Don Camillo

 Perhaps because I had been thinking about Dr and Mrs Dreyfuss in The Apartment yesterday, I suddenly remembered Dad, when I was a little boy, weeping with laughter reading a book called 'The Joys of Yiddish" by Leo Rosten and reciting extracts with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. I've ordered a second hand copy from ebay.

Later, when we were tinkering, remote from each other, with Amazon Prime Watch Party (we did get it working)  I mentioned the Rosten memory to my brother John and we started reminiscing about how dad and all his brothers were suffused with the short stories of Damon Runyon, O. Henry, and P.G. Wodehouse and how we had taken this in on behalf of the next generation almost unconsciously by some sort of osmosis. We've both had the experience, reading the three authors above, of coming across a phrase that, through sheer familiarity, we thought was one of Dad's. Indeed, John found my own  regular "you interest me strangely" in Wodehouse ("Thank You, Jeeves" I believe) when I had no idea that was where I picked it up.

Ok, let's have a crack at delineating the old man's favourite short S from each of the triumvirate. My best guesses are:

O. Henry: The Gift of the Magi.

P.G. Wodehouse: Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend

Damon Runyon: Romance in the Roaring Forties

That last choice may be controversial. I am all but sure John would go with "Hold 'em Yale!" because the contexts into which Dad could introduce "I wish to say that old Liverlips' noggin is a very dangerous weapon at all times" really was a wonder to behold. I'm going with "Romance in the Roaring Forties" though on the basis of "Dave walks over and starts to give Waldo Winchester the leather, which is considered customary in such cases" I really thought "giving him the leather" was a phrase of Dad's until I read that.

While we are on this page, the stories, beloved by the old man, about good natured feuds between a Catholic priest and a Communist mayor post WWII in a small Italian town in the Po Valley are collected in the Don Camillo books. I couldn't remember the name yesterday. John couldn't remember them at all. This month's Audible credit will go on The Little World of Don Camillo with a following wind.

Finally, back to Jews and Catholics and coming in a complete circle.

Worth a watch. Wiser days in many ways. Less tightly wound than now.

Watch Party

 I've been peripherally aware of an option called Amazon Prime Watch Party for a while. Apparently it is a facility you can use to chat with up to 100 friends while you watch movies and TV shows online together. I've noticed it on the Prime Video website but had never come across it on the Fire TV Stick until recently. The explanation appears to be that it is available via the Fire TV Prime Video App, but doesn't appear in the general Fire TV interface. I think I must have come across it when Fire TV took me into the app when I was watching Amazon coverage of a Premiership football game.

Herewith the skinny (I believe that is the technical term). Follow this link.

John and I have agreed to try and give it a test drive with The Apartment today. It seems desperately unlikely but wouldn't it be wonderful if we could use to watch movies with mum? Is it that impossibly more advanced than combining the Skype chat we have every Saturday morning with watching a video streaming from St Brigid's? We've done both of them in the last couple of weeks.

While we were laying our plans last night J.C. told me that Jack Kruschen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dr. Dreyfuss in the The Apartment. For all that I am uncomfortable with another human being, never mind my little brother knowing more about The Apartment than me, I was pleased for Jack Kruschen (Icons passim). It was richly deserved. (How Naomi Stevens was overlooked as Mrs Dreyfuss, I will never know. " A girl like you, for the rest of your life you want to cry in your noodle soup?")

Rita Tushingham

 

It has struck me this morning, that this must be the first time I haven't seen PG for more than a week since the start of the pandemic. Have some random recollections of his from the swinging sixties on me. First, he decided to concentrate on writing and directing as opposed to acting when  Ray Brooks got the lead in The Knack ...and How to Get It. Second, there is also a story about him helping Tony Richardson out with the auditions for A Taste of Honey but I can't remember the details.

I needz my choonz

Rebecca sent me new music (above) yesterday, and Frankie sent me a message giving me a task and saying "can you have a try as you’re there doing nothing?" 

