract the spiders from the search engines to your site and the more hits your site gets the busier it looks and if you get really successful you will attract banner advertising.

Look at the really successful sites and see how many pop ups or adverts they have. The IMDb attracts millions of hits per day so you can imagine how much it would be to advertise on that site – the same with other successful sites.

One little trick a lot of (small) sites use is to put text in invisible writing on their sites; if you know some meta tag that is bound to bring hits, shall we say, Britney Spears, who is the number one hit on Google, you can put her name all over your site in white on a white background when the only way you can read it is by highlighting; the spiders don't differentiate as to what colour your text is in.

You may ask what the point is and it is to attract traffic to your site. I have probably attracted a few hits by mentioning Britney Spears on here now – what I have just noticed by the way is that she doesn't spell her name in the usual way as Brittany; maybe her parents spelled it wrong as Elvis's parents did when they spelt Aaron as Aron.

The other place I mention my blog is on Twitter and that has attracted some hits too; there is a well known actor in London called Stephen Fry; he played Jeeves in 'Jeeves and Wooster' and Oscar Wilde in the movie 'Wilde.' It would be unfair to call him just an actor as the man is brilliant at all things; all things in his field, I might add: I don't know what he's like using a pneumatic drill?? He describes himself as British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger.

He writes everything from screenplays to articles, books, plays – you name it – and if you want to see an example of his writing output look on both sites of Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/ylgbuho or http://tinyurl.com/yfdnaxq. He is a wit, a presenter and general factotum; well maybe not that, but I wouldn't be surprised, and he does a load of other things and today the followers he has on Twitter is at 851,627 – in two minutes that's gone up to 851,646 so you can see where I am going.

Each day his followers see his tweets on Twitter and his followers love him; a few weeks ago he mentioned a book and the book jumped to number one on Amazon for that day; he has also mentioned sites in the past and his mere mention has attracted so much traffic to those sites that they have crashed.

So he has a great deal of power. He knows this and is very responsible about it – thank goodness.
I'll look again at his followers – up to 851,845.

My followers on Twitter are at the grand total of 42 – pathetic isn't it; there is a long way to go.

When my followers are up to a high figure I will mention my novel and maybe it will sell a few copies; at the moment it isn't selling very well on Amazon – it's doing ok on Kindle but nothing to write home about in paperback – so I won't write home about; I'll just leave you with the (American spelling) blurb:

This is an Irish novel set in Los Angeles. It tells the story of Alfredo Hunter, a depressive Jewish/Irish playwright who is in Hollywood to make a killing in the film business. It also tells the story of the unknown narrator, who observes Alfredo's various fluctuations of mood and humor. Humor is to the fore in this novel of a building friendship between two Dubliners as they encounter the New World, with its new language and confusing mores.

Have you ever farted in a supermarket?

I love living in Hollywood because it is a crazy place – it really is and it's unlike anywhere I have ever lived; when I say Hollywood I don't mean Hollywood the movie capital of the world I mean the actual small city of Hollywood itself – a city that doesn't really exist because it isn't a city at all. It has tried to be one but they voted against it so my home address is officially Los Angeles - but it's really Hollywood.

Hollywood has its sleazy places but that's not where we live; we live right near Runyon Canyon and the view from our window is spectacular. Walking outside, and from here to the canyon, the streets are lined palm trees, jacaranda trees, and trees I don't even know the names of, and some very pleasing 1950s type of architecture; it is neither urban nor suburban and when you are in the canyon, or climbing over it which I do occasionally, it is like being miles away from anywhere as you don't see or hear any traffic; there is plenty of greenery notwithstanding the climate and plenty of wild life including rattle snakes - very rarely seen; coyotes - heard and not seen; and humming birds which I see every day and they are beautiful. One day I actually saw a woodpecker; an actual woodpecker after spending my whole life only hearing them.

When I go over the canyon I think of the times when they probably shot movies in canyons like that and I can imagine Hopalong Cassidy movies being shot there and I can see where an Indian might hide waiting to ambush the cowboys and things like that; but then I'm brought back down to earth again when I see and hear the helicopters overhead.

