Jenny Kane & Jennifer Ash

Jenny Kane: Coffee, cupcakes, chocolate and contemporary fiction / Jennifer Ash: Medieval crime with hints of Ellis Peters and Robin Hood

Tag: end of the month

End of the Month:There Goes July!

By

On July 31, 2019

In Blog, End of Month, News

Surely not? Surely we can’t be saying goodbye to July already?

Yet, Nell Peters is here, so it must be time to see out another month.

Other to you Nell…

Good day, one and all. You may have to bear with me for a while, as I battle with my new- fangled laptop and Windows 10. I say ‘new’ although I have in fact had the cursed machine for roughly a year and hardly opened it, but was shamed into doing so because #3 son (the nomadic one) was due home for a week and I knew he would nag me mercilessly unless I got to grips with the darned thing and all its foibles PDQ. Also, if he saw me hitting this shiny new keyboard with aplomb, I figured he might overlook the snazzy new iPad Pro (new earlier this year) that is languishing somewhere in one of my desk drawers gathering biscuit crumbs. Any suggestions that I am a Luddite are … well, probably true.

Enough of my technical hitches; are you still awake and sitting comfortably? Then let us begin.

Andrew Marr – he of the interesting aural formation – was born in Glasgow on 31st July 1959, and so will need sixty candles for his celebration cake. A journalist, television presenter and political commentator, he started work on The Scotsman after graduating from Cambridge with a First in English, and from then on became a ubiquitous media presence, writing for various newspapers and popping up all over BBC radio and TV.

Politically, he was formerly a Maoist and a member of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory group, now known as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. At Cambridge, Marr admits he was a ‘raving leftie’, and so well known for handing out copies of Mao’s Little Red Book that he was referred to as Red Andy. On BBC TV recently, controversial windbag, George Galloway said, ‘I knew Andrew Marr when he was a Trotskyite, selling …’ (ergo, embracing capitalism?) ‘…Trotskyite newspapers to bewildered railwaymen outside King’s Cross Station.’ Marr now lives in not-very-Trotskyite Primrose Hill, London, with his wife, political journalist Jackie Ashley of The Guardian, and their three nippers.

Sharing Marr’s date of birth are another English journalist and author, Kim James Newman, and Stanley Jordan, an American jazz guitarist whose playing technique involves tapping his fingers on the fretboard of the guitar with both hands. A frustrated bongo drum player, perhaps? Last but not least, we have the sporty contingent represented by Mike Bielecki, baseball pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, born in Baltimore, Maryland and Australian golfer, Peter Senior, born in Singapore, Malaysia. Happy birthday, y’all.

Speaking of Stanley Jordan and his bongo-style guitar playing – even if it exists only within my fetid imagination – it was also sixty years ago today that the first exhibit of bongos opened at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Fancy that! The zoo now occupies one hundred and eighty-three acres in Ohio and is divided into several areas: Australian Adventure; African Savanna; Northern Wilderness Trek; The Primate, Cat & Aquatics Building; Waterfowl Lake and The Rain Forest, plus the newly added Asian Highlands. The exhibit opened on the same day that Harry Rodger Webb, aka the evergreen Wimbledon-in-the-rain warbler, Cliff Richard, and his backing band, The Shadows (anyone know if their drummer also played the bongos?), had their first No. 1 hit single, Living’ Doll – the biggest British single of 1959.

Fast forward five years to 31 July 1964 when the Rolling Stones played their first ever dates in Ireland – the first in Dublin, and the second on their way home via Belfast International Airport, in Ballymena, although the latter finished early because of violence in the audience. While all this was going on, after six unsuccessful missions the US unmanned Ranger 7 spacecraft was busy snapping the first close-ups of the surface of the Moon, and sending as many pics as possible back to Earth before the craft was destroyed upon impact with the lunar surface.

Wags at NASA referred to the programme as ‘shoot and hope’ – which is pretty much the same way I take photographs.

But unlike my masterpieces, the Ranger 7 images were one thousand times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-based telescopic equipment. Amazing to think it was just five years later, on 20 July 1969, that Apollo 11 astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong – while Michael Collins stayed in orbit aboard the command module – landed the Eagle without mishap and walked on the Moon. Incidentally, and in keeping with his political moniker, Michael Collins briefly served under Richard Nixon as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. Back to the Apollo programme; on this day in 1971 Apollo 15 astronauts became the first to ride in a lunar rover (aka a Moon buggy), a space exploration vehicle specifically designed to negotiate the tricky terrain.

While the old saying goes that bad things happen in threes, I think #4 might argue that should be four. On the Friday that he attended the funeral of his friend Michael, who died of cancer at a ridiculously young age leaving a young family, an outing was planned to an open air cinema in the evening. The Greatest Showman is our six-year-old middle granddaughter’s favourite film (so far) and she was super-thrilled at the prospect of seeing it again, as was her younger sister. So, after dinner by the coast en route, the family headed off to the magnificent grounds of Holkham Hall in Norfolk, armed with blankets and huge sweaters. #3 was in charge of organising the tickets and obviously got carried away, opting for the VIP package – though they were indeed excellent seats. As the curtain rose, so to speak, there was yet more excitement, at least until the equipment threw a wobbly seconds later – whether a dodgy connection or someone forgetting to put a coin in the meter we’ll never know, just that there was nothing to be done and it was time to leave. Tears, of course, and even the solemn promise to buy the DVD as soon as was humanly possible didn’t console completely – but at least the complimentary first drinks had been consumed.

When he went into work the next morning, #4 was made redundant out of the blue, along with everyone else – they were given a cheque in lieu and shown the door without ceremony. The founder of the business died just after my dad a couple of years ago and apparently his widow decided, practically overnight, to pull the plug. Bit of a shock to all. As he made his way home on foot, two drunks (bearing in mind this was roughly 10.00 am!) tried to mug him. Fortunately, their inebriated state hindered them considerably in their pursuit of extra beer money and his long legs (he’s 6’3”) facilitated his escape, practically unscathed.

The following weekend was rather more successful, when the OH and sons #3 and 4 went on their annual pilgrimage to Goodwood – the Festival of Speed, not horseracing. While there, they torture themselves by ogling the sort of high-end vehicles none of them will ever be able to afford and take a helicopter ride, imagining for just a short while that they are magnificent men in their flying machine. Yeah right. The birds are actually for sale, with zillion quid price tags, and are typically snapped up early on. I am definitely in the wrong job!

Jenny and I are both a year older since we last chewed the fat (gross expression!) We celebrated our birthdays on 13th July, along with Patrick Stewart (Star Trek), Ian Hislop (Private Eye), Ernö Rubik (cube man), Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones), Chris White (Dire Straits) and Julius Caesar (et tu?) – although there is speculation he might have been born on 12/7 and there doesn’t appear to be anyone around still to verify.

Some slebs have chosen the 13th to get married; DH Lawrence (1914), Walt Disney (1925), José Ferrer (1953), Halle Berry (2013) and Jimmy Kimmel (also 2013, the day that Glee star Cory Monteith died of an overdose, and eighteen people were killed, with forty injured when a gravel truck collided with a bus in Podolsk, Russia).

While Jen did a bunk on her hols, for me it was a lovely family BBQ day at home. The early morning rain cleared and the sun came out, so a great time was had by all in the garden. I actually dusted off the iPad and had a Facetime conversation (my first, and possibly last) with #3, who was dodging monsoon conditions in Mumbai. In the latest move in the campaign to drag old fogey Mum into the 21st century, #2 gave me an Amazon Fire TV stick as a gift – more technology angst! We’ve always refused to have Sky, or anything else – much to the boys’ annoyance when they were at home, because ‘everyone else has it!’ We simply don’t watch that much TV, and apart from the OH’s spasmodic grumbles at the absence of Sky Sports when he can’t watch the rugby, we’ve never missed it. At least the remote for this newest gizmo doesn’t appear to have too many confusing options …

As I write this in advance, we don’t yet know who will be the UK’s new PM from 24/7 – just that it will either be Boris Johnson (why would someone whose first name is Alexander, want to call themselves Boris?) or Jeremy Hunt. I know little about Hunt, except that you have to be quite careful how you pronounce his name – to call him a Runt would be very rude after all, but a friend was at Eton with Bojo, David Cameron, George Osborne and I forget who else. He says Johnson has always appeared to be a bit of a buffoon and sometimes plays on it, but in reality he is very savvy – it’s just that his tongue can’t keep up with his stream of consciousness, as it hurtles toward his lips in a bid for freedom. Whoever gets the keys to No 10 and assumes guardianship of Larry the cat, let’s hope they can find the brakes on the handcart that is taking the country to hell.

To wind up, an update of sorts on the Apollo 11 Moon landing. James Burke covered the momentous event for the BBC in 1969, as their science correspondent, but when interviewed this month he said, ‘Fifty years on: was it worth it? Not for the new science and technology. Not even for the view of a vulnerable planet Earth from space …

However, the project was a part of the weapons race that would eventually bankrupt the USSR. And Apollo certainly advanced the art of management and organisation … for the majority of the population it’s only history. Been there, done that. As is, to an extent, everything ‘space’ since. Talk of interplanetary derring-do remains back-burner material, given our present focus on earthly matters such as pollution, climate change, starvation and resource depletion.’

Strange sentiments from someone who devised and presented the excellent TV programme, Tomorrow’s World and who was once described by The Washington Post as ‘one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world’. Without the Apollo series and other exploratory missions, we might not have the ISS hovering above us and met its most popular inhabitant, Tim Peake, who engaged young and old alike with his antics and inclusivity – there wasn’t much ‘been there, done that’ when he ran the London Marathon in real time on a treadmill, for instance. But perhaps I missed Burke’s point entirely as sadly, I don’t have an intriguing mind. In any event, I prefer to believe that the success of Apollo 11 was indeed ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’

I am now clambering down from my soap box to say Toodles. Thanks, as always, to Jenny for having me. Hopefully see you in September.

NP

**

Check out one of Nell’s novel’s- A Hostile Witness-  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hostile-Witness-Nell-Peters-ebook/dp/B0191NJIMC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Nell+Peters&qid=1563820679&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 

A huge pleasure as ever Nell. I hope you enjoyed your birthday as much as I enjoyed mine.

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny xx

End of the Month: March to the past!

By

On March 31, 2019

In Blog, End of Month, Fiction, history, Jenny Kane, News

Here we are again then!

Another month has whizzed past at breakneck speed. I think we’ve all deserved a rest. Let’s hand over to the fabulous Nell Peters for a while to march through Marchs’ of the past.

Over to you Nell…

There you are – I was wondering when you’d show up!

If you fancy it (and why wouldn’t you?), grab a drink and a comfy chair and settle down with me for a few moments, while we see – intermingled with other random jottings – what has happened on 31st March in years gone by. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin – with one of those random jottings …

In 1924, two men – one American, the other British – were born, both of whom earned themselves catchy nicknames in adult life, courtesy the paths they followed. Felice Leonardo Buscaglia was born in Los Angeles, the youngest of four children of Italian immigrants. Though he spent his early childhood in Aosta, Italy, he returned to the US for his education, and graduated from high school before serving with the US Navy during World War II. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the GI Bill, was a law that offered opportunities as a thank you for the service of returning World War II veterans – more commonly called GIs. Taking advantage of the legislation, Buscaglia enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he read for three degrees; a BA (1950); MA (1954) and PhD (1963), before joining the faculty.

