Year Zero

This post has been inspired by “Year Zero: A History of 1945” by Ian Buruma.

Being born in 1969 I grew up with the Second World War.

This possibly seems an odd statement to make but it is true.

Throughout the seventies WWII was there. Ever present through the medium of the comics my dad used to buy me – Battle and Action – through toys like Action Man and model Spitfires which, despite the air superiority of the Hurricane, was the one that caught everyone’s imagination. And through the good old “war film” that the BBC and ITV would roll out every Sunday afternoon. Before I was familiar with algebra I was familiar with The Guns of Navarone, A Bridge Too Far and Von Ryan’s Express. My grandfather occasionally showing me his medals and my Nan’s reminiscences of working in a munitions factory during the 1940’s made the myth making very personal.

Although WWII faded from my mind during the 1980’s – my teenage mind finally progressed to the Cold War and the imminent threat (or so we thought) of nuclear holocaust – there are those who argue that WWII did not end until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In reality, the world we have all been born into – all us post war babies – has been and still is shaped by the ongoing strifes and struggles that WWII either created or did not amply settle. The guns of WWII might be silent but the rumbles still produce shellshock in the unfortunates around the globe who found the taste of liberation merely a slightly less bitter pill to swallow than occupation.

In my mind, as a boy, 1945 must have been a great year. Celebration. Relief. Freedom. The end of suffering, death, starvation and chaos. The beginning of a better world.

In fact, 1945, even after the capitulation of Germany and Japan, was a horrific bloodbath. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in reprisal and revenge attacks all across Europe and Asia. In some cases the Allies made attempts to keep a lid on it; in others they supplied the means – be it guns or a temporary policy to turn a blind eye. Thousands of German women were raped every day by the Russian Red Army – and this went on until 1947 when the Red Army was eventually confined to barracks. Thousands of POWS and Death Camp survivors died after liberation – not through maltreatment – but through well-meaning ignorance. Soldiers and medical teams would give them food not realizing that a body, in an advanced state of starvation, cannot cope with rich food. Women across Europe who were accused of being “horizontal collaborators” were tarred, feathered, beaten, publically humiliated and in some cases executed. Others, male and female, were accused of collaboration with the fascists, or the communists, or whoever was out of favour that week and executed in almost endless rounds of reprisals as those who perhaps were not as brave as they felt they should have been during the actual conflict crawled out of the woodwork to flex last minute muscles and do their bit for glorious freedom.

And there were, of course, the political betrayals which were ultimately no less bloody. The Cossacks sold back to the Russians, disarmed both martially and emotionally by false promises spouted by the mouthpieces of the West and executed within hours of being loaded onto the trucks. The Koreans who within days of declaring their independence found themselves occupied by the communists in the north and the western powers in the south; years later the entire country would be split into two – an absolute travesty of liberation. And there were the Jews – who nobody wanted and whose true suffering at that point in time nobody bar a precious few really understood – who were still being treated as pariahs.

1945 was bleak.

But humanity did begin to exert itself again. Within days of the cease fires the Allies were mobilizing themselves to save Germany and later Japan from starvation. It was at least understood that the economy of Europe and later the world depended on their survival. Less charitably it was also understood that leaving them to completely collapse would make them ripe pickings for communist ideologies. Because despite the uneasy alliance with Uncle Joe Stalin, the battlefronts for the Cold War were already being drawn up and marked out.

The big idea – the big ideal, in fact – that emerged from the chaos of WWII was the United Nations. A means to prevent such a costly, disastrous war ever happening again. A means to exert and make sacred globally certain human rights and essential freedoms. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. High ideals. But even at the time the Allied powers would only go as far as making these rights a “declaration” and not “a guarantee”. How could they with Korea occupied? The Shinto religion banned in Japan? The communist zone in East Germany already closing like a suffocating fist? National re-education programmes put into place in both Japan and Germany to “civilize the brutes”. And a hundred other nudges, pushes and pressures as the Yanks and the Commies divided up the spoils of war and created the world in which we all currently live.

The modern world then, our world, was borne out of good intentions and unholy hypocrisy. And the guns of its collective war machine, it’s collective peace machine, rumble on and on and on.

Sobering to acknowledge as we take stock of the world around us in 2014, both at home and abroad, that although good intentions can never cancel out hypocrisy, hypocrisy can and does fully cancel out good intentions.

Are those four freedoms really so unobtainable? So unmaintainable? Is it time to admit defeat and present each one of them with a single white feather?

World Wars, it seems, never end but the peace we as individuals make with them sometimes, sadly, does.

Supercar

Things are simpler when you are a kid.

I don’t mean life itself. Life can be pretty complicated for even the most settled and content of children. But most problems can be solved with the merest touch of a child’s imagination. Of course, this solution often has little bearing on scientific reality and is beyond all physical and temporal restraints. I’ve seen this at work in my youngest son who, when watching the water aid adverts on TV, tells me quite earnestly that the lttile boy in the advert being poisoned by bad water can instantly be made better if we send him the £2 the advert is asking for. His solution is correct but also not quite correct and it is difficult to explain the nuances to a 6 year old.