Lots of days we look over the canyon, from where we live, and we see hawks circling the from a great height and watch them swoop to catch their prey; one time last year there was a great big bird sitting on top of one of the trees. We couldn't quite make out what it was even with a strong pair of binoculars. I think we decided it was an eagle but I'm still not sure; it couldn't have been anything else as it was bigger than the hawks. The other birds seemed to be worried about the eagle and they were flying around squawking and twittering and generally trying to annoy it.

They would fly right up to the eagle and then fly away and then suddenly the eagle took flight; when it did this the other birds started to attack it; not the hawks just the little birds. They were trying to get near it and bother it and when we were looking at this it was happening directly above against the clear blue sky and reminded me of some footage I had seen of the RAF fighting the Germans in dog fights during the second world war.

On Sunset Boulevard, which is about ten minutes walk from here, there is 'Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs'; not that I walk to Ralphs much as I usually have shopping to carry. It is called 'Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs' because there are lots of recording studios nearby and when they finish recording, pop stars have been known to go to Ralphs to pick up the odd bottle of booze; this is usually very late or in the wee hours of the mornng before they stop selling alcohol which I think is at 2.00 am.

In 'Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs' you see anything from housewives and businessmen to transvestites, transsexuals, prostitutes, strippers and exotic dancers and most of the time you wouldn't know the difference because most of the time they are like you and me. If you look closely you might be able to tell but we all get on well together without a second look; someone with green hair and maybe a really huge and outrageous breast enhancement might get a second glance – and indeed they have – but what can you expect? This is 'Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs.'
I was in there today (Sunday) browsing around and a very attractive girl aged around thirty walked towards me and said “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Of course not.” I said.

“Have you ever farted in a supermarket?”

Now what am I going t say to that – what would you say?

“Have I ever what?” I replied.

“Farted.”

She said farted with the accent of David Letterman; very polite maybe more like how Christopher Reeve would say it when he played Superman; but she didn't say 'sir' like they might have.

“I thought that's what you said.”

“Have you?” she repeated,

“Well....” I said “ . . maybe I don't want to answer.”

“Why not?”

“Well why would you want to know.”

“I just want to know.”

I could see that there was a fella standing behind her holding on to his shopping cart with a twinkle in his eye.

“Are you two together?” I asked.

“No” said they guy “she just asked me the same question.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I said to her.

“Go ahead.”

“Have you ever farted in a supermarket?”

She nodded.

“What about in an elevator – and then someone came in?”

“Yes!” she said.

She stayed as the guy asked me if I was an actor; I told him I was and then I turned to the girl.

“Are you here by yourself?”

“No I'm with people”she said “but you gave me a good answer.”

“And what was that?”

“In a round about way you told me you did.”

Then she turned and walked away.

Just an every day occurrence in 'Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs.'

Dubbing Anthony Hopkins voice?

When they finish shooting a movie they move into the stage of post-production – 'post'.

One of the things they do in post is to sort the sound out and the sound editor is – or was – one of the most thankless of jobs ion the film industry. They have to strip the sound down so that there is only dialogue and then add sound effects: cars going passed, a radio, dogs barking etc and if some dialogue hasn't been recorded properly they sync the sound afterwards and this is called post syncing; if they didn't do this the background sound would jump about all over the place.

When I say it used to be a thankless job I mean it's not so bad now when they can edit with the aid of a computer as opposed to years ago when they actually had to cut the film and hang tiny bits of it all over the editing room and the bits of sound they cut out would sometimes be as little as an inch long and they had to keep those little pieces somewhere safe.

Well yesterday I got a call from my agent to go and do Anthony Hopkins's voice this morning; when I had gone to these people before it was usually to actually do the job so last night I looked on YouTube for Anthony Hopkins bits and found a few movies and a few interviews.

I listened to the clips and practised it till I got it right – or as close as I could get it; he has a kind of chest voice and sometimes sounds a bit hoarse; he also has a Welsh accent; not very pronounced – shall we say well spoken educated Welsh. For example the Welsh who are not that posh would pronounce 'ear' as 'year' and 'here' as 'year' too and they would say that as an Englishman with a posh accent would say it; something like 'yer' rhyming with purr; clear?? Never mind!