Buscaglia – by then known as Leo – was teaching in the Department of Special Education at the university in the late 1960s when one of his female students committed suicide. Deeply affected by this tragedy, he was inspired to hold a weekly non-credit class combining psychology and sociology, entitled Love 1A – about (unsurprisingly) love and the meaning of life. There were no grades, but the class led to more formal lectures, then TV exposure and eventually a book called Love was published, based on what was shared in his classes. He became known as Dr Love, or Dr Hug, because – possibly influenced by his emotionally demonstrative Italian background – he hugged every one of his students at the end of lectures.

Leo died of a heart attack in June 1998, at his home in Glenbrook, Nevada, aged seventy-four, but had he still been around, I wonder what he would have thought about the fate this month of the founder, director and former chief executive of clothing chain, Ted Baker. After a period of suspension, Ray Kelvin was forced to resign for ‘inappropriate behaviour’, including ‘enforced hugging’. Well there you go…

Sharing Dr Hug’s date of birth that long-ago Monday was Henry Edward Cubitt, 4th Lord Ashcombe, known latterly as Mad Harry. Eton educated, he served in the RAF during WWII and thereafter became chairman of Holland, Hannen and Cubitt, the family construction firm.

He was also the London-based Consul General for Monaco from 1961 to 1968 – I rather think I’d have insisted on being Monaco-based. Between wives after his first divorce, Harry nipped over to his Barbados estate and hosted a Caribbean house party for the summer – amongst the guests (including Jackie Onassis) was his niece/goddaughter, who was invited to bring a friend. She chose her lucky flat mate, the Hon Virginia Carrington, daughter of Peter Alexander Rupert Carrington, the sixth Lord Carrington and Tory MP who was Defence Secretary from 1970 to 1974, Foreign Secretary from 1979 to 1982, chairman of GEC from 1983 to 1984, and Secretary General of NATO from 1984 to 1988.

Harry was instantly smitten and aged forty-seven pursued twenty-five year old Virginia amongst the palm trees – they were married on New Year’s Day the following year, 1973, and it was for this folly that he became known as Mad Harry amongst family and friends. Upon her marriage, Virginia effectively became her flat mate’s step-aunt, at least while the marriage lasted (six years). You might recognise the name of said flat mate, Camilla Shand? She became Parker Bowles and is now the Duchess of Cornwall, married to Prince Charles. Mad Harry died childless aged eighty-nine in 2013, having given marriage one more unsuccessful try along the way.

Also on 31 March 1924, a strike called by London Transport personnel ended (plus ça change etc) – on the same day that Britain’s first national airline, Imperial Airways, began operations at Croydon Airport. Croydon was also known as the London Terminal Aerodrome or simply London Airport, and was emerging as the UK’s major international airport between the wars. Imperial Airways was the British Government’s cunning plan to develop connections for trade and personnel with the UK’s extensive commonwealth and overseas interests, and so it was from Croydon that in addition to European flights, long haul routes to India, Africa, the Middle and Far East, Asia, Africa and Australia (in conjunction with Qantas) were established. #3 son spends a very great deal of time on flights between Heathrow and Mumbai and Bangkok – he’s in the air for eight and thirteen hours respectively. Goodness knows how long those Imperial Airways flights would have taken – and there would be no getting it over with in one hit.

As I tap, I am also talking to aforementioned nomadic son online, while he is stuck in Kuala Lumpur airport en route for Hong Kong. Because this is a vacation and he is paying for his own flights, he opted for a cheaper non-direct route out of Bangkok – but sadly didn’t notice that the sim card in his phone wasn’t working and therefore hadn’t updated the time, a situation exacerbated by KL being a silent airport with no announcements. Ergo, he missed his connecting flight; a six hour lay-over turned into thirty and of course he had to buy another ticket – so much for economy – plus he’s lost a day of his holiday, silly Billy. In between wearing a hole in the lounge sofas, he’s eaten enough water melon to sink the Titanic, along with the iceberg, and taken five showers – for the last two he invested some Malaysian Ringgit in deodorant, as his was in his checked luggage. Rookie mistake for such a seasoned traveller, I should have thought? And I do hope it’s not an omen that last time he was in Hong Kong in September, he was stranded because of a typhoon …

March 31st 1855 was a sad day for Rev Arthur Bell Nicholls, when his wife, author Charlotte Brontë, and his unborn child died as a result of a traumatic pregnancy. And so, her father Patrick, also a clergyman, outlived his wife and all six of their children.

Charlotte’s most famous novel, initially titled Jane Eyre: An Autobiography and written under the pseudonym, Currer Bell, was immediately successful when published in 1847 – one critic described it as ‘the best novel of the season’ and people began to speculate who Currer Bell could be. However, some reviewers were more critical and described it as ‘coarse’, and even ‘anti-Christian’. It is, nonetheless, still on the shelves more than one hundred and seventy years later.

In 1849, Brontë’s second novel, Shirley, featuring eponymous heiress, Shirley Keeldar, was released. Until then, the name Shirley was generally uncommon and almost exclusively a boy’s name – in the book, Mr and Mrs Keeldar had been hoping for a son and named their daughter accordingly. But after publication, the name Shirley started to gain in popularity for girls, helped many decades later by American child actor Shirley Temple.

I have had multiple dealings with a ‘lady’ called Shirley Sergeant over the last few months – she’s not the type who would appreciate any ‘evening all/allo, allo, allo’ jokes. Shirley worked in the stone masonry department of the funeral directors who handled my dad’s arrangements in August ’17. When the year for settling of the grave was up, #2 son and I did a tour of the cemetery and picked a design we liked, then went to see about ordering something similar. Shirley pounced – we had decided upon white marble, with grey inscription, but she had other ideas. While I know that marble is a porous stone and will therefore deteriorate over the years, I don’t have a problem with the passage of time being evident – in fact, I quite like the idea. But Our Shirl insisted we’d be better off with more robust white granite. The sample she showed us was a speckled white and quite shiny/sparkly and I hated it. Ms S was not about to give in gracefully. Anxious to escape her lair before it was my turn to climb into a coffin, I agreed that she should send quotes for both, plus a CAD illustration of what our design might look like. She was kind enough to point out that although marble is white, the CAD illustration would appear grey. Face-palm. Did she think I’m as silly as I look? Don’t answer that.

The quotes didn’t arrive in a few days as promised, but three weeks later, with another sample of granite – grey (speckled with black), as white granite was no longer available. Seriously? I emailed to say the (more expensive) grey was not to my liking and we’d go with white marble – oh, and where was the CAD illustration as promised? After another month, she replied – my email had disappeared into her junk folder, she said. And so it went on. Bottom line, Shirley has now retired (yay!) and someone else is handling our order – after more than seven frustrating months, my dad’s memorial should be in place for his birthday in April. This year, I hope. Just slightly concerned that their confirmatory email referred to him as Derek P Thompson, when his name was in fact Peter Derek …

On this day in 1770, Prussian/German philosopher Immanuel Kant was made Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. He published works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history and more – but since I had enough of him and his Enlightenment buddies when I had to study them, we’ll leave him there, being logical and metaphysical. I believe I’ve mentioned before that another philosopher – the ‘Father of Modern Philosophy’, no less – Frenchman René Descartes, was born on the last day of March in 1596, so I won’t repeat myself. I think; therefore I am.

Hard to believe comedian, actor, writer and broadcaster, Ronald Balfour (Ronnie) Corbett died three years ago today, aged eighty-five. This was on the same day as German politician, Hans-Dietrich Gensher (born 1927); Iraqi-born English architect and academic, Zaha Hadid (born 1950); Hungarian author and Nobel Prize laureate,  Imre Kertész (born 1929) and Denise Robertson, British writer, television broadcaster and agony aunt (born 1932).

Enough now, it’s Mothering Sunday/Mother’s Day in the UK, so off you go and have a great day if you qualify. If you don’t, have a brilliant Sunday anyway and take care.

I hope to see you at the end of May, not April, as I am changing the frequency of my guest blogs for Jenny to bi-monthly, because I really need to get back to some serious writing – all the time-consuming family stuff I’ve been immersed in has meant I’ve not produced anything on the fiction front for well over two years, and I need to put that right, assuming I can still remember how!

Toodles all, and thanks Jen.

NP

***

Huge thanks once again Nell!

Looking forward to “seeing” you in May

Jenny xx

 

 

 

 

End of the Month: From Harry Corbett to MASH via David Nivan

By

On February 28, 2019

In Blog, End of Month, Fiction, history, Jenny Kane, News

I’m never sure why, seeing as it’s only two or three days shorter than the other months of the year, but February goes to fast. It always feels at least a week shorter than all the other months.

The plus side of this, is that Nell Peters is back already with her latest End of the Month blog.

Over to you Nell…

Hello, and top of the morning to y’all. Come on in out of the cold and grab a hot beverage to warm your cockles, so to speak.

The actor, Harry Corbett was born in Burma on this day in 1925, the youngest of seven children. His father, George, was serving with the British army as part of the Colonial defence forces, but the boy was sent back to England aged just eighteen months to be brought up by his aunt, after his mother died of dysentery. As an adult, Corbett enlisted in the Royal Marines during World War II, serving on the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire. Is there such a thing as a light cruiser, I wonder? In 1945, he was posted to the Far East, and reportedly killed two Japanese soldiers while engaged in hand-to-hand fighting. Yikes.

Back in Blighty, after a spot of desertion, he trained as a radiographer before moving into acting, initially in repertory – it was then he added the middle initial H to his name, to avoid confusion with the guy who found fame with his hand stuck up Sooty’s bottom. If asked, he would claim that the H stood for ‘hennyfink’. What a wag. Although acknowledged as an accomplished Shakespearean actor, Corbett was best known for his role as Harold Steptoe, a rag and bone man who lived with his irascible father, Albert (played by Wilfrid Brambell, who was actually only thirteen years older than Harry) in a dilapidated house, attached to their junkyard and stabling for the cart horse, Hercules. The series ran from 1962 until the Christmas special in 1974.

Must have been interesting on set, as Corbett smoked sixty fags a day (until his first heart attack in 1979, when he cut down to twenty), and Brambell was an alcoholic and gay – at a time when homosexual acts were against the law (decriminalised 1967). It was a second heart attack that killed Harry H in March 1982, aged fifty-seven – he was survived by his second wife, a son and daughter, Susannah, who played Ellie, Peter Pascoe’s wife in Dalziel and Pascoe. Outliving Corbett by almost three years, Brambell died of cancer aged seventy-two, in January 1985.

Over in the Soviet Union, it was on 28th February 1953 that Joseph Stalin had a pow-wow with Beria, Bulganin, Khrushchev & Malenkov – it must have been quite a knees-up because the very next day Stalin suffered a massive stroke, which killed him four days later. Perhaps they were celebrating the births of American wrestler Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat, (real name Richard Blood); Ingo Hoffmann, Brazilian racing driver; and Paul Krugman, American economist and New York Times columnist, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008?

Mention deoxyribonucleic acid – the molecule that contains the genetic blueprint for cell reproduction – more commonly known as DNA, and most of us could excavate the names Watson and Crick from the memory bank. Officially, it was on this day in Cambridge, also in 1953, that the two scientists were credited with the discovery of the chemical structure of DNA. However, it was at King’s College London, that Rosalind Franklin obtained an image of DNA using X-ray crystallography (the science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids), an idea first broached by Maurice Wilkins.

Franklin’s image, known as Photograph 51, was taken by Raymond Gosling in May 1952, when he was working as a PhD student under her supervision. It provided critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA and was thus a vital contribution to James Watson and Francis Crick’s creation of their famous two-strand, or double-helix, model. There is some doubt that Franklin gave her permission for the image to be used. Of the four main players – Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Rosalind herself, she was the only one with a background in chemistry, and the only one who did not share the Nobel Prize (Physiology/Medicine) in 1962. She died far too young of ovarian cancer on 16th April 1958 – my sister’s first birthday.