Both bucked me up immensely. Many others, though I now they mean well, are dealing with me as if I am as helpless as Steve Martin's  Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - https://youtu.be/SKDX-qJaJ08

Burning Man

What with my COVID powered coughing and wheezing I am finding the consumptive DH Lawrence a much more sympathetic figure as I am working through Frances Wilson's "Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence"  than I did when I was hale and hearty.

For Those Who Can't Be Here

 

I like to think of myself as a cynical and poisonous individual. I wouldn't have the slightest hesitation putting the boot in if I thought otherwise, but I must say I think that the Duchess of Cambridge nails this. 

I am frankly unconcerned about how technically easy or difficult the piece is, what impresses me is her time keeping. It is absolutely nailed on. There's not a drummer, a click track or a conductor and she starts solo. Take it from me - someone who failed at this for years - when you practice alone steady tempo is your Achilles heel playing with others. 

Belles, belles, belles

I was so wiped out by COVID yesterday that I went to bed around six. I spoke to John my brother on the phone for a while but I reckon I was asleep by seven. When I woke up this morning I just lay there sweating and festering under the bed clothes, until I remembered getting a message from the - always reliable - Andy M a couple of days ago which said:

There is some marvelous new music around and and I need to catch up stuff. Radio 6 music is also a good source of new listening with a number of great shows, particularly on the weekend (Iggy Pop, Cerys Matthews, Guy Garvey, Craig Charles and Huey Morgan). So much music (so little time)!

"Alexa, play BBC Radio six," I said. Amy Lamé was hosting the show that was on and introduced Claude Francois' Belle Belle Belle as well as giving a quick pen portrait of the video. As soon as the song ended I was all over YouTube looking for it.  I defy anyone to watch these two and a quarter  minutes of of Gallic fun in the snow without cheering up. It has certainly put a smile on my face.

More genius is that it is a cover of Made to Love by the Everly Brothers with new French lyrics by Claude Francois.  Claude Francois also wrote the French lyrics to Comme d'habitude. When Paul Anka wrote English lyrics for it, the song became My Way. How wonderful is that?

Quos Deus vult perdere

 It looks like I was tempting fate with my rant about lock-down yesterday as I cam up positive on a lateral flow test early yesterday evening and the COVID diagnosis was confirmed at a drive-in PCR this morning, so I could be stuck inside these four walls until January 2nd. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year eh? It is I suppose possible I could be released after seven days if I pass lateral flow tests 24 hours apart on days six and seven. According to the letter of the law I could go to New Year's part if I arrived exactly at midnight.

A bright spot is that I have got good friends and neighbours (the Hendries and the Butlers for example). Every now and then I hear a knock on the door and open it to find a carrier bag of goodies has been deposited by a benefactor. Helen and Mat left me a take-away curry and four Stellas. That's the Christmas spirit for you.

More hair with that shirt, sir?

 BBC

No more than six people will be allowed to meet in pubs, cinemas and restaurants in Wales from 26 December.

Two-metre social distancing rules will also return in public places.

Licensed premises will have to offer table service only, face masks will have to be worn and contact tracing details collected.

Outdoor events will be limited to 50, with 30 indoors, but no restrictions were brought in for smaller meetings in private homes.

First Minister Mark Drakeford called for people to limit the amount of socialising they do and take a lateral flow tests before they go to meet other people.

"Outdoor events will be limited to 50, with 30 indoors, but no restrictions were brought in for smaller meetings in private homes." Let's be clear about what this means. It means that our family get together earlier this week after my aunt's funeral wouldn't be allowed next week, a whole year after no such thing was allowed at my father's funeral. I am incandescent with rage.

BBC

Fines will be handed out to employees in Wales who go to work when they could work from home.

From Monday, workers will receive a £60 fixed penalty notice and companies hit with fines of £1,000 every time they break the rule.

Until now there has just been guidance encouraging home working.

The union GMB said it would affect "the poorest, most vulnerable workers" while the TUC said it was "at best naïve" to think responsibility is shared.

That dickhead Vaughan Gething (Icons passim) was on Breakfast TV this morning. The expression of disbelief on Naga Munchetty's face when he was explaining that the nonsense above wasn't a problem because no-one had been fined for it and it was a way of exerting pressure on companies as opposed to poor working stiffs spoke louder than any words.