So with all this on board I set out to the recording studio this morning on Hollywood Boulevard – just a walk from where I live.

When I got there the first person I saw was someone called Julian Holloway who was fairly well known in Britain and the son of Stanley Holloway of My Fair Lady fame.

We were given a piece of paper with some dialogue on; so it was an audition! Pretty soon another guy came in who was Irish; I'm Irish too but you wouldn't think it to hear me.

Presently the ADR editor came and she asked us into her office; when we got there she told us that we weren't doing an Anthony Hopkins voice match at all; it was the opening narration to a movie called Season of the Witch starring Nicolas Cage and they wanted an Anthony Hopkins 'type' of voice. The character we were to play was one of the actors in the movie when he grows old and she played us his voice and showed us the opening of the movie. Someone said he sounded Irish then someone else said 'well Tony Hopkins is Welsh.' “Yes” she said “but we want his kind of gravitas.

With that two of us left the room and the first fella had a go at it – Julian Holloway; I was called in second and read it straight – the way I speak - and she asked me to put a little bit of an Irish influence to it and the third time I did it I did a little more.

I left her with five takes to choose from and went about my way ready to do an Anthony Hopkins voice if anybody else should ask.

By the way ADR means Additional Dialogue Recording – watch this space!!!

Guerilla Film Making and football.

Here's a little tale: about two years ago I went across to London to film a series for the Internet; London, England that is, as they used to say in America.

I think we were going to do about thirty episodes and I was playing a very gentle and very persuasive debt collector with connections to the mob; it was shot guerilla style – in other words very little location preparation and no permission to film; just set the camera up and get on with it.

One day we shot a scene in a pub; we ordered some drinks and some food and by the time the food arrived we were filming with a mini tripod on the table. I remember that the barman came over with the food and stood there as we went through a take. He didn't ask any questions just put the food down onto the next table; we told him on the way out that we were trying out the camera and he smiled and waived.

Such is the guerilla style of film making; a friend of mine, Chris Jones, wrote a book called The Guerilla Film Makers Hand Book; I did two movies with Chris and neither was shot in guerilla style, by the way, but if you're interested it's on Amazon.

Anyway, back to the filming; I was only due to be in London for about three weeks and all we were to do for those three weeks was to shoot the scenes I was involved in throughout the thirty or so episodes. Everything else would be shot when I had returned to Los Angeles.

I can't remember how many episodes we shot but one day somebody broke into the crew truck and stole the Steadicam; now the Steadicam is exactly what it sounds like it is; a piece of equipment to make the camera steady and is made up of telescopic parts, bells, whistles, weights and other bits of paraphernalia much too complicated for me to explain here even if I knew how to explain it - but I think you get the idea.

The idea is that the cameraman has to wear it and it makes them sweat – I have to say a camerawoman has to wear it too and they sweat as many buckets as the man; it is a kind of jacket with holes and pockets in where you put the harness which steadies the camera and when you use it you can substitute it for tracking shots, gib shots and any other kind of shot that looks difficult.

Laying a track for a tracking shot, for example, would not be any good for the guerilla type of filming making because you would be moved from your location after you had put the first piece of track down.

So if you will excuse the pun the loss of the most important part of the Steadicam stopped us in our tracks; number one it wasn't insured and number two they are very expensive. I don't know how much they are but I should imagine between three to five thousand dollars for a second hand copy.

We looked all around London to find another Steadicam but had no luck. There was a place which rented them in the Brixton area of London which we tried. Now Brixton is London's equivalent to Harlem or South Central Los Angeles; in other words a very bad reputation for crime probably not deserved.

When we got to the place in Brixton we had to go a particular street and then phone them again; only when we did this would they let us know the actual street address; outside it looked like an ordinary suburban house but when we got inside it was the usual busy looking film equipment house specialising in Steadicams.

