Cliche and Over-Worked Plots In television soaps

In my last post I managed to hint at a subject which intrigues me a great deal and that is the subject of cliche, nowhere more prevalent than in the area of films and television soaps. If you watch soaps on television you will no doubt be aware of the over-use of certain story lines, stereotypes etc. I cannot actually see what the attraction of soaps is, although  in the past I have been caught up in the long-running story lines of soaps such as Brookside (long since cancelled), Emmerdale, EastEnders, Coronation Street and the only radio soap left, The Archers. Admittedly, it has to be said, it must be extremely hard to keep a soap going for 52 weeks of a year, and there must be times when there is nothing much happening as regards plot. But then there are big stories that are supposed to hook the viewer, usually at peak times of the year, most notably at Christmas. The cliche of the big Christmas 'reveal' around the dinner table in EastEnders, Den giving Angie the divorce papers in EastEnders was during a Christmas episode and consequently the rating soared to record levels. Some long-running soap story lines do 'hook' the audience, for example the Trevor Jordache 'body under the patio' in Brookside which ran and ran and was a definite 'hook' (I have to admit I was caught up in it during the 1990's.)

It has often intrigued me about soap and that is, why do the characters live and work in such a small area, i.e. a small northern backstreet,  an east-end square that  is run-down, etc etc and not only live and work there, but form relationships with one another in such a small area, why do they never seem to do what the rest of us do and not move away from such a small area?  I know, you're thinking to yourself as you read this, "well, it's not real. It is drama, and it isn't supposed to be real." But that doesn't excuse the fact that it doesn't bear any resemblance to how the 'real' world acts and behaves so we can at least identify with what we're watching. For example, why is it they never seem to move away from that little closed world as the rest of the world does? Some do seem to go outside the confines of this small world, but when they do they never seem to return or are forgotten. Perhaps it's because of the soap format, the restrictions of the soap 'form' because if they do the soap can't work. In that respect I find it so boring, so depressing and unimaginative. I suppose the story lines have to work within such a restrictive format because it is an open-ended form of drama, because it is expected to run several time a week, for 52 weeks of the year. For me, I have to say I prefer something which ties up within one episode or over a set number of episodes. We rarely get single dramas or plays on television as we used to have in the 1960's or '70, with such strands as 'Play of the Month', 'The Wednesday Play', 'Play For Today' or 'Armchair Theatre.' It's a pity that everything seems to fit into a series slot, either crime, mystery, who-done-it, medical, etc etc. There's nowhere to go for a 'one-off' story. The BBC have done daytime drama series, such as 'Moving On' which has a sort of theme, but all the stories are told over a 45-minute running time and don't relate one to the other with stories overlapping or having returning characters. A bit like short stories in the printed form as opposed to long-form writing with, say, novels.

Why do soaps get such high ratings? Could it be that it's actually a habit-forming sort of drama. Soaps are on several times a week and at the same time. Also, people are drawn to the gossipy element, everyone love to 'find out' the latest bit of juicy gossip, which is always carried by the tabloid newspapers. Soap seems to sell newspapers so it's a sort of cyclical thing, soaps drive sales, the audience for soaps soar and round and round it goes.

I do seem to have wandered off the topic of cliche, but never mind. Once I get going on a subject such as this it is always so easy to get onto another area. I'm just interested in why people get so hooked on soap, unfortunately they don't have much else on that they can get their teeth into. Soaps seem to make good topics for the tabloids whenever they use social issues as the basis for story lines. It was usually such playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh and all those who wrote for the BBC series such as 'Play For Today' and 'The Wednesday Play' which used such subjects as homelessness which made those plays so memorable.

EastEnders and Coronation Street are one big cliche without going into too much detail. Corrie is stuck in some sort of late '50's early 60's time warp.  EastEnders is stuck in a sort of 1980's time warp. Do people still live in backstreets like that? Wouldn't that area have been bought up by developers and been bulldozed long ago and been replaced with a retail park, modern houses and business premises? As for EastEnders, can someone please explain how it is no one in Albert Square owns a washing machine? And from experience I have used quite a few laundrettes, but the one near Albert Square has staff who DO YOUR WASHING FOR YOU and the place looks dirty and uncared-for and would most certainly put off customers. Why, whenever the writers want to kill off a character or characters do they have someone run into or run over by a car, when there are surely no more than half a dozen cars in the Square and that person just happens to walk into a car when there are no other cars about and there's no through-traffic? Ludicrous and silly, to say the least. How is it so many of he EastEnders characters can afford to spend so much time in the Vic pub (the same can be said of Corrie in the Rover's and Emmerdale in the Woolpack.) and they drink excessive amounts of alcohol yet can still stand up straight and walk in a straight line. Most people would have permanent hang-overs and be falling all over the place. No one seems to have a job that would earn them enough to be able to afford to buy the homes they live in. Most of the houses in that area of London would be worth far more than they could afford.