Raymond Massey

Had he not died in 1995, Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE would be loading his birthday cake with a whopping one hundred and ten candles today. He was an English poet, novelist, critic and essayist who highlighted themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work, which came to prominence during the 1930s. He was big pals with WH Auden and Cecil Day-Lewis – they met as Oxford undergraduates, even though Auden and Spender had both been pupils at Gresham’s School in Norfolk – and along with Christopher Isherwood and Louis MacNeice, they were sometimes referred to as the Oxford Poets. Right now, I am getting nowhere fast with this and I can relate to a line in one of Spender’s poems: As I sit staring out of my window…

Who can remember the coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han on the last day of Feb 202BC, which initiated four centuries of the Han Dynasty’s rule over China? No takers? OK, what about the first boat load of gold rush prospectors arriving in San Francisco from the east coast in 1849 – the very same day that jockey Tom Cunningham won the eleventh Grand National riding a horse called Peter Simple? Still no? I’ll make it easy-peasy then – we all know that when he was sworn in, in 1952 (Charles) Vincent Massey became the first Canadian-born person to serve as Canada’s Governor General since the Canadian Confederation, eight days after his sixty-fifth birthday. We do, don’t we? He was the eighteenth GG, by the way.

Vincent’s younger brother, Raymond Hart Massey, also briefly dabbled on the sidelines of politics when he appeared in a 1964 television advertisement in support of Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater. Massey denounced incumbent US President Lyndon B Johnson’s strategies during the Vietnam War, suggesting that Goldwater had the nous to win the war quickly. Johnson won a landslide victory and the war trundled on until 30th April 1975, when Saigon fell. Taking the hint, perhaps, Raymond went into acting, becoming a US citizen along the way. His film appearances were many and varied and he was no stranger to the TV screen during the 1950s and 60s, most notably playing Dr Gillespie to Richard Chamberlain’s eponymous role as Dr Kildare.

Massey married three times. His high-profile estrangement and divorce from second wife, actress Adrianne Allen, was the inspiration for Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin’s script for the film Adam’s Rib (1949), starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. In a You Couldn’t Make It Up scenario, Massey went on to marry the lawyer who represented him in court, Dorothy Whitney, while his by then former wife, Allen, married the opposing lawyer, William Dwight Whitney. But before they fell out, Massey and Allen produced two children, actors Anna and Daniel Massey.

Like his father, Daniel married three times – first, actress Adrienne Corri (only slightly spooky to pick someone almost sharing his mother’s name); second, actress Penelope Wilton (Calendar Girls (2003), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Pride & Prejudice (2005), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), The BFG (2016) and all six series of Downton Abbey – to name but a few); and third wife, Linda Wilton, who is one of Penelope’s two sisters. I’m not saying a word.

Incidentally, Raymond Massey died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on July 29th 1983, just shy of his eighty-seventh birthday and on the same day as David Niven, with whom he had co-starred in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946). Niven would have been one hundred and nine years old tomorrow.

On the home front, the sale of the family house completed on time – never thought #2 and I would manage it, but it was handed over duly stripped of all furniture etc and decades of accumulated ‘stuff’. There was so much paperwork to go through, I had to ship quite a lot back to Norfolk, as it was far too time consuming to do it all on site with the deadline looming. Luckily, we have a few spare bedrooms here and I have been able to stash it out of sight for the time being – can’t put it off forever, though.

However, sorting out utility bills and cancelling the many, many insurances – any eventuality/act of God was covered, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate I suspect – had to take precedence. As usual, a Power of Attorney complicates matters and there are extra hoops to jump through before anyone will actually deign to talk to you, but I think I can see the teeniest chink of light at the end of the very long tunnel now. The biggest relief was waking up on the Monday morning following completion, and realising I didn’t have to whiz off to the station to embark upon the four hour journey to Twickenham, where I would stay until Friday.

On 28th February 1983, the final (2.5 hour, 256th) episode of M*A*S*H aired in the US. It was entitled, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen – I think I’ll borrow that and add a cheeky Toodles.

Thanks, Jenny – maybe see you in March?

NP

***

Huge thanks Nell. Another corking blog.

See you next time!

Jenny xx

 

End of the Month: Spooky October

By

On October 31, 2018

In Blog, End of Month, Jenny Kane, News

It’s that time again! Yes- really- it is the end of the month again!

So, let’s hand over to Nell Peters to see what she’s uncovered for us this month.

Over to you Nell…

To paraphrase the late David Frost; hello, good morning/afternoon/evening, and welcome y’all. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is the last day of October, aka the day we glance in the mirror and girly-squeal at the scary Halloween mask reflected, only to realise it’s not a mask after all.

There is a film called 31st October – an Indian Hindi historical action drama, written and produced by Harry Sachdeva and directed by Shivaji Lotan Patil.

Based on fact, it focuses on the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination on 31st October 1984 and stars Vir Das, Bollywood actor and comedian (although the funnies might have been in short supply in this script) and Soha Ali Khan, actress. The film had its official screening at the London Indian Film festival 18-20 July 2015, before going on general release fifteen months later.

Reaching the tender age of eighteen today is Willow Camille Reign Smith, who is professionally known as Willow, an American singer, actress and dancer and the daughter of Willard Carroll Smith Jnr and Jada Pinkett Smith. Her dad is of course better known as Will Smith, star of the TV series, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and numerous award-winning films. In my end-of-September blog for Jenny, I mentioned Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy’s 1929 hypothesis that all living things and objects are just six degrees of separation away, so that a ‘friend of a friend’ chain can be made to connect any two in a maximum of six steps. Want to take a wild guess at the title of the film in which Smith played his first major dramatic role? A shiny new goldfish (bring your own bowl) for those who guessed it was Six Degrees of Separation (1993).

Frigyes Karinthy

On the very day that Willow was born, Kazuki Watanabe, Japanese musician, guitarist and lead songwriter of the visual kei rock band, Raphael, died aged just nineteen, from an overdose of sedatives. In case you were wondering (as was I) visual kei is a movement among Japanese musicians, characterised by varying amounts of make-up, elaborate hair styles and flamboyant costumes, similar to glam rock. The group were popular, with all their releases entering the top 40 of the Oricon (holding company of a corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan) charts, but disbanded after Kazuki died.

Also breathing their last – though aged a slightly more reasonable eighty-five years – on this day in 2000, was American journalist and screenwriter, Ring Lardner Jnr (born Ringgold Wilmer Lardner), who was blacklisted by film studios during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s. A member of the US communist party since 1937, he moved to Hollywood to be a publicist and script doctor before writing his own material. In 1947 he became one of the highest paid scriptwriters in Hollywood when he signed a contract with 20th Century Fox for $2,000 a week (equivalent to approx $22,000 a week today). A short-lived claim to fame, however, as later that year he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to account for his left-wing views, two days after he was sacked by Fox. Along with nine others, collectively known as the Hollywood Ten, he cited the First Amendment and refused to answer their questions, but the HUAC and appeal court were having none of it; Lardner was sentenced to twelve months in prison and fined $1,000 for contempt.

Nine of the Hollywood Ten

Blacklisted in Hollywood, he moved to England for a time where he wrote under several pseudonyms for TV series, including (and this will interest Jenny, aficionado of all things Lincoln green) The Adventures of Robin Hood. After the blacklist was lifted in 1965, Lardner worked on scripts for some high profile films, including M*A*S*H (1970), which earned him an Academy Award (his second) for Best Adapted Screenplay. Perhaps as some sort of posthumous tribute, an episode of Robin Hood first broadcast by the Beeb in December 2007, was entitled Lardner’s Ring.

Sticking with 31/10/2000; that was the day Soyuz TM-31 became the first Soyuz spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS). Launched from Russia, it carried the three members of Expedition 1 – Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, with American William Shepherd – who collectively formed the first long-term ISS crew.

Lowering the tone as usual, I thought you might like to know there are two toilets aboard the ISS, both of Russian design, which have waste and hygiene compartments using fan-driven suction systems. Astronauts first fasten themselves to the toilet seat, which is equipped with spring-loaded restraining bars to ensure a good seal. A lever operates a powerful fan and a suction hole opens to allow the air stream to carry waste away. Solid matter is collected in individual bags, which are deposited in an aluminium container, and stored for disposal when full. Liquid waste is evacuated via a hose connected to the front of the toilet, with anatomically-correct urine funnel adapters attached to the tube, so that men and women can use the same toilet. Urine is collected and channelled to the Water Recovery System, where it is recycled into drinking water. Fancy that. Actually, I’m not sure I do …

On the last day of October 1941, the destroyer USS Reuben James (named after a boatswain’s mate famous for his heroism in the First Barbary War) was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Iceland, killing more than one hundred sailors – the first US Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII. This was on the same day that, after fourteen years of chipping away, Mount Rushmore was completed.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a massive sculpture carved into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The monument took shape under the direction of Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln, the sculpture’s 60’ high granite faces depicting presidents George Washington (1st), Thomas Jefferson (3rd), Theodore Roosevelt (25th) and Abraham Lincoln (16th). The site also features a museum with interactive exhibits.

It was historian Doane Robinson who came up with the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the hills to promote tourism. His initial plan was to feature American West heroes like Lewis and Clark (led the first expedition across the western terrain of the US), Red Cloud (one of the most important leaders of Oglala Lakota, part of the Great Sioux Nation), and William Frederick – Buffalo Bill – Cody (scout, bison hunter, and showman), but Borglum decided the sculpture should have a broader appeal and chose the four presidents.

Buffalo Bill

Another mount; the Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape happened forty-five years ago today, when three IRA volunteers flew out of the Dublin jail, aboard a hijacked Alouette II helicopter, which landed in the exercise yard. With IRA Chief of Staff, Seamus Twomey doing a five-stretch and senior republicans, J. B. O’Hagan and Kevin Mallon also being incarcerated in Mountjoy, the command structure was seriously depleted. So, a plan involving explosives that had already been smuggled into the prison (how?!) was hatched; a hole would be blown in a door (anyone else’s thoughts drifting to Michael Caine/The Italian Job? Just me, then) which would give the prisoners access to the exercise yard. From there, they would scale a rope ladder thrown over the exterior wall and bundle into a getaway car, driven by members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade. Alas (or not!), the plan failed when the prisoners couldn’t gain access to the yard and the rope ladder was spotted.

Back to the drawing board, Plan B involved the helicopter, with pilot Captain Thompson Boyes flying under threat of having his head blown off by the firearms trained upon him. In the exercise yard prisoners were watching a football match, when shortly after 3:35 pm the helicopter swung in to land, with Kevin Mallon directing the pilot using semaphore. (Seriously? If I wrote that in a book, my editor would throw it out as way too far-fetched!) Prison officers on duty initially took no action because they believed the helicopter carried the Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan, who presumably was in the habit of dropping in for tea. It was only when prisoners surrounded the eight guards present and fights broke out, that the officers realised an escape was in progress. Twomey, Mallon and O’Hagan boarded the helicopter and it took off – apparently in the confusion one officer shouted ‘Close the gates, close the f***ing gates!’ Doh! The escapees landed at a disused racecourse in Baldoyle, where they transferred to a hijacked taxi and were whisked away to safe houses.

Mallon enjoyed his freedom for the shortest time, as he was recaptured in December 1973, O’Hagan early in 1975 and Twomey in December 1977. In the aftermath, all IRA prisoners were transferred to maximum security Portlaoise Prison, and to discourage any further getaway attempts the perimeter was guarded by troops from the Irish Army. And shutting the stable door etc, wires were erected over the prison yard to prevent helicopters landing in future – so presumably poor Paddy Donegan had to get the bus with the rest of the hoi polloi.

