The Home Straight!

 Sunday. 6.45 a.m. Bright and mild, and, thankfully, not too hot. Currently, the temperature reading on my digital thermometer is 75ºF.

I've made up cheese and tomato rolls for today's church event. Everything is packed in the cool box and ready to take with me to church later this morning.

Monday. 6.20 a.m. A good time was had by all at the Oaktree Centre yesterday. Worship was outside, with the band under the gala tent and we were sitting in awnings, tents and other shelters to be out of the direct sun. There was a barbecue, with hot dogs and burgers, and a Pimms's tent. Only trouble is, I can't stand Pimm's. 

On  BBC Breakfast, they are making a real issue out of today being possibly the hottest day on record, with the temperature reaching around 100ºF. 

No sign of any workmen this morning, then I'm told that they're unlikely to come today, or tomorrow for that matter, because of the heat. I was so looking forward to having everything completed, with the walls in the kitchen painted and the tiles put up. I could have the oven and fridge/freezer put back in place and then put the stuff back in the cupboards, but I suppose I'll just have to be patient and wait until later in the week.

I've spent the morning watching the first episode of the BBC version of 'House of Cards', on Britbox, which I worked on as a supporting artiste, back in the mid-1990s. I'm really enjoying it, but haven't actually seen myself in any of the scenes I was in, although, being an S.A. isn't about being seen. You're in the background and aren't supposed to distract from the principals. Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart puts me in mind of some of Shakespeare's villains. Think Richard III or Macbeth. His asides directed through the 'fourth wall' to the audience is a clever technique which puts you in mind of Shakespeare again. He's confiding in you and telling you things which the other characters are unaware of.

1.30 p.m. Currently, the temperature in this flat is 88ºF. I think that's the highest it's ever been, even with an electric fan on in the lounge and another in my bedroom and the windows open. I may take Alfie out later and hopefully it will have cooled down considerably by then.

7.35 p.m. The temperature at the moment is 92ºF. I just hope it doesn't get any warmer.

Wheels Came Off The Bus

Saturday. 7.30 a.m. So, the wheels did actually come off the bus with Boris Johnson's resignation. The big question I have is, did he jump, or was he pushed? I think he was totally deluded if he thought he could remain as Prime Minister, considering what has been going on regarding 'so-called' 'Partygate' and the goings-on regarding Chris Pincher (I won't go into details on THAT.) 

This morning I have now moved the unit which had my microwave on it into the lounge. A bit of effort was required to do this, rather like a big game of Tetris. One thing moves, another thing goes into the space created, and then another bit of furniture is moved in. It has taken a considerable amount of thought and effort to achieve this. A bit like when I worked in stage management, working out how scene changes would be achieved, and often in a very short space of time. The problem is, now there's more furniture than the room can really take. It's going to be a bit of a squeeze, which is something of an exaggeration, but I will have to cope until the work in the kitchen is completed. 

12.50 p.m. I now have china and other kitchen items stored in the unit, which I moved from the kitchen (it was opposite the oven. I was hoping I might have got a new unit in that space, and, as there are what must have been screw holes in the wall above, I assume at one time there was a wall unit, but unfortunately I won't get this, as they are only replacing 'old for new.' Shame, but it's just as well I have this unit, which came from Amazon. 

I went into the main Milton Keynes shopping centre around 9.30. I just needed a break from the flat and all the shifting of stuff. I had intended to buy a magazine I have had on occasion, called 'Current Archaeology.' But W.H.Smith, from where I have managed to buy it before, have seen fit to rearrange their magazine section and the magazine doesn't appear to be there. Just very annoying. I think it might be worthwhile having a subscription and, as a result, having each monthly edition delivered, the same way I have two other magazines, 'BBC History Magazine' and 'History Today'.

The mention of those two magazines makes me think about how they are delivered, by the Royal Mail. But there is a slight problem. Well, not actually a problem. You may recall all the flats within Dexter House had their front doors replaced. But the letter box in each of these doors has a flap inside, a sort of curved metal buffer if you like (I can't think of a better way to describe it.) It may be fine if ordinary letters are inserted through the letter box, but with this metal contraption, anything larger, for example, a magazine, will get mangled. Not such a clever device. Meant, one supposes, to prevent smoke from getting into the flat should there be a fire. But nobody tested these things to find out how they would prevent larger items from being put through the letter box. 

Sunday. 5.30 a.m. Another warm and still morning. 

12.35 p.m. I didn't go to church this morning, but watched the service online, via Facebook. 

Currently, the temperature, according to my digital thermometer, is 82ºF. Just quietly roasting, but does it matter? Seems not. I have attempted to get this reduced, but no one will listen. Crazy.

5.00 p.m. Alfie has been for a second visit to the family who is, hopefully, going to look after him when I go to visit Worcester. He seems to be settling down and enjoying being with them. We will have one more session and then let's see what happens next.

Monday. 6.45 a.m. So, this is it! All the waiting, all the frustration, the screaming, the shouting, the stamping of little feet. What am I referring to? Why, of course, the runners and riders in the race to select the replacement for Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party after the resignation of Boris Johnson. It makes me laugh when you see the two-faced behaviour of these MPs, one minute, all smiles and patting each other on the back, and, no sooner as any of them come forward as candidates, they're stabbing each other in the back (metaphorically, of course!) Rather like something out of a Shakespeare drama, such as 'Julius Caesar.' More like the television series (which I worked on, the BBC version, that is.) 'House of Cards.'

The last of the things have been moved out of the kitchen, and here I am, ready for the workmen to arrive to refurbish my kitchen. It's a bit of a squeeze in my lounge, with more than enough extra bits of furniture, but if it means I get a new, improved kitchen, then I don't mind.

8.25 a.m. Two workmen have come to start breaking up the units in the kitchen. I am going to have a temporary sink so at least I can wash up and make a cup of tea. Temporary that is, until the brand, spanking new sink unit is installed. (Intend to post each step of the journey from old to new kitchen on here. I am photographing it as well.)

Jody Whittaker as 'The Doctor' and Watching 'Quatermass'

I've just seen a trailer for Jody Whittaker as the new Doctor, and for what I've seen, it looks good. I won't even go there regarding the fact that a female has taken over this iconic role. Jody Whittaker will be absolutely fine, although she has a difficult job, following on from all the other versions of the character. Just make the role her's and she'll be great. But, please, can we now stop making an issue out of it now being a female character and just enjoy the journey, which is bound to be fun. I had my doubts as regards what it looks like, even in a short trailer of barely a minute or two, it has a sort of cinematic gloss, a look the show hasn't had in years. Definitely a Doctor for the 21st Century. If I have a quibble with how the BBC handles 'Doctor Who,' and that's can they stop giving away plot details, what the monsters are going to be like? It's a bit like reading a novel and suddenly jumping a few chapters forward to find out what's going to happen. In the old days of 'Doctor Who,' half the fun of the show was when the Doctor and his companions were travelling to their next adventure, whether in the past or the future, and we had absolutely no idea where they were going to end up, when the Tardis's doors opened, we saw the new 'world' for the first time, it was all a mystery, we had to discover who the villains were, or what the monsters we were about to encounter would be like. Today it's all spoilt by giving away far too many details and ruining the anticipation. Please, BBC, don't spoil things. If they do anything, the stories need to be better. It's a pity it all has to be played out within a 45-50 minute time frame. It must be an extremely tall order for the writers to tell a story decently in such a length of screen-time. The old Doctor Who was in a 25-30 minute slot and most adventures ran for about 4-6 episodes, giving a far better running time. But of course, in today's broadcasting landscape, everything has to fit the American format for television. Of course it's 45-minutes so when they sell the show to a commercial network they can put 15 minutes of advertising in to make the show run for an hour. With the shorter episodes the writers can have cliff-hangers at the end of each episode which keeps you guessing as to what happens in the next episode.

I couldn't believe that Bradley Walsh was to be cast in 'Doctor Who.' When I first heard about this, I didn't believe it, because I don't believe everything I see on the internet. After all, Bradley is best known as a comic as well as presenter of 'The Chase' on ITV. He's well known as a corpser, a giggler when some unusual or unsavoury answer comes up for the contestants to guess. He has done 'straight' acting, especially in 'Coronation Street' but not in anything such as 'Doctor Who,' so it will be interesting to see what he's like in this show.

The BBC has seen fit to put some of their classic material on iPlayer, in the archive section. I think this is an attempt to counter what Netflix and Amazon are doing with all episodes of a series downloadable so that viewers can 'binge' watch, shows such as 'The Crown,' and 'House of Cards,' (all, at least the new version, although I see the BBC version of 'House of Cards' is available in the archive section. Other stuff includes the brilliantly funny 'Nuts In May,' a really classic Mike Leigh play with stars Alison Steadman, which I clearly remember seeing when originally broadcast in the 1970's.) I'm currently watching 'Quatermass and The Pit,' which comes from the late 1950's. I think I've seen the Hammer version of one of the Quatermass stories but have never seen this television version of a later story. I'm surprised it survives in this 6-episode form and it's quite clear that it must have had an influence on the early 'Doctor Who' series and shaped it's development. Some of the acting and the sets are a bit creaky but nevertheless the story does grip and it's quite scary. Considering the technology of the period it was made and the fact they couldn't edit tape like they can now, it stands up remarkably well. It beats a lot of modern stuff. None of those annoying whip-pans and strange camera angles which add nothing. I believe it was broadcast 'live,' which must have been quite stressful for the actors and technicians. Some sections were on film and would have no doubt have been put in so that actors to move to other sets and cameras moved around the studio. I'm certain that the BBC attempted to restage one of the 'Quatermass' stories 'live' on BBC Four early in the 2000's, at about the time I switched over to digital when I got a Freeview box and I seem to remember watching it and it had David Tennant in it, before he took on the central character in the revived version of 'Doctor Who.'

Working on 'Hale and Pace'

In the early 1990s I managed to sign up with an agency in London run by Ray Knight. I had heard that he was taking on new people to go on his books and I wrote to him. Long before email, you had to actually put pen to paper and I enclosed headshots, because if you're going to do walk-on work in television they always need to have recent photographs to go on their books. Nowadays they would be uploaded onto a website. His office was somewhere in north London, and I visited for an interview and I was accepted. As a result I got no end of work, and was doing jobs on such programmes as 'House of Cards' (the original B.B.C. production with Ian Richardson.) and did several days on that, some at the B.B.C. Elstree studios and various locations in and around London. This is described in far more detail in an earlier blog post on here.

Over one weekend I had jobs on two shows for London Weekend Television (LWT). On the Saturday I did work on 'Hale and Pace'. I was to go to a location somewhere in the East End of London. I can't say I remember where it was exactly. Some sketches were filmed in and around the area, but the interiors were done in what looked like a disused office block and they made various rooms within the building to be such places as a dentist's surgery and a sitting room.  I have never ever seen any of the shows when they were originally transmitted back in the early '90's, but having done some research on the internet, particularly I.M.D.B and YouTube, I have at last managed to track the episodes I was in. Hale and Pace had  several continuing characters, particularly Bobby and Billy, who were sort of kids television characters, the sort of characters you'd have in such shows as 'Play School' or 'Play Away' with the two boys dressed in bright coloured bib and braces. In this sketch I was in they were supposed to be policemen and I am a mugger! I must say it's odd seeing it now, some 25 years later! It's all in series 3 of the Hale and Pace show, which was originally broadcast on a Sunday at 10 p.m. and some of the material is what you would call adult, although probably considered somewhat tame by today's standards. I was a man living in a box, a sort of tramp or something. To this day I have no idea what that sketch was about. I hope I manage to find it in one of the episodes on YouTube. Another I was supposed to be a patient in a dentist's surgery and one of the boys sat on my legs on the dentist's chair. I'm not sure whether it was Hale or Pace and I can't remember what else happened in that sketch. They were done in such quick succession, there was very little time in between set-ups and they didn't do a lot of takes. I do remember that one of the production crew, a cameraman or lighting assistant, I'm not sure which, took a liking for the pins I wore on the hat I was wearing. I used to collect pin badges, the sort which are metal enamel with a separate pin which you put inside your clothes and the pin sticks through the fabric and the other main part pins to it. Well, he was determined he was going to have them all, but I insisted they weren't for sale or even barter. Strange what you remember and it wasn't clear whether he was being serious or merely trying to annoy me. Some people are difficult to decipher.

On the Sunday I went back into central London.  I was working on location at Smithfield Market and St Bart's Hospital on an episode of 'Poirot,' the episode which was done for the centenary of the publication of the first Poirot story by Agatha Christie,' The Mysterious Affair at Style's.' It was an extremely hot day I seem to remember, but we were dressed in extremely thick and heavy Edwardian suits and there was no way you could keep cool on the set. It was so warm the tarmac on the road we were working on began to melt in the heat. It was the opening sequence, done with the titles. They used a crane to do a wide shot. As it was a Sunday it meant they could close the streets to traffic. We were supposed to be the walking wounded, back from 'The Front' in France. Some people had plaster casts on their legs and were wheeled in wheel chairs, others had their arms in bandages and I think I had my head bandaged. We were walking in through the entrance to St Bart's Hospital. They did no end of takes, and we had to go back to original positions several times for fresh takes. There was a particularly bossy unit manager (or production assistant or assistant director, I'm not sure which he was.) who kept hasstleing us to get it right. On another set-up they had traffic in the street, all vintage vehicles, cars, busses and bicycles. I was supposed to be on a bicycle, but at the last minute I was taken out from the scene. Perhaps because I was going to be used as walking wounded as it would be odd to have me in two places more or less at once, one minute on a bicycle and able-bodied and the next as a wounded soldier. I don't in all honesty think it would have mattered because you are usually in the background in a scene, although  there is always somebody who will point such things out. 

Watching Amazon TV Series 'The Man In The High Castle'

Besides having Sky as our 'television provider' we also have Amazon Fire, which is linked to Amazon Prime. A couple of years ago Carol bought a Kindle Fire, and as part of the deal, we got Prime free, which meant we got anything we purchased through Amazon came with free delivery as well as Amazon's 'on demand' television service. When the first year ran out we had to decide whether to continue with it and pay £79 a year and to purchase a Fire Stick. This we did and set up the Fire Stick which connects to our Sky wifi router. You then get a wide range of 'apps' which allows you to watch television shows and films free but also some which you have to pay for through the Amazon account. There are quite a few similar services besides this Amazon service, including Netflix. We can get the main channels 'on demand' such as BBC, through their iPlayer as well as Channel 4, Channel 5, as well as a few more besides. Very good, except you can't download and keep the programmes as you can with your Sky+ box. I'm not sure whether the newer Fire box which Amazon recently introduced allows this, but it costs a good dea than the Fire Stick (which I originally bought from Argos and costs around £34 which, considering what it does seems very reasonable, particularly if you don't have Sky, Virgin or any of the other 'television providers.') We used to have Freeview at this address but found that, because we didn't have an outdoor ariel, the signal was poor. So we looked around for a solution and found that Sky was perhaps best. It was when we were searching around that we discovered that Virgin wasn't available in this area because Milton Keynes, although a modern city, didn't have a cable network to carry the Virgin television or telephone network.

It's great having Television 'catch-up' services such as iPlayer and similar as you can not only watch programmes you might otherwise miss when they are originally broadcast (usually up to a month.) but there is quite a lot of what I'd call 'back-catalogue' material. We've watched 'Doc Martin' through the Fire Stick which also means you can miss the advertising. We did start watching 'Downton Abbey,' having recorded episodes on the Sky+ box but the adverts we so annoying and irritating that we didn't bother to watch any further episodes but eventually caught up with the final series when it was on the I.T.V. 'player.' It now appears that all six series are on Sky+ 'box sets.' With Netflix producing a remake of the B.B.C. series "House of Cards" with Kevin Spacey in the lead role, and the fact you can 'binge' watch all the episodes and don't have to wait a week before the next episode is available to watch, you can see why companies such as Amazon are making their own television shows for 'instant' download or steam. (Incidentally, I was a 'Walk-On' in the BBC version of 'House of Cards.")

I am currently watching an 'Amazon Original' series called "The Man In The High Castle." It's based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, who is best know for writing the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," which was the basis for the film "Blade Runner." That film was directed by Ridley Scott, who is also Executive Producer of "The Man In The High Castle." I am enjoying this series immensely. It is set in an alternative future where the Nazis won the Second World War and rule America jointly with the Japenese. This shows that television can beat cinema when it comes to story-telling because you can the time, over 10 hour-long episodes, to allow the narrative to breathe and characters to develop over time, which you cannot possibly have with a film which for no more than three hours.

This is dark and brooding and has a real chill to it. I think it's because it's believable. We know that the Nazis obviously didn't win the war, but this could so nearly have happened. It's this that gives it the edge. Only only criticism is that many of the scenes are in almost impenetrable darkness, to such an extent that you can barely see what's going on. I realize that this under-lit quality adds to the suspense and atmosphere, but it doesn't really help that you can't see clearly what's going on. I do like the fact that you, as the audience, has to actually work hard to make out what's going on, they don't give everything away. I like being able to make conclusions for myself. A lot of modern television and cinema is far too obvious. It's almost as if the makers assume you don't have the intelligence to work things out for yourself. It have a certain cinematic look, well photographed and the set design and costumes are well executed. I would imagine they had a fairly large budget to be able to give it that 'look.'