WE’RE NOT NUMBER ONE!!!

Once again I feel forlorn and bereft because I know that the summer is all but over. And how do I know this...? Because “Soul Limbo” has played out the end of the last test match of another English summer and, apart from the knotty issue of some one-day games and the pointless razzamatazz of a few Twenty20 games, that’s just about the proverbial “it” for another year.

“My” team have managed to live down to all of the hype and managed to cling on to their position of “number one test team in the world” for about twelve months before handing over the title to a deservedly better team, and in that time played so relatively poorly that you really began to wonder how on Earth they managed to get their grubby little paws onto the ICC Test Championship Mace in the first place.

This summer, almost from the moment the South African team got the ball in their hands, the England (and Wales) team were outplayed, outgunned and outclassed at almost every turn and when they weren’t falling back into their old “losing ways” on the field, they seemed to be doing their level best to fall apart off it, almost as if it was the winning streak that was the glue that held them together, and once they started losing it seemed as if they had no love for each other at all. Or at least one of the “team”, anyway...

Rather typically, since I started to write that, of course, that rather fine chap who was the Captain who guided them to the top of the tree and then had to watch as they fell out of it again has announced his retirement. Ah, Andrew... You gave us some good times and, until this year anyway, things all went rather swimmingly. It’s just a pity that I’m such a persistent pessimist when it comes to following “my” team that my expectations are always so low, and yet things usually (and sadly) return back to what I consider “normal” before I ever get the chance to let my expectations rise.

Meanwhile, the Bank Holiday weekend was bracketed by the first two games of the five “one day” games, none of which fell on those lucrative “days off” (for the majority of the potential audience at least) because of the scheduling of the “domestic” season. The first was washed out by torrential rainfalls in Cardiff and the second was lost so comprehensively that it seems as if another claim to be the “best team in the world” in another form of the game is in similar jeopardy.

Whilst “Sir” Geoffrey Boycott comes in for a lot of criticism from both those who watched him play and from those who played alongside him, it must be said that when it comes to “stickability” and a willingness to hang on to your wicket at all costs, he might well have a point. After all, selling your wicket dearly hasn’t done the South African side any harm during this campaign and the England (and Wales) side never seem to look as if they have anyone who looks as if they might “drop anchor” and hang around for a bit.

And so another international cricketing summer, for me at least, seems to be all but over and there will be no more days and weekends spent in the company of my old pals from TMS burbling happily away in the background as I go about my days. Well, not for a while, anyway...

Now instead it’s going to be all gloomy days, dark evenings and wondering what to buy for whom for Christmas, and I’ve blown yet another soggy summer by not managing to make the best of it, and not spending any of my evenings sitting in the garden with a glass of something as the sun sets. Perhaps that was because this year, every time I even gave it a thought, the heavens opened and all thoughts of sitting outside became redundant.

I was able to do that during our recent few days away visiting friends in the south, mostly because they had the kind of enclosed garden that was conducive to such things, and they also have the kind of lifestyle that doesn’t involve getting ready for bed almost as soon as you’ve staggered in from work, sitting watching the telly as the darkness falls, and actually heading up to sleep at a time when most of the “grown-ups” we know are tucking up their toddlers for the evening and seriously considering cracking open the Chablis.

And now that the August Bank Holiday is behind us, I really begin believe that the summer is actually over. I remember going to Edinburgh for the last weekend of the “Fringe” a good few years ago and being struck about how quickly the weather turned and the evenings got darker once that weekend had sailed into history. It really felt as if someone had switched out the lights and the dark mornings, icy windscreens and the autumnal chill in the air became the norm within a mere fortnight of walking around those granite streets in the glorious summer sunshine.

But this is how our lives “drip, drip” away from us. Days, weeks and seasons pass and we get older and barely notice them as they slip past. It’s now almost two entire years since I attended a party marking the passing of a company for whom I once worked and which, alongside a little bit of work with a writing group, “inspired” me to start writing these pages. Two entire years of my life have been examined and documented on an almost daily basis and whilst you might not be able to work out a thing about what I was up to on a day-to-day basis during that time (even I can’t and I’ve got the illegible diaries to refer to) it does make me wonder quite what the hell I was thinking as I did it.

Luckily, I can read through those pages and find out just what it was I was thinking, but it still seems to be quite a bizarre record of possibly not the most exciting phase of my humble existence and somehow, when you start to think about it, reminds me of quite how terrifyingly swiftly a couple of years of a not considerable lifespan can vanish into history.