They were all over the place; 'big ones small ones some as big as your head!!!' to use the lyrics of a well known song from the fifties; when we enquired as to how much money they were talking about they wanted around fifteen hundred per day to rent or they would have sold us one for around seven thousand dollars; it's approximate, of course, depending on the exchange rate.

They explained that they were very busy as it was the football season (soccer); there is football every night on some channel or other in the UK and they usually use a couple of Steadicam operators to run up and down the side lines – you've probably seen them if you watch football on TV – all kinds of football.

As we were on a very low budget this was the end of the production; there was a chance of picking one up on e-bay but it had to come from India and there were other pieces of camera steadying equipment available but again from India and the delivery was at least two or three weeks – when I would be back in the sunshine of Los Angeles.

So here we are about two and a half years later and we are going to try and do the series over here in Los Angeles and we're going to shoot as many episodes over the next few weeks as we can; it's nearly cast and I'm playing the same character again.

One thing we are looking for is an English woman rather like Ray Winstone's wife in Sexy Beast – Amanda Redman – so if you know an English bird like her drop me a line.

By the way as we are on the subject; soccer or football???? They are all called football and I don't know how many types there are; Rugby Football, American Football, Gaelic Football, Australian Rules Football and Association Football. Association Football was nick named Assoc for short then Soc and now soccer; but you knew that didn't you?

Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Kentucky.

I heard an article on NPR this morning about the death of a fella called Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Kentucky.

Bill Sparkman was a Census Bureau worker for Clay County and he was found on September 12th hanging from a tree with the word 'FED' scrawled on his chest; now when they say scrawled I don't really know what they mean unless it was on his actual bare chest which makes the whole thing even more macabre.

The people in Clay County overwhelmingly voted for John McCain in the election last year and have been protesting against President Obama ever since; they see him as a big spending socialist. To me, and to anybody from Europe that sounds comedic; we have lived under so called socialists, they have always been in our governments, and Mister Obama is no where near being a socialist; if he lived in Britain he would be on the right wing of the Labour Party.

But to get back to Bill Sparkman; he was, apparently, a man who had gone back to school to qualify as a school teacher and, indeed, worked as a substitute teacher; the census only happens every so often – five years is it or ten? - and he had started his census work recently; he had also been diagnosed with a form of cancer – non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The FBI have said that his death is either a homicide, a suicide or an accident. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in all your life; how could a man accidentally scrawl something onto his chest and then hang himself – some accident!

Here is direct quite from Yahoo News: 'Al Cross, a former reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who covered the area for 30 years, believes that the conditions underlying the murder go back much farther and much deeper - and are more local - than the spate of recent ire.'

Today I'm going to write about illegal alcohol in Donegal, Ireland; not that I know too much about it but I know what I want my characters to do in the next part of my novel. One of my heroins gets involved in the distribution of poteen and I want a little adventure to happen now so I'll get on with that.

Toodle oo!!

Polanski

Another wonderful Los Angeles weekend with wonderful weather, plenty of things to do and places to go to and the Los Angeles District doing its duty: you can forget the gang problem in LA they got Polanski.
I wasn't there so I don't know what happened so I have to believe what I read in the newspapers and form my own opinion; I saw the movie, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, recently which showed the behaviour of the star fucker judge who went back on his word so if I was Polanski I might have done the same thing.
Detaining Polanski in Switzerland is an embarrassment and stupid and for the sake of everybody's sanity should have been left alone; the hangers and the floggers will be delighted, of course, that he has been incarcerated because they have never erred, never done anything wrong and in a country where they put a young child in handcuffs because he was sexually curious Polanski doesn't stand a chance.
It's strange that the person who actually killed Sharon Tate, Susan Atkins, died the day before Polanski was detained.
But getting back to Los Angeles; there was a four month old baby shot in the head by some bastard of a gang member over the weekend; it's hardly on the news as it's full of Polanski so maybe the DA should look into troubles at home first.

The Three Sisters

Last night I went to the Odyssey Theatre, in Los Angeles, to see a production of Chekhov's Three Sisters; now people might not like Chekhov or might not like the play Three Sisters but I'm really glad I went.