On the home front, the OH and #3 son returned safe and sound from their jolly in South Africa, vowing to go back next year and take #4 with them. Fine by me, as I really enjoyed the peace! On their penultimate night they’d booked an hotel near Cape Town on line and had a long drive through filthy weather/bad visibility/electric storms to get there, relying heavily on sat nav. Arriving very late, son gave his name – Piers – at reception and was told they were expected. Shown to a sumptuous twin, with patio doors opening onto a veranda and the beach, they were much impressed by the value they were getting for their money – until they went to pay the bill next morning and were charged considerably more than they had been quoted. They were in the wrong place and the booking had in fact been made by someone called Pierre who didn’t turn up, his travels presumably thwarted by the weather conditions. What are the chances? I gather OH and #3 weren’t overly worried, as it was such a great room.

#3 has since done a lot of to-ing and fro-ing UK/India/Thailand and it’s even more difficult than normal to keep up with where he’s currently hanging his hat. He has some more leave due early in November and will hopefully be around for our annual combined Halloween/Bonfire Night party, delayed for his attendance in his guise as everyone’s favourite uncle.

Favourite Uncle!

I have sold the family home in Twickenham to my parents’ neighbour, who offered my dad an obscene amount of money many years ago and when refused, bought the house next door. It’s strange to think that it will no longer be ‘our’ house after so long, but now that my mother is in residential care (she’s not been thrown out yet!), it’s impossible to justify paying those whopper fees, plus meet the expenses entailed in keeping a large, empty house going.

I say empty, but of course the place is filled with possessions accrued during sixty-odd years of marriage – including a zillion dust-collecting figurines of varying value, so beloved by my mother. We have taken a few favourite pieces to decorate her room in the home, along with family photographs etc, but that has hardly made a dent. What does one do with so many complete dinner services, tea sets and ornate crystal glasses for any drink you care to name? Some of the furniture will be sold, some given away – it may take a while to clear the place! Then there’s the garages and outbuildings, the garden …

Yikes! Best make a start!

Thanks, Jen and toodles everyone! NP

***

Good luck with all that sorting and moving hun!

Thanks again for a fabulous blog.

Happy reading,

Jenny xx

 

 

End of the Month: 273 days in

By

On September 30, 2018

In Blog, End of Month, Jenny Kane, News

Yes- I know- you don’t want me to mention that another month has gone by…However, it must have because Nell Peters is here with another fabulous end of the month round-up.

Over to you Nell…

Hello, my sweeties – I trust all is well with you on this 273rd day of the year? That means there are just ninety-two to go before we get to sing Robert Burns’ Auld Lang Syne again. Tempus certainly does fugit.

Celebrating her Ruby Wedding anniversary today is Mary Louise (better known as Meryl) Streep, who married sculptor Don Gummer in 1978, having been in a relationship with fellow actor, John Cazale (The Deer Hunter, amongst others) until March of that year, when he died of lung cancer. Mother-of-four Streep’s versatility as an actor apparently knows no bounds, and she has won multiple awards, including eight wins out of a huge thirty-one Golden Globe nominations. She even somehow managed to pull off her British-accented roles as Maggie Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011), Emmeline Pankhurst in Suffragette (2015) and sing a passable Abba in Mamma Mia! (2008) although she apparently only appears in flashback in the current sequel. And now I have the song rattling around my head, making a nuisance of itself.

Emmeline Pankhurst

On the same day that Meryl and Don were cutting cake and dodging confetti, American actor, comedian and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (originally the Swedish Berrgren, meaning mountain branch) died – sadly, he was three days into his two week Farewell to Show Business retirement tour. While still in high school aged eleven, he studied a booklet called The Wizard’s Manual – nothing to do with Harry Potter, but a basic lesson in ventriloquism, and he then paid a carpenter $35 to carve the head of his first dummy, Charlie McCarthy, in the likeness of a red-headed Irish newspaper boy he knew. Bergen created the body himself, using a nine-inch length of broomstick for the backbone, with rubber bands and cord to control the lower jaw mechanism of the mouth. Gottle o geer, anyone?

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy

Edgar and his wife, fashion model Frances, had two children – Kris, a film and TV editor, and the actress Candice. Her debut role was in the 1966 film The Group and this year she can be seen as Sharon in Book Club – with a whole lot of other TV and film roles in between. At one time, Bergen and her then boyfriend, Terry Melcher, lived at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, which was later the home of Sharon Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski. This was where Tate and four others were murdered in August 1969, by disciples of Charles Manson. On September 27 1980, Candice married French film director Louis Malle and they had one child, Chloe Françoise, in 1985. Malle died from cancer a decade later and she went on to marry New York real estate magnate and philanthropist, Marshall Rose, in 2000.

Another American actress, Angeline (Angie) Dickinson, will need eighty-seven candles for her cake today – that’s going to take an awful lot of puffing and blowing. Born in 1931 to Fredericka (née Hehr) and Leo Henry Brown, she shared her date of birth with Teresa Ellen Gorman (née Moore), British Conservative MP for Billericay 1987 to 2001, who died in 2015. Angie became Dickinson when she married Gene, a former football player in 1952, and kept the name when they divorced eight years later. Although she’d had affairs with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and John F Kennedy (quite a line-up!) she married composer, songwriter, record producer, pianist, and singer, Burt Bacharach in 1965.

Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson

An American, Bacharach nonetheless studied partly at McGill University in Montreal – a little (actually, a lot!) before my time. While I was there, I vaguely remember chilling out by watching a so-so US TV series called Police Woman, which ran for ninety-one episodes from 1974 to 1978 and starred … drum roll … Angie Dickinson. Based on an original screenplay by Lincoln C. Hilburn, the police procedural featured Sergeant Pepper Anderson (our Angie), as an undercover police officer working for the Criminal Conspiracy Unit of the LAPD. She would typically masquerade as a prostitute, nurse, teacher, flight attendant, prison inmate, dancer, waitress, or similar, to get close to the suspects and gain incriminating evidence that would lead to their arrest. As I recall, Pepper – like the Canadian Mounties – would always get her man (or indeed woman), but Sherlock it wasn’t.

About thirty-five miles to the east of where we live in Norfolk, is the market town of Holt, its name taken from the Anglo Saxon for woodland. Almost all of the town’s original medieval buildings were destroyed by fire in 1708, which explains the abundance of Georgian buildings that now dominate the small, picturesque town. (I’m reminded here of a chap who worked for my dad years ago, who chronically mispronounced words – for example, picturesque was picture-squeak and chaos, choss.)

Back to the plot: Holt is also home to prestigious public school, Gresham’s, opened in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar for forty local boys, following Henry VIII’s dissolution of the Augustinian priory at nearby Beeston Regis. Over the years, buildings were added and the footprint expanded, but in the early 1900s there were still less than fifty pupils – until ambitious headmaster, George Howson, arrived on the scene. On this day in 1903, The New School was opened by Field Marshall Sir Evelyn Wood.

Nowadays, Gresham’s is co-ed, having admitted girls from the early 1970s, and is one of the top thirty International Baccalaureate schools in the UK, as you would hope from an institution which charges fees well in excess of £30K a year (what ever happened to free?) for boarders – on a par with Eton. There are approximately eight hundred pupils, but needless to say, we didn’t send the four boys there – my last royalty cheque for 45p wouldn’t make much of a dent in £120K+ … Luckily for Old Greshamians, Sir Nigel Foulkes (Chairman of BAA), Sir Cecil Graves (Director General of the BBC), Lord (Benjamin) Britten of Aldeburgh (Composer), Sir Christopher Cockerell (inventor of the hovercraft),  poets Wystan Hugh (WH) Auden and Sir Stephen Spender, Olivia (first name actually Sarah) Colman (actress), Sir James Dyson (inventor and entrepreneur), and last and possibly least, Jeremy Bamber (convicted murderer) – plus many, many more – their parents weren’t such skinflints.

In 1929, Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy, suggested that all living things and objects are six degrees of separation away from each other, so that a ‘friend of a friend’ chain can be made to connect any two in a maximum of six steps. Putting that theory to the test, I have previously mentioned that when Super Blogger, Anne Williams, went to an all-girls grammar in Bangor, she and her fellow pupils would be invited to school discos at what years later became my two older sons’ alma mater, over the Menai Strait in Llanfair PG. The headmaster in post when our sons were at the small, all-boys boarding school on Anglesey had a brother who was also in teaching – their subjects were mathematics and history respectively – oh, and the brother was a deputy head at Gresham’s.

The OH’s solicitor is an Old Greshamian and in turn sent his own nippers there – he was on the Board of Governors, at one time along with aforesaid deputy head. The solicitor’s practice partner is my solicitor, who recently told me her family had increased by one; take a bow, Roxie, super-cute pedigree cocker spaniel. ‘How strange,’ I remarked, ‘our weekend neighbours have just got two cocker spaniel puppies, Hugo and Leo.’ (I am bitterly disappointed that Leo isn’t called Victor!) It turns out that the three wee dogs are from the same litter, Roxie and Hugo being almost identical.

Historically, On 30 September 1791, the French National Constituent Assembly was dissolved and the people of Paris declared lawyer and politician Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre one of two incorruptible patriots, honouring their purity of principles, modest way of living, and refusal to take bribes – in November, he became the public prosecutor of Paris. He was a big fan of the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, especially The Social Contract, and the ethos of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. (Incidentally, Jacques Necker, French finance minister to Louis XVI, whose fiscal decisions contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution, was born in Geneva, Switzerland on 30 September 1732.) In June 1792, Robespierre proposed an end to the monarchy, and in September the First Republic (officially The French Republic) was founded – after that, it was always going to end badly for Louis and he lost his head on 21 January 1793. One degree of separation, perhaps? So sorry!

The infamous Reign of Terror ensued, during which at least 300,000 suspects were arrested, 17,000 were officially executed, and as many as 10,000 died in prison with or without trial. Scary stuff. Opposition to Robespierre quickly festered on all sides and his influence was challenged within the Committee of Public Safety, resulting in him being declared an outlaw. He severely wounded himself with a bullet to the jaw at the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), throwing his few remaining supporters a curveball, and was later arrested there, prior to being  guillotined on July 28 1794 – ironically in front of a cheering mob on the Place de la Révolution (now Place de la Concorde).

On a lighter note, the last day of September in 737 saw the Battle of the Baggage. That’s not two good-time gals fighting over cocktails during Happy Hour, but when Turkic Turgesh tribes drove back an Umayyad invasion of Khuttal, followed them south of the Oxus and captured their baggage train. Nowadays, lost luggage is generally down to the shenanigans of airport baggage handlers.

Henry IV, also known as Henry Bolingbroke, was proclaimed King of England and Lord of Ireland from this day in 1399 and held onto the throne until 1413, asserting the claim of his grandfather, Edward III, to the Kingdom of France along the way.

More recently, this was a day of hope in 1938, when The League of Nations (founded on 10 January 1920, as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended WWI – the first international organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace) unanimously outlawed ‘intentional bombing of civilian populations’. That’s on the same day that Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. With the benefit of hindsight, neither of those undertakings really went to plan, did they?