I could go on. I may return to this subject in future posts.

The Rain it raineth every day

The weather has been absolutely awful for the past couple of days. Rain, wind and now the possibility of snow. Actually it has been quite a mild winter up until now. So mild, intact, that I've actually seen new growth, almost like the first signs of spring. I'm not sure whether this is correct, but not what you would expect to see in late January. No doubt if we do get snow and a really hard frost it will kill off any of this greenery.

The title for this post seemed so appropriate, considering the amount of rain we've been having recently. The line comes from one of my favourite plays by Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, and is one of Feste's songs. The first verse from which the quote comes from is as follows:

When that I was a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

I suppose it's not so surprising that he uses weather so much as a metaphor in his plays because in this country our weather plays such a central part in our day-to-day lives and makes the British what they are. You only have to look at the British landscape to see how the weather has made the scenery what it is.

There are plenty of other references to the weather in his plays. In King Lear, Lear wanders aimlessly on the heath with his companion, The Fool, and the following is another quote which has weather in it:

In Act 2 Scene 7 we have the following:

The storm continues to rage. KENT enters in disguise.

The GENTLEMAN enters from a different direction.

KENT: Who's there, besides foul weather?

GENTLEMAN: One minded like the weather,

Most uniquely.

KENT: I know you, where's the king?

FIRST GENTLEMAN: Contending with the fretful elements;

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea

Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,

That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,

Which the impious blasts, with eyeless rage,

Catch in their fury and make nothing of;

Strives in his little world of man to out storm

The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. . . . . 

Then Lear has this speech:

Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ungrateful man!

Then, further on in the scene The Clown has one of his songs which seem very similar to Feste's in Twelfth Night. I never know what function he has. Is he like a chorus, commenting on the action within the play? A lot of his songs have a sort of melancholy about them. As for Lear's Clown, he does have a purpose as he helps Lear and sort of counters his masters madness. It interesting that both plays deal with sanity. Infact, thinking about it, Hamlet is probably the most obvious of Shakespeare's plays to deal with madness. Although, is he really mad or is it feigned? As for madness in Twelfth Night, Malvolio's madness is brought about by Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Maria's treatment of him in the Sir Topaz episode.

The song of Lear's Clown I refer to is this:

He that has a little tiny wit,
With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.

It is interesting that Shakespeare uses the weather as a sort of metaphor for Lear's madness. The descriptions of the weather in the play is very much how I would describe the current weather in Britain. Whether it could be used as a metaphor for the current world situation, whether financial, political, moral or whatever is open to question.

It's interesting to note that in television plays, cinema films, novels and other works of literature or creativity how authors and directors use weather as a sort of metaphor, for example rain clouds rushing past, usually in fast-motion (something of a cliche I know.) to represent something doom-laden is about to happen, such as the build-up to some tragedy, the start of a battle or a war, or a character is going to do something horrible such as a murder. Then, sunshine, brightly-lit scenes of countryside, represents happiness, pleasant happening etc. Never was this more obviously used in books by the Brontes, Wuthering Heights is a good example. Or mystery, suggested by fog, mist rising, bats flitting by a full moon with scudding clouds. All a bit corny and obvious, but we know more or less what is going to happen. If you have a miserable character standing by a window and it's raining and the rain is running down the window panes they can be seen to probably represent tears. Again, dreadfully corny. I could do a whole post of cliches. I think I might just do that.

Rain and Thunder

We had a very heavy rainstorm mid-afternoon today. It not only rained but there was thunder and lightening. Both dogs got really scared as did myself and Carol. I just hope we don't get any more as the ground is very saturated. The garden, such as it is, is nothing but a quagmire and when the dogs did eventually go out they came in covered in mud and we had to keep them in the kitchen to make sure they were dry before coming into the lounge. The floor leading from the patio doors from the garden was covered in muddy paw-prints after they came in. All the work and effort of cleaning the floor earlier in the week for the house inspection gone in a moment. Never mind, it can be mopped again.