Meanwhile I seem to be sleeping less and less and waking up earlier and earlier as if my mind is trying to remind me that time is flying by and I really need to be making better use of it. You would think that the darker nights would mean that I slept better with the mind more attuned to think that darkness and sleep would be somehow associated, but not with this brain, unfortunately. Instead I lie awake, fretting about everything and noticing how quickly I’m skydiving towards eternity, perhaps just a little bit like a cricket ball being pummelled towards the boundary.

Still, maybe I’ll get lucky and the fielder on the boundary will drop the catch and I’ll manage to remain in the game or at least escape being caught for a little while yet. Well, if it’s one of “my” lot on the boundary, I think that I should be good for a few more innings yet and maybe, just maybe, I might actually manage to achieve something next summer.

A WEEKEND IN ESSEX

The Bank Holiday weekend was, for once, actually spent doing something as we went to visit friends in Essex. Not specifically my friends of course. Those very special types are as rare as hen’s teeth and I seldom bother them with an actual appearance preferring instead to remain a fond(ish) memory rather than have them face the horrible reality of what I have become.

No, these are friends of the beloved, and, whilst it is always interesting to ponder upon the “cause and effect” of them happening to meet twenty years ago after happening to go to the same college leading to a five hundred mile round trip being made on a Bank Holiday weekend in 2012, it is also rather unlikely that any of us ever meet at all, really. One small change, one day of deciding not to do something or other and your entire life might be completely different.
 

But I must refrain from pondering upon the imponderables again… Well, I say I must, but I seldom listen to myself any more, so what I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I need to tuck that little nugget of sunshine away for another day, and concentrate instead upon the main thrust of what I meant to talk about today instead…

Or should I…?

After all, “A weekend in Essex” is what it is, and my own experiences of doing such a thing are neither more or less interesting than anyone else’s are, I suppose. I mean, I imagine that they’re more interesting to me, of course, but I’m sure that there are millions of other experiences of “What I did over the weekend” out there, all of which are equally valid, were equally enjoyable (if not more so), and could fill page after page of the great unfolding story of humanity, if told to the rest of us.

We are, after all, insatiable.

I might have told you of the strange phenomenon of there being so many cornfields in contrast to the hills around about where I live and how that sudden splash of yellow on a remarkably flat landscape (has there ever been a book called “The Hills of Essex…?”) is somehow life-affirming and cheering as you rattle along the motorway after a five hour drive following a working week.

“We don’t have any of this ‘yellow’ nonsense oop north, tha’ knows…”

I might have decided to tell you that asking for directions whilst your companion is eating a sweetie, or has “something” in their teeth, creates and instant and impressive approximation of the local dialect, especially over the word “Rahnd-a-baht” but that would no doubt be offensive to someone or other.

I might have plunged into the depths of the darker side of my mind and fretted over being the oldest person in the room (by some considerable margin) and how their general air of confidence and enthusiasm combined with looking young, physical, and capable dragged up hitherto unheard of feelings of inadequacy which will no doubt resurface in another posting on another day.

I might tell you that perhaps the main reason for our visit was to finally take the opportunity to see the house that these lovely friends have bought after several tough years of scrimping and saving, even though it is already nearly two years since they actually moved in which only goes to show how truly dreadful we are at making the time to see people as we let the years of our lives slip away at such a speed that you hardly notice them passing you by.

Instead, amongst all the fond new memories of fine food, good company and excellent beers and wines, the trips to towns like Harwich and Wivenhoe, the mandatory ice-cream cornets, the visits to lightships and bookstores, the generally disappointing photographs, and the general lift in the spirits of being near to the sea, I find myself pondering upon a small Bank Holiday Monday exhibition we strolled around in Wivenhoe just before heading off homewards.

This was a couple of rooms in what I think was usually the public library packed to the gills with people’s personal archives. Photographs, scrapbooks, models and documents from all through the lost and living history of one small seaside town, all brought together by the local historical society and presented, as they do every year apparently, for the benefit of locals and visitors alike.

Now I don’t suppose that many places could put on such an “unglamorous” sounding event and expect much response, but those couple of rooms were chock full of people showing a real interest in the history of the tiny little dot on the map in which they live, and it really made me get a sense of people who felt that they “belonged” somewhere which, to an old “outsider” like me, managed to make me feel both rather forlorn and rather comforted at the same time, especially as I have never really ever had that feeling that I “belonged” anywhere.

