Normally I’m a big fan of the BBC website (though I find its revamped look cluttered) but the last week or so I seem to see the same stupid face gurning at me and its been annoying me. The clock in question belongs to something called Alison Graham who is a TV critic.
That’s the first thing that irritates me. TV critics. What is the point of reviewing a programme that has already aired? (Mind you with the current BBC it is likely to bounce round the 4 different channels for months). But just what purpose does a TV critic serve? Secondly if you are going to be photographed for the media could you at least make an effort. Instead, ms Graham has responded to the presence of a camera by spiking her hair up, removing her upper dentures and gurning her lower jaw over her top one. It was bugging me that she reminded me of someone…then it came to me:
Have these two mugs ever been seen in the same room at the same time. I think we should be told.
The Little Prince
Bouncing around on Youtube, as one does, I picked up a reference to a book called the Little Prince (Depeche Mode, Enjoy the Silence). I was dimly aware of it, I certainly recognised the cover, though thought it was by Oscar Wilde or sum soche.
I was Intrigued so I bought a copy, if only to understand why the video involves Dave Gahan wandering about in a robe and crown with a deckchair with the image of a rose appearing. It’s only a short thing but one of the most beautiful stories I’ve read in a while. It was written by a French fighter pilot in 1943 named Antoine de Saint-Exupery who disappeared, Earhart-fashion a little time later. Its a beautiful little parable about seeing the world through childlike eyes without the adult burden of “weighty matters of significance” (and this was written 40 years before mobile phones and e-mails (and trite blogs for that matter)). I found it extremely moving. Moreover, having read it, the imagery of the video becomes clear. There appears to be a dispute amongst the learned Youtubers about whether the video IS based on the book but there is no doubt that it is. A key link is something that the fox says to the Little Prince: “Words are the source of misunderstandings…..” Whereas the chorus of the song goes….”Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm.”
Hmm. Normally I hate people who quote song lyrics but word are indeed unnecessary but lunch isn’t so I’m off.
Have you ever listened to a song for years without paying it any mind and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, “discovered” it? I’ve had this happen a couple of times these last few weeks. I guess it comes from listening to the radio in the wee small hours of the morning. I’ve become a big fan of the divine Janice Long who probably keeps half the night truckers in the country sane with her sexy husky voice, and enthusiasm for music old and new; A marked change from Snotty Lamarr, whose show is on earlier and whom, whilst no less enthusiastic about music, inhabits a narrower world where only his tastes are acceptable and where dissenters are excoriated according to his own arcane and arbitrary criteria.
Actually I think Janice just likes getting on young bands so she can drool all over them (that’s enough One Eskimo Janice – Pleeeease!)
I never knew Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London until I picked it up in a compilation tape a couple of years back. I thought it was truly awful. Then I heard it on the radio again last week and it is a hoot. A great tight rhythm section which turns out after research to include Fleetwoods’ Mick and John but it is the lyrics that are laugh out loud funny: “……A hairy handed gent, ran amuck in Kent…”
There was another little piece of synchronicity that gets you believing in the supernatural and the powers of predestination. I was singing this little ditty in my head for a some time then bang: On it comes in the radio despite never hearing it for years. I thought it was Roxy Music but turned out in fact to be a minor act from the seventies called Captain. Click on the link below and you will hear why I always thought it was RM. But in fact it turns out that it has recently been used in an M&S ad campaign which is why it was in my head, and why it was out of the archives. Watch, it is great fun.
But the most amazing discovery is a little ditty called Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones whom, I am very slowly starting to discover, may well be the best rock act of all time. I always dimly knew that this song has an amazing female backing bit but it was only last week that I stopped and listened and realised how stunning it is. I’ve been listening to this all week (about 40 years after it was a hit!). A bit more googling tells me that the singer is called Merry Clayton (no I did not spell that wrong) who is an american gospel singer. The line she is singing is “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away.”
She sings the line 3 times in succession from 2′40. I can’t describe the intensity and urgency she puts into this line and on the third time she sings “murder” her voice breaks in an odd way into a sort of shriek. It raises the hairs on the back of your neck. After she ’shrieks’ there is a noise in the background which is alleged to be a stunned Mick Jagger going “whhooo”. Whatever, this has got to be one of the best rock songs ever. It is so driving and rhythmic and then there is this awesome BV. Here is a non-video clip, also from YouTube.