To be honest, the fact he wants to help is maybe the best solution of all.

His solution to other world or home problems usually entail chocolate, hugs, money magically appearing from somewhere and things instantly changing because that would just be the right thing to do. Kids have an in-built magic wand that, were it to be real, would both make the world better and worse at the same time.

But I digress.

What got me thinking along these line was a memory I have of when I was a child. It will be of no surprise to you that I wrote stories as a child. Stories where I was the hero leader of a crime fighting gang of movie stars. My posse consisted of the cast of Star Wars (who all remained in character), Charlie’s Angels (all of them – including the replacements when Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson bailed out), the good guys from the Logan’s Run TV series (which I only ever saw once) and, for some unearthly reason, Abba. You can imagine the tension  that existed within my gang toward the end of Abba’s pop career.

Anyway, one of the main problems I had was: how the hell could we all get ourselves around town en masse to fight crime? Because my gang consisted of a good 25+ members. Catching the bus or hiring a coach was going to seriously cramp our style. And your ordinary four-door family saloon car wasn’t going to be nearly big enough (people carriers hadn’t been invented in the seventies).

My kid brain came up with the perfect solution.

A supercar.

A car that was made up of an ordinary car at the front but towing a long train of caravans. The car would be welded to the caravans – and the caravans to each other – by sheet metal, creating a metallic sausage of a car the length of the Chiltern Turbo. The spaces between the vehicle were completely enclosed and thus could be utilized by gang members to sit and operate (via hi-tech computers) fantastic weaponry – laser turrets and cannons – that were attached to the vehicle’s exterior.

The pièce de résistance was that the outside would be spray painted in garish colours with the word “supercar” emblazoned down the side. Just in case passers-by hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that this was a less than ordinary vehicle.

Perfect. So perfect.

I lived with that idea for many years (until my teens) and was quite determined that, when I was a grown-up, I would build this supercar and drive it around Leamington Spa. How could I not? A spot of welding one afternoon and it would be done. Simple(s).

The fact that I’d never get it to take a corner or the impossibility of an ordinary car pulling that much weight around without stalling (let alone ever reaching crime fighting speeds) never ever occurred to me.

And to this day I still know nothing at all about cars.

But dreams that are never going to work…

Well, I know all about them.

Tawdry Telly

It struck me the other day how little television my boys watch. Their TV time seems to be confined to meal times; times when, by necessity, their hands are too full of cutlery to be able to manipulate a joypad or a game controller. And even then, half the time, they’re not soaking up some faceless TV scheduler’s entertainment menu but are watching a DVD or something we’ve pre-recorded and stored on the set-top box.

How different things were when I was a kid.

There was no choice other than ITV and BBC. By the time I was on the scene the Beeb was for old traditionalists (my grandparents were big BBC-ers) and ITV was for young thrusting hip-young things (which enticed my parents into its viewing fold).

Hence I never watched Doctor Who as a child because it was on the BBC and we rarely watched the BBC. The BBC seemed glamorous to me, simply because it was forbidden fruit. Or seemed that way. I seem to remember watching Bod and the Mr Men as a child and they were definitely BBC. I suspect my parent’s ITV leanings were abandoned temporarily when the BBC’s kid’s hour was on as a tactic to keep me and my sisters quiet and malleable for a little while longer.

My overriding memory of my pre-teen telly though is that on the whole it felt rather tawdry. But maybe that was just the seventies? Sure, I have fond memories of Daktari, Tarzan and Robinson Crusoe on a Saturday morning and, of course, the magnificent Tiswas… but overshadowing all these is the over-arching memory of how utterly awful weekend telly was for kids in the seventies.

My trouble was I never really “played out” as a kid. I wasn’t a street kid. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until my twenties. I was stuck indoors. My window on the world, on reality, was via the TV. Via ITV.

And on a weekend ITV delivered The Grumbleweeds. It coughed up Russ Abbott’s Madhouse. It vomited out 3-2-1. Recalling Bullseye and Family Fortunes – the latter even fronted by the great Bob Monkhouse – make me depressed in equal measure. I sometimes think that no telly at all would have been better.

For some reason, when I think of all these shows they appear in my mind as if nicotine stained. As if dyed brown with tobacco juice. I think tank-tops and brown plaid. And orange shirts. And carbuncly men with faces like blighted potatoes and working men’s club accents holding microphones topped with full-sized afros. I recall the subconscious despair that I lived with before the obvious question finally formed itself in my burgeoning little brain: is this it? Is this all that life has to offer?

The answer, of course, was no. There was the BBC. And the multi-coloured Swapshop revolution of the eighties. And then Channel 4. And satellite television. And cable. And eventually digital. And HD. And iPlayer. And choice.

Glorious, glorious choice.