It had been a long time since I saw any Chekhov and now that I'm older and a lot wiser it was easier for me to understand.

I remember seeing Chekhov plays when I was at drama school and didn't understand a word; nothing seemed to happen apart from a load of talking; how wrong I was.

The play last night had fourteen actors and actresses in and most of them gave excellent performances; a lot of the cast appear on TV and in films on a regular basis and it goes to show that there is a lot of talent here in Los Angeles.

Now I'm not going to write a review of the play but I could see at this lofty age that it was about the deterioration of the aristocracy in Russia being taken over by the bourgeoisie; there are a couple of servants in the play who were treated very well by the master and mistresses of the household but when the brother of the three sisters of the title married a middle class woman she treated the servants terribly; the upper classes would call their servants by name and their middle class successors by their job – as per this wonderful poem on the subject; read the explanation too (if anybody is out there reading).

"HOW TO GET ON IN SOCIETY" (1958), BY JOHN BETJEMAN
A devastatingly witty poem in which Betjeman mocks the nouveau riche middle class. The narrator is shockingly pretentious, yet uses a vulgar vocabulary. The final stanza provides the final evidence that, pronounced correctly, scone should rhyme with "gone".
soiling the doileys with afternoon tea-cake and scones.

Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
Your kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.
Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.
It's ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule's comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me
Now here is a fork for your pastries
And do use the couch for your feet;
I know what I wanted to ask you-
Is trifle sufficient for sweet?
Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

fish and chips

Well I didn't get the commercial – I mean that's it. The best thing to do as soon as you even go for a job is to forget it as soon as you leave the audition/interview/meeting – whatever you want to call it; it saves you grieving over what might have been because lots of times it turns out like this – never to be.
But I had a good day yesterday – I wrote 2,200 words of my new novel. The way I work is I have an idea, sometimes small and sometimes big, and then I start to write.
Whilst writing other ideas come into my head and I go from there. I have heard people say that they don't know what's going to happen next that they don't know what the characters are going to do and believe it or not this is quite true.
To me it happens like this – your character has to get from point A to point B and so you have to think of a way they get there; let's say they hitch a ride. That means we need another character who will be driving the vehicle and that character might say 'where are you going?' and the hitcher might say 'Hollywood; I want to break into the film business.'
The driver can just sit there for the rest of the ride in which case I would cut to another scene or he might say 'my sister goes to an acting class there; I'll introduce you.'
So characters just happen like that – the hitcher might fall in love with the sister or even get involved in a crime and rob a bank – who knows? The hitcher had to answer the question and the question leads somewhere. That's the way I work – other people might work other ways.
That's the way I wrote my last novel and it wasn't till I'd finished the first draft that I knew what it was about; as long as I know what the characters want.
That novel is called The Storyteller and it's for sale on Amazon.com – not .co.uk just .com. It's for sale in paperback and Kindle; not selling many paperbacks but a few on kindle.
I'm afraid that was the only place I could get it published as I couldn't get anybody to even read it but at least it's totally up to me editing wise as I don't have to answer to anybody.
Tomorrow (Friday) I'm driving along Pacific Coast Highway to a fish restaurant called Neptune's Net; it's a biker place just over the Ventura County line north of Malibu; it's a friend's birthday and a couple of us are going there for fish and chips.

My Favourite Gig etc.

