A trailer came on the TV earlier this evening for the 'The King's Speech' and I said to my son J that I would like to see it.
'Which King is it about then?' he asked.
I explained that 'Bertie', the subject of ' The King's Speech' was not born to be King. His older brother Edward was destined for that role but because of his love for an American divorcee (Mrs Wallace Simpson), whom he was not allowed to marry, he gave up his kingdom for love. His abdication suddenly threw Bertie into the public eye and he became a reluctant monarch, King George VI. All these years on it is hard to understand the shock the nation felt about the abdication of King Edward VIII and I recited the famous line from the his abdication speech:
'I've found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.'
'Wouldn't that have made a better film than one about his brothers stutter?' J asked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UouwlU4YE-w
The other day watching something in which Ruth Jones made an appearance (I can't remember what it was) I said to my daughter K that I thought Ruth Jones would made a fabulous Hattie Jacques if a film was ever made of Hattie's life story. Then today I saw a trailer for 'Hattie' starring Ruth Jones. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8685253.stm. Obviously old news but something I had not heard. I love Hattie and I am sure Ms Jones will be excellent in the role. Hattie was quite the femme fatale and had, if you believe what is written about her, a voracious sexual appetite. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1280269/Ooh-Carry-On-Hatties-bedroom.html K had no idea who Hattie Jacques was so my comment was greeted with a 'Hmmm.' and I had to point out Hattie to her a few days later when we came across her in a 'Carry On' film. I have just had to ring K to tell her about my amazing psychic ability and sadly she wasn't that impressed.
'You know one overweight brunette comedy actress playing another overweight brunette comedy actress isn't that big a surprise' K said dismissively.
I think it is. They could have asked Dawn French.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
translated by W.S. Merwin
Pablo Neruda
Always
I am not jealous
of what came before me.
Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!
Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!
Pablo Neruda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda
Someone introduced me to the work of Pablo Neruda some time ago and I have grown to love some of his poetry - and the more I read it the more embarrassed I become that I even attempted to write a love poem! How can a poem, written in another language, perfected to a different rhythm, resound so powerfully with alien words?
I am hanging up my poet pen.
'The Kings Speech' is not the sort of film I would normally want to see having no interest in the royal family but I have read some great reviews about the film, particularly about the performance given Colin Firth.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/06/the-kings-speech-review
My interest in the film is purely because my grandson has a stutter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttering
My grandsons stutter is fairly mild - he can go weeks without stuttering and then he will suddenly spend a whole day stuttering in every sentence. The speech therapist he sees is of the opinion it will eventually disappear and we shouldn't worry. Which we don't because he seems to cope well with it, he is progressing well at school and is popular and confident. However there may come a time when his peers notice it, comment on it and cause him to become sensitive and unhappy about it. Listening to the radio on the drive into work yesterday the subject for discussion was stuttering and several stutterers phoned in to talk about their experiences - which had all been negative - until they had learnt techniques to combat it, some more successfully than others. It also made uncomfortable listening.
This is the first day for weeks where I haven't had to go anywhere or do anything. So this morning the unthinkable happened. I didn't wake up until 12.10pm! I have lost a whole morning and I am not happy about it. A whole morning. 6 hours later than my normal time for getting up. 6 hours lost forever. Now my whole day is messed up and instead of enjoying a day of doing nothing I am all out of kilter. Being out of kilter is not good. Although I don't know what a kilter is - give me a minute to Google it.
Kilter - out of balance or harmony
OUT OF KILTER - " Many have tried to explain the origins of 'kilter' in this expression meaning to be out of order, out of whack, but no one has succeeded. The best suggestions I think are the 'kilter,' meaning a 'useless hand in cards,' the dialect 'kilt,' to make neat,' and the Dutch 'keelter, 'stomach,' because stomachs are often 'out of order' with digestion problems. We only know that the expression is first recorded in 1643, as 'kelter.'" From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).
A friend of mine will often email me and other friends who are interested in such things an obscure word and give it three definitions from which we have to guess the correct one (strictly no Googling the correct meaning). I am yet to get one right as I stick rigorously to the rules (I am not so sure about the others) and we then try to use the word in conversation that week. No easy feat when we have had such offerings as:
Pogomotomy - useful when G grew a beard for charity, sadly it never reached the cutting stage.