Before you read this, I will have spent a long weekend in London with some of the family. #3 son is flying in from Thailand so that he and #4 can go to the Anthony Joshua v Alexander Povetkin boxing match at Wembley on Saturday 22nd. I’ve no idea what the pugilistic appeal is – I personally think it’s a wholly uncivilised ‘sport’ – but they went to watch Joshua fight last year and so obviously weren’t put off. Next day, the OH and #3 are flying to Johannesburg for a few days and then on to Cape Town as their base for two weeks. The OH spent his formative years in SA and that’s where #3 spent his gap year, so they both have an attachment to the country – plus the ma-in-law will be in J’burg for those first few days and the OH’s youngest sister is working on a film in Cape Town. Don’t feel too sorry for me – I turned down the chance to go. Of course, all this is assuming #3 manages to fly out of Hong Kong, where – as I type – he is stranded because of the typhoon. It’s OK though – he’s found the bar in his hotel …

Someone who also isn’t going anywhere is my mother, who now has a permanent room in the care home where she spent a respite period. Yay! I say permanent, but she can still be thrown out (according to the twenty-one page contract I signed) for conduct unbecoming. Not sure what you’d have to do for that action to be taken – certainly the lady who steals serviettes from the restaurant and hoards them, the one who removes greeting cards and trinkets from residents’ rooms and redistributes them à la ageing Robin Hood, nor the one who periodically rushes up and down the corridors like an octogenarian Jenson Button (Zimmer frame substituted for racing car), squawking for everyone to get out of her way because her taxi has been ordered and she doesn’t want to miss it, have been expelled. Neither has the lady who caused the whole place to go into lock-down one time when I was visiting, because she was trying to escape. She thought she’d spotted a relative in the car park and wanted to go out and see them, but because of the necessary security she couldn’t get through the main doors, so proceeded to try and kick her way out, setting off all sorts of alarms – she was certainly giving it some welly! Once they managed to calm her down, a carer took her outside to show her there was nobody there that she knew, and peace once more prevailed.

Now I need to escape – and I know the security codes!

Thanks, Jenny.

Toodles.

NP

***

Thanks Nell – another corking blog.

See you next month, when we’ll all probably have the heating on and scarves and gloves at the ready!

Happy reading,

Jenny xx

End of the month: A glimpse of autumn

By

On August 31, 2018

In Blog, End of Month, Fiction, history, Jenny Kane, News

OK, so who said it could be almost September already? No one asked me! I have far too much to get done this year for it to be time to knock on September’s door.

However! As it is the end of the month, I’m flinging the door open wide to the wonderful Nell Peters.

Over to you Nell…

Guten Morgen meine Freunde, and anyone else who just happens to be passing. Here we are at the end of August – how on earth did that happen? The school summer holidays are all but over and we are standing at the edge of the slippery slope that descends into cold weather, short daylight hours, Halloween, Bonfire Night and *whispers* Christmas. Yikes!

There is already Christmas stuff in our local Tesco …But before we start hanging up our stockings and buying earplugs as protection against Slade, there’s the OH’s birthday to celebrate. On the day he was born (1961), the Dutch National Ballet was formed through a merger of Netherlands Ballet (Dance Director, Sonia Gaskell) and Amsterdam Ballet (Dance Director, Mascha ter Weeme). This put an end to the rivalry or ‘ballet war’ between the two companies – loaded tutus at dawn? OK, anyone else harbouring a stereotypical mental image of prima ballerinas noisily pirouetting their stuff across the stage in wooden clogs, with a tulip clenched firmly between their teeth? That’ll just be me, then …My paternal grandfather, Wilfred, was also born on this day way back in 1897 – he was the one who lied about his age to become a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps in 1914. Wilfred shared his date of birth with American actor, Frederic March, born in Racine, Wisconsin, who appeared in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Best Years of Our Lives, as well as German writer and poet, Marianne Bruns, born in Leipzig. They died in 1966, 1975 and 1994 respectively, so Marianne walks away a clear winner of the longevity prize. Also on this day in 1897, British General Horatio Kitchener’s army occupied Berber, North of Khartoum, and Thomas Edison patented the Kinetoscope (kinetographic camera), the first movie projector. Say cheese!

by Bassano, proof print, 29 July 1910

August 31st 1976 wasn’t a good day for either Mexico (their currency, the peso, was devalued) or George Harrison, when Judge Richard Owen of the United States District Court found him guilty of ‘subconsciously’ copying the 1963 Chiffons’ tune, He’s So Fine  and releasing it as My Sweet Lord in November 1970. The record reached #1, making George the first Beatle to have a solo chart-topper, but with nasty terms like ‘copyright infringement’ and ‘plagiarism’ thrown into the legal mix, the shine may have faded somewhat from that achievement.

Perhaps musical composition (and this is pure hypothesis on my part, since I am tone deaf!) bears similarity to writing a novel, in that everything is to a certain extent a re-mix? The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations (1895) is a list compiled by Georges Polti, to categorise every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance. He analysed Greek classical texts, plus classical and contemporary French works, along with a few non-French authors. In the book’s introduction, Polti claims to be continuing the work of Carlo Gozzi, who also suggested thirty-six basic plots.

However, in 1965, Kurt Vonnegut submitted a thesis to Chicago University, arguing that there are in fact only six scenarios that form the foundation of literary ‘shapes’. Much to his great annoyance (fair enough – anyone who has ever laboured over a thesis knows how much blood, sweat and hair-tearing goes into it) his work was rejected. But years later the dust was blown from the manuscript and the premise used as a springboard for researchers at the University of Vermont, who fed 1,737 stories from Project Gutenberg – all English-language fiction texts – through a programme that analysed the language for emotional content. They concluded there are ‘six core trajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives’. Way da go, Kurt!

On this day in 1730, amusingly-named Gottfried Finger (sounds painful) died. You will all know he was a Moravian Baroque composer and virtuoso musician, the viol (of the viola/violin family) being his weapon of choice – many of his compositions were written for the instrument. Finger was born in Olomouc, the modern-day Czech Republic, and worked for the court of James II of England before becoming a freelance composer. Sometimes known as Godfrey, he also wrote operas and entered a contest in London to adapt William Congreve’s The Judgement of Paris as such, but after managing only fourth place he grabbed his bow and resin in a huff and moved to Germany, where he died in Mannheim.

Gottfried was preceded in death by one Ole Worm (snigger), Danish physician and historian, who breathed his last on this day in 1654, aged sixty-six. Ole was the son of Willum Worm (it just gets better!) a wealthy man and mayor of Aarhus, and Dorothea Fincke, the daughter of friend and colleague, Thomas Fincke. Thomas was a mathematician and physicist who invented the terms ‘tangent’ and ‘secant’, while teaching at the University of Copenhagen for more than sixty years. I really hope he was given a gold watch for long service. To give Ole his due, while he was personal physician to King Christian IV of Denmark, he courageously remained in Copenhagen to care for the sick, during an epidemic of the Black Death. Olé, Ole! So sorry …

More recently, Walter William Bygraves – better known as Max – died in Australia on this day in 2012. Born into poverty in Rotherhithe, London in 1922, he worked his way up to become a comedian, singer, actor and variety performer who had his own TV show. He appeared in the Royal Variety Show twenty times, as well as hosting Family Fortunes. Bit of a lad, was our Max – not only did he have three children with his wife, Blossom (real name Gladys), he added another three, born as the result of extra-marital affairs.

Exactly a year after Max, David Paradine Frost died of a heart attack while enjoying a life on the ocean wave, aboard the MV Queen Elizabeth – he’d been booked as a guest speaker. Born the third child and only son of a Methodist minister, Frost took the well-trodden Cambridge/Footlights route and, after graduating with a Third in English, went on to develop a hugely varied career in the media. He first came to the viewing public’s notice in the UK when chosen to host the satirical programme That Was The Week That Was in 1962, and his popularity led to work in US TV, plus a series of high-profile interviews, including Richard Nixon. A post mortem revealed that Frost suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a hereditary heart disease which affects roughly one in five hundred people – sadly, it also killed his oldest son, Miles, in 2015, when he was just thirty-one.

On the domestic front, August has been a time of upheaval and life-changing decisions. I can see a chink of light at the end of an eight year long tunnel, which began when my dad had a minor stroke. At that time, both my parents had already started to show obvious signs of dementia but weren’t diagnosed with the vascular variety until four years later. It was all downhill after that; even with some family members helping out and five visits a day from private care providers, we staggered from one crisis to the next.

After my dad died last year, my mother inevitably spent some time on her own and to counteract this as much as possible, #2 son – bless him – stayed at the house Mon-Fri, supplementing the care visits. This still left weekends and that’s when I would spend hours on end gawping at images from the CCTV system we had installed for my mother’s safety. Things came to a head during the recent hot weather, when she started to refuse both liquids and food – she quickly became so weak that she ended up doing an overnighter in hospital on a saline drip. We’d bent over backwards to adhere to both parents’ wish to stay in their own home, but after giving it our very best shot, #2 and I simultaneously decided that we’d come to the end of the road – hard decisions had to be made, and quickly.

Over four days we planned a military operation to get my mother out of the house she hasn’t voluntarily left for a very long time, to begin the four weeks of respite care I’d arranged in a rather swish care home – previously checked out for just such an eventuality. By stealth – the theme tune to Mission Impossible playing on a loop in my head – we got clothes, toiletries and a few personal items together and stashed them out of sight, arranged for one of the visiting carers who has a good rapport with my mother to stay on for extra time to act as escort, along with another carer borrowed from the home, we also borrowed a wheelchair from the home, booked a disabled taxi, managed to grapple through an assessment of needs with one of the care home staff, and crawled to the pub exhausted the evening before Evacuation Day.

Everything went like clockwork on the morning. My mother was sitting in the hallway, all dressed and fed and in the wheelchair – we’d told her she had an appointment and though protesting loud and long that she didn’t want to go, we steadfastly ignored her. It was a case of now or never – and never wasn’t an option. Then just as the taxi was due, there was a car accident at the end of the drive – no one hurt, but damaged vehicles blocking the road caused a huge tailback. When the taxi eventually arrived, the two carers swooped into action and had my mother out of the door and into the back in seconds – amid wails of outrage – and rode shotgun during the short drive to the care home. #2 and I followed at a safe distance, the burden of guilt weighing heavily on our shoulders.

As always, I’m writing this blog in advance so that Jenny has time to do the magic thing with it. There are six days to go until the respite period ends and we will know then if a permanent place can be offered – stressful, nail-biting times. So far, things have gone well. My mother is eating and drinking almost normally and interacting with others and staff and has had quite a few visitors. It’s a well-run, friendly home with a good atmosphere – her room has a lovely view of the gardens and one day she may even venture out there. The fees are eye-watering, but she has round-the-clock care from brilliant staff, in a safe and secure setting – you can’t put a price on that.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for having me, Jenny. Toodles.

NP

***

GOOD LUCK!!

Guilt is always such a nightmare- especially when you’ve done the right thing.

Thanks again for such a fab blog,

Happy reading,

Jenny xx

 

End of the Month: July in a Nutshell

By

On July 31, 2018

In Blog, End of Month, Fiction, history, Jenny Kane, News, Non fiction

Another month has zipped by, and so Nell Peters is here with her popular roundup of events. A belated happy birthday to Nell (who shares the same birthday as me), and thanks, as ever, for another fab post.