I wrote this to a friend and he said you should get that published; well here it is copied and pasted.
I saw lots of the British groups in the 60s - I think I saw all of them except for The Who I had nothing against The Who - or The Big Three now I think of it - I just never had the opportunity; I saw groups - or bands as they started to call them - that I have totally forgotten. I saw The Undertakers, Vince Eager, Dickie Pride, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith, Mickey Most and even Jim Dale who turned out to be a decent actor. All of this when I was under sixteen or so and when I became of age I started to go to dance halls for the girls and the drink.
I would go on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and a lot of famous groups appeared in some of those places.
When I first started going the groups were trying to be like The Shadows who used to back Cliff Richard who was Britain's answer to Elvis so things were really ripe for The Beatles when they came along; it's strange that it all happened at once - people up north liked The Beatles and people down south liked the Stones all discovering rhythm and blues at the same time. Up to that time, apart from Cliff Richard, songs were written by professional song writers who would put them on the flip side of a covered song from America and we had people like Craig Douglas, Frankie Vaughan and Danny Rivers who would cover songs such as the ones sung by Gene McDaniels (whom I also saw) and Andy Williams,
I was always a collector of records and would buy as many as I could - one of the dance halls I would go to was The Ritz in Birmingham who featured top line groups. In those days groups like Brian Poole and the Tremolos would come along with a million dollars worth of equipment and you could hear every little tiny little bit of noise, tic and hic cup.
I saw everybody but really wanted to see Elvis; some groups I ignored like The Kinks - I think I liked them but if there was the chance of scoring with a girl you couldn't let a group get in the way.
There was a TV show called Thank Your Lucky Stars which would go out on ITV on a Saturday evening and it would be a show where New Bands and acts with hits would come and lip sync to their song; miming we called it. One week The Beatles came on; they had one little hit with Love Me Do, which we mostly ignored, but when they sang Please Please Me! on Thank your Lucky Stars that night it was like a bomb going off.
I was a really great Buddy Holly fan and the tune reminded me of a Holly song and the way Lennon stood there, strumming his guitar with his legs open like Elvis, looked great and rebellious and guess what - the next week they had been booked to appear at The Ritz; so when we got there the place was pretty full with blokes - not many girls - so when they played we could hear every word.
They were not like Brian Poole with their sophisticated equipment but had Lennon singing into one microphone and the other two harmonizing into another so the sound was better than having two mikes with different levels; they were heavily influenced by American black girl groups and I remember at the time Tony Orlando had a version of "Beautiful Dreamer" on record and The Beatles sang it using his same phrasing - after they had finished their act we went down to the bar and The Beatles came down too - my brother walked down with Ringo (his hair was combed back in those days like on their first LP) and whilst we weren't exactly with The Beatles we all had a laugh but one thing I do know is that there was something about them - you knew they had the bull by the horns and somehow, even then, you knew they were going to change the world; and they did.
I saw The Stones too - at the same place only this time we wandered into their dressing room and met them all; I chatted with Charlie and Bill for about half an hour; Mick was absolutely exhausted lying back on the couch and Brian Jones had about 3 girls around him; I can't remember Keith.
I found out that Bill and Charlie seemed to have the same taste as me; they liked Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. I was never much of a Stones fan as they covered songs by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and The Beatles with their first three singles but I liked them as people very much and liked their attitude although they were never as funny as The Beatles. Over the years I liked one or two of their singles and once I worked with Chris Jagger, Mick's brother, for about six to eight weeks on a film at Elstree Studios - he was a nice guy but looked so much like Mick that he would never really have an identity of his own; he spoke a lot about Marlon Brando whom he knew so there I was within a few degrees of the most famous people in the world.
I saw The Beatles again after that but it was never the same; I saw them in a theatre when they were a supporting act - half the audience went home when they finished their set - and I saw them back at the Ritz where the noise of the girls and everybody singing every song with them made it impossible for us to hear them even though they were only 10 yards away.
I read a review on the Internet recently of Jerry Lee Lewis's Birmingham Town Hall concert in 1963: just a small review from the time and it mentioned that he sang ten songs altogether that night and that the police surrounded him when he left the stage for his own protection and when they took him out he couldn't remember the name of his hotel - so the cops had to drive him around till he came to one that looked familiar; some people from the audience, apparently, thought he'd been arrested.
I was at that concert; it brought lots of memories flooding back from the "good old days." And they were the good old days especially if you liked rock'n'roll; someone said to me recently that we had the best and didn't leave anything for the kids today except mediocre copies of true talent; maybe that's why they're so pissed, we took it all, the best music, the best movies, the best drugs... and they got nothing; I don't agree with all that but it's not without truth.
I didn't get any of the drugs but I experienced the best music; as I said I saw everybody except for The Who and Jimy Hendrix now I come to think of it but the best of all was Jerry Lee Lewis and the best evening was that concert in May of 1963; the first time I saw him.
Jerry Lee had been to England before and was, more or less, drummed out of the country; he came with a barely teenaged bride, Myra, and that kind of thing couldn't be tolerated then; might not be tolerated these days to be honest.
So we sat and waited for him to appear on that dark evening long ago.
Most of the people in the audience were male and most of them looked like bank clerks, office workers and the like; a lot of them would be what we would describe these days as nerds or geeks.
If I remember correctly he was backed by the group Sounds Inc who backed many of the American stars who came over to England. There were other acts, I'm sure, but I can't remember them; I think there was a Canadian comedian who was a kind of compare and I think it was Frank Berry as he was in Dr Strangelove.
The first song Jerry Lee Lewis sang was an up paced country song which he went straight into as he came onto the stage; he was wearing some light coloured cavalry twill trousers, brown boots, a dark jacket and a white shirt.
The microphone was placed on a floor stand half way along the key board so he had to keep putting his hand around it as he played the treble - a trick he has always done - and when he finished that first song he got a tremendous amount of applause; and then it started.
The next song burst the old building into life; it was an up tempo number, maybe Great Balls of Fire or High School Confidential but whatever it was, at the first instrumental break the audience went wild; I have never heard such rhythm in my life either before or since. On the middle piano notes he hammered away - chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung - conservatively dressed bank clerks rose slowly out of their seats - chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung - people with mouths full of bad teeth smiled broadly as they never had before - chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung - the bank clerks started to move awkwardly with weird looks on their faces - chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung chung - suddenly he put his hand around the microphone stand and started to play the high notes - clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink clink - then his jacket came off, he kicked the piano stool away and stood up and drew up to the climax of the song and the end.
The applause was deafening, everybody was on their feet waiting for the next one: the bank clerks, the office workers, the warehousemen - we stood there like a thousand clapping clitorises waiting to be caressed and caress us he did.
Straight into another song with just as much an exciting rhythm and it started all over again; at one time he was standing on the piano, jumping from it and he eventually ran off the stage to the cops. It was over. He was gone.