Recombentibus - not to be confused with a reconditioned 'bendy bus' but no doubt plenty of these occurred on board a bendy bus.
Sgiomlaireached - I actually got to use this one but nobody recognised my pronunciation which sounded like a coughing fit so all I got was patted on the back.
The presumed failure to know the meanings of words caused a bit of a rumpus (a noisy, confused, or disruptive commotion) at work this week when an older member of staff - who has a MA (Masters of Arts) in her chosen subject - was peeved (annoyed or resentful) that a younger member of staff - in the same team but from a different profession - read one of her reports. The older member of staff tried to maintain that her report was confidential and once she lost that argument she then tried to say that the younger member of staff was not 'qualified' to read it as she did not have the relevant degree. 'I need to read it to you, as I do with the parents, because you are unlikely to understand the words I have used in the report' she whined (to utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint).
This was wrong on many levels. The report was written about a child and the main audience for the report was the child's parents. Reports for parents have to be free of jargon (the specialised or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group) and when they are also being written for a variety of professionals who will be working with the child they have to be able to be read and understood by everyone who is going to read it. The older woman made an assumption that because the younger woman has a different job title and only joined the team a few weeks ago (from abroad) she would not be able to understand the report and had therefore committed a great faux pas (an embarrassing mistake, or indiscretion) by thinking she was able to read and understand a report written by someone of such (in her mind) superiority. The younger woman was close to tears as this discussion was taking place and the older woman eventually walked back to her desk satisfied she had made her point and there would be no more reading of her reports by the plebs (the common people). Unfortunately for her the younger woman's manager was witness to this conversation and that's when the rumpus began. They were all taken off to a room and the older woman was informed that the younger woman had a degree in the relevant subject and was able to understand the report. Which was beside the point as the report, if it contained such highfalutin language (pompous or pretentious) to render it incomprehensible (difficult or impossible to understand or comprehend; unintelligiblenible) to it audience it had failed its purpose. Older woman's turn to cry and take the next day off sick.
My friend T, who is one of the older woman's professional colleagues, told me after that at the interview for his position the panel are very prescriptive about the language used in reports, that it had to be free of jargon etc, and that he told them he was a member of the Plain English Campaign- http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ - untrue but it impressed the panel and he got the job.
The younger woman, who is studying for a PHD in the very subject the older woman deems so superior, told me that in her opinion the report was substandard, clearly copied and pasted and really just a list of bullet points. This I can believe as I have heard a member of the team calling out to her colleagues 'has anyone got a report on a child with Downs?' clearly intending to tailor it to the child she was writing about. Nothing wrong with this really, we all have been known to take short cuts and why keep reinventing the wheel but if this is the case then stop being so precious about it.
The younger woman may even have felt that there was a racial motive behind the older woman's patronising behaviour. I know this is unlikely to be the case as many years ago this same woman asked me if my daughter's name was something I had heard on a soap opera (a television serial, typically broadcast in the afternoon or evening, about the lives of melodramatic characters, which are often filled with strong emotions, highly dramatic situations and suspense) which made me feel she thought I was trailer trash (derogatory description for person who seems well-suited to residential life in a mobile home park and is distinguished by poor hygiene, foul language, slovenly or slutty clothing, and general ignorance and children with unusual names). I have never forgotten this conversation or a comment I overheard her say a couple of years ago 'I haven't worked hard all this years to be put in the same team as this riff raff' (rabble; a mob; persons of the lowest class in the community) a comment she was heard to repeat returning to her desk after she had reduced the younger woman to tears.
Not a nice woman and one who has a lot to learn despite her M bloody A.