House Inspection . . .On, then off, then on again . . .and so on!

Another week has gone by and I haven't posted anything.

We were supposed to be having an inspection of the house from our landlord. I had an email a couple of weeks ago from the agency who are supposed to be managing this property, if 'managing' means merely sitting in an office and drinking cups of coffee and pushing a few pieces of paper around on a desk and earning around 10-15% commission on your tenant's rent, then things are not what they seem at all. Around eighteen months or so ago we had problems with our cooker. The one that was in the property when we moved in around four years ago gave up on us and the landlord replaced it with a cheap model from Argos. THAT lasted all of 18 months. Very poor quality. It rusted badly and the painted surface flaked off. The thing took an age to heat up sufficiently to cook anything in the oven and the hot plates took an eternity to merely boil a saucepan of water. When we contacted the agency about this they eventually got hold of the landlord. It transpired that he refused to replace the oven so we had no option but to buy our own. A good one, incidentally, with a halogen hob which put the price up considerably but we've found it worth it has it is far more efficient and heats up quickly, unlike the old one. I can't believe how poorly the old Bush AE56SW oven was made and finished. (Anyone thinking of buying a new oven, then don't even think of buying this model. It's rubbish.) We dragged the thing outside and it sat on the front lawn only a few days before someone came and knocked on the door and took it away for scrap! Well, it saved us either taking it to the tidy-tip or ringing the Council for them to come and dispose of it. Anyway, during all this the landlord's wife turned up unannounced. Legally your landlord has to give you reasonable notice before visiting. She unfortunately saw the house in not exactly first class condition cleanliness-wise. I had been clearing out some of the kitchen cupboards and there were piles of old bottles and jars on the work-surfaces which didn't help matters and there were lots of things piled up under the stairs in the entrance hall when she came in. As a result we heard from the agency that the landlord wanted to have an inspection every two months.  To tell the truth, they never did any two-monthly inspection of the place. Neither, it would appear, did they seem to keep any record of anything the landlord said, or any explanation as to why they have never done a two-monthly inspection.

So, when we got this notification of an inspection out of the blue, we were somewhat surprised. The manager of the agency came to do a pre-lndlord inspection and was, frankly quite rude as regards the state of the cleanliness. We had spent around two weeks cleaning and tidying and, frankly, the place is now a good deal cleaner than when we moved in. He told us that the landlord's wife didn't like dogs and said that she could smell the dogs when she had visited. Well, we've been living here for around four years and they've never mentioned this before and they knew we had two dogs when we moved in. He then said that we'd missed a rent payment, which is completely untrue. We have never missed a payment as it's done by direct debit. If we had missed a payment why have they never told us? I'm sure if a payment had been missed the bank would have written to tell us. This is all just a complete lie, I'm sure to try and get out of the reason for them not managing the property properly and not making sure we had the two-monthly inspections we were supposed to have had.

An appointment for an inspection was made for last weekend, but then we got another email from the agency to let us know that it would have to be cancelled because the landlord had some 'family business' to attend to. Another inspection was supposed to have been today, Saturday, at 3 p.m., but again this was cancelled for the same reason. They did this to us sometime last year when they were meant to visit for an inspection. We got the house clean and tidy, then they didn't turn up. The time came and went without any sort of apology or any explanation as to why they hadn't turned up. Frankly, somewhat rude if you ask me, considering all the time and effort that went into the cleaning of the house and the fact we waited in all day. So, when can we actually expect the inspection? I don't really think they have any intention of turning up. We look after the house, pay our rent on time so why should they need to look around? I still say it's the agency not doing their job properly.

Swimming and Trimming

When we went to Ilfracombe in August we stayed at a John Fowler holiday park. There was a swimming pool within the site and we could use it with no extra charge. I generally love swimming. In fact, it was one thing I did actually enjoy when I was at Rushmoor School. I learnt to swim there. We weren't allowed on my father's boats until we children could swim which seemed a good enough reason to learn. I believe that all children should be taught as you never know when you are likely to need to save yourself from drowning. I used to go swimming regularly at one time every Sunday morning at the Robinson Pool in Bedford. I hadn't swum since I had my heart attack in 2006 so when I went to the pool on holiday I was somewhat wary of actually getting in the water and what sort of stress it would put on my heart. I need not have worried. Although not a particularly strong swimmer I can do quite a few lengths of the pool without any sort of discomfort from angina. I find that if I take one of my isoborbide mononitrate tablets before I go it does prevent any sort of angina attacks. Since I was prescribed this medication I haven't really experienced a great deal of angina discomfort. 