Oh, I’ve put down “professional” roots and all that sort of thing, so much so that people have wondered whether they would ever be rid of me, and I tend to stay put in most places mostly out of a combination of habit or laziness, but I don’t even now ever really feel that sense of “belonging” that appears to come so easily to others.

Perhaps it’s because they’re prepared to work so very hard to make it look as if it comes to them so easily...?

IF THE SHOE FITS

I’m sleepy.

Last night it was my turn to wake up in the middle of the night and be totally unable to get back to sleep and consequently spend hour after long dark hour pondering the imponderables, mulling over the big questions, those matters of life, death and taxes and watch the red LED numbers on the radio alarm clock dance their less than merry dance ’til dawn.

The mind can go to some dark places as you lie there thinking, and those thoughts are more than likely to be exactly the kind of thought that would keep you awake even if the stifling heat of another airless night wasn’t already doing so, but the mind can also look into some very crazy corners, too, and you can find yourself asking the sorts of questions that you might not feel compelled to ask in polite society, or if your mind was slamming down the safety defences and putting itself into gear before you find yourself opening your mouth.

But there are questions that need to be asked and, as I’m sitting here typing away and the mind is still away with the fairies and still trying to work out whether or not we successfully managed to get that hi-tech device known as a kettle to function correctly this morning, I can go ahead and ask them, risk the wrath of an unforgiving world as it collectively sucks in its breath and says “You can’t ask that…”

You see my mind has ventured into the choppy waters of considering the Paralympics, and those are waters into which you should only dip your toe with the very greatest of care so as to not cause offence. These are waters in which the wrong choice of phrase can land the phrase-maker in very hot water indeed, and so we must tread cautiously and plunge headlong with the very greatest of care.

However, it’s a question that bothers me and so I feel that I ought to ask it, if only to get a satisfactory answer. You see I’m not very well up on how the mysticism of the Olympics works. As far as I understand it, the “spirit” of the Olympics is “passed on” from city to city during the closing ceremony of the Olympic games and so the “magic dust” that was handed to and sprinkled upon London back in 2008 has now been given to Rio de Janeiro and so, presumably, no longer hangs over the south of England.

Two weeks later the Paralympics begin.

Does this mean that the “Olympic spirit” has left the country before the Paralympics occur? Or does the Paralympics have its own separate “bubble” of Olympicity that exists in a kind of parallel world to the “main event” and that countries could bid to host them separately from having the Olympic Games themselves? In which case, why isn’t the Paralympic “torch relay” going from town to town and, perhaps more to the point, why doesn’t the Olympic closing ceremony happen after BOTH sets of Games have been completed…?

Otherwise it’s just a matter of convenience that the host nation just happens to have built a load of state-of-the-art facilities that the Paralympics can be held in. I mean, the Winter Olympics now seem to exist in a completely separate and distinct universe to the Summer Games, so why isn’t the Paralympic version treated with quite the same reverence…?

I told you that it wasn’t a “comfortable” question…

Mind you, it could have been worse. Ever since Channel Four have been running their little pre-Olympic “moments” with the athletes I’ve been wondering about the running shoes of athletes with only one foot and, whilst I accept that it’s a very “awkward” question, I’m assuming that they have one very specialist, very well designed shoe designed for them and they don’t just simply get a pair “off the peg” as it were and throw one away or have to come up with some kind of an agreement to “pair up” with an other athlete with the opposite problem to deal with the “other” shoe…?

I told you that I hadn’t engaged my brain yet…

My mind has also ventured into darker waters and noticed that whilst the Olympics were on and attempting to show the world the very best of all things British, the main news story for the last week or more, on the rare occasions when the media could be bothered to mention such things existed, involved the death of a child and one of the very worst manifestations of family life in our allegedly “broken” Britain, so perhaps my cynicism is inappropriate and I should not be making light of the great achievements made in the name of the mighty juggernaut we call “sport” over the past few weeks.

After all, without such things to distract us, none of us would (or should) be able to get that much sleep if we allow a society to develop in which such things can happen…

LIKE FOR LIKE (EMBRACE THE FUTURE)

One of the strange quirks of being robbed is the concept of the “like for like” replacement in terms of insurance payouts. Normally, this is a good thing. The stolen items might no longer be available and, perhaps to ease the gnawing sense of horror at having been robbed in the first place, a newer, shinier, “upgraded” version of what was lost can help to make things seem just a little bit better.

Anything unique, of course, is utterly irreplaceable. I still have a slight “pang” every time I think about my late father’s silver pocket watch and that went “out of the window” due to the actions of “person or persons unknown” (who may or may not have been future rock stars) over twenty years ago.