How far we have come since Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin. For me, the mid-eighties is when television began to come good. When the new TV choices that became available began to heal some of the deep-seated wounds of the drab seventies.

I’m not sure what TV memories my boys will have when they are older. I don’t think it is possible for computer games to impinge on the memory in quite the same the way that a TV show does (yeah, I remember pressing LEFT RIGHT RIGHT and the X button on that particular day doesn’t cut the same mustard as remembering when Stu-pot and his mates finally faced down Gripper Stebson in Grange Hill) and I sometimes worry that they’re missing out on the shared peer experience of watching a truly great TV show at the exact same time that your mates are in their own houses.

But on the whole, if they’re being spared 3-2-1 and The Grumbleweeds, I am reconciled that the good effects of progress outweigh the bad. And it does seem to be that, these days, what you play is far more important than what you watch.

As for me though, I think I’ll pass up on Halo and get Daktari on DVD. I’m sure old wine in a new wine skin will taste just as good. But if my boys would rather play outside than watch it with me, I’ll be inclined to let them.

Even On The Quietest Street

There was a summer when I was no more than 7 or 8 that me and my sister, Karen, were allowed to play out in the street with some of the other kids that lived nearby. We were only allowed to play within a clearly defined area though – Waller Street, Wathen Road and Campion Road but no further than Brownlow Street. This boxed us in nicely to our own locale; a residential area where we were never more than 400 yards from home. The streets were straight, quiet and formed a little square meaning it would be impossible for us to get lost.

This summer sticks in my mind because it was the only time we were ever allowed to play out in the street. It is only years later and recalling what occurred that I can understand why this freedom was never granted us again.

I can’t remember the faces or names of the other kids we played with. One of them may have been our neighbour’s daughter, Sarah, who at 9 was deemed grown-up enough to watch over us. The other kids may have been friends of hers, I’m not sure.

Our games consisted of lots of chasing, a visit to the sweet shop for those of us lucky enough to have 10p to spend – more than enough money in those days to buy a decent bag of sweets – and the inevitable hide and seek.

Even at the time I felt uneasy about being separated from my sister. It felt wrong. I was sure my mum would not approve of it. I was the eldest, I should be looking after her and to do that we needed to stick together. To be wandering alone, hiding from each other felt very wrong.

I may have let myself be caught or perhaps just bottled it 5 minutes into the game and gave myself up. I just knew I had to find Karen.

I found the others first. I know this because I remember there was a little huddle of us gathered by the back gate of the old man’s house where one of my friends had found my sister.

I have no idea who he was. His face is lost to me now but I remember he was tall and thin and had a wheedling voice. He was stood outside his backdoor with my sister close by urging her to come inside his house and hide.

Karen seemed undecided, she wasn’t moving either to leave or to go inside. I suppose now she may just have been confused or scared. Either way she was not fit to make the decision.

The old man didn’t have horns or sharp teeth. He didn’t smell or swear or look particularly rough. He was just old and strangely urging.

But I remember vividly the bad feeling I had when I saw him standing over my sister. Karen was in his backyard, a mere couple of metres away, but it felt like miles. Like she was in a different country altogether. A country I had to get her out of.

Even with us other kids present the old man persisted with his pleading for her to hide inside his house; she’d be safe there, he said, he’d look after her. It was a good hiding place.

Looking back on it now this just confirms to me that my instincts were right. His eagerness to separate her from the rest of us... there is not a reason on this earth that could possibly be good or wholesome or innocent for that to be OK.

I was speaking before I knew it. We had to get home, I said. Mum was waiting. We had to go. Now.

Karen walked back to us and it felt like something huge had brushed past us, impossibly close but not quite touching.

I remember the man calling after us... we could all come inside if we wanted. We could all play. But his voice was faint. We were already walking away, heading back to the comparative safety of Waller Street.

I don’t remember telling my mum what had happened but I think the story must have got back to her somehow. We never played in the street again and after a while we stopped asking to.

That summer was special. Mostly because of what didn’t happen.

Some kids don’t have summers like that.

The Maltings

Modern suburban bliss.

That’s what this photograph conjures up.

But lying beneath that idea, for me, is a whole heap of childhood memories.

The building above form a residential development in Leamington Spa called The Maltings. It takes its name – and indeed much of its design aesthetic – from the buildings that were there originally.

When this site was first developed the buildings formed a local brewery – we’re talking some time in the 1800s here. Back when I knew the site in the 1970’s the brewery had closed down and I think the site was somehow shared between the local authority and Severn Trent Water. Certainly Severn Trent used to park their fleet of vans in the car park alongside those of the council bin men.

My grandfather worked for Severn Trent for much of his working life. Hence the connection.

Sunday’s were my favourite day as a kid. Every Sunday me and my sisters would spend the day with my grandparents – my Nan and Bampap. Bampap would pick us up around 10.30 and the journey we’d take to my grandparent’s house was painfully, joyously circuitous. We’d call in on family friends first – a whole host of people who became adopted as Aunty This and Uncle That. My grandparents came from the generation where friends were people you actually made time to see and visit rather than just poke on Facebook. They are each memories in themselves.