Requiem for a Dream

 It is a year today since Dad's Requiem, and Auntie Rona's was yesterday.  Both of them were mass in the parish at 11 followed by Thornhill Cemetery. At least yesterday we could meet the family at the Manor Parc hotel afterwards. That to our distress was outlawed last year.

Mum watching the service streamed live to her care home, went better than I dared hope. We could even give her communion, which was a great comfort to her.

Acceptable in the 80s

 I am in Cardiff for Mum's older sister, Auntie Rona's funeral. Mum's not well or sparky enough to attend so I will watch a stream of the services with he on https://www.3churches.org/streamed-masses/ and then go along to the reception (wake?) in the hotel afterwards to pay my respects. (We couldn't meet socially after last year's funerals like Dad's because of COVID restrictions. After the Welsh Government announced yesterday that fans will be unable to attend sporting fixtures in the country from Boxing Day I can't help but fear therapeutic family gatherings may be banned again.)

I have noticed a rather heartwarming trend of people keeping up with relatives in their 80s this weekend. When I knocked on PG's door to take him on his weekly grocery shop, his nephew and his nephew's son were there paying a visit. I called on Sean, and old school friend, early yesterday evening to find him and his sister caring for their elderly mother, and when I met another friend Kevin in the Borough Arms last night he brought his eighty year old uncle Win Taylor along.

not to yield

Myself: “Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Prodnose: Tennyson right? Is this the Dan Fish thing again? Three days in a row.

Myself: I suppose it is really, but - in this week of weeks after last year's week of weeks - it's about mum and dad as well. Peter said a striking thing to me yesterday. I think he made it up on the spot. It didn't sound like he was quoting himself or anyone else. "If we were aristocrats our stories would be called history, the fact we aren't doesn't make them gossip."

The gift that keeps on giving

World Cup winner pleads with Dan Fish to put retirement on hold after 'absolute class' performance against Quins

For all that my daily coverage of life the universe and everything has been a touch "one-note" lately I am going to keep sharing this heart warming story. Surely Mr Spielberg there is a Christmas movie for the ages in here somewhere,

Feed the FIsh

So proud of the guys in these photo.

32 players and 16 staff stuck in quarantine, more injured but this group stepped up.

The effort, spirit and endeavour shown in the face of adversity has put more pride in the jersey than any victory. Thank you.

Is it dusty in here? 🥺 pic.twitter.com/YQotff72Hr

— Cardiff Rugby (@Cardiff_Rugby) December 18, 2021

My brothers and I talk with my mother over Skype every Saturday morning. Vince told me today that Dan still can't retire. Wales online put it best "Harlequins v Cardiff team news as cult hero Dan Fish to go against England star Marcus Smith" - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/harlequins-v-cardiff-team-news-22494594.

Dan, the great grandson that is a result my Auntie Nellie's courting of Bunny Churcher through the barbed wire at the bottom of the garden of the house PG grew up in. The other side of the fence was an Air Force base. A base that was referred to in PG's play "Small Change." We saw a revival of it recently. Do I have a family or an almanac of the twentieth century?

Going postal

 If it hadn't been for Radio 4, and specifically the healing balm of Jack Thorne, screenwriter, on Desert Island  Discs with Lauren Laverne at nine followed by episode 5 of On Seamus Heaney which took us to ten this morning while I was stuck in traffic trying to get to the midlands I think I might have turned into Michael Douglas in "Falling Down."

The Iron Lady

 

My brother John was up yesterday with the actress nieces plus a school friend called Carter, so we went along to Corleone for a pizza before they drove back to Wales.

Mia was talking about an exercise she has to do at Central delivering a politician's speech. I suggested Margaret Thatcher's above (transcription here). Looking at the video this morning, there is a lot that she could work with there.

Two other random ideas were Condi Rice and Dr Rosena Allin-Khan's emotional speech at Prime Minister's Questions after a video was leaked showing Downing Street aides laughing about a lockdown-breaking party in Number 10 - herewith.

authorihews

1985

Sean Burke
Doesn't do any work,
But if badgered he
Claims to study theories of tragedy.

