Stephanie Beacham on Big Brother
I am just glancing at Big Brother on Channel 4. Not that I normally watch things like this, but I often look in at the start to see who is dropping low enough to enter the house.
The interesting one is Stephanie Beacham, who on the Big Brother web site is described as 60. On her Wikipedia entry she is 62. I’m not sure which one is correct but I do know she went to the same school as my late wife. I also seem to remember that she told me that Miss Beacham was in her higher class than she was. Now as my wife was a year younger than me, then I suspect that the higher age is possibly nearest to the correct one.
But as my late wife is not here, I can’t ask her the truth.
My wife was also at school with Elaine Paige, but I seem to remember that that was only primary school, so it may be that the Wikipedia entry for my wife’s school is incorrect in saying that Miss Paige attended. But at least the web gets her age right.
Christmas Music
What a pleasure to go to the shops now that the dreadful Christmas music has stopped.
But there is also another side to this. Before Christmas, I visited Waitrose and John Lewis several times. Did they have any Christmas music? I didn’t hear any!
But which store group has done very well over Christmas. Step forward John Lewis!
Not The Nine O’Clock News
The BBC is showing a program about Not The Nine O’Clock News.
We enjoyed it at the time.
They’ve just shown a clip where they took the piss out of Mugabe. Some things never change. And rightly so!
Did you know that Mugabe backwards is E Ba Gum?
All Bar One
Before Nowhere Boy last night, I had a drink in All Bar One in Cambridge. I was interested to see that they now have Aspall’s Cyder on draught. It would appear that many bars stock it as it is in the on-line Beer menu.
Even if the bar doesn’t have Aspall, they mention lots of other proper ciders and no mentions of the dreaded chemical ones with added nastiness.
Most All Bar One usually have newspapers to read and some even have the Beano. There is also usually something on the menu that is gluten-free too!
Sir Sydney Camm
How many people know who Sir Sydney Camm was? According to the Telegraph there is now a campaign to remember the designer of the legendary Hurricane in his home town of Windsor.
Camm was one of a small group of engineers, scientists and an odd-ball who were responsible for providing the tools that enabled the RAF to win the Battle of Britain.
- R. J. Mitchell was the designer of the Spitfire, who had died in 1937 at the age of only 42.
- Henry Royce is credited with the initial design of the Merlin engine, following on as it did from the successful R type engine, that had won the Schneider Trophy in 1929 and 1931.
- Ernest Hives was the engineer at Rolls-Royce, who had the forethought to create the production lines for the Merlin engines that powered the Hurricanes and Spitfires.
- Robert Watson Watt may not have been the sole inventor of radar, but he made it work, so that fighters could be used efficiently and directed towards targets in the battle.
And then there was the odd-ball, Lady Houston.
Nowhere Boy
I went to see the film, Nowhere Boy last night. It is all about John Lennon growing up and was well worth seeing.
Whether Sam Taylor-Wood intended it I don’t know, but I found it an almost claustrophobic film as it was mainly set inside. Only in a few cases were Liverpool’s magnificent buildings and parks shown. Having been in Liverpool just a few years after the period of the film and visited several times lately, there are still a lot of places that have hardly changed since Lennon was growing up. I would have used these settings more.
But it is only a matter of personal taste and the fact that I knew Liverpool at that time and Taylor-Wood did not, as she is too young.
I wasn’t too sure where Lennon was actually brought up, but after looking it up, I found it was within walking distance of our first marital home at Rosehill Court in Woolton. Quarry Bank High School which gave the name to the Quarrymen, the forerunners of the Beatles, where he was educated is now Calderstones School. That wasn’t too far away either. But in those days of 1969, you knew the Beatles were good, but didn’t want to doorstep where they had lived.
I often think I owe a lot to Lennon, the Beatles and Liverpool. I wonder what would have happened to me, if I had gone to say Nottingham, Exeter, Southampton or even Cambridge Universities. I may not have acquired my robust attitude and could have wandered into research, which may have suited me, but then I don’t suffer fools gladly and there are many of them serving time in Universities waiting for their pension. I certainly wouldn’t have acquired my wife, who put up with me for over forty years.
I hope though that I wouldn’t have ended up a nowhere boy. But I know that I could have! Luckily I was rescued by Liverpool and my late wife.
Perhaps, I am frightened of ending up sad and lonely for the rest of my life.
Ian Dury
I used to work with someone who was a great Ian Dury fan. But as I said in the book of condolence for the singer.
Never met Ian. Never saw the band. Never listened to any record in full.
But! Ian left a deep impression on me! If anything nasty ever happens to me, then I’ll remember his attitude.
What an attitude!
All I did was listen to him talking eloquently about life (and death) on the radio.
Now there is a film about his life.
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
It’s one of those films that you hope is very, very good. There is this article in The Times, that gives some hope, that it doesn’t follow the usual route of biopics.
My first London Tram since the 1950s
I can just about remember the original London Trams.
My paternal grandmother used to take me on trips around London in my Cumfifolda push-chair and I have seen pictures of us as the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon at the Festival of Britain site on the South Bank of the Thames in 1951. The only building that remains is the Royal Festival Hall.
I can also remember dark images on a winter’s day from a very low height of a wide street with trams travelling down the centre. I’ve always believed that this was the Holloway Road and as trams on route 35, ran through the Kingsway Tunnel to Archway and Highgate until April 1952. I can remember climbing aboard and travelling. But where I do not know!
Yesterday, I went to see friends in South London on the way to see Ipswich play Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park. On way to get across was to take a bus to Wimbledon and then use the London Tramlink to West Croydon.
London Tram at Wimbledon
It was busy and just like any other tram all over Europe. We need more in the UK.
If you ever want to see something like the old London Trams then go to Hong Kong. Long may they survive.
Happy Christmas
It’s 6:30 on Christmas morning and I’m just up and getting ready to go to play real tennis in Cambridge. After that I’ll be driving to Sussex to have Christmas dinner with friends. At least the weather looks better.
Happy Christmas everybody. If there is anybody there!
River Lea and the Beatles
The television except for QI tonight is/was total crap. I suspect that when people get home from work on Christmas Eve they are/or get so legless that they don’t notice. That’s why the good television starts at ten, as those that are sober then, probably need something to stimulate their brain with all their friends/families around them.
I’m alone tonight, so I really do notice when the television is crap.
Whilst preparing two fish pies; one for tonight with sprouts and the other for the freezer, I delved into the Sky Box to see what I had recorded. I started by watching Gryf Rhys-Jones on the River Lea and followed this with Help, the Beatles film.
Both brought back memories of adolescence. Many a day I fished in the Lea and I was lucky enough to see the Beatles live. Should that last bit be old enough?
These memories all date from before I met my late wife in early 1967. But it just seems a few years ago.
A couple of times recently, I’ve walked the Lea. It is one of London’s treasures and Gryf brought a lot out in his program; the New River, Abbey Mills and Crossness pumping stations, the Royal Gunpowder Mills and all the greenhouses in the Lea Valley.
Help is in some ways dated and very much in the sixties. But the music is still as fresh as ever.
The Anonymous Widower 