Only Me/ You

So many people have a strange habit when introducing themselves on the phone 

They say

“ It’s only me” 

Almost as if they are apologising .

Which they are.....

I do it all of the time.

And I shouldn’t ....

Being awake when nearly everyone I know is asleep allows the mind to wander around such

conundrums. 

Tiktok is filling with American Shite and Twitter with two many gay men, shirtless and drunk 

My book The Object of my Affection by Stephen McCauley is untouched .

It was the first “ gay” novel I ever read back in 1989 and I can still remember a quote from it that resonated with me 

“ Often, what's most attractive about a person is that part they're trying hardest to conceal, that part they think is least likable. You find out about it and it becomes a secret bond between you, something you never talk about but hold close to your heart and are continually touched by”

It still does........

Alison Moyet looks better now than she did thirty eight years ago

How is that possible?

My mask smells of olbas oil, a few drops before shift makes the wearing it bearable for hours at a time

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/2JEpZxU

Thick

In Britain, the term "thick" is widely applied to people  who lack intelligence. Similarly, we have a well-known saying  that is also applied to those who are lacking in mental ability - "as thick as two short planks".

I confess that in the early years of my secondary education I struggled terribly with both Chemistry and Physics. In short, I was thick - as thick as two short planks. Neither subject interested me in the slightest and to be frank I just switched off. In fact, it got so bad with Physics that my father contacted the school and it was finally agreed that I should drop Physics entirely. I would sit at the back of  my timetabled Physics lessons and undertake private study - completing homework tasks and suchlike. It was such a relief.

And so I would attend Physics lessons - sitting at the back like a leper and frequently passing the lesson-time writing poems or drawing cartoons. Sometimes I even did homework - but not often.

Anyway, one tedious school afternoon in the spring of 1970 with sunbeams piercing the Victorian windows of the Physics lecture room, I was sitting behind my classmates as usual. The teacher entered in his black academic gown and waited for the boys to settle down. There was something on the bench in front of the bespectacled scientist. It was covered with a white sheet.

He removed it to reveal a shiny steel ball on a stick with a wheel contraption connecting it to a smaller steel object. It looked like something from "The Eagle" comic or the world of science fiction.

"Can anybody tell me what this is?"

He looked around the flummoxed Physics scholars. There was silence.

I looked up from my doodling and poetry and immediately stuck my hand up. At first the Physics teacher ignored the thicko at the back but as nobody else was offering a suggestion, he gave me permission to respond.

"It's a Van der Graaf generator sir!"

My classmates were looking round open-mouthed. How on earth did I know this?

"Yes it is!" he said in surprise. "And what's it for?"

"It's for creating static electricity sir," I replied with authority. 

I returned to my jottings and drawings, never disclosing how I knew the answer. It was one of the finest moments in my eighteen years of education. The reason I knew the answer is that the previous weekend while lingering in a record store, I had handled a new album by a progressive Manchester band called Van der Graaf Generator. And what was on the album cover? Yes. You guessed it. A Van der Graaf Generator!

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/37yIbAY

I Remember, “I Remember Mama”

Elizabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson 

 I managed to go to the cinema yesterday.

What a treat! 

The film, “ Shirley” was a much praised fictional account of a very dark period in the life of 1950 s horror writer Shirley Jackson. 

It’s an unsettling film, part gothic horror, part psychological and erotic romp and despite an excellent performance by Elizabeth Moss in the title role, I found myself irritated by it , so I left early . 

On reflection I needed a film with a certain lightness of touch , so I came home, looked through the BBC IPlayer and found George Stevens’ classic I Remember Mama 

It was an inspired choice.

If you have not seen I Remember Mama ......please do, for its a little gem of a movie 

Set in San Francisco in 1910 it is a simple tale of family life , seen through the eyes of a teenage first generation Norwegian immigrant girl ( Barbara Bel Geddes).

The family is ruled by the Mama (Irene Dunne) a gentle but pragmatic matriarch who not only supports her three daughters, son and husband through the difficulties of a frugal life but who remains the moral compass for her three elder and less virtuous sisters, the timid Aunt Trina ( Ellen Corby) , bad tempered Aunt Jenny( Hope Landin) and the bitter Aunt Sigrid ( Edith Evenson) and the thunderous and her overbearing Uncle Chris ( Oscar Homolka)

Oscar Homolka as Uncle Chris

The family is perfectly described during the normal but significant life vignettes everyday life. Of course they are older and more stereotypical than they could be, but they are the product of a teenage girls’ memory and so the larger than life performances of Landin, Corby and especially Homolka ( In probably his most remembered role) are pitched just right.

The story meanders through illness ( when Mama in an effort to keep her promise to see her youngest daughter after surgery famously  pretends to be a hospital cleaner), death, and the formative moments of a girls’ growing up and does so with such affection and warmth, that by the final credits when daughter reads out her published stories as Mama looks out of the kitchen window , there is not a dry eye in the house.

Irene Dunne is a revelation and breaks your heart as Mama

The famous washing the hospital floor scene

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/37yrqpw