The Commercial

Just a quick line about the commercial; first of all this might make me look good if I get it but many people go for commercials and sometimes it's a bit of a leveller when you get there as you see lots of other people just like you; so in my case I hear a lot of English accents; this time it was for the father of a bride (so they were all around my age) and last week it was for a London gangster type; that commercial was for tyres or even tires and as far as I know they haven't cast it yet.
The other thing about commercials is that the temperature here was in the nineties, on Friday, and we had to go in suits – one or two people wore tuxedos – so if you see people walking around Hollywood in suits in sweltering weather the chances are they are actors going for a commercial audition.

a little look at the acting world.

Just a few lines today as I have to go up for a commercial in about half an hour – well I have to meet my wife, Margaret, for lunch at American Burger on Sunset and then go for the commercial.
Most days I write my novel – my second novel – so you could say my full time job is writing but I'll always be an actor; for good or bad. Most of us are caring liberal people and if we have an opinion about anything or laugh too loudly we are sometimes thought to be opinionated or even theatrical.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
Some of my actor friends I have known for over forty years and I have seen some great talents wasted – I have seen a lot of no talents do very well too so we have to take the rough with the smooth.
I don't have much money at the moment as we are trying to put some money together to go to London in November for our grandson's baptism; my wife is not particularly religious and I'm not religious at all but it'll be a good get together with family and friends.
The reason I mention money is that the commercials we go for can sometimes be worth a fortune so you can suddenly be picked up off the floor to do the commercial which is followed by a good income for the length of the run of the commercial.
One commercial I did many years ago ran for six years; that was a bit of an anomaly as the contract, in the UK where it was shown, runs out after three years but it was so successful that they negotiated the contract with me again – look out for it on YouTube; just search for my name and Guinness Commercial.
So when we go for the commercial we never know – wish me luck you people out there who don't exist.
Is this blog slightly insane?