Over to you…

Good day! Both Jenny and I are a year older since we last met, and while the Football World Cup didn’t actually come home, sales of waistcoats rocketed. That’s July in a nutshell and I’m not even going to mention tennis or Donald Trump …

Someone celebrating their birthday this fine day is JK (Joanne Kathleen, as I’m sure you all know) Rowling, who clocks up fifty-three years. The Harry Potter series of books hit the shelves in June 1997, with publication of HP and the Philosopher’s Stone, and the last (seventh), HP and the Deathly Hallows was released in July 2007. Rowling’s imagined biography for her main character saw him born on 31st July 1980 in Godric’s Hollow, whereas the actor Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry P (again, as you all know – I have a talent for stating the obvious), was born in Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London – where sons #2, 3 and 4 were born – on 23rd July 1989, about nine weeks after #3. I’m sure if Daniel’s mother had known then the significance of the last day of the month, she’d have held on. In keeping with the 31/7 theme, the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne, with contributions by JKR, was published worldwide at midnight on this day two years ago. And what do you give the woman who can have anything she wants for her birthday? I like to think at least one of her friends will give her some tasteful Harry Pottery. I’m so sorry …

A name caught my eye as I was researching people born on 31st July and immediately appealed to my pathetic sense of humour – take a posthumous bow Arthur (John) Daley; not the ducker and diver, but an American sports writer and journalist born in New York City in 1904. He wrote for The New York Times (his only employer) for almost fifty years, producing over 10,000 columns with an estimated twenty million words – and in 1956 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his troubles. He reported on the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and when he was chosen to repeat that role in Berlin in 1936, he became the first Times correspondent to be sent overseas for a sports assignment. In later years, he covered the Olympics in Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich. Daley lived in Old Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife, Betty and their four children, two of whom followed in his footsteps to become journalists on the Times. He died of a heart attack on January 3rd 1974, as he was walking to work, and is buried in the ambitiously-named Gate of Heaven Cemetery, New York.

Poor old Arthur didn’t make the Montreal Olympics in 1976, but I did. I managed to miss all of the long, hot summer that cooked the UK that year, but Montreal summers are always hot, with crippling degrees of humidity because the city is a series of islands. Being around three months pregnant and very sickly, I quite regretted shelling out for a ticket for the opening ceremony, as I sat through the rather lacklustre proceedings, feeling like death.

Montreal had experienced the coldest winter on record during 1970/71 (152 inches of snow, yikes!), followed by a period of violent political unrest. The terrorist Front du Libération du Quebec (FLQ) exploded ninety-five bombs in the city – the largest of which blew up the Stock Exchange – and kidnapped the British Consul, James Cross, along with the Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded by imposing martial law, and armoured personnel carriers patrolled the streets, with troops detaining hundreds of people without charge. The FLQ released Cross but murdered Laporte, and the city was a pretty scary place to be for a very long time – even when I arrived in ’74 – particularly if you spoke with a British accent.

You might think, then, that the Games of the XXI Olympiad – to give them their official title – would be embraced as an opportunity to turn a corner, to go some way to ease the tragedy of the 1972 Munich Olympics, and demonstrate that sport could transcend all. After all, the Games were the first to be hosted by Canada and, to date, the only summer Olympics held there. But no; multiple strikes, organised corruption, theft and sabotage, along with rocketing costs, left the city with a debt of (Canadian) $1.6bn which would take decades to clear, not to mention an unfinished stadium. And to add to the fiasco, as the Games were about to open, twenty-two African nations withdrew, because the International Olympic Committee refused to ban New Zealand for sending the All Blacks rugby team to tour in apartheid South Africa.

But the British did turn up, and one of the women toddling around the stadium, dodging cement mixers and wearing the rather hideous uniform – red skirt suit, white shoes, bag, scarf that looked like a hangman’s noose, topped off with what one of my grandmothers would have described as a muck-spreading hat – was Princess Anne (without her horse, in case you were wondering?)

My only claim to fame is that I’ve watched the Olympic Torch procession up close and personal twice – first in Montreal in torrential rain and then in sunny Norfolk in 2012, prior to the London Olympics. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Zara Phillips won a silver medal on her horse, High Kingdom in the Equestrian Eventing final on 31/7/12. This was on the same day that two car bombs killed twenty-one people in Baghdad and a second power grid failure in India in two days left 670 million people without power. That’s an awful lot of redundant toasters.

I doubt Zara ever met our niece, who was a volunteer chauffeur during the London Games – as a teacher she was on summer hols and didn’t have to take leave. Not speaking a word of Russian, she was the perfect choice to ferry around a Russian ambassador, who didn’t speak a word of English. What a jovial pairing that must have been (he did, however, manage to invite her to some lavish official function – an offer she tactfully and wisely refused.) Worst of all, she had to wear the awful pink and purple clobber assigned to all staff and volunteers. Who ‘designs’ these outfits, I wonder – colour blind orang-utans with no dress sense?

As I write this in advance, I hope I’m not tempting fate by mentioning that this July has brought hot temperatures and little rain to the UK. And some record heat levels were recorded elsewhere in 1994. It was 39.3°C in Pleschen, East-Germany on this day; Arcen Limburg, Holland recorded an average over the month of 22.0°C – the warmest July since 1783; and Stockholm averaged 21.5°C, their hottest July since 1855. Phew!

Loretta Young

Lots of weddings have taken place on 31st July over the years; American actress Loretta Young married advertising executive Tom Lewis (1940); singer-songwriter and musician Ray Charles married Eileen Williams (1951); singer Natalie Cole married songwriter Marvin Yancy (1976); Bee Gee Robin Gibb married author and artist Dwina Murphy (1986); actor Patrick Dempsey married make-up artist Jillian Fink (1999); Lady Davina Windsor married surfer and the first Maori to marry into the Royal Family, Gary Lewis at the chapel in Kensington Palace in London (2004); and then a double whammy in 2010 when singer-songwriter Alicia Keys married award-winning rapper Swizz Beatz in Corsica, and Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former US President Bill and wife Hillary, married investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in New York.

We had a family wedding on 31st July 2015, when our oldest niece (aforementioned Olympic chauffeur) tied the knot in Stratford-upon-Avon, from whence her OH hailed. It was a lovely old country house-type venue and no expense was spared, as the sun shone down on the bridal party and their many guests. Our immediate family had a couple of wardrobe malfunctions in the footwear department – #2 son forgot to pack his smart shoes and so had to wear trainers with his formal suit, but that paled into insignificance compared with #1’s experience. Can you imagine why anyone would order a pair of very expensive shoes off the internet and not try them on to make sure they were a good fit? The first time those shoes met his larger feet was in the hotel room as he and his wife were getting ready for the ceremony – he was giving the bride (his cousin) away because her dad had died four years previously, so no trainer substitutes for him.

The wedding was in two parts – the first conducted by a celebrant in the ruins of an old chapel in the grounds. Son managed to escort the bride from house to chapel wearing the crippling shoes, but they were removed at the first opportunity, and when he walked the bride into the official proceedings within the house, he did so in his brightly-coloured socks. That was also the case for the photographs – at least there were no visible holes. Nor did anyone seem to notice that #2 and 3 were wearing almost-identical blue suits – #2’s newly-purchased and #3’s hired. Despite an enviable honeymoon in the Maldives, the ‘happy couple’ had separated before Christmas. Slightly bizarre that the outfit I purchased far outlasted the marriage …

#2 son’s wedding was booked for 30th July 2011, but, alas, was called off a few months beforehand – there seems to be some sort of wedding curse going on here! That year for us was four funerals and no weddings … Looking on the bright side, cancellation meant the dreaded stag do would not go ahead – they’d planned a long weekend on a canal barge. The very thought of several inebriated young men, staggering around on deck in close proximity to murky waters, turned my blood cold – not helped by my friend Allison insisting on referring to it as The Boat of Death. The wedding may not have happened, but the couple are still together, as are another couple who actually did get married on that day.

Step forward once again Zara Phillips, who wed rugby player, Mike Tindall. Without any nuptials to attend, the OH and I nipped up to Edinburgh for a few days, not realising the wedding would be taking place down the road in Canongate Kirk – in fact, several people staying at our hotel were going to the bunfight. As I hadn’t packed my embarrassing hat, we decided not to gatecrash.

Speaking of which, hat’s me lot – sorry again! Thanks, Jenny!

Toodles!

NP

***

Thanks again Nell!

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny xx

 

 

End of the Month: March Madness with Nell Peters

By

On March 31, 2018

In Blog

It’s that time again! What wonders does Nell Peters have to share with us this month?

Grab that cuppa and get cosy!

Over to you Nell…

Morning all – and happy Easter Eve, on the ninetieth day of the year! I was going to say Easter Saturday, but apparently that’s the one that follows Easter Sunday. Not a lot of people know that, or maybe it’s just me. I don’t imagine too many folk will be around today, so who shall we be rude about? Perish the thought … although a few candidates spring to mind.

Anyone heard of the Bangorian Controversy? I confess I hadn’t. It all began when the Bishop of Bangor, one Benjamin Hoadly, delivered a sermon on 31st March 1717 to King George I. His focus was The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ, taken from John 18:36; ‘My kingdom is not of this world’. Hoadly’s interpretation was that there’s no justification in the scriptures for church government in any form, because Christ did not delegate His authority to any representatives. There are a few church bods who should perhaps take note? Whatever, obviously this was a pretty contentious viewpoint, hence the controversy bit – one of the main objectors being a chap called Thomas Sherlock (Dean of Chichester), whose name naturally appealed to my pathetic sense of humour.

The Bangor in question is the one in Wales, as opposed to County Down, Northern Ireland, which is why the item attracted my attention in the first place. If I had a quid for every time I’d passed through the station there, I could buy you all a slice of Welsh rarebit. This was while sons #1 and 2 were boarders at Indefatigable School, Bangor being the nearest train stop to the school’s location in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, although there is still a disused station there where tourists pose for pics in front of the sign. From Bangor it was a taxi ride over the Menai Suspension Bridge (Thomas Telford, 1826) to Anglesey and the seat of learning, housed in what used to be the Marquis of Anglesey’s sprawling estate. All very beautiful in the summer, but slightly grim during winter months. Llanfair PG (local shorthand) translates as ‘Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio of the red cave’. Fancy that.

The one hundred and forty-two pupil establishment was run strictly in the naval tradition, with all boys and some staff wearing appropriate uniforms, and areas of the school referred to in nautical terms – most obviously the kitchens as the galley. All this was in homage to the original school being aboard a ship called Indefatigable, moored on the Mersey in Liverpool from 1864. In those days the ethos was to offer poor boys a home and education to equip them for a life in the Merchant Navy. Incidentally, it was on this day in 1972 that the rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy was discontinued, and in the UK the official Beatles fan club (if I mention Yellow Submarine that’s a link to the sea-faring theme, right?) was closed – just thought I’d toss in those facts for good measure.

Where was I, ah yes – dry land Indefatigable sleeping quarters were called dorms (as opposed to cabins or similar) and there was a nocturnal fire in Raleigh House during #1’s residence. Try as he might, the Housemaster couldn’t rouse the boy as flames licked around ancient timbers, and ended up physically dragging him from his bunk (no hammocks!) Miraculously, no one was hurt and damage was contained. Said heroic Housemaster, Chris Holliday, was Head of English; he is now retired and enjoying a comparatively stress-free life in northern France with his dog, Einstein – we chat every now and again on FB. Chris and I that is, Einstein being more into Snapchat.

With grounds stretching down to the shores of the Menai Strait (Afon Menai), water sports and seamanship skills featured strongly in the curriculum, along with more mundane academic subjects. While #1 did well, became deputy head boy and left with a slew of impressive results en route for uni, #2 decided to buck the system and rebel. His biggest claim to fame – definitely one of his less bright ideas – was to lead a bid for freedom at the dead of night. Picture several thirteen year-old boys on foot traipsing down narrow, largely unlit, winding country lanes and over the bridge to Bangor, in a haphazard crocodile formation; those tiny roads are scary enough driving in daylight! When the intrepid ones reached Boots’ car park, inspiration deserted them and eventually a member of the public alerted the school – presumably, one of the lads was daft enough to wear part of the school uniform for ease of identification. The Great Escape that never was; I think I prefer the Steve McQueen version.