The real issue with that, of course, is that even if someone were to magically restore it to me tomorrow, I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that it was the same one because I have no photographs of it, I don’t recall it being engraved in any way and for most of the time I had the thing it was kept in a box in a drawer, and the only thing about it that I remember clearly was the bit of string that was tied the winding key to the fob chain, and the glass face that opened up and closed in an interesting way. Well, it fascinated me when I was a small person, anyway…

It was just that it was once my dad’s and now, like him. It’s gone forever…

There is always the tricky matter that the swines who stole your stuff in the first place might come back and steel your new stuff just as soon as you’ve had the chance to get it, but it is sheer madness to live your life under the assumption that they will. You have to get on with your life and, whilst fearing the worst, you must hope for the best.

The difficulty with “like-for-like” when it comes to computers, however, is a subtle one and one which is unlikely to bother the “gadget-junkies” of this brave new world of ours, but is, actually, a right royal pain in the derriere…

It’s the fact that, in the intervening time, the “operating system” will have been upgraded.

Now you might be thinking “Ooh, exciting! Shiny and new” etc., etc., but, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a company like A**** and A**** who seem to have a philosophy of never looking back and always embracing the future, what you actually tend to find is that your “like-for-like” replacement won’t do the job any more because many of the programmes that you used to use to do your job will no longer work (sorry, are no longer “supported”) and many of the files that you have created during twenty or more years of creating them will no longer open in the shiny new “upgraded” (and therefore “better”) versions of the software that you have to use.

But then that’s the thing when your corporate philosophy seems more interested in providing shiny new toys for the kids to get for Christmas than in actually providing computer equipment that will do the job to the generations of designers who have embraced your products through the years when everyone else seemed to unable to touch your products with the proverbial barge pole.

The “thinking” of the kids in California seems to not even consider the notion that anyone would possibly want to run “legacy” versions of their most tried and trusted products any more. “Why” they seem to suggest, “Would anyone want to use these ‘older’ products anyway…? And look, here’s a nice shiny new pretty thing you can buy instead to play your music on and everything, dude…”

To me it is an act of supreme corporate arrogance to not only make it impossible for things to run at all on your new systems, to not even include older (“Rosetta” or “Classic”) versions of the software in the bundle that will launch when you need to use these particular items to do your job, and to not even make the option of having them available to anyone who might really need to actually open these older files for whatever reason just seems plain ignorant of how the world of work and design actually functions in the real world and not just up in the “Clouds…”

“I’m sorry, Client, but I can’t open all those files that we worked on for you last year in that massive account that you paid all that money for because our computers no longer support it. Hey, you think you’ve got problems…? None of the games I bought with my own money will play either… Well, I’m sorry you feel like that, Bye, Bye…!”

The ridiculous thing is that they’re so protective of their patents from all the various corporate buyouts that they won’t even release the codes so that someone who wants older version of the packages, or just to run a few of the old packages that they used to regularly use, might be able to find a way of doing so. Instead we just have to “accept” that all that massively expensive software that we once bought is now just so much junk (“Tombstones” I believe is the hip and trendy term which seems to be beautifully derogatory to anyone still wanting to use it) and we should just “embrace the future” even though the future doesn’t do the job half as well and takes far, far longer to achieve less satisfying outcomes…

On a completely unrelated note, when it comes to the future of Graphic Design being in such safe hands, I saw a van as I was driving home the other night with the slogan “Where Number One” emblazoned in huge letters on the side.

I’m assuming that it was a post-modern joke of some kind for a TV show, otherwise, well, maybe the handcart has finally delivered us to hell…

MAN ON THE MOON

Neil Alden Armstrong

August 5th 1930 - August 25th 2012

Apollo 11 Launched: July 16th 1969

Arrived Tranquility Base: July 20th 1969

Time Eagle spent on lunar surface: 21 hours, 36 minutes, 21 Seconds

Time of lunar EVA: 2 hours, 36 minutes, 40 seconds

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" July 21st 1969 02:56 UTC

Apollo 11 splashdown: July 24th 1969

Hero, Astronaut, Legend.

FILM SCHOOL

I wish that some of these directors would realise

(As I have finally done)

That “long” doesn’t necessarily mean “epic...”

Adding to the running time

Doesn’t make something more “important”

It just makes you shift in your seat.

There’s no film so great

That it cannot afford

To lose thirty minutes or so.

Fay Wray performed far better

The same role Naomi Watts played

In eighty-seven minutes less screen time.