As mentioned in a previous blog I am not intending to make any New Year resolutions this year, although if you do want to make changes a new year is the perfect time to make them. It is all very neat and tidy to stop smoking or start dieting on January 1st but for me that doesn't work. It is much better to start or stop something when the time is right as opposed to when the time is new. Recently I read an article about a woman who vowed not to buy any new clothes for a year (when I say I 'read an article' what I actually mean is I read the headline - an article about not buying new clothes struck me as being immensely dull) and this got me thinking. Could I go a whole year without buying new clothes? Of course not. This has nothing to do with fashion or trends but has everything to do with clothes becoming boring after a few months. That is not to say I don't like to keep certain things for years, because I do, and it is lovely to rediscover dresses you had forgotten, but I love the excitement of wearing something new. But I thought about all the money this lady saved, and hearing about nothing but cuts, cuts, cuts, I have decided that this year I am not going to waste any more money buying new clothes (apart from underwear and shoes) from a proper shop. Instead I will only buy clothes from a charity shop. Not only will this save me money but it will also support various charities. At the moment I have direct debits set up to make a monthly donation to two charities, the NSPCC and Breast Cancer Care, but by shopping in various charity shops I can support the British Red Cross, The British Heart Foundation, Barnardos, Oxfam, Scope, Sense and the Cat Protection League. All these charities have shops a short distance from my home and they are all, without exception, staffed by nice middle aged and elderly ladies who are extremely polite, helpful and grateful that you have made a purchase, no matter how small, but I have to say the ladies in the Cat Protection League are the sweetest old ladies you could ever meet. I am sure this says something about old ladies who like cats. I am coming to the conclusion that old people should keep a pet. They need something to care for, something that relies on them and most of all, something that is warm and loving.
Moving on...
I am not sure what I think about the sentence given today to disgraced MP David Chaytor. Yes, I think he is a plonker who behaved despicably and he certainly needs to ‘pay for his crime’ but does he really deserve to go to prison? Is prison really the best punishment for him? Aren't prisons overcrowded? Aren't we going to have to pay to keep him in prison? Hasn't he already cost the tax payer thousands of pounds? Shouldn't prison be for those people who are a danger to society? The murderers, rapists, bullies and drug dealers? Fraudsters have to be punished of course but what has been gained by sending him to prison? Surely it would have been better to make him pay back the money he stole, with interest, and then send him to work for some charitable organisation without pay. Tag him. Place him under house arrest. Ban him from working in the public service. Never allow him an expense account and, if he ends up on benefits, keep a careful eye on him in case he has an urge to work and not declare his earnings, or tries to claim DLA while working as a roofer. But 18 months in prison? The former MP for Barnsley Central, Eric Illsley, stands trial next week accused of dishonestly claiming £20,000 in council tax and other bills on his second home, while other former Labour MPs Elliot Morley and Jim Devine and the Tory peers Lord Hanningfield and Lord Taylor face trials later this year. These men must be shaking in their boots. Pathetic, greedy, nasty individuals who I would gladly see made to pay for their crimes (if they are in fact found guilty) but, if they are, is prison the right place for them, or any person who commits a non-violent crime? I would like to say ‘victimless crime’ but it would be argued that we are all victims somewhere down the line. Yet I would much prefer being a victim of Chayters crime than that of these two charming ladies. Prison should be reserved for criminals like these horrible women who actually escaped a prison sentence: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344621/Care-workers-tormented-elderly-women-Green-Goblin-glove-puppet-banned-profession-life.html
Browsing the book shelves in a charity shop, in the days that separate Christmas and the New Year, I came across the book 'Billy' by Pamela Stephenson. Pamela is my new 'lady crush' replacing Alex Polizzi in my affections since I saw Pamela sashaying across the dance floor on 'Strictly'. 'Billy', is Billy Cononnly the comedian, and Pamela, his gorgeous clever wife, had written this book about his life.
I vaguely remember the book coming out in 2001 and the discussion it caused around the revelations it contained about the sexual and physical abuse Billy endured as a child. Because of this I have never had a desire to read it, but fuelled by the boredom that those 'inbetween' days engulf me in, and my Pammy love, I bought the book and started reading it a couple of nights ago.
In the introduction Pamela talks about the Heisenburg Principal, which if you Google, comes back with the following:
Since Δmv ≈ h /λ and Δx ≥ λ the two can be combined:
ΔxΔmv ≥ hλ/λ. Therefore, ΔxΔp ≥ h
Pamela explains this as the notion that 'nothing in the universe can ever be accurately described because the act of observation always changes it. For every one life, there are a million observed realities including several of the subject's'. Swoon...brains and beauty.