Coincidentally, some years before the sons’ time at the school, Super Blogger Anne Williams was studying at Bangor Grammar School for Girls, whose pupils used to be invited to Indefatigable school discos to trip the light fantastic with the older boys. What a weeny world this is, forsooth. The school is now occupied by the MoD, after it closed unexpectedly during the summer of the year we moved from London to Norfolk – and so after hasty negotiations, #2 went from being a pupil living several hour’s travel and hundreds of miles away from his school, to literally being over the road.

#3 was home for ten days at the beginning of March, catching up with his boss at the company’s UK base, as he does every now and again. He flew out of Bangkok in temperatures of 34 degrees C and landed at Heathrow early next morning in -1C and snow – nine minutes early after a thirteen hour flight.

Not too shabby, although he was with Thai Air and it was a dry flight because of Buddhist’s Day – something he learned to his horror only when he checked in and went off in search of his customary pre-flight pint of Guinness. From Heathrow, he then had a three hour drive back to Norfolk in scary conditions. The same day, a friend’s son flew from Germany to Heathrow en route for Edinburgh and his stag do. Alas, the guys were all stranded in London. Seriously? Air Canada pilots regularly land on six feet of solid ice!

While home, #3 did the usual rounds of brothers, plus nieces and nephews in his capacity as everyone’s favourite uncle – he spoils them rotten and lets them get away with murder. #4 had moved house since his big brother was last home and so received much gratis advice on interior redecoration; I didn’t notice anything as practical or exhausting as a paintbrush being wielded, though.

11th March was Mother’s Day in the UK and as has become a tradition, #4 arranged (for want of a better word!) my flowers in a lime green plastic jug thingy from Ikea, that the OH bought many years ago because he thought I’d like the shape. Shape is OK – hate the colour. When #4 was thirteen, he got his first pay packet from his paper round the day before MD, raided Tesco on his way home and put the flowers he’d bought into the Ikea jug. It was the first thing he saw as he charged through the kitchen en route for his room – where the flowers remained overnight, with his window wide open so they remained fresh. As if this house isn’t cold enough!

Our nomad (he’s getting far too much publicity in this blog!) flew back to Bangkok on 11/3, leaving at crazy o’clock in the morning. So, my celebration actually stretched from Friday night dinner, through Saturday lunch and on into Sunday, with various sons and their families appearing whenever they could, combining MD with saying adios to their brother. It was a brilliant weekend! Because he isn’t home for Easter (holiday in Sri Lanka, if you please!) I have had to warn him that the bunny may not have enough petrol in the Eggmobile to deliver his chocs. However, the annual Easter Egg Hunt will take place here, the Grands searching for spoils in what GD #2 refers to as ‘the dark forest’ – in reality a rather more mundane area of perhaps fifteen tall trees.

The Grand National has been run several times on 31st March, starting in 1905 (the 67th race) when it was won by Frank Mason riding Kirkland. The 116th race in 1962 was won by Fred Winter on Kilmore; 127th by Brian Fletcher on Red Rum in 1973; 133rd by Maurice Barnes on Rubstic in 1979, and in 1984 the 138th race was won by Neale Doughty on Hallo Dandy. Since 1839 the Grand National – a National Hunt horse race – has been run annually at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, with the exception of war years 1916-18 and 1941-45, when the land was requisitioned for military use.

It is a handicap steeplechase run over 6.907 km with horses jumping 30 fences over two laps and is the most valuable jump race in Europe, with a prize fund of £1 million in 2017 – note to self: learn how to ride a horse, although at 5’9” I may be a little tall to be a jockey.

I know nothing about horse racing, but even I’ve heard of Red Rum (and Shergar, who disappeared in February, 1983!), the horse that holds the record number of Grand National wins – in 1973, 1974 and 1977, coming second in 1975 and 1976. Plus for sixteen years he held the record for completing the course in the fastest time of 9 minutes and 1.9 seconds. The race is notoriously difficult and has been described as ‘the ultimate test of a horse’s courage’, but Red Rum’s jumping prowess was legendary; not one tumble in a hundred races. He was retired before the 1978 National after suffering a hairline fracture the day before the race.

However, he had already become a national celebrity, opening supermarkets and leading the Grand National parade for many years. He even switched on the Blackpool Illuminations in 1977 – no mean feat with cumbersome hooves, I imagine.

When the horse died on 18 October 1995 (aged 30) it was announced in the national press and he was subsequently buried at the Aintree winning post, with an epitaph that reads, ‘Respect this place / this hallowed ground / a legend here / his rest has found / his feet would fly / our spirits soar / he earned our love for evermore’.

Multi award winning actor and Scot, Ewan McGregor celebrates his forty-seventh birthday today, although it may be a slightly subdued affair since he filed for divorce earlier this year after twenty-two years of marriage and four daughters, only to be unceremoniously dumped by his new love interest. Hey-ho. His film, TV and theatre credits are impressive, including Trainspotting, The Ghost Writer and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, plus later versions of Star Wars, to name very few. His maternal uncle, Denis Lawson appeared in the original Star Wars. McGregor is heavily involved in charity work, including UNICEF, visiting some of their projects during the motor bike documentaries he made with mate Charley Boorman.

Another actor born today is American Gabriel (Gabe) Kaplan – he’s seventy-three. In Montreal, I remember watching him in an American TV series called Welcome Back Kotter – he played the eponymous role of Gabe (no chance of forgetting his character’s name) Kotter, a teacher who returned to his alma mater in New York to teach a remedial class of loafers, called Sweathogs. As a member of the original group of Sweathogs, Kotter befriended the current bunch and over time got his unruly pupils to realise their potential. The Sweathogs’ unofficial leader was Vinnie Barbarino, a cocky Italian-American, fan of Star Trek and resident heartthrob of the group. The part was played by one John Travolta (pre Saturday Night Fever and Grease etc), who was in real life a high school dropout.

Our third and final thespian birthday is another American, Rhea Perlman, who is seventy. She is separated from husband Danny DeVito with whom she has two daughters and a son. At 5’0” she’d probably stand more chance than me of riding in the Grand National – and DDV is even shorter, although a tad overweight. Perlman’s career began off-Broadway in tiny parts until her first notable TV (recurring) part as Zena, the girlfriend of Louie De Palma (played by DeVito), in Taxi. But her most memorable role has to be that of wisecracking Carla Tortelli, waitress in a sitcom set in ex-baseball player Sam Malone’s Boston bar. And that’s my last word on the subject – Cheers!

Thanks for having me, Jen – not too many Easter eggs, now.

Toodles.

NP

www.Author.to/nellpeters 

***

Huge thanks Nell- as ever. 

As if I’d eat too many eggs….wipes chocolate from chin…

Happy reading,

Jenny x

 

End of the Month Blog: Farewell February

By

On February 28, 2018

In Blog

Another month has whizzed by with lightening speed – and a few coughs and colds (and a broken foot in my case)

Let’s see what the lovely Nell Peters has to say for herself this month…

Over to you Nell…

Hi y’all! Good to see you again, on this last day of February – 28th, as it’s not a Leap Year (just in case you hadn’t noticed). The proposals will have to wait, ladies.

Let’s dive straight in, shall we? Looking at a web site listing those with birthdays today, I noticed quite a few of them described as YouTube or Instagram stars – seriously? Needless to say, they’re all very young, mostly American, and I’ve never heard of any of them. Best of all, however, has to be Australian Kai Saunders, seventeen today, whose slightly iffy claim to fame is that he’s a Scooter Rider. My first thought was that the older Grands are scooter riders also – even I can ride a scooter, though it’s been a while – but I hope their achievements later in life will be a little more worthy and substantial. Kai’s mini bio includes the info that he rides for Phoenix Pro Scooters who competed at the Auckland Street Jam in 2017. Now we know.

I wonder if TV chef Ainsley Harriott will be baking his own birthday cake today – he’ll need sixty-one candles. Born in London of Jamaican heritage, as well as training and working as a chef, he dabbled in comedy and singing and formed the duo Calypso Twins with old school friend, Paul Boross. They released a hit record in the early 1990s and went on to be regular performers at the Comedy Store, before crossing the pond to appear on American TV and radio shows. It was via radio that his prolific UK TV career was launched. And he never seems to stop smiling that brilliant smile.

Celebrating his seventy-eighth birthday today is Barry Fantoni, whom I knew very briefly eons ago. As a gangly late teen, I was at St Martin’s Art College (I had a few false starts before I decided what I wanted to do) when Gary Withers, as editor of the college mag, took advantage of students and Private Eye bods frequenting the same Soho pub (St M’s was then in Charing Cross Road) to approach BF bar side and request an interview. Gary couldn’t keep the appointment and asked me to go instead, as chez Fantoni wasn’t a million miles away from where I lived, a smallish detour on the way home.

I duly presented myself at the door of the Clapham Common basement flat, pad and pen poised for action and absolutely no idea what I was doing, as I seldom read the publication let alone contributed to it. It went surprisingly well, as I recall, and for someone very much in the public eye at that time, he came across as super-friendly and refreshingly modest. I learned later that he had a bit of a dodgy reputation for female conquests, but I have to say he was a perfect gentleman while I perched on his uncomfortable sofa. I sent him a copy of the piece I’d written for approval and we stayed in touch for a while. I once met cartoonist/artist/writer Ralph Steadman at the flat – which impressed the OH last Christmas when I revealed that snippet from my shady past, rather more than the Steadman coffee table book his mother gifted us. It wasn’t great.

For those sweet young things amongst you who have no idea who Barry Fantoni is, meet the London-born author, satirist, cartoonist, TV/radio presenter and jazz musician of Italian and Jewish descent, who was in many ways the epitome of Swinging Sixties cool. Already writing scripts for That Was the Week that Was (from 1962) and cartoonist for Private Eye (from 1963), his TV break came after he was asked to design a Pop Art backdrop for Ready, Steady, Go – the rock music programme that kicked off the weekend on Friday evenings for a whole generation – which he also sometimes presented.

From there he went on to have his own show, A Whole Scene Going On (named after the Bob Dylan track) which went out live, had sixteen million viewers and earned Fantoni the 1966 award for TV Personality of the Year, ahead of Cliff Richard, Tom Jones and Mick Jagger. The Daily Mirror wrote of him in 1967, ‘Barry doesn’t so much know what is in – he decides it.’ Strangely enough, like me he now churns out crime novels, only his desk is in Calais.

And what of the aforementioned Gary Withers? While I shamefully never used the qualification I earned at St M’s (now Central Saint Martin’s) and wandered off elsewhere, he was driven by an overwhelming need to succeed, coming from a single parent home in a rundown area of London. And succeed he most certainly did – he is now the zillionaire head of a global design company, The Imagination Group Ltd, which he founded while still at college. The boy done good – hats very much off to you Gary, old chap.

On this day in 1646, one Roger Scott was tried and punished for nodding off in church in Massachusetts – judging by some of the soporific sermons we had to sit through during monthly Girl Guide church parades, he would be neither the first nor last; talk about a captive audience. Massachusetts (who has the Bee Gee’s song bouncing around their head now? You’re welcome!) was probably not the best place to grab forty winks during worship, with its wall-to-wall devout Puritans, rabid intolerance of heretics, and (albeit forty-odd years later) the Salem witch trials.

Roger was roused from his nap when a tithingman – a powerful officer of the church – whacked him over the head with his trusty staff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Roger hit back and it was decided he should receive a whipping as punishment, as well as have his card marked as ‘a common sleeper at the publick exercise.’ Oh the shame …

Staying in Mass – the US state, not the religious rite – 1704 was a Leap Year and it was on 29th February that the Deerfield Massacre took place during the Queen Anne’s War. The French and their Native American allies fought many tit-for-tat battles against the English between 1702 and 1713, in an effort to gain control of the continent (shouldn’t that have been the birthright of the indigenous Red Indian tribes anyway? Just a random thought …) Under the command of Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville, the English frontier settlement at Deerfield was attacked before dawn, and much of the town burned to the ground, killing forty-seven. The colonial outpost was a traditional New England farming community, the majority of settlers being young families with wives and mothers who had moved west in search of land – the labour  that these women provided was essential to the survival of the settlement and its male inhabitants.