James Bond does not

Become more interesting

Because he plays an over-long game of cards.

More “Pirates”

Does not necessarily mean

Better “Pirates” when you have to watch their swashing buckles.

And a man dressed as a bat

Is no more “significant”

By hanging around longer than required.

“Begins” felt too long

The “Dark Knight” felt interminable

And even the trailer felt too long this time.

If brevity truly is

The source of all wit

What does witnessing so much witless spectacle really mean?

BAD POSTIE

I’ve recently been suffering from “Bad Postie” syndrome, which is due to a situation that has developed in which a reasonable amount of things mail-related have gone wrong to the level that it’s now become a source of anxiety, and, in an era when the dear old Royal Mail really needs all of the help it can get, and when it really should be making a bit of an effort after the general all-round sense of bad feeling generated by the recent price-hike, this is probably not a good thing, although I accept that the problems of one small letterbox don’t add up to a hill of beans in this great big world of ours, and maybe the rest of the system is pootling along nicely.

Mind you, if, like a cosmetics company, you extrapolate this one tiny sample out to imply similar results across the entire population (“1 of 1 people sampled…”) maybe the entire postal service is falling apart so much that they might as well have been put in charge of security at the Olympic Games (bit of politics there, yes indeedy...!)

I got home last week to find an unexpected and rather huge pile of mail, none of which was for me and all of which was for next door despite the number being prominently displayed at the back of the house. I, naturally, posted it through… But then, on another weekend, my own post appeared on my own doormat courtesy of another neighbour late on a Sunday evening after she’d been away for the weekend and long after the time we expected it to. This was our weekend DVD rental and it was by then far too late in the actual weekend to give us time to actually view it, but that, in itself, was not a tragedy.

Shortly after that had happened, yet another neighbour knocked at the back door asking if we were the people that this parcel “failure to deliver” card was meant for because it had been left outside his door and it really wasn’t him.

It wasn’t us either, but I kept him talking for five minutes anyway which caused the beloved to mock me and my “little ways” for hours afterwards which I know wasn’t strictly the Royal Mail’s fault, but they did act as the catalyst…

Then one of our disc rentals turned up in the wrong series order and when I went to check online I found out that our account had been suspended because one of the discs had been returned as “wrongly delivered” which meant that it had gone “somewhere” and that “somewhere” was far enough away for the stroll round to pop it through our door was far too much of a faff for whoever it was.

All-in-all, the whole “Royal Mail” situation was starting to look as if it was unravelling rather, and throughout it all, rather significantly, neither our house nor ourselves had relocated or been relabeled in any way whatsoever. We had steadfastly remained in exactly the same spot where our mail had turned up with an acceptable level of success and regularity for quite a considerable sum of years.

The problem is, of course, that you can’t control it for yourself. If your “precious thing” gets put through the wrong door and that person is away on holiday or, perhaps, a less honest person than yourself, you can very quickly find yourself wondering where things have vanished to. It’s even worse when you start to notice that you haven’t had the expected bills, or credit card accounts, or bank statements because, in this age of identity theft and whatnot, it doesn’t take much to make you feel really, really concerned about it all.

So far I’ve refrained from complaining, but I have (ironically) put a “Post-It” note (other self-adhesive notepapers are available) on the letterbox saying “This is number…” and written our number in large chunky and everso slightly friendly looking letters, so I hope he’ll take the hint…

He might just think that I’m extracting the Michael, although I did decide not to add a cheeky exclamation point, so I can’t think why he should. Nevertheless, you have to do what you have to do and, to be honest, as long as he doesn’t decide to post cat excrement or petrol through the letterbox, and does, in the end, give me the correct post, I’m not all that bothered about whether he finds it all a bit patronising.

To be honest, I think it’s more of a problem that is caused by his colleagues on the regular guy’s days off, but what do I know...?

Still, I hope that it manages to sort itself out, otherwise I’ll be composing that “stiff letter of complaint”, although I don’t suppose there’s much point in posting it.

After all, God only knows where it would end up…

A VISIT TO TRUMPTON

Another posting originally from “The Alternative” and written during my “sulky” old month avoiding Lesser Blogfordshire. This one I just liked when I wrote it, and I ever so nearly resurfaced for a day and allowed it to say “hi” because the temptation to do so was so great. Ah well, the stubborn part of me resisted, until now at least, but I think that it’s now time to take a look at that Town Hall clock and journey back to a simpler time, “Trumpton Time...” Tick... Tock... Tick... Tock...