When we came back from holiday both myself and Carol decided that we wanted to keep the swimming routine going and wanted to join a gym in Milton Keynes which has a swimming pool. After doing a certain amount of research we decided to visit a fairly recently opened gym, D.W. Fitness, which is located within the grounds of Milton Keynes football stadium. We had a tour of the premises and then had a free session. There is not only the usual gym factilities within the gym but a very well-appointed swimming pool which also has two spa-pools (Jacuzzis), hot room and even tanning rooms (which we don't intend using, but it's great to have all of this at no extra charge.) As I am over 60 I get quite a reasonable discount and Carol gets a discount being a member of N.A.S.U.W.T., the teaching union. We try to go for a swim at least twice a week, although we didn't go at all for around a month when we had really bad coughs and bronchitis.

On Saturday we went to D.W. Fitness as the gym opened at 8. a.m. It was very pleasant to have the place virtually to ourselves and then to just sit in the spa pool and chill out. We hadn't tried the hot room so we decided to give it ago on Saturday. We didn't spend too much time in there. It was very hot and steamy (!) but I think it would be a good place to go if you have a cold or even any sort of health problem as you would certainly sweat out any impurities. I have been building up my stamina and have managed around 15-20 lengths of the pool but having lost some time not swimming due to the coughs and bronchitis this has had to be built up gradually again from doing only about 10 lengths.

We are getting the benefit of this exercise and I'm sleeping better. In fact, on Saturday I slept on the bed for round an hour as I was so chilled out by 2 o'clock. Also, I feel more invigorated and have lost some of my tummy as a result. We want to buy two bicycles later in the year so we can add cycling to our exercise routine. As Milton Keynes has such an excellent network of cycle-ways (Redways) there is absolutely no excuse to not ride around the city on bicycles. You have no need to use any of the roads and you can pass under, or over, the grid roads instead of actually getting off your bicycle.

A Holiday Prize- Part 2

We got to Dover and had a rather nice meal in a restaurant. All paid as part of the prize. I remember having some sort of fish, but I think it might have been Dover sole. Probably never had it before as we only ever had fish and chips at home. We had taken anti sea-sickness tablets for the crossing and as a result the ferry crossing was not much as a memory as I was drugged up with the medication which made it actually worse than being sea-sick! Pity, as I'd have probably enjoyed just taking in the voyage. We got to Dunkirk and then resumed the journey through France. We went past Cologne as we saw the cathedral and at one point the Opel car plant. Strange how you remember such small details, 45 plus years later.

I actually kept a journal of the whole holiday and it was typed up by someone at the resort where we stayed. They must have worked in the administration office or something, and it was printed out for us. I have no idea what happened to this book. Just got lost, unfortunately like a lot of things that get lost when you move house and things get packed up and misplaced. I suppose today I would have written it like this blog and written it as we'd travelled through Europe and over the days of the rest of the holiday. It's so easy to write this on a lap-top, rather than write into a book, as it can be published on-line and have photographs added taken with a digital camera. But this holiday was long before all the latest digital technology. I seem to remember quite a few photographs being taken as well as some Super 8 film, but, there again, I think all this got lost. A real pity as I'd have liked to have included it all in this blog. Today you can so easily take photographs with mobile phones and then up-load them to the internet etc etc via Facebook and other websites. You could take a maximum of 35 shots with a conventional camera and had to wait some time before they were developed. We seem to take for granted that you can take limitless photographs with a digital camera and erase the worst ones and don't have to wait for them to be developed.

When we got to the north of Italy, having come down from Austria through the Brenner pass, we seemed to loose the second bus somehow or other. I seem to recall that the coach we were on was somewhat smaller than the second coach and as a result must have been able to travel faster. We must have travelled together for most of the journey but somehow the coaches got separated. When the slower coach caught up the driver got lost somewhere and attempted to turn round in a rather narrow road and the coach got stuck in the ditch and we had to get out and help push it out. It must have been very embarrassing for the driver as it's not something you want to happen, particularly as it was late at night and we were behind schedule.

