Beware Frenchies Bearing Gifts.

Seems like the Ghostbusters might have got it wrong.

I Want to be Amused.

I occasionally watch an American TV series called Monsters and Mysteries. They take a wild, sparsely inhabited part of the US and construct a ‘documentary’ around local inhabitants who have first hand stories to tell about encounters with nightwalkers, thunderbirds, Jersey devils and so on – crypto creatures that creep out of the hills, the woods, and the darkness to creep out the poor folks who have only assault rifles and exorcists for protection.

Tonight’s episode was set in New Mexico, and it began with the camera panning across an area of desert wilderness. A message in red script (and creepy font) appeared at the bottom of the screen. It said:

Desert wilderness.

Mmm. Prepare to be amused, and amusing it is. That’s why I watch it.

What I find interesting is that American and British approaches to programmes like this differ markedly. The American producer makes sure that however trivial, circumstantial, and speculative the evidence might be, you will believe! The British producer takes the opposite view. However compelling and inexplicable the evidence, you’re a complete fruitcake if you believe a word of it! I’m not sure which I find more irritating.

Still, I continue to be amused. And I can’t wait for the one about Sarah Palin.

Knees and the Action Man.

I just read that Daniel Craig injured his knee on the Bond set and has been in hospital for a ‘minor arthroscopic procedure.’ A spokesperson said he’ll be back filming on April 22^nd.

Well, I hope they’ve got some sitting down scenes lined up (or lying on the beach, or in the bath tub, or playing dead or something) because I had a minor arthroscopic procedure once and it was nine weeks before I was walking normally again. I could hardly bend my leg for about three weeks, and I hadn’t even had an injury repaired – just a clear out of some tiny bone fragments from the worn knee cap. (I developed a really good technique for descending the circular staircase in the theatre’s green room. Happy days…)

So anyway, look out for the scene in the next Bond movie where James is chasing the bad guy across the airport tarmac very smoothly. He’ll be on wheels.

Spring Firsts.

In the last twenty four hours I’ve seen…

The first bat

The first bumblebee

The first butterfly

And I got the first fly in my eye today, just to prove I’m not seeing things.

Neo-Victorian Britain.

The teachers' annual conference has heard that more and more children are turning up for school inadequately fed and clothed against the rigours of the season. They say they’re seeing a return to ‘Victorian poverty.’

I’ve been warning about this ever since Mrs Thatcher began dismantling the mixed economy in the 1980s. I’ve made ironic references to ‘a return to Victorian values’ (Mrs Thatcher’s proclaimed aim) several times on this blog. The present, mainly Tory, administration has engaged unashamedly and irrationally on a policy of dismantling the welfare state. They say it will encourage people to work, conveniently ignoring the fact that there aren’t the jobs for them to do.

This same government, unsurprisingly, hides behind the heavy walls of Westminster, their expensive suits and flashy cars, their country houses and London apartments, their taxpayer-sponsored expense accounts… and counters that the coalition government has reduced child poverty during its term of office.

They are, also unsurprisingly, basing their transparent sophistry on theoretical statistics. The teachers are seeing the real picture.

On Easter and the Image.

I caught a bit of an Easter Service on the TV yesterday. I watched, fascinated, as two young people – a young man and a young woman – read the lessons. They were both squeakily smart, sickeningly self-aware, and infuriatingly earnest.

As the myth would have it, the original Christians were raggedy men and women walking around the countryside living rough. They probably had fleas. They were subversives, rebels who courted trouble with the authorities and the Establishment generally.

How on earth did they become plastic facsimiles of sugar candies, manufactured in the Establishment’s own workshop to promote its interests?

Death and Frustration.

Every time I watch a murder mystery on the TV I’m struck by the contrast between two statements:

1. A murder has been committed.

2. A person is dead.

They always seem somehow unconnected. One is saying ‘somebody has broken the most important of our society’s laws.’ That’s a matter of simple logic; it’s mundane, banal even. The other is saying ‘something which once existed no longer exists.’ That’s the real mystery. How can it be? Where did it go? How does something just vanish? Now you see it, now you don’t. What sort of perverse magic is this?

The ending of any life is a matter of both sadness and annoyance to me – even when it’s the life of that innocuous little brown bird which died in my hands a few days ago. It’s unfair. It doesn’t make sense. It’s an inexcusable failing on the part of whatever force rules us. There’s something wrong with it, and I can’t get to the bottom of what it is.

Bitching Brontes (or the Haworth Harridans.)

This sketch misrepresents Yorkshire’s holy trinity quite disgracefully, but it happens to be seriously funny. It also demonstrates the difference between the Yorkshire lass and the Essex girl. Yorkshire lasses never attempt to educe any impression of style. Such an affectation is strictly for wimps and southerners, which two categories are synonymous to anybody raised in the shadow of the Dark Peak.

Americans might need to watch it more than once, since expressions like “get lathered and lose it to a cow ’and” might take a little working out. And I’ve no idea where the depressed black woman fits in. Do persevere.

On Social Intercourse.

I was standing by a waste bin today when three teenage boys approached. One of them fiddled in his pocket and took out some sort of wrapping which he deposited in the bin. He’d obviously carried it around with him and I was impressed.

‘Well done,’ I said.

‘What?’

I nodded in the direction of the bin and said ‘thank you.’ He looked back and forth between me and the bin and seemed a little nonplussed. I think the penny dropped eventually:

‘Oh, yeah. Right.’

You have to be so careful with teenage boys. Congratulate them too heavily for doing the right thing and they’re likely to rebel. It’s the best way to make delinquents of them.

*  *  *

So then it was into the newsagent to get a couple of photocopies done. I unloaded some loose change on the young woman assistant, which she counted and declared ‘perfect.’ Oddly, she didn’t pronounce it ‘perfict,’ which people in this area usually do. She pronounced the ‘e’ as in ‘felt.’ Perfect.

‘You said “perfect.” Where are you from?’ I asked.

‘Oh, around here.’

‘Are you educated or something?’

‘Something like that.’

*  *  *

And then I went into the bake shop to buy a cake. (I’d taken a packed lunch with me. It’s cheaper than buying a bag of chips.’)

‘A small egg custard, please.’ (They cost 50p.)

‘Is that all?’

‘All?! That’s my weekly treat!’

‘Weekly? Heavens! Poor thing.’

Quite. But don’t anybody tell me I don’t have good social skills. And don’t anybody tell me I don’t have a life.

The Election War and Beyond.

Today’s major salvoes in the General Election battle concerned the old issue of big business versus small workers. The Tories were crowing about how wonderful it is that business is supporting them to further the cause of making bigger profits, while the Labour Party is promising to protect the workers from being screwed by business in pursuit of… bigger profits.

It seems that after decades of there being nothing to choose between the two main parties, the wheel might just be turning full circle. And I can’t help thinking that one of these days the human animal will need to find a better way of organising society.