When I was young, I had an L.P. called “A Visit to Trumpton” which was presumably the soundtrack to two television episodes of that once famous children’s television show slapped one episode to each side of the record, and released to the general delight of kiddies like me who could only rely on our memories or the odd picture book tie-in (and the repeats, of course) to recreate the magic of our favourite television shows in what must now seem to be those very strange times before YouTube, shiny discs, downloads and even videotape made watching programmes at the time you chose to be anything other than a ridiculous dream.

“Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock; telling the time, steadily, sensibly - never too quickly, never too slowly - telling the time for Trumpton…”

It says a lot for the power of those characters that even now snippets from that record will occasionally pop into my mind for no very good reason, sometimes in the middle of perfectly ordinary conversations which can, quite suddenly, take a very surreal twist.

Clocks are like people,

Clocks are like you and me.

Each has their own

Per-son-al-it-ee…

Suddenly my mind is flooding with memories like Mrs Honeyman, a stoutish lady in a straw hat and leg concealing violet dress, shouting at her three Pekes “Mitzie! Daphne! Lulu!” or “Chippy” Minton, the carpenter, who loved his work so much that he wanted to sing about it:

I like my job as a carpenter,

There’s nothing I’d rather be!

I’ve had my tools for many long years,

They’re all good friends to me.

Although, to be fair, everyone in Trumpton seemed to enjoy their work, almost as if the children of Britain were being somehow “prepared” for their future lives in gainful employment by being made to accept such things as being “normal behaviour” at a very young age.

Hmmm! Odd that…

Even the employees of that most institutionalised of institutions, the Post Office, would still manage to sing a cheery song as they went about their drudge-filled existences. Sadly, those are songs of which I can only remember a few fragments like “Hello... Hello… Replace your receiver please” and “We have found you were connected to a phone we found defective, we are sorry to have troubled you, but now your line is clear! Hello? Hello? Your line has now been cleared…” (or, at least something like that, anyway…).

“Brrring! Brrring! I work for Post Office Telephones…”

All evidence of a far simpler and less cynical and surly era of customer services…

I can also recall that bastion of the town’s fire brigade (from the days before they merely became a “service”), Captain Flack receiving a telephone call: “Aggie? Up the pole?” before summoning the fire brigade into episode-ending action:

“Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb!”

There are those who eschew the urban sprawl of the fast-living town of Trumpton and prefer the relative peace of the rural idyll that was “Camberwick Green” with its more mellow and relaxed inhabitants like Windy Miller, all of whom would emerge from within a spinning musical box and mutely draw us into their latest adventure.

This is a box, a musical box,

Wound up and ready to play.

But this box can hide a secret inside,

Can you guess who is in it today?

These viewers never really took to this new fast-paced “Trumpton” series and preferred instead to watch the old “Camberwick Green” episodes and harp on about the gentler, simpler old days and style of the “classic” show. What they made of the “spin-off too far” which was “Chigley” is anyone’s guess…

However, if a trip to the big city was required, then a swift visit to the more brutal, industrial and altogether more “urban” area of “Chigley” was precisely the place to be for those forward-thinking kids as they were looking towards their future in the supersonic 70s. For Chigley, with its wild and crazy daily dances after work when the factory closed for the day was, after all, possibly more their thing…

“Trumpton” itself was a series of thirteen short films for children made in 1967 by the same the team which had previously delivered thirteen “Camberwick Green” films for BBC television in 1966, and would go on to produce “Chigley” a couple of years later which featured, amongst all of the blue collar functionaries in the factory, Lord Belborough and his steam train trying to keep a firm grip on the past just after the final steam trains had been withdrawn from the British Railway network.

Who says that the Trumptonshire Trilogy wasn’t about social commentary…?

All three series were brainchild of Gordon Murray, who created and wrote them, and there are those who suggest that they have remained popular because they were not particularly fantasy-based like a lot of children’s TV, but were generally about “ordinary people” doing “ordinary things” albeit in an idealised vision of a Britain that was already fast fading into history (if such places ever really existed at all) even as the programmes were being made.

Nevertheless, as representations of a society long lost to us, they remain a fascinating insight into another “lost world” and, being as it was, the soundtrack to my own childhood, it wasn’t all that bad a place to visit, and it only takes a few bars of those familiar tunes to transport me right back there. As soundtracks to your life go, well there could have been far worse ones; I remember a friend and I coming across an L.P. of “Mary, Mungo and Midge” on a market stall once which he just “had” to buy.

Inclusive, liberalised, utopian high-rise nonsense…!