We eventually got to Rosapineta Lido and found it to be a rather pleasant place near the sea. Not actually a great deal to do. We spent a lot of time merely relaxing, which was all we wanted to do after such a long journey down through Europe and the fact that the itinerary had been so out of step with the planned itinerary. Also, being over six foot tall and having to sit in the rather cramped confines of a coach which had seating which didn't take into consideration people who were over a certain height (I still have this problem. I find the seating on coaches and to some extent carriages on railway trains do no take into consideration a person's height. It can be extremely uncomfortable. I just want to stretch out, but this seems impossible.) Also, some rather inconsiderate people who were also on the coach with us insisted on making a great deal of mess where they sat, leaving litter around their seats and never cleared up after their children and whenever we left the coach for whatever reason, for toilet stops or to have a fleeting tour of a town or village on the journey through Europe, on returning to the coach  they sat in a different place and we had to sit within their dirty leavings which wasn't pleasant. Just one of the disadvantages of coach travel I suppose.

We made friends with another family, the Cottons. Henry and Sue and their two children who would have been around the same age as my brother Sandy. We seemed to spend quite a lot of time with them over the course of the holiday. They came from Liverpool. When, a few years later, I went to work as an A.S.M. at Liverpool Playhouse I decided to look them up and it turned out, merely by coincidence, that Henry was actually on the board of the theatre! I believe he actually became chairman of the board of directors of the Playhouse a few years later. He was connected to a department store in Liverpool, Owen Owen and was probably manager or something, but I'm not sure exactly. We did keep contact with them over the years and they visited us at Malting Farm a few years after the Italy holiday, but we seemed to loose the contact which is a shame. I suppose with modern technology, for example, the internet, it would be very easy to keep in contact, through things like Facebook.

We went to Venice for a day-trip. I have to say it was well worth all the travel down through Europe. A really unique place and I'd love to have the opportunity to visit again. The only real negative was it was a bit smelly, but apart from that a quite amazing place. I just wish we had the photographs we took. I don't think you can ever take enough.

Another trip was to a town called Chioggia. The company who'd set up and promoted the competition we'd won, Trutex, used this as an opportunity to take photographs of some of their products. I have a feeling my brother was used as a model, but as it's so many years ago I don't actually remember much about it. I don't know what they did with the resulting photographs. Perhaps they used them for advertising, posters or brochures but I'll never know. I don't actually know whether Trutex still exists. I know they were based in a town somewhere in Lancashire, but knowing that most of our clothing is today made in the Far East, and a lot of the old textile businesses in and around Lancashire and the North of England were closed down, I very much doubt it still exists, or if it does, it's most likely been swallowed up by  a multi-national company or conglomerate.

We ate pizza for the first time on that holiday. I'd never eaten any before we went to Italy. At Rosapineta Lido they had a real pizza oven which they used to cook proper pizza. My mother was taken with the coffee and mocha, that is coffee with cream and chocolate on the top. We tried to reproduce this when we got home to England and w even bought pizza but it didn't have the same taste as the genuine Italian article. These are foods we take for granted today, you can get mocha coffee in places such as Starbucks and Costa and pizzas are sold in Morrisons, Asda and Tesco which taste almost genuine and you can order them via the internet or telephone and they are delivered to your door. How things have change over the last almost half-century since we won that competition! I can't imagine my father eating pizza, or any sort of foreign food if it comes to that. He was a 'meat-and-two-veg' man and somewhat stuck in his ways, so i don't think my mother would have attempted to present pizza to him at a meal!

The weather during the holiday wasn't particularly good. I suppose the company got the use of the place we stayed cheaper because I presume it was 'off-season.' We did have some relatively warm and sunny days, but most of the time I seem to remember it rained. I think it rained when we went to Venice, which didn't exactly enliven the atmosphere or add anything to the tour. I imagine if it had been later in the year (the time we went was during the Easter holiday, April I think.) so the weather was much like the weather in England at the same time of year. There again, the old 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' comes to mind. It was a free holiday, so we didn't want to let a little thing like the weather spoil things.

So, that is all I remember of the holiday. We returned to England via journeying back through Europe. I used the experience for a presentation at school when I got back, and the whole thing faded from memory which is rather sad and I've never been abroad since.

As a final coda to the above. I have now Googled Trutex and have found that it does still exist as a company. They make mostly school uniforms it would seem. It's based in Clitheroe, Lancashire and they sell a lot of their products through a website, as do most modern businesses. I'm really glad I have found that and that it's still doing business.

If anyone reads this blog and came to this post as a result of what I have posted regarding Trutex or the holiday to Italy, please do leave a comment. I'd be really interested to hear from you, if you were another prize-winner or were in any way connected with that holiday I'd love to hear from you.