so many deaths

No ramblings today – I have to go to Burbank Airport to pick somebody up; then we are going to Chili John's in Burbank for – a chili!!
This gets me thinking as the guy that used to own Chili John's, Gene, died a few months ago from Pancreatic cancer which is what killed Patrick Swayze the other day; he was a great guy, Gene, and even though I only knew him for the last two years or so of his life I felt I had known him for years.
What I was thinking is that so many people – besides Gene – who are famous have died over the past few months or so - Farrah Fawcet was the first, but was overshadowed by Michael Jackson on the same day, and today I see that the Australian actor Ray Barrett died last week.
He was the fella in the BBC series The Troubleshooters and the voice behind one of the characters in Thunderbirds are Go. He said he owed his career to the pock marks on his face; he got them after suffering from acne as a teenager but when a journalist asked him how he got them he joked that he got them from catching himself on a barbed wire fence whilst helping fellow prisoners of war escape from the Germans during the second world war and was surprised to see that the journalist had used the story in the article.
Another person who died last week was Larry Gelbert the TV and screenwriter; he wrote the movie Tootsie and created the TV series, from the movie, MASH; I met him a few times as he was a friend of a friend. The first time was at a birthday party and he came up and introduced himself to me 'I'm Larry Gelbart' as if I didn't know; in fact I've found this quite often when famous people introduce themselves.
The other time I met him was at his house in Beverly Hills when he invited friends of the same mutual friend when she died and he was as charming as before coming over and chatting to me as he had with everybody else there.
I'm sorry this blog is about death – but nobody reads it in any case!!

This and that

Do you know I was thinking – as I write this into the abyss – that there is something different about people born in the years preceding the second world war; they lived through something I have never experienced – especially those living in Britain.
During a certain period during the war the Germans sent bombers over to Britain and bombed the cities. Can you imagine that?
Bombs falling out of the sky, people running for shelter and streets of flames as the buildings burned. When you returned from the shelter to your home it probably wasn't there; there was a famous singer in London called Al Bowley who didn't go to the shelter and consequently died in an air raid.
Last week in Glasgow two men who were born then and presumably experienced the blitz robbed a store of two thousand pounds – that's around $3,000. That's the sort of thing young tearaways do when they start in their crime career not two men in their seventies. They say that the new fifty is seventy but this is ridiculous!
A few days later in La Jolla, in Southern California near San Diego, an older man, very smartly dressed, carrying and using an oxygen tank, walked into a bank and held it up; as far as I know he is still at large.
Does this give us all hope? Not that I want to start a career in crime but it means it's never too late to start something new; is there an event in the Olympic Games I should start training for?

Hello!!

Well here I am on this blog; the number one entry and I'll learn what to do and how to do it over the next few entries - or I won't. If I don't you'll see that too!
As you may see here I am an Irish/English actor and a novice novelist who lives in Hollywood; Hollywood California, USA that is as there are other Hollywoods and Californias all over the world.
Of course I would love you to buy my novel, my Irish or rock CDs and come and see me on stage – but that is not the point of this exercise.
This will be a place for my musings and ramblings and I won't have a set time to blog; I'll do it when I feel like it and that may be once a week, once a day or even once an hour.
The other thing I'd like to say is that I'm just going to write on here and not tell anybody I know – I want to see how many people actually find me through the internet; it'll be fun if I can answer comments and I am encouraging as many people as possible to write a comment about anything and we'll see where it leads.
So I am at the mercy of the search engine spiders to crawl into this site and deliver you to me so it would be good if you comment – then I'll know if it's working otherwise I'll be writing to myself; I have to say that it wouldn't be the first time!!
Today is Monday September 14th and today we have heard of the death of Patrick Swayze; very sad when anyone dies and, of course, I didn't know him personally but he meant a lot to lots of people and there were people around his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame earlier – I live about half a mile from it.
There was a helicopter hovering overhead at about six-o-clock and then we saw on the news that it was the ABC chopper. We were planning to go to the 'In and Out Burger' on Sunset and I did wonder if there would be a crowd for his star and for the Kelly Clarkson live show that is happening on Hollywood for the Jimmy Kimmel show at the moment.