“Go to Trumpton, son!” is what I should have advised him, “That’s where the real people are…”

HAIRY DIETERS

We like those fun-loving foodies, “The Hairy Bikers” in our house. Whilst I have to be perfectly honest and admit that an awful lot of programmes featuring “Television Chefs” do get watched, I tend to find “something else” to do whilst most of them are droning on in an overly elaborate or patronising way as they construct what is, basically, a cheese sandwich.

Gary Rhodes was the worst for that, I believe. I’m pretty sure there was an entire series where he basically made sandwiches. Oh, he didn’t call them “sandwiches” of course, and I’m sure that he would have charged a small fortune in one of his restaurants if you’d wanted to eat one of the things, but, if you took away all of the trappings, it was sandwiches that they were.

Whilst I tend to ignore any cookery programme with the words “Hell” or “War” in the title, because I really don’t see the point of all that f***ing swearing and shouting, and I only really enjoy the sequences featuring strange threesome of judges in “The Great British Menu”, Jamie Oliver gets watched a lot, as does Nigella Lawson, as well as a whole host of young models actresses who have developed “quick” and “easy” methods of making curries or Chinese food, the only ones who I will actually sit down and make a point of watching are Dave Myers and Si King, those “Hairy Bikers”, whose rather friendly, honest and no-nonsense approach to the art of television cookery is very compelling.

And this is coming someone who used to watch “The Galloping Gourmet” during the school holidays when I was a kid and, whilst I know my way around a kitchen and can follow a recipe if pushed (simply because of all those years spent living on my own), I’ve always had a more laissez-faire approach to bunging a meal together and hoping.

The “lettuce curry” was a low point…

When it comes to “The Hairy Bikers”, their latest series, in which they attempted to lose some weight whilst still cooking and eating the food they love, has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, as it usually is whenever anyone who has “self-image” (i.e. weight) issues has to face up to themselves and their addictions whilst someone is standing by pointing a TV camera in their face.

We learned of the sadness in both of their pasts, and how it led to a “comforting” relationship with food, as well as the difficult stories of some other “real people” who joined their weight loss “support group” for the series.

As ever with this pair, they do make some very watchable television, and their “matey banter” and relaxed and fun relationship with the general public who, on the whole, seem to love them to bits, makes for an entertaining hour or so. Their “Food Tour of Britain” a couple of summers back was a pretty good show too, being almost the perfect combination of looking into food sourcing, admiration for the producers, visiting a few great restaurants all around the country, a few great recipes and their trump card, the “public cookery” demonstration.

This series also drew me in pretty quickly and, whilst I could have lived without the various shots of them stripped to their underwear or talking about their increased libido (there’s far too much emphasis on Dave’s libido for my tastes), I understand that such “naughty” behaviour is exactly the kind of stuff that a large proportion of their usual target demographic would lap up, judging by the people in the crowds they draw, and you really do have to know your audience, and these guys really do.

Anyway, I was so impressed by their Lasagne recipe that I bought the book of the series just as soon as I saw it in Tesco, and there are some really tasty looking meals in there. I don’t suppose that we’ll end up ever eating the vast majority of them of course, as our bookshelves are already groaning under the weight of all of the other cookery books which I ignore on those evenings when I really can’t be bothered and crack open another tin of beans and plonk some sliced bread into the toaster.

Still, it’s been interesting to see the developments in their relationship during this enforced public exercise in weight loss, although that is not something that I would recommend to anyone, by the way. I know that some people feel that it is the “public” aspect that spurs them on to succeed, but to me, my relationship with my “wobbly bits” is a strictly private affair. There have been moments when Si has looked askance at Dave and you’ve wondered whether at that precise moment that he really hates him (perhaps for making him have to do the science and scales bit), but those moments pass and the friendship, even if it was only a “telly friendship” which I’m reasonably sure it isn’t, endures.

Dave – the shorter, dark-haired one, seems to do all the research and “science” stuff and “enjoy” the exercise, whilst Si, who usually plays the “fun–loving” lovable “buffoon” role, has been far more serious during this series than usual, but, maybe because this series more than any previous one has scratched beneath the surface and revealed more of their “real” lives, perhaps they were being far more “guarded” on camera, or perhaps it was just having to face up to some of the demons in their pasts, and do it in front of us, their adoring public, that made them feel more reserved.