A Holiday Prize- Part 1

In 1967 I was still at school. It was the year my younger brother, Sandy (Alexander) won a prize in a competition run by the company Trutex, who made shirts. The competition had been run I seem to remember in conjunction with ROSPA, something to do with road safety if my memory serves. We bought all our school uniforms from Braggins (now Beales) in Bedford and the shirt wasn't actually part of anyone's school uniform, as it was brightly coloured and short-sleeved and the competition was printed on the cardboard which was used for the packaging of the shirt. Sandy wore it for a few years after the competition and the prize holiday  had faded into memory. I don't remember what you were supposed to do in order to enter, perhaps the main part was to identify items that would be unsafe in a picture of a house or something, but I remember there was a tie-breaker which was to write a slogan for a safety campaign and the one which was made up (most likely by my mother) was 'careful kids keep cops catching crooks.' Anyway, whatever the rest of the competition was, Sandy won, as he got a letter telling him he'd won and the prize was a holiday for four to Italy! You see these competitions regularly, usually on the back of breakfast cereal packets, in magazines or other everyday products you buy, and you often think 'how many people actually win?' But to actually win one yourself is quite a shock, to say the least.

As I've written in earlier posts on here, our holidays were always in this country and never abroad. We always went to the same place every year, to Frinton-On-Sea in Essex, so the thought of actually winning one and to somewhere ABROAD was really exciting. Sandy went to a prize ceremony in Braggins store in Bedford (I think I must have gone with my mother and possibly my father, but I can't honestly remember exactly.) and the prize consisted of two weeks at a place not far from Venice called Rosapineta Lido. Don't ask me whether it's still in existence. I doubt it, but I expect a Google search would find it, one way or another. We were to travel by coach, and leave from London and then go down to Dover and cross to the Continent by ferry.

I have done a Google search and, yes, the place still exists. The map on the website shows it is situated between Venice and Padua in the north of Italy. From what I have seen in the photographs on the website it looks very different from what I remember, which would suggest that it's been revamped over the years since we were there, which doesn't surprise me. I would imagine that it is more like a Centre Parcs holiday centre than what you would call a holiday camp in the tradition of Butlin's or Pontin's.

Our party consisted of myself, Sandy, my mother and my grandmother. I don't know why my father didn't come with us, but I don't think he would have enjoyed it that much, particularly the journey by coach or the ferry crossing. We went down to London and met the group of other prizewinners at a hotel and it was from there that we boarded one of two coaches which were to drive us across Europe and eventually into Italy and then on to the place where we would stay, Rosapineta Lido.

They always say that you should never look a gift-horse in the mouth, which to some extent is very true. We were more than lucky to win the holiday, which must have cost a fair amount, and it was a real treat. But it wasn't without it's problems, the first being the fact that we had to travel down to Italy by coach. The company which was responsible for the transport had only ever arranged tours around Britain and in particular, London. Such a long journey down through Europe by coach was something they weren't experience at, and they had arranged the itinerary by driving down the route by car. This meant that the timing of the itinerary was wrong. We were supposed to arrive at such and such a place at a given time but due to the fact that the coaches couldn't travel as fast as a car we got to places we were supposed to get to, such as hotels for over-night stays a good deal later than planned. So on one occasion we were supposed to be at a town in  Germany at around 7 p.m. but didn't get there until well past 11 p.m.  My grandmother was a diabetic and she needed to take her insulin and other medications regularly and on several occasions she needed to take sugar lumps or some form of sugar, usually as a sweet to prevent her going into a coma due to the fact that she didn't always remember to inject herself at the correct time she was supposed to.

Sherlock Holmes

I have to admit to being something of a Sherlock Holmes fan. I got interested after I did some Walk-On work on one of the Granada Television episodes which was filmed in King's Lynn sometime in the late 1980's. The episodes which had Jeremy Brett in, and which, in my opinion, are some of the best renditions of Conan-Doyle's stories. The episode in question was "The Man With The Twisted Lip" and I was one of the street 'roughs' (for want of a better word.) It was supposed to be set in some back-street near the Thames in London, so the River Ouse (which comes out into the sea near King's Lynn, and runs through Bedford and Newport Pagnall.) was making an excellent job of standing in for the Thames! We were made up in really  awful costumes to be this street gang hanging about in the street near an opium den and Holmes is doing his investigations in disguise within the opium den and we are outside in the street. We had to queue up for lunch in this quite smart hotel restaurant in our awful tatty costumes and it must have looked quite odd if you hadn't realised we were filming for a television drama. 