Regularly though we’d call in on the site now known as The Maltings.

Due to the Severn Trent connection my grandfather had access to the place and the facilities (such as they were – this was the 1970’s after all). This consisted solely of a standpipe and a hose with which he’d wash his car for free while me and my sister (my youngest sister was yet to be born) sat in the car and giggled at the sound of the water hitting the metal roof and running in curving arcs down the windscreen. On occasion, Bampap would allow us out of the car and we’d go for a nose around the offices. All strictly covert and secret. He’d tell us not to touch anything and then slyly nick us notepads and pencils from the stationery cupboard or dial the speaking clock on the telephone so we could hear the time recited to us in clipped BBC English.

I remember once he left us in the car while he went off about some business or other. He wouldn’t be long he said, we were to wait in the car. I daresay he was gone barely 15 minutes but to me and my sister, at 8 and 7 years old, it seemed an age and we began to panic that he wasn’t coming back. An idea that seems so ridiculous to me now I can’t believe I ever thought it. Being the oldest it was up to me to act and I decided we ought to roll down the window and climb out and go look for him.

Having made the decision I then sat back whilst my sister acted and I have a fuzzy memory of her managing to squeeze out of the driver’s side-window and dropping down to the ground just as Bampap appeared asking us at the top of his voice what the hell we were doing? I remember I was relieved to see him, not least because I doubted I’d be as agile as my sister and would not have got out of the window safely.

My other memories of this time are fragmentary. Reflections in a broken mirror. I remember the vans that used to be parked there. I remember the clock tower on the old brewery building. I remember the feral cats that we’d sometimes see scampering about and that Bampap would try and entice towards him by rubbing his fingers together as if to proffer food.

An entire decade of Sunday mornings are reduced down to a few mental snapshots and disembodied feelings that I know would hold me tightly if only I could bring them more into the light.

The Maltings development is lovely. I’m sure it is a very nice place to live and there are plaques commemorating the site’s former usage as a brewery – all part of Leamington’s rich history.

But when I walk by now I can’t help but feel a wistful sort of regret. Regret and sadness.

All that meant anything to me about the place is gone. Long gone.

And the plaque I have in my mind is now not as clear as it once was.

As my Nan would have said: happy days.

RIP Richard Kip Carpenter

I’m not expecting a lot of comments on this post because most of you will be thinking “who the hell is Richard Carpenter and anyway didn’t Davey Jones from The Monkees die yesterday?”

But to a few of you, Richard Carpenter will mean something special. And I’m not talking about Karen Carpenter’s brother here either. I’m talking about one of the best British television writers that this country has ever produced. Certainly he’s a writer who has influenced and fed my imagination more than any other... even before I was properly aware of who he was or even if I wanted to be a writer myself.

If you were a kid in the 70’s and 80’s you would have been very familiar with Richard Carpenter’s television work. Catweazle, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Dick Turpin, The Scarlet Pimpernel and, my favourite show of all time, Robin Of Sherwood to name but a few.

The Ghosts of Motley Hall and Dick Turpin were a major feature of my weekends when I was a kid. Both were on a Sunday evening and would be something me and my sisters would watch at my Nan’s house after spending the day there. They bring back cosy memories of a time when life was much simpler than it is now.

Robin Of Sherwood holds a special place in my heart and was just one of the shows that spoke to me on a spiritual level – as crass and hysterical as that might sound. On some level Richard’s writing and the acting of the cast embodied all that was magical and mythical and British about this country of ours. The off-screen chemistry of the cast spilled over onto the screen and for a lonely wallflower like me it was like a beacon of how wonderful life could potentially be. Years later, reading interviews with the cast, their friendships plainly remain and Richard Carpenter himself is quoted as saying that this forging of friendships and the lasting camaraderie of those involved in the show is one of the things he was most proud of. Robin Of Sherwood went on to majorly influence Kevin Costner’s criminal foul-up of a film and the BBC’s recent Robin Hood.

Most of Richard’s television work is now available on DVD. Robin Of Sherwood has recently been reissued on Blu-Ray – remastered for both sound and picture quality. I have treated myself because it is the one show that I know will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I am saddened that Richard’s passing on the 26th February hasn’t been more picked up on in the press and the national media. His death is a huge loss for both television and British writing per se. Back in the days before CGI and computer generated lighting Richard worked wonders with tight budgets, proper location shoots and real flesh and blood people. His writing was heartfelt and emotive and quietly proud.

Richard, Albion salutes you.

Theme Tunes

Funny how the music to certain TV shows sticks in your mind. I mean, we all have favourite ‘pop’ records. Music that provided the incidental backdrop to our first kiss, our first shag, our first civilian kill whilst piloting an Apache helicopter over Baghdad (oops, sorry, bit political; bit old news but always, always relevant).

But what about those favourite TV theme tunes that you used to hear as a kid and now remind you of happier and not-so happier times?