Well. That explains a lot actually.
Pamela and Billy have been married forever. In the pages that I have read so far Pamela shows a deep love and understanding of her complex man.
Billy says that what saved him during his bleak childhood was reading. He loved to read and he got his books from the library. He describes the library as 'wonderfully warm, full of people of all ages, especially older folk' and it was there that he escaped to another world. Just as I did in my visits to the library as a child. We were extremely lucky, Billy and me, to have a place where we could go, away from the grim reality of our home, somewhere safe, where we were left alone, allowed to browse, unaccosted.
It is sad that all these years on something that was so readily available to the young and old of the past is at risk of disappearing forever. The people running things now have never had need for a proper community library. Why would they have had? They had access to books, newspapers etc, their homes may have even had a library of its own. No doubt their schools and colleges and universities had libraries that were second to none, places where no snotty, poor child or tired old pensioner ever took refuge in warmth and written words. So when cuts are made these people will make them without a second thought and when challenged will shrug their chip free shoulders and say-
'Let them use Amazon'.
No resolutions this year. Oh the relief! Not because there is nothing I need to change or improve but because I simply can't be asked. I seem to be developing a rebellious streak.
Another invention-
A do-it-yourself hot stone massage pack - 'Pamper Pebbles'. Pamper Pebbles are stonelike in appearance but are made from a synthetic material that retains heat and, as it cools down increases in weight. The stones will be of various sizes and arranged between two sheets of a transparent material. It can be rolled up and put in the microwave (or oven) to warm up then the user simply unravels it and enjoys half an hour of sheer bliss. It can be used in a variety of ways, either with the user laying on top of it or placing it on their back as they lie on their fronts. Naturally the stones need to vibrate so a battery pack will need to be incorporated and the speed of vibration can be controlled (via a switch) by the user. I envisage a travel model that can be strapped to the car seat along the lines of those car seat covers with the wooden balls that old men and cab drivers used to find so useful (where have they disappeared too?) The travel model can be heated via the cars cigarette lighter and it can be an optional extra when a new car is purchased. In time it will come as standard and I will be rich. One day there will even be an aromatherapy model and even a mini Pamper Pebble for children that plays a simple lullaby. One day, maybe, even a Pamper Pebble mattress.
Can you guess what I really, really wanted for Christmas? I have been reduced to having my grandson walk on my back, which only caused me to collapse into hysterical (panicked) laughter and did little to ease my tense, tight muscles. Oh how I miss the masseur that used to visit. Although his hands did seem to (occasionally) stray to areas usually only caressed by a lover he was infinitely better than the tiny, but deceptively strong, Thai girl who asked in a small voice ‘Soft or Firm? Looking at her hands, which were no bigger than an average 6 years olds, I foolishly opted for ‘firm’. I emerged twenty minutes later, battered and bruised with my carefully styled hair dishevelled and standing on end. Word of warning - don't mess with small Thai women. They are freakishly strong and almost Autistic in their failure to recognise any body language (fliches) or groans of pain.
Apart from not finding a Pamper Pebble Deluxe Vibrating Aromatherapy Travel Kit in my stocking I received many lovely gifts for Christmas but the creme de la crème of gifts was given to me by my son’s girlfriend – a Grandson Calendar. She had put a lot of thought and effort into putting the calendar together, selecting just the perfect pictures to represent each month. For example December has my grandson building a snowman (taken a couple of weeks ago), June has him pictured at the wedding where he was a pageboy, October has him dressed up as a vampire and February (my birthday month) has a picture of us both. All these pictures had been downloaded from my daughters Facebook account, along with important dates that were also marked on the calendar. It looks incredibly professional and was all done on the Tesco website. A wonderful, thoughtful gift that I will treasure forever but also one that confirms my fears about FB. But what a great way to use and display your favourite photographs.
More I told you so’s -
http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/big-question/the-big-question-does-the-latest-online-technology-pose-an-unacceptable-threat-to-our-privacy-1840974.html
There was one resolution that I toyed with. Lately I am concerned that I am taking myself too seriously. If I wasn't me would I like me? Do I like me? But then I thought about it some more and reconsidered. But I resolve to keep an eye on it.