From doing that bit of television 'Walk-On' I began to read some of the Sherlock Holmes stories, after watching the television adaptation when it eventually turned up on television a few months later. (I think the actual episode I was in was within the "Return Of Sherlock Holmes" series. I have since seen it again when it's been repeated on one of the digital channels, probably ITV2, but I can't be sure, but the Jeremy Brett episodes are always being shown on some digital channel or other. I have to say I do love them, the detail in them is remarkable. The production values are extremely high and they are extremely faithful to the original stories and in some cases they even reproduce the Sidney Paget illustrations very faithfully. They must have had a considerable budget in order to make drama of such amazingly high standards of production. I can't imagine television drama being made to the same degree of quality in today's television environment.)

Much has been made of the current 'Sherlock' series on BBC1 and starring Benedict Cumberbach and Martin Freeman. It's not the first time that the stories and characters have been up-dated to a modern setting, note the films made during the 1940's and starring Basil Rathbone. As much as I enjoy the new version and the way the writers have used modern technology to up-grade the whole Holmes world, I still prefer the originals. I have a magnificent set of annotated Sherlock Holmes stories which I bought through Amazon, called 'The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes' (not a particularly original title, I know, but never mind.) and annotated by Leslie S. Klinger and published by Norton. This work is in a set of three slip-cased volumes and in a large format and produced to an extremely high quality and there are enough notes and essays as well as most of the original artwork by Sidney Paget and other illustrators to keep most Holmes addicts very happy. I can recommend this annotated set of the stories highly. They sell for around £45 although you may find them for far less if you do a  Google search. I'm not sure now how much I paid for them on Amazon. The novels and the short stories come in two separate slip-cased sets and I can't now remember whether I bought them together or separately.

What is it about Holmes that is so intriguing? Is it the way he does his deductions? Is it the relationship he has with John Watson? Is it the fact that the more you read the stories, the more you discover about Holmes, what makes him tick, the fact that he is so enigmatic? I don't know, but the stories in general are so good, they keep you guessing, they make you want to keep 'turning the page.'  These are the things which makes good story-telling so brilliant and you can't fault Conan Doyle on this fact. Not all the stories are brilliant. The later ones, particularly those written after Conan Doyle bought Holmes back after the Reichenbach incident, due mainly, to public demand after he attempted to 'kill' Holmes, are not up to the same standard as the early ones, probably due to the fact that Conan Doyle had run out of ideas for him and the fact that he had by then got tired of the character, but they still have the same ability to intriguing the reader.

Creative Writing

My writing is going well at the moment. I'm not sure whether I mentioned on here that I'd done a one-day creative writing course at Milton Keynes Art Centre one Saturday at the beginning of November and as a result of that I have got a good deal more confident as regards sharing my work with other people. From that course I'm signed up for a further 10-week evening  creative writing course, again at Milton Keynes Art Centre, and again lead by Deborah Fielding. I'm really looking forward to this and I'm absolutely sure that it will inspire me to write new material and also help with my writing in general.

I've been watching the series 'Moving On' which is a BBC 1 early afternoon drama series which must by now be in it's fourth or fifth series. It's shown each day for a week. I remember the BBC doing what are termed 'single dramas' when I was growing up in the 1960's, series of plays such as 'The Wednesday Play' which eventually became  'Play For Today. ' This series is very much in the same mold, and the plays feature subject-matter which is far more socially-aware than a lot of current, prime-time television drama. Writers such as  Alan Bennett, Dennis Potter, John Mortimer and Mike Leigh and wrote plays for these drama 'slots'. Mention of John Mortimer reminds me that he wrote ' A Voyage Round My Father' which I worked on at Greenwich Theatre in the early 1970's and started life as a Play For Today. 'Moving On' is produced and developed by Jimmy McGovern, a writer whose work I very much admire. My own writing is an attempt to produce more current material,  and has, hopefully a sort of depth to it. My current 'multi-strand' project was inspired by 'EastEnders.' I'm not actually a lover of this 'soap' and I wanted to attempt to create my own project much in the style of a soap in that it's set in a single location. I used Bedford as the location so that I could tie the various elements of the stories together (although it isn't actually set there.)  Some of the characters are based on people I observed while I lived there, not necessarily their real stories, but from making observations and visiting various places which I was familiar with was able to develop some of the characters and stories. Much as in the style of a soap, but I hope I am able to get away from the somewhat stifling restrictions which the average television soap has, such as the same old recycled story lines and the fact that the stock characters only live within such a restricted setting (i.e. a street, square or village such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale.) Some of the stories over-lap and characters cross between the various story elements. I had intended to have a single day as the time-frame, but having got so far with the project it seems that this will be too restricting and it now seems to cover a far longer time frame. As it has developed I am really surprised how the characters individual stories have grown and extended far beyond what I had at first envisioned and I'm more than pleased by how it has gone.