For me, I can’t listen to the theme tunes of Sesame Street, The Banana Splits or Hong Kong Phooey without thinking of long school summer holidays in the 1970’s. These shows seemed to be ubiquitous every summer. I don’t recall them being on at any other time of the year though surely they must have been. There was something about Sesame Street and The Banana Splits that was kind of special. I wasn’t really that aware of the world at the time. I knew America was another country but that was about it. Sesame Street and The Banana Splits made it seem a wonderfully warm and inviting place to be.

I mean, let’s face it, the American’s had all the best kids TV shows. Sorry and all that, but Rainbow and Pipkins were hardly in the same league, were they? If you pitted Big Bird and Octavia the ostrich against each other in a cage fight Big Bird would win even though he’s a hopeless pacifist. Octavia would get herself tangled up in her own strings purely down to the jerky way she half-walked half-floated over the ground.

And then there are the theme tunes that make me feel depressed.

Family Fortunes. Hart To Hart. Magnum PI.

Yes, even Magnum PI makes me feel a little bit depressed.

These shows were invariably broadcast on a Sunday evening in the 1980’s which, for me, meant school the next day. Secondary school. Big school. And not just school but “Games” first thing and that meant rugby which I absolutely loathed. And not only rugby but the horrible school communal showers afterwards which I also loathed (though am at pains to point out that nothing untoward ever happened to me in the boys’ showers at school, OK? Not ever. I’m hang-up free when it comes to nudity – just ask the young mums who visit my local park at lunchtime).

Hearing these theme tunes meant that bedtime was fast approaching and that meant sleep and a hastening of time passing. Monday morning was approaching all too quickly and the weekend was over.

And then there are the theme tunes that are truly special but for no special reason at all. Just odd slivers of memory that make no sense to anybody else but nevertheless remind you of how loved you were and how safe.

Rupert The Bear. I have this on my MP3 player. I used to watch this as a toddler at my Nan’s when we’d visit her every Wednesday. I think the show had originally been produced in the 1960’s and was probably going round the block for the fifth time when I used to watch it. Nevertheless it had me mesmerized and whenever I hear the music now I am instantly transported back to my Nan’s sitting room with the smell of beef stew wafting in from the kitchen and warm sunlight streaming in through the dining room window. I didn’t know much about the world but I knew it was all going to be OK.

*sigh*

Alas, I haven’t heard a piece of music in a long time that makes me feel that way. But it’s not the music that has changed, it’s me.

I look at my kids now – look at the TV shows they like; the ones they don’t – and wonder if they’ll have their own musical aide-mémoires when they are older.

I hope so. And I hope they’ll be for similar reasons.

Though maybe not the rugby thing. Or the showers. I could have lived without those.

Right. I’m off to the park. See you there.

Second bush on the right (that’s me).

;-)

Touching Wood

+++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++

(But hey - aren't they all?)

So. Onto pastures new.

Torchwood has moved to the US of A. It has eschewed the bright lights and broad vowels of Cardiff and gone for the clipped and curled accents of, er, somewhere in America.

And this is the problem. They may have said exactly where in America the action is taking place but if they did I didn't take it in. And neither can I figure it out for myself by trying to eyeball any landmarks in the establishing shots. It appears to be somewhere in "TV America". That mythical place that seemed to come into being sometime over the 50's and 60's and then solidified into a place in the hearts and minds of kids the world over in the 70's and 80's.

TV America is how the rest of the world believes America to be. Michael Knight lives next door to B.A Baracus. Charlie's Angels sell Avon products to Jody from The Fall Guy.

It isn't real.

And this is why I am having a hard time getting my head around the current series of Torchwood. The plot is interesting. The ideas are good. The action is glossy, slick and movie quality. Clearly a lot of moolah has been spent on the show. £10,000,000 from what I've read. Though possibly that's in dollars rather than pounds. There's been some heavy-ish investment from an American TV channel / producer. A cash injection that would make even Captain Jack's eyes water.

And this, I suspect, explains everything.

The show is angling itself toward the American market. It has transformed itself into an American-ready chicken. Notice I didn't say turkey. Because it isn't that bad.

It's just the American thing... Don't get me wrong, I like America. I loved all those American action shows as a kid; they fed my young imagination. But it doesn't work with Torchwood. It doesn't work for me.

It feels too glossy. Too generic. Too Eighties pastiche. Rather than emulating modern American action shows it feels like they're emulating American action shows from 20 years ago. It clashes and it grinds. And not in a good way.

The American actors give it their all. They're reliable; they're competent. It's damning them with faint praise but it's true. Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper acts them all off the screen. Maybe it's the quirky Welsh thing? Maybe she seems more believable simply through familiarity? But I don't think so. Her acting and her emotional responses are streets ahead of everybody else. A couple of weeks ago she did a scene at the bedside of her on-screen father. He was ill in hospital. Her performance was brilliant. Real, gritty, restrained and yet emotionally full at the same time.