You might think that earned the women and their descendants an automatic right to absolute equality? Nope – in the US, much like the UK, from the mid 1800s several generations of women had to fight for the right to vote and although concessions varied from state to state, it wasn’t until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in August 1920 that all women were given those rights. In practice though, the same restrictions that hindered non-white men’s right to vote now also applied to non-white women – that took rather longer to sort out. In Canada, the enfranchisement of women timetable happened according to Province, starting in 1916 with Manitoba and good old (French Canadian) Quebec coming very much up the rear in 1940.

This month in the UK, we celebrated the centenary of suffrage for (some) women. Under the 1918 Representation of the People Act; women over the age of thirty who either owned land themselves or were married to men with property, or who were graduates, were able to put their cross in the box. The same act also dropped the voting age for men from thirty to twenty-one – so, not exactly on a level pegging. It was another whole decade until the 1928 Equal Franchise Act granted women in the UK truly equal voting rights, almost doubling the number of eligible females. That doesn’t really compare too favourably with democratic New Zealand, where all women were given the vote in 1893.

I mentioned the Girl Guides several paragraphs back: I so looked forward to meetings on a Friday evening (pre the Ready, Steady, Go years) and the two best hours of the week when I was free to let my hair down and actually have fun. We were exposed to all sorts of activities most of us would never have dreamed of or encountered otherwise – I can still recognise the star constellations I learned, but might struggle to tie a round turn and two half hitches knot – and we went away to an annual (usually wet, cold and muddy) camp for a week. Heaven – burned bangers, leaky tents, stinky latrines and all!

This was before Health and Safety turned the sensible world upside down, which was just as well, as our means of transport was a huge home removals van with our luggage (kit bags) thrown in, followed by perhaps thirty Guides and their leaders who simply piled in the back on top of one another. Not a seat belt (no seats!) between us, just bodies diving in to make themselves as comfy as possible for the duration. Scariest of all, the back was left open so that we could actually see – as far as I remember, we didn’t ever lose anyone overboard.

And now I’m going to pinch the opening line of all Barry Fantoni’s rhyming obits to the famous in Private Eye, written under the by-line of E J Thribb; So. Farewell then …

Thanks, Jen – and toodles!

NP

Author.to/nellpeters 

***

Another smashing blog! Who knew our Nell knew Barry Fantoni!? (Who I have to admit I have never heard of until now…ummm….xxx)

Have a smashing March everyone,

Happy reading,

Jenny x

End of the month round up with Nell Peters

By

On September 30, 2017

In Blog, Contemporary fiction, crime, Fiction

OK- I am in denial. It is not the end of September! It can’t be…except, it is…

Over to Nell!

Good grief! We’ve reached the end of September already – how did that happen? Anyway, let’s not waste any time as I’m sure you have better things to do, like giving your pet rhino a pedicure, or similar.

Red-headed actress Rula Lenska was born seventy years ago today as Róża Maria Leopoldyna Łubieńska – wow, pity her poor teachers calling the register. And she must have had custom-made, extra-long name tags for her school uniform. The family claim membership of the Polish aristocracy, with her parents being a count and countess – I wonder how impressed the good folk of St Neots were by that, because that’s where Rula was born. Perfectly nice town though it is, St Neots doesn’t quite conjure the same mental image as Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk or even Radomsko, does it?

Early on in her career and certainly by the time she hit thirty, Lenska had renounced her countess title. She said at the time, ‘In England it doesn’t count, if you’ll excuse the pun.’ Oh, how very droll. However, a good few years afterwards in January 2006, when she signed up for Celebrity Big Brother, she justified her decision to take part with the words, ‘I’m a crazy Polish countess who likes a challenge’. Do make up your mind, dear.

I’ve never seen CBB – a fact that horrified near-neighbour Peter, who is a designer on the show, when we were chatting at a party locally. Even I, though, knew about RL cavorting with MP George Galloway in a role-play task where he pretended to be a cat licking milk from her cupped hands, and Lenska stroked his ears and moustache. Eew … or perhaps mew. Apparently, she also managed to lock herself in the toilet during her time in the house, giving late singer Pete Burns the golden opportunity to quip, ‘Oh dear, what can the matter be, clapped-out actress stuck in the lavatory.’ How brutal – made me laugh when I read it, of course, but rather mean. I’m hanging my head in shame … really.

My mother also managed to lock herself in the downstairs toilet, a few days before my dad’s funeral. I got a call from the Bluebird lunch carer saying Mum had been in there quite some time and seemed to have forgotten how to slide back the basic lock in order to get out. When Sally (said carer) tried to relay instructions through the door, my mother said she didn’t know what she was talking about and became abusive. So, Sally rang her office and some bright spark there told her to contact me. What sensible advice, when they were in Twickenham and I was at home in Norfolk – a buck expertly passed if ever there was one.

Sally decided a chisel to jimmy the lock was the way to go and so I guided her through the idiosyncratic locked door system of the ground floor – each lock with ever more weirdo-shaped keys that need to be persuaded into action – out into the back garden and around the house to the potting shed. My father was always one for ‘we’ll get a man in’ but did have some basic tools and I was pretty sure that was where they’d be, along with various lawn mowers and other garden machinery, an ancient bicycle or two, a zillion disused flower pots and industrial strength spider webs. After she managed to get the shed door open, Sally quickly located a chisel and squealed with delight when she saw an axe. I persuaded her (with much difficulty) to leave that where it was.

While she was attempting her breaking and entering, she had to hang up the phone, promising to call back when the prisoner had been sprung. An hour passed and I was beside myself with worry, when she finally rang back. Mission aborted. She’d called the Fire Brigade. We had to end the call once again, as she was expecting them to ring. By the time I heard from her again, I was (even more of) a basket case – but job done. Not impressed by three hunky firemen setting her free with a strategically placed crowbar, my mother had spat harsh words at Sally for letting strangers into her house and insulted the poor guys loud and long – nothing to do with dementia, that’s how my mother rocks.

Going back to aforementioned Rula Lenska, Marc Bolan shared her date of birth, but died just two weeks short of his thirtieth birthday when the Mini being driven by his girlfriend hit a tree on Barnes Common – I passed the spot on many an occasion when I lived in London, and there were always flowers placed there. The singer/songwriter/poet/musician was actually born Mark Feld and tried out stage names Toby Tyler and Mark Bowland along the way, before settling on Marc Bolan. Through his father Simeon’s bloodline, he shares Rula Lenska’s Polish (plus in his case, Russian) ancestry, but does not appear to lay any claim to the nobility – so, just dead common like the rest of us.

While at school (from which he was expelled at fifteen for bad behaviour), he played guitar in the trio Susie and the Hula Hoops, with vocalists Helen Shapiro, twelve at the time, and Helen’s cousin the appropriately-named Susie Singer. I can remember Helen’s hit, Walking Back to Happiness – boy I’m old, but not as old as her, because she was born on 28th September 1946, the year before Lenska and Bolan.

The glam rock band T. Rex recorded Ride a White Swan in 1970 with producer Tony Visconti (who also managed David Bowie) – it was the single that changed Bolan’s career, and was inspired by Mungo Jerry’s success with In the Summertime, tempting Bolan away from predominantly acoustic to a more electric sound. Friends Bolan and Bowie both inflicted pretty awful names on their sons – Rolan (although he was named as Rolan Seymour Feld on his birth certificate) and Zowie, who wasn’t so lucky but is now rather more prosaically known as film director Duncan Jones.

The band were originally known as Tyrannosaurus Rex, named after one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs – a ferocious beastie capable of the ultimate in bone-crushing action. Ouch. These prehistoric predators were approx 40’ long and up to 20’ tall, with strong thighs and long, powerful tails built for speed, plus a 5’ skull which drilled into prey. They suffered from a bit of a design fault, though – while the two-fingered forearms could seize prey, they were too short to reach the mouth and deposit the poor unfortunate victim. Doh! That’s when their serrated, conical teeth came in handy (sorry!) – to pierce and grip flesh, and then rip it away from the body of their quarry. That could become the latest diet craze – tie up your arms somehow to make their reach shorter! Because we don’t have T. Rex-type teeth, no food would make it as far as the lips, ergo no calories consumed – sorted! I may yet become rich and famous …

On this day in 1955, another young man died as the result of a car crash – one James Dean, twenty-four year old American actor and cultural icon of teenage disillusionment, angst and social estrangement, as portrayed in arguably his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause. American teens of the era easily identified with the dilemma of his character, Jim Stark, who feels that no one, not even his peers, can understand him.

A keen participant in motor racing, Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder to a race meeting when the accident happened, having been stopped less than two hours earlier for speeding. The crash occurred at an intersection, when a 1950 Ford Tudor driven by Donald Turnupseed (I kid you not!) turned in front of the Porsche. Because he was driving too fast, Dean was unable to stop, colliding side-on with the other car. The actor died instantly, while Donald walked away with minor injuries. A subsequent coroner’s jury delivered a verdict that Dean was entirely at fault due to his speed, and found Turnupseed innocent of any criminal act. Fellow actor Humphrey Bogart observed about JD’s image and legacy: ‘Dean died at just the right time. He left behind a legend. If he had lived, he’d never have been able to live up to his publicity.’ Harsh, but possibly true. Unbelievably, according to Forbes Magazine (a US bi-weekly business publication, maxim The Capitalist Tool), James Dean’s estate still makes around $5M annually. Not too shabby …

This year, the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur is observed on 30th September, being the 10th of Tishri in the Hebrew calendar, or the tenth day of the seventh month, and is regarded as the ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’. It is considered the most important holiday in the Jewish faith. Falling in the month of Tishri (variably September or October in the Gregorian calendar), it marks the culmination of the Ten Days of Awe, a period of introspection and repentance that follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

I wonder quite how that sits with International Blasphemy Day, observed annually (mostly in North America and Europe) on 30/9 since 2009, after a student contacted the Centre for Inquiry in New York proposing the idea, which the CFI supported. Ronald Lindsay, president and CEO of the CFI said of Blasphemy Day, ‘We think religious beliefs should be subject to examination and criticism just as political beliefs are …’ For those who – like me – haven’t heard of the CFI, they are a non-profit educational organization, their primary mission to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. In January 2016, Richard Dawkins hitched his foundation’s wagon to the CFI. Probably enough said.

Today is also Chewing Gum Day (a lot of blaspheming going on when folk tread in the damned stuff?), International Lace Day and Family Health and Fitness Day USA – the latter two taking place on the last Saturday in September rather than a specific date. And then there’s National Mud Pack Day, also an American affair. The blurb says, ‘This holiday is for learning and appreciating the use of mud on the face or really any part of the body. Mud packs have been popular for years for facial treatments to keep the skin young, soft and supple, so let today be the day you learn how to nourish your skin with mud.’

No sooner said than done – it has been raining, so I’m off to dig up the garden (or maybe I’ll get a man in) and then luxuriate with a homemade concoction slathered over all the wrinkles. You may not recognise the youthful creature who guest blogs next month – plus, of course, I will be super-skinny from trying out and perfecting The T. Rex Short Arm Diet! May have to work on the name …

Thanks, as always, for having me, Jenny!

Toodles.

NP

Many thanks to Nell for another entertaining and fascinating blog. I will never look at Rula Lenska in the same way again!

Happy reading everyone.

Jenny x

 

 

 

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén