Round Robin

(The names have been changed to protect the innocent…)

Well, this really has been some year for the _______ family, and no doubt you’ve been itching all year to hear of our latest adventures.

Of course this was the year we said goodbye to Grandpa. No, he hasn’t passed. No, he’s decided to spend our inheritance following The Rolling Stones around the world. From city to city he goes, not to the concerts, you understand. No, he hangs around their hotel lobbies, hoping they’ll spot him and finally see the errors of their ways. Well, that’s Grandpa for you.

We’re guessing that it’s Grandma’s cross-dressing that finally sent him packing. She’s taken to dressing like once popular ventriloquist’s dummy, Lord Charles. She’s quite immaculate & accurate with her greased back hair, painted rosy cheeks and monocle. Her being constantly on the gin only adds to the effect. Well, that’s Grandma for you.

We are now educating our Jamie at home. Not by choice, to be honest, but by order of the local education authority. I’m afraid an incident relating to the deputy head and the 2nd XV rugby posts put the cap on  things at Boswell Academy. Well, that’s our Jamie for you.

Our Rosamund has taken it on herself to research our family tree, although I did her muttering something to a friend on her mobile about “hoping she’d been adopted” I’m sure she was only joking. Well. that’s our Rosamund for you.

Having said that the whole family has really thrown itself into our hang gliding this year and are all making progress. For sure, perhaps the sport is a long way from it’s 80s peak. But have both Tom & Rosamund in their respective All England Top 10 rankings is something to write home about. Albeit to your home dear friend. Well, that’s hang-gliding for you.

This year. the four of us (save Grandpa who was in Mustique with the Stones and Grandma who was on standby for the Britain’s Got Talent qualifiers) took the camper down to Alicante. And the good news here is we have a new edition to our little family. Introducing Pedro, our new family pet! It was Rosamund’s headstrongness – alongside Jamie’s knowhow – which liberated Pedro from the stockade outside the bullring. Somehow they got him into the top bunk without Tom or I noticing. The months have just flown by. Of course, we are now unable to access our house, Pedro now being the size that he is. But we are more than contented living in what’s left of the camper van, Pedro having got loose and stampeded on the road back from Alicante. In fact being mobile may be a boon to us, being able to set down in another postcode area where we can find Jamie a better school, or at least somewhere where they’ve not heard of him. Well, that’s animal smuggling for you.

Well, that’s our year in a nutshell for you. I hope our exploits haven’t made you too jealous when comparing our lives to your own… and that you’re eager to hear more? You seem not to be responding to my Facebook friend request. Please do, so I can regale you with my tales every day.

Your old friend

Selina

PS Tom and I are making a go of it. Well, that’s me & Tom for you.

Bring it back: #1 The traditional railway carriage

I like things just the way they are. And yet I long for the past.

That is to say, I wish things were the way they used to be but I’m happy the way things turned out.

Yes, I am the Contrary Mary…

What I’m trying to say is that whereas a lot of things are as good as they can be right now, perhaps there are some things we can bring back. Not as a replacement, but as an alternative…

For my first example I offer for your approval:

THE TRADITIONAL RAILWAY CARRIAGE.

Now, your modern railway carriage is light, centrally heated, air-conditioned, fairly comfortable. Perhaps not up to the standard of a few years back with Richard Branson’s airline style audio channels built into your seats. And I am looking at things as a weekend explorer rather than a daily commuter, so apologies & respect to yourselves. Oh, and the wi-if.

But where’s the romance of it all?

Consider the movie “The 39 Steps”.

Hannay – the hero – on the run from the police for a crime he (spoiler alert) didn’t commit darts into a compartment and embraces a girl sat alone in there (this is the 1930s). The police enter the compartment, and to save the blushes of what they assume to be a canoodling honeymoon couple, make their excuses  and Hannay makes his escape. Now read on.

This scene works because of the layout of the old style carriage. Unlocked manually operated doors. and each end & in the middle. A long straight corridor to run down, leading off into individual glass fronted compartments which seat around six to eight. The bolt-hole of the compartment, its confinement, its semi-privacy.

This was used to great effect by genius TV comedy writers Dick Clement & Ian la Frenais in the opening episode of not one but three of their shows: Porridge, its sequel Going Straight and their revival Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads. In all three cases, the laughs (and the pathos) come from the characters being stuck together – moving forward but going nowhere.

And as a final example I offer you A Hard Days Night, where a poor businessman on his way to London finds himself confined with four long haired yobs, particularly the smartalec one. I hope the man had a word with the guard which is how come the quartet ended up in the guard’s van. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What I’m trying to say here is none of these classic scenes could have been played out in a modern open-plan rail carriage.  If John Lennon came and sat next to you now, you’d probably fold your Metro up & go and sit yourself elsewhere.

So what I asking of Britain’s beleaguered train companies is just. Modernize away – there are some fantastic locomotives coming online. But somehow, you’ve got to couple up an old-fashioned carriage into the set. For the fun of it. For the romance of it.

It would be just the ticket.

Samsung swansong

Hello. Those of you who actually read this stuff… and I truly appreciate those of you who do… may have noticed that I’ve been particularly quiet as yet.

My dear old notebook – the electronic one, not the paper one I scribble my brainstorms down onto – gave up the figurative ghost on me. Poor old thing, eh?

Well it started off by refusing to acknowledge the existence of browsers. The power was on, I had an internet connection, the security all fine. But when you tried to get out there onto the worldwide web, it just dozily did nothing.

I can only describe the feeling of being online without being able to get online to finding someones blocked an emergency exit.  You have to escape but can’t escape.

And so the weekend was abandoned in favour of pressing those buttons you hope you never have to press, those ones that take your system back to an earlier stage. For sure, you get your device back onside, but there’s all that reloading of music or photos : Me and memory sticks have never really seen eye-to-flashing red-eye.

For a few brief moments everything in my internet world seemed a little rosier. The chance to rebuild from scratch. All my notebook asked of me was that I shut down to allow it to update.

And that was all I wrote. All the re-programming in the world won’t help you if your on button has become like a wobbly tooth and will now not do its only assigned job.

We had three good years together. Lightweight and trim enough to slip in the back pocket of my rucksack, he had been a companion on two trips to Canada and several European jollies allowing me to listen to BBC Radio wherever and to convey my nonsense to the social media. Gone but not forgotten, despite the best efforts of those memory sticks…

See you out there, Sam.