Everybody else behaves like a cartoon character in comparison. It's like the American contingent are just going through the motions. Possibly seeing their outing on Torchwood as merely a way to be noticed by one of the bigger TV channels, who knows?

John Barrowman too is pretty good but his character feels like it has been emotionally dumbed down. There's no range or even much scope for range at the moment. Maybe that will change as the series progresses? I hope so.

In the meantime I will stick with it. The plot has enough hooks in it that I want to see what happens next. This isn't a bad piece of TV.

It's just that after the previous Torchwood outing it feels like they've lost something. A little heart. A little soul.

I suspect there is a little demon running around somewhere thinking that's it's got itself a good deal.

And that's fine, believe me - as long as we, the viewers, are not ultimately short-changed.

We Need A Hart To Hart

There is a long tradition in this country (in any country in fact that sports a Royal family) to take the p out of them, make snidey comments and satirize their many foibles. It is a healthy tradition and one that should be defended to the hilt regardless of whether you are a Royalist or an anti establishment Royalist hating Emo.

So it was with some dismay that I read that dear Miranda Hart – surely the world’s most likeable comedienne – has flown into some flak for a gag she made on Have I Got News For You last week. I actually watched the show but my recall of the offending joke is a little hazy because, to be honest, it was a pretty innocuous joke. Basically, whilst talking about the well-known and widely accepted racism of Prince Philip, Miranda made the gag that the world should move past making racist jokes and someone ought to tell that Greek twit and his Kraut wife about it.

Now, let’s be honest, it was a pretty obvious joke to make. It’s almost a given. Even me in my secret desire to be a stand-up comedian would have jumped on that kind of feed and responded with a similar line. It is a joke about the racist stereotyping used in racist jokes. I don’t think it was meant to be a racist joke about the Queen per se. Or am I the only one splitting that particular hair?

I should point out at this point that I am not a raving anti monarchist and am quite content with the Royal family’s continued existence in this country’s status quo.

Apparently 5 people complained to the BBC and a few more managed to fart themselves out of their armchairs and put finger to keyboard to offer their cholesterol marinated opinions on various internet forums.

They didn’t get the joke. They didn’t think it was funny. They thought it in poor taste, racist and that the Queen should be mollified with a strap-on wielded by Miranda Hart herself. Actually that last bit is a lie and a bit of a fantasy.

Personally I can’t see what the fuss is about. I don’t think Miranda Hart is racist and I don’t think the joke was racist. It was satirical. In truth the joke wasn’t even that funny – but only because it was so obvious. But it had to be made. It was the cymbal crash after the drum roll. The digestive after the cup of tea – ‘cos a drink is too wet without one.

Poor Miranda. There’s something quite harmless and inoffensive about her – the poor woman must be mystified by all the hoo-ha. I have to say I like Miranda Hart and my family is greatly enjoying her eponymously named sitcom, Miranda. It makes us all laugh including our 9 year old who nearly split an intercostal muscle at this week’s show despite being surely too young to get most of the jokes. She has somehow revived the sitcom ethos of the 70’s, made it cool again and exhumed the much missed ghosts of Frankie Howerd and Eric Morecambe with her asides and to-the-camera gurning.

She is a striking looking lady – easily over 6ft, and solid. A veritable shire horse of a woman. But you know what? Strangely attractive. And in an attempt to subvert a minor tradition of this blog, stick two fingers up at those poker-faced, Hitler-youth loving Royalists who can’t get their malformed senses of humour around a simple joke and strike a blow for big beautiful women everywhere I am going to make her my TV Totty Of The Week.

Miranda, you can dress up as a Nazi and pratt-fall into my lap anytime. I think you’re lovely.

So. Freeview. It’s A Bit Shit

It’s been about 4 weeks since we ditched the cable TV package and bought a mid range, mid price set top box from Argos. More than enough time for the new system to bed-in and outlive the initial honeymoon period.

Sure we can record one channel while watching another. Sure we can even record two different channels at the same time while watching one of them. Or we can even record stuff while watching stuff we’ve already recorded. And the rather capacious harddrive means we can store entire series and entire film oeuvres and still have room for the odd sitcom or two shoehorned on top.

Long live the great god Technology.

Except the reception is patchy and intermittent. This despite blowing the best part of £200 on a brand spanking new TV aerial and “booster box” – apparently the latter was necessary because our house is in a “slight dip” which is further aggravated by the presence of a 3 storey apartment block a couple of roads away whose sole purpose in life (aside from acting like a Chav hatchery) is to block out the TV signal that legitimately should be ours.

But here’s the thing: the reception seems to go at more or less the same time every night. 8.0pm approaches and the picture pixelates and the sound pops and jumps like that annoying comedian from the 70’s who’s main shtick was to pretend to have a dodgy hearing aid and would thus speak like this: “-llo can y- h- me? I’m h-ing tr-ble w- my h-ing ai-“

Yeah, right, ‘cos the ol’ voicebox is controlled by a device you plug into your ears, isn’t it, you st-pid b-st-d?