This is getting boring. I am sitting here with my deposit burning a hole in the sock under the creaky board under the stairs and I am seeing nothing but inertia. I am ready keen and willing to exchange and complete with immediate effect but absolutely nothing has happened yet. Grrr. Summer is flying by. (According to the calendar anyway. You wouldn’t know from looking out the window).
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I had a good weekend. We went to Cambridge to see an actor friend who is playing Jeeves in a production of Come On Jeeves. It was somewhat odd though: I’ve always been a big fan of the Wodehouse bookes but although written by PG himself, this was somewhat different in that Jeeves was on loan to someone else and wasn’t the unflappable sensible paragon he usually is. Bit disappointing that. It also starred Anita Harris and Victor Spinetti whom, I am assured was famous in the sixties.
Then Keith stayed over at Chez Corr and we went to the Bedford River Festival on the Sunday. The weather behaved itself pretty well and I am feeling a little pink across the forehead.
I’m a bit snotty about mobile phone bores who get a new phone every year, stuffed full of features they never use and justifying it by claiming it is a “free upgrade”. They never seem to think of multiplying their monthly contract rate by the contract term to see that it is very far from being free. eg. Orange £35 x 18 months = £630…ooh what a bargain. I’m quite happy to be PAYG with no trinkets but the old phone was 5 years old and the battery was dying. So I got tempted into buying a rather snazzy PDA type phone with a touch screen and all sorts of goodies. I don’t know what it can do yet as I am spending the afternoon trying to figure it all it.
But being a bit nifty I wanted a decent case and ordered a leather one online from Mobilefun at about 4pm yesterday. It was in my hands by lunchtime today and very classy it is too. I am very impressed.
I left the country on the 21st June and got back on 4 July – an event that Americans have anticipated and celebrated for 232 years. I thought I would keep this up to date and let it function as a diary as well but it was not so easy getting hold of the internet in Europe and where I could, it was pretty pricey.
I got back on Friday at 6am and thought I could have a bit of a zizz as I was out in London on the evening but I arrived to a load of legal crap to do with the house I seem to be buying and spent the day on the phone. So was straight back down to the big smoke for a civillized and enlightening bevvy then recovering, unpacking cleaning etc over the weekend.
Spent a couple of days trying to edit down some pictures then upload them. Its taken forever cos my little pay as you go modem isn’t very fast but Ive now posted as many pictures as I can be arsed to. After a while I just got bored taking pretty pictures of beautiful scenery. I’d had a sharp accident on day 2 (not on the bike) and sprained my ankle so I couldn’t get about, the taking pictures of, for with. So they seem a bit disappointing, mainly because I’ve already published so many from my trip last year. Anyway, usual place..
http://imageevent.com/captainhaddock
The trip didn’t work out as expected. I planned a longish route around Austria and Italy. But somehow, in an effort to see the Matterhorn I ended spending most of the time in Switzerland which is rather expensive. I didn’t want to but it took so long to get to the Matterhorn and so long to get back to where I wanted to be that Switzerland took up most of the time. And there can be quite long stretches between the good bits.
But a cracker of a trip. Incredibly hot and sunny. Too much so in fact, it was stifling and humid as well. Bet you thought it was cool in the mountains. I did. Not anymore. Now I am wondering what I can get up to next.
At the weekend I am off to Cambridge to see Mr Richard Pocock playing Jeeves in an all-star production but mainly at the moment, I am in a waiting state, waiting for exchange on this house. More later….
Strange thing though. Its taken nearly 3 days to get all the pictures up…in dribs and drabs. But by this stage, according to the stats and before I’d even got them all uploaded and in order, 300 people have viewed them. Who are all these people looking at my pictures so assiduously?
I left the country on the 21st June and got back on 4 July – an event that Americans have anticipated and celebrated for 232 years. I thought I would keep this up to date and let it function as a diary as well but it was not so easy getting hold of the internet in Europe and where I could, it was pretty pricey.