Nevertheless, with yet another great series behind them, it’s time to say “thanks lads” as they roar away on their motorbikes to make the next one. I just hope that you can keep the weight off, and that I can be inspired enough to drop a few pounds, too…

BEYOND THE LIMITS

“There is nothing wrong with your television set…”

One of the things that I’ve been doing with my evenings and whatever other moments of “free” time I have been getting lately is that I’ve been working my way through the box set of “The Outer Limits” which I found in an online “bargain bin” a few weeks ago. Forty-nine fifty minute episodes of post-McCarthyist, Cold War paranoia and all-round genius as broadcast on American television in the first half of the 1960s, and all for less than fifteen quid, well… it seemed like a bargain to me at the time.

I know that a lot of fans of more “modern” television might find such a thing laughable and a bit silly, but to me those old shows are really pure gold even if you do have to try and make allowances for the rather average looking rubber monsters.

I have, you might already know, spent a lot of my life as a television viewer ignoring such shortcomings, so that, at least, came as no difficulty to me, and there was an episode called “The Borderland” which just looked like a sixties version of J.J. Abrams “Fringe” to me, and opened up all sorts of possibilities for a “very special episode” that C.G.I. might offer…

After all, I do like a good anthology, and if the anthology also includes a lot that is analogy, then so much the better.

Once upon a long ago, during my brief sojourn into the world of academia, I managed to weave a whole thesis about how using fantasy, programme makers were able to sneak bigger “issues” out into the big wide world without the network controllers really noticing, so it’s not as if the topic is one with which I am unfamiliar.

I do sometimes think that I could write it far, far better nowadays, however, simply because I know more about the history and politics of the era I was writing about and have far more access to the actual programmes themselves, instead of just reading books about them as I did back in those days.

As an aside, I also like to think that I write better, too, but that’s not really for me to say…

Anyway, I’ve been slowly ploughing my way through those episodes whenever I’ve got the chance and I’ve sat through about a dozen so far. “The Zanti Misfits” have been and gone and a whole multiverse of new worlds still awaits me.

A couple of things have struck me though, and they’re mostly about something as banal and inconsequential as “fashion”, a topic that certainly failed to trouble me as that thesis was being written.

One episode started with what must have been, judging by the number of extras it would otherwise have required, some “stock footage” of “panic on the streets” and I was completely taken aback by how many hats that there were being worn by the average men in the streets.

And it wasn’t those baseball caps that you see so many of today on heads that should know better (or at the very least look in a mirror before heading out), but proper “trilby” style titfers. All of the gentlemen seemed to have one. In fact it was more unusual for someone not to be wearing one.

Then I started to wonder when exactly it was that men stopped wearing them, because it seems to have been a very sudden thing and it does rather look as if everyone pretty much came to this decision overnight.

“No more titfers, everyone…!”

“Okay then…” (Flings hat at hat rack in best “James Bond” style. Misses. Never wears it again.)

Strangely enough, if you watch “From Russia With Love”, old Jimmy Bond spends a lot of that film wearing hats, especially when he’s running about on that hilltop being harassed by a helicopter, but by the time of the next film “Goldfinger”, apart from the customary “hat stand” moment (and whatever happened to hat stands, too…?), and the scene on the golf course, by then they’ve pretty much vanished.

I wonder if that time is the moment when hats fell out of favour with the average gentleman…?

In fact, during all of the time Sean Connery played the part, he had a hat on in the opening “gun barrel” walk on, even when it wasn’t actually Mr Connery shooting the pistol but the stuntman Bob Simmons in the first three films.

But “The Outer Limits” also posed another fashion question that still needs answering. It has to do with women wearing dresses and heeled shoes. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of moments in this show (and indeed others from about that time) where it would have made perfect sense and been perfectly practical and logical choice for the woman in question to have put on a pair of trousers, but costume designers never, ever seem have considered that option in those days, and instead would make the young actresses clamber up mountains and through forests and whatever else the scriptwriters decided to put them through, in the most impractical outfits, almost as if it never crossed their minds that there was another option.

Was it simply the case that, in those days, women simply did not wear jeans or trousers at all and so putting them in such things would have been too radical? Well, that’s obviously not so. After all, Marilyn Monroe spends much of “The Misfits” in jeans, but maybe that was because her character was considered so very far “out there” that she could get away with it…? After all, if you see footage of “real” women from around that time in documentaries, they are almost always wearing dresses or skirts…

When did it happen then, that it became “acceptable” for “ordinary” women living their lives to start being seen out and about in trousers or jeans…? Again, did the world suddenly wake up one morning and decide that we were all fine with that…?

Before that, women wearing tousers, or men without hats, really would have seemed like something from… “The Outer Limits!”