We’ve tried turning it off and on. We’ve tried changing channels. We’ve tried blowing onto the box in case, you know, it’s overheated playing back The Sarah Jane Adventures to the kids (well, Rani is a bit of a babe).

But all to no avail.

Reception is scrambled.

So something must be occurring around the same time every night and interfering with our TV reception. My money is on the students next door. I daresay 8pm sees them opening their coffin lids to finally start their day and all logging-on en masse to Windows Messenger and Facebook to see if anybody actually gives a shit about their status (“drank 8 bottles of tiger beer last night am well wasted”).

I can’t think what else it can be.

Either way if my Freeview box can’t cope with a little bit of interference then the great god Technology is dead and buried in my book. I mean, we never had reception problems like this when I was a kid. We only had 3 channels and they all worked fine. The only time the TV would go on the fritz was when a seagull would sit on the TV aerial or there’d be a thunderstorm somewhere in the Birmingham area.

Freeview? What a misnomer. It’s anything but free and half the time you can’t view anything.

Still, at least I can record static and white noise from 2 different TV channels whilst watching a digital snowstorm on a third.

Every cloud, eh?

Leamington Peace Festival: A Load Of Old Cock

You’d think with me working in the building that is situated right next to where Leamington’s Peace Festival is annually held I’d be a Peace Festival veteran. That I must surely go to it every year. That I must positively sweat scented joss sticks and have a Matrix style overcoat made entirely from hand-woven friendship bracelets.

You’d think that with the weather good for once plus the possibility of meeting a fellow blogger I’d make more of an effort to go this year.

Negative on all counts (sorry, Laura).

What with the eldest boy’s 9th birthday, Father’s Day and a top secret meeting at work that I had to take the minutes for but can’t talk about here my Peace Festival weekend was effectively kiboshed.

However, I must confess that even if all of the above hadn’t been hitting the fan this weekend it would have taken a wild horse indeed to get me to the Peace Festival (though I daresay a combination of my wife who is rather partial to the Peace Festival and the opportunity for a blogger meet on my very own doorstep may have dragged me there kicking and screaming. Not – and do quote me on this – that either my wife or Laura are horses).

So what is it that I don’t like about the Peace Festival?

a) Although I was never one of the cool people in my youth I was also never quite alternative enough to be alternative. I was the diet Coke of Goth. Not quite suicidal enough.

b) Despite a passing interest in Wicca, hippydom and all things “yeah man, let’s have a bong and talk about it (or rather slump onto our backs in a totally incommunicative state and not talk about anything),“ I soon grew out of it and started having baths again.

c) Crusty festival goers selling cheap tat annoy the bejasus out of me.

So to save myself an attack of the spleen I usually avoid the Peace Festival, immerse myself in my own cynicism and become rather jolly in my solitude.

This attitude has not changed with the passing of this year’s Peace Festival due to the Peace Festival residue that was spread around the building when I returned to work, bushy eyed and bright tailed, on Monday morning.

Some enterprising hippy had decided to dump a horribly chintzy yellow sofa in the skip that I had hired last week to offload some of the detritus that was clogging up the building’s storerooms. It’s horrible. Urine yellow and with horrible tassely bits furring the seams of the sofa cushions. It’s plainly obvious that on the hottest day of the year this example of 1970’s bad taste was not hoofed down from the outskirts of town. Instead some crusty stall holder had decided to free up some bong space in the back of his camper van by offloading his granny’s old divan into my skip. Git. Still, at least they put it into the skip and didn’t sail it down the river.

But worst of all – worst, worst of all – some moonfaced yoghurt weaver had obviously set up a stall selling chalk in order to encourage the kids to express themselves graphically on the paving stones right outside the building. Among the traditional icons of flowers and love hearts (I do hope Baz & Shaz will be happy together) there were 7 – count them – 7 depictions of cocks complete with monumentally hairy balls. Cocks of every different colour and persuasion. Most of a size so eye-watering that they cannoned their way across 5 or 6 paving slabs at a time.

Ah bless. A phallocentric mating ritual had evidently taken place outside the auspices of Leamington’s defunct Tourist Information Centre (yes, it is still closed).

These new additions to the world of pavement art meant that yours truly had to patrol the building with a bucket of water and a broom on a day when he had far too many other things to do in order to rid the town of its unwanted chalk cock-dom.

Give peace a chance?

Peace off!

Is Disqus Any Good? Discuss:

I’m a weird kind of tech-head. The type that is ever on the lookout for the latest gadget or widget but then gets cold feet about using them and breaking the clean lines of my blog.

Over the last few months I’ve noticed a great number of my favourite blogs switching their comment moderation over to Disqus.

Hmm.

Since then I’ve been eyeing it up. Trying to work our whether it has any advantages over Blogger’s own comment moderation. Is it quicker? Does it give you more options in terms of editing (being able to go back and correct typos rather than having to delete and type everything in again would be marvellous)?