2021

Sean Burke
Continues to shirk.
What on earth are we s'posed to be citing
In the years since The Ethics of Writing?

Charles Moore: Torygraph

A clerihew is a well-known form of light verse, invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. It is just four lines long, and comprises two rhyming but non-metrical couplets. (His very first one went: “Sir Humphry Davy/Abominated gravy./He lived in the odium/Of having discovered sodium.”)

During Covid, the distinguished historian Sir Noel Malcolm, former political columnist of this paper, went for many long walks. As he walked, he developed a refinement of the clerihew which makes the form stricter. The first couplet must find a rhyme for the name of an author. The second couplet must conclude with the title of one of that author’s works.

Here is an example: “WB Yeats/Liked all the excitement an uprising creates./Yet he was nowhere to be seen/In Easter, 1916.”

Sir Noel calls his new genre “authorihews” (and has just published a little collection of them for Christmas, under that name). I prefer to call them “malcolmicals”.

Part of the fun is the absurdity created by these rhyming rules: “The contribution of Benito Mussolini/ To political theory was teeny./Only his desire to make a splash is some/Explanation of The Doctrine of Fascism.”

I particularly like the second rhyme in this one: “To the eyes of Bram Stoker/ Everything appeared blood-coloured or ochre:/Apparently he was suffering from macular/ Degeneration when he wrote Dracula.”

Paranoid Delusions of Adequacy

#Tooting’s Pearl Chemist Group aim to give a Covid vaccination to everyone who turns up at 159 Mitcham Road – whether they’ve booked or are using their walk-in service – but they ask everyone to please be patient. pic.twitter.com/uQSSHhevEH

— Tooting Newsie (@tootingnewsie) December 13, 2021

Tooting's Pearl Chemist is where I got my two COVID jabs.

This is the queue yesterday (Monday). On Sunday night, the Prime Minister urged adults to “get boosted now”, promising that all over-18s could get their jabs by the end of the year.

Within moments of his ill-advised broadcast, the NHS booking site crashed for many users as it was repeatedly overwhelmed by demand from millions of people.

Long queues were seen outside vaccination sites on Monday - not just mine - as Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said the Government would “throw everything at” the Covid booster programme to tackle the omicron variant.

I would throw everything at the Government if I could get near enough to one of them.

I am glad to see that the Speaker of the House of Commons shares my disdain for Boris Johnson's megalomaniac confusion of his role with that of a President as opposed to a  primus inter pares (first among equals) minister. PM's have been abrogating executive powers for years but this is getting ridiculous.

When Sajid Javid arrived to deliver his statement on the Government’s COVID plans yesterday he  copped a proper earful from the Speaker before he even got to his feet. Like me, Sir Lindsay Hoyle wasn’t happy about Boris’s Sunday night address to the nation about turbocharging the booster programme. Once again, he complained, Parliament had become ‘a second runner-up to television news’.

(Also glad to note that the Bomber has finally booked his vaccinations.)

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

 Dan Fish turned out for the Cardiff Blues for what should be the final time yesterday. Playing against Toulouse, the reigning European champions whose side featured World Rugby’s player of the year Antoine Dupont, must be a good way of closing your account.

Wales Online:

Dan Fish is the popular Welsh rugby player who's been trying to retire for weeks but can't

See https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search?q=%22Dan+Fish%22 for our coverage over the years.

Disinvited

 Herb: I was a fool to ever leave your side

Me minus you is such a lonely ride

The breakup we had has made me lonesome and sad

I realize I love you 'cause I want you bad, hey, hey

Peaches: I spent the evening with the radio

Regret the moment that I let you go

Our quarrel was such a way of learnin' so much

I know now that I love you 'cause I need your touch, hey, hey

Myself: Disinvited, and it feels so good

Disinvited 'cause we understood

There's one perfect fit

And, sugar, this one is it

We both are so excited 'cause we're disinvited, hey, hey

Prodnose: What on earth are you on about now?

Myself: (Summoning some little dignity) In this life old boy, there are those who scoff and those who understand. All together now.... One two three four .....

The entire cast:  Disinvited, and it feels so good .......