Calmer Weather

Thank goodness the weather has calmed down from what it was only a few days ago. We had to scrape ice off the car's windscreen this morning before we could drive off at around 7.15. I had found a bottle of de-icer under the kitchen sink the other day when I was clearing out the cupboard. Surprising what gets hidden at the back. Several bottles of part-used spray cleaner, which means we don't have to buy any more until it's all used up. Those pump-action spray bottles are all very well, but they don't work very efficiently. You have to 'prime' them several times before they produce any sort of spray. Anyway, I went back into the house to get the de-icer, but it just wasn't very effective in melting the ice on the windscreen and it just seemed to make things worse and the glass more smeary which didn't make driving very easy. I think you just have to let the car heater warm up sufficiently to melt the ice but it's the first proper frost we've had in quite a while. Perhaps just pouring hot water on the windscreen would be more effective than using the de-icer. Which begs the questions, what is the use of de-icer if it doesn't do it's job properly? I must remember to not buy that particular brand ever again.  

At least it's stopped raining. We don't seem to have had as much flooding as in other parts of the country, fortunately, but I hear that the Ouse in Bedford and Newport Pagnall has flooded quite badly. The wind has also dropped, and there has even been some sunshine, but briefly. We have had an email from our landlord  through the agency  saying he wants to do a visit on 18th January. Strange that we've live here for around four years and they've never bothered to do any sort of inspection before. So we'll have to make sure the house is clean and tidy which really shouldn't cause too much of a problem. I just wonder if they would take some time to look at the state of the fence and think about replacing some of it as at the moment there is a panel propped up where it was blown over in the gales a few weeks ago, and the leak caused by the botched attempt to install the washing machine and which is dripping into the old washing-up bowl and needs emptying on a regular basis.

Severe Weather

At 6.15 this morning we had a very violent rainstorm here. We were sitting in bed watching the  B.B.C. Breakfast programme and drinking our tea when the sound of the most intense rainfall could be heard outside. It sounded as if the roof of the house was going to be torn off. I suppose it lasted a couple of minutes but it was actually quite frightening and we were more than pleased when it eventually came to an end. As I write this at 9.05 a.m. there is still the sound of rain outside. It has gone very dark and having seen the weather forecast on television no doubt we will get more rain. Over the past few weeks we have endured some extreme weather and we were due to visit the in-laws in Bournemouth over the Christmas and New Year break but decided that it might be a good idea to postpone the visit and perhaps go down in the spring when, hopefully, the weather improves.  We usually go out and visit somewhere ever the Christmas break, but due to the wether we haven't been anywhere, unfortunately. We had a very strong wind a couple of weeks ago which tore down part of the garden fence. Our beloved landlord has absolutely no intention of replacing any of the fence, although it is in a very poor state of repair. We managed to stand the fence panel up which was blown down, wedging some old garden chairs against it in an attempt to make it safe. This happened for a second time, and the section of fence seemed to have been lifted up further into the garden by the wind but we had to stand it up again, suggesting that the wind must hvave been extremely strong.  The entire fence is now in such a poor state of repair that it is well past the point where it actually needs to be completely replaced and has sections of old table and other odd bits of timber leant against it to prevent the dogs getting out. Our main concern is for the safety of the dogs as they have a tendency to wander off if given the chance. Alfie, more than Poppy, would be off up the Redway if he got out. Poppy has wandered off, having got out presumably through the back of the equally dilapidated garden shed, as the neighbour's cats seem to enjoy using it as somewhere to sleep, and the door to this shed is off it's hinges and it is something of a trial keeping it in place and so keep the dogs out. Whenever the cat appears in the green, all hell is let loose when the dogs see it, but it seems to have the upper hand as it knows full well that they can't get to it as it sits on the roof of the shed or walks along the top of the fence.