Hmm. Or is it more complicated? An extra fuss in a world already stuffed to the gills with fuss and bothersomeness.

Because I have to say here (hand on heart) – and this is not meant to be a criticism at all on what other people do with their own blogs – I find I have a helluva lot of trouble trying to leave comments on blogs that utilize Disqus.

It seems to take ages to load the comment box. Sometimes it refuses to load at all. Sometimes it will load but only if I refresh the page 6 or 7 times. Then when it has loaded it is completely arbitrary as to whether it will allow me to log-in and publish a comment. Sometimes I have to try several times before, hello, my comment – my sparkling jewel of wisdom – is published.

Now as I said this is not meant to be a criticism or even a product review because my experience of using Disqus is purely from the front end as opposed to the back. If anything, those of you who use Disqus should now be basking in the knowledge that I love your blog so much that I am prepared to run this gamut of daily irritation every time I want to leave you a little bit of myself on your newest post.

Love is… accepting minor irritations with a fond heart. See, that should be on a T-shirt featuring those naked boy and girl cartoon characters from the 1970’s.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is just to say that, upon balance, Disqus is not selling itself to me. Am I missing something? What’s the deal?

Disqusion welcome.

Who’s Got My Spider?

When I was 6 or 7 – no older as my youngest sister hadn’t yet been born – my grandparents took me and my other sister to Twycross Zoo. My memories of the day are like the recollection of a dream: both vivid and yet fragmented and incomplete.

I know that it was a blazingly hot summer’s day. The kind we don’t seem to get anymore when you can feel the heat bouncing up from the grass. I know my mother had dressed me in the ubiquitous seventies combination of open toed sandals and really short shorts. Both were brown and I daresay I’d been put into an orange t-shirt as well. Coupled with my National Health spectacles I must have looked like a street urchin from one of Gene Hunt’s nightmares.

I have vague recollections of watching the chimp’s tea party – this was back in the days when such things were accepted as normal and not at all cruel or detrimental to the mental health of the animals. I remember the chimpanzees as being very smelly, very noisy and very messy. My recollections of the day start to run dry from this point onwards. I don’t remember seeing any of the other animals, or the car journey there and back and though the faces of my grandparents are strongly imprinted in my mind I can’t quite picture them on this day though they were undoubtedly there. It’s like they’ve been blurred out, pixelated.

The one overriding memory of this day that I do have is of being allowed to buy something from the zoo gift shop. I went for a “huge” (probably only a foot long) rubber spider. It had long dangly legs that were covered with little rubber stipules giving it a hairy appearance. And it was on a piece of elastic which meant it could be bounced like a demonic yo-yo.

I loved that spider.

Inevitably, like all favourite toys, it was unwisely taken into school. It caused a great stir. I can remember causally getting it out of my satchel to show my best friend at the time (John McCrae – hello if you’re reading this) and hearing a glass shattering screech from somewhere to my left. Mrs Reeves, one of the hardest teachers in the school, was stood pole-axed, looking at me. Or rather looking at the spider. Thankfully she realized I wasn’t deliberately trying to give her a heart attack and laughed it off in that way that teachers have that is neither laughing nor quite forgiving you even though you haven’t exactly done anything wrong.

The spider accompanied me everywhere for weeks. Either in my satchel or stuffed up – a wriggly, brown rubber ball – in the pocket of my parker. It naturally found its way into break time games. The favourite of these was John and I using it as some kind of ball or bizarre projectile. Throwing it to each other or, even more stupid given its eventual fate, using the elastic to swirl it around at high velocity and then releasing it upwards into the air.

It was John who in the end misjudged the release. My last memory of my spider is seeing it sailing over the school yard wall into the back garden of one of the gloomy houses that backed onto the school perimeter. It fell through the air, legs fluttering behind its body like a black comet, and made an insignificant crater somewhere amongst the scary shrubbery of the forbidden garden.

I peered through the gate many times but could never see it. It was gone forever and the mindset of a child seems to skip over any possibility of asking a grown-up to help or even just knocking on the door of the house to see if the owner would hand it over. In all honesty it never crossed my mind. I feared we’d get into trouble for throwing it over the wall in the first place (the owners of the nearby houses were always moaning about footballs ending up on their property) and I couldn’t see Mrs Reeves being very sympathetic.

It took me a long while in kid’s terms to forgive John. At least a week.

The school is now long gone. It was converted years ago into some sort of horrible hi-tech media training centre and I daresay the surrounding houses have been renovated and new owners come and gone. But every time I walk by I always wonder what happened to my spider. Was it callously binned or did it find itself another appreciative owner? Sadly I don’t think they make toys like that anymore. Certainly I’ve never come across any and I do look occasionally.

I do think that if I’ve kept hold of that spider my subsequent education would have taken me on a completely different career path - botanical scientist or wildlife conservationist. Instead, thanks to one erroneous twang of the elastic, here I am: up to my spiderless arms in alarms, toilets and maintenance.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, eh?