The View from the Hill on Saturday 10th October

There is a sort of resignation in the news today about everything, nothing is good anymore, nothing goes well it seems no matter how hard you try.

The Nobel Committee deliver their shock news that President Obama wins the Peace Prize, at the same time as he has to send more troops to Afghanistan.

NASA crash a rocket on purpose, but still manage to not quite get it right, all those millions and to not get the results you were after, oh dear.

The ceremony in London to commemorate the sacrifice of the soldiers in Iraq gave the Arch Basher of Canterbury a chance to lecture Gordon Brown and Tony BLIAR, who then had the ignominy of a parent of a soldier who had died, refusing to shake his hand. Good for you Sir!

Al-Qaeda have infiltrated the lab at Cerne, you know the lab which can create a black hole and destroy the world, although Osama Bin Lorry will survive in his cave no doubt.

Strictly are still imploding, Simon Cowell might be too ill to appear on X Factor, MP's have further expenses issues awaiting their return to Westminster, and there are many many more stories which all hint that the world is ever so slightly a bad place to be at the moment.

On a personal note, I have a moral dilemma to bottom, one which will give my sleepless nights a purpose at least so I thought perhaps it might be nice to finish on a positive thought for the day:

I'm going shopping with Mrs B - it's time to get winter boots for her. Hip Hip Hooray!

Look out M&S, here we come.

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On this day in 1963, the little sparrow died, (not the same sparrow that died in my sisters blog) I mean of course Edith Piaf. Edith was named for the WW1 nurse Edith Cavell, and Cavell had a hospital in Peterborough which is where the blogging sister lives, but that is not the connection...one of the songs Piaf is allegedly famous for singing is Mon Dieu which of course translates into My God. As an atheist who doesn't believe in God, I don't believe she sang it at all - in fact with the help of Richard Dawkins, I have scientifically proven that it is the only case in music history of a whole world thinking they heard a song when it actually was never there at all.

And that's a fact!

PS Happy Birthday Nicholas Parsons - 86 today. He is famous for Just a Minute, which is quite apt because that might be all the time he has left!

The View from the Hill on Friday 9th October

As I travel many many miles ( in my head I always hear Commandant Eric Lassard saying many many, you know, the old guy from Police Academy? - never mind!)

Let's try this again...as I travel many many miles for work I sometimes have the radio on to help pass the time. Sometimes it's Five Live so I can get mad at Victoria Derbyshire for being so condescending, sometimes it's Ken Bruce so I can do the PopMaster Quiz, sometimes it's local radio that is unless it's a garden phone in and then sometimes I hear a little of the Jeremy Vine show.

Yesterday I got a bit of all of them, Five Live was on with the Strictly Racists Dancing saga, so after a while I turned that off and found that Richard Bacon was covering for Jeremy Vine.

Now Richard is a local celebrity here in Mansfield, he is the third or fourth most famous man from Mansfield after Alvin Stardust, Rebecca Adlington and someone else who is that famous I can't remember them.

The topic on his show was should we dig up the golf courses and turn them into allotments, this was a tentative proposal for Edinburgh, the home of the fresh veg!

They interviewed a lady from the Organic Brigade and she made her position clear, golf courses are devils spawn, all that green grass is maintained with weed killer and it poisons the little bugs which are then eaten by the birds who then get the poison into the human food chain...now this is where I got confused.

How does the poison get from Billy Blackbird to me? Have the pigs that sacrifice themselves for my bacon butties been scaling trees and hunting blackbirds?

Perhaps the blackbird is eaten by a cat, the cat by a dog, the dog by a goat, the goat by a cow and the cow by me...yes, that makes sense!

I'm convinced, let's dig up the golf courses and grow carrots.

Wait a minute, how do they keep football pitches so green and weed free, and cricket pitches, and rugby pitches, not weed killer surely?

Dig them all up, they are poisoning us, bring on the allotment army, let's dig up Old Trafford and plant asparagus.

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On this day in 1967 Che Guevara died. His face has since adorned a million Tee shirts, but strangely on his own Tee shirt was a picture of me.

And that's a fact!

PS Happy Birthday Fyvush Finkel 87 today.

The View from the Hill on Thursday 8th October

What is wrong with the BBC!?!?

Just the other day I signed an online petition pledging my support for the BBC and declaring for the whole world to see that I believe they make the best programmes, like the new nature series by Dave Attenborough (he lets me call him Dave) and of course programmes like Torchwood and Doctor Who.

So you can only imagine my shock and horror when I see that the BBC is running a competition in which they are asking members of the public to redesign the console of the Tardis...excuse me, redesign the Tardis!

But it gets worse, they are letting this task be undertaken by the viewer of CBBC, surely thats a mistake, CBBC is for kiddies I thought, they wouldn't let kiddies loose on the most important adult tv drama of the century - of the last two centuries!

Doctor Who is the jewel in the crown of British Broadcasting, we had just begun to recover from the time they let Sylvester McCoy be the Doctor, but that took the combined force of Christopher Ecclestone and David Tennant, now they are having a new Doctor played by a boy and letting children redesign the bloody Tardis!

If they want children to be involved in TV production, let them redesign Keith Chegwin or Jackanory, but please keep their grubby little fingers away from MY Tardis.

I don't ask much from my licence fee, just to be able to travel the universe unfettered by sticky finger prints on my equipment.

If this continues I may have to watch Primeval! (God help me).

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On this day in 1829 George Stephenson's famous engine The Rocket took part in the Rainhill Trials, it achieved an average speed of 12 miles per hour and would go on to win the £500 first prize, setting the scene for the explosion in rail travel and technology that followed.

In a strange parallel, later this month I will travel on a train from Nottingham to London, it will not be as comfortable as the Rocket and it might not reach a total average speed of 12mph, and the £500 prize money that Stephenson won will now buy me two return tickets. That is 180 years of progress...

And that's a fact!

The View from the Hill on Wednesday 7th October

Eleven years ago, on a hillside overlooking Laramie Wyoming, 21 year old Matthew Shepard was tortured, beaten and left to die, tied to a fence. His crime was being gay.

The attack upon him started a whole new debate in America about hate crimes and bigotry but here we are 11 years on and bigotry certainly seems to reign around the world.

Bigotry in all its shapes and colours insinuates its way into our lives and means that even those held in national reverence, like the sainted Anton Du Beke, can come unstuck with an ill timed racist comment.

The casual nature with which we all sometimes use disparaging remarks about others perhaps shows the greatest reason why bigotry and hatred will be with us for a while, none of us see it as harmful, but it is totally corrosive. If we see another person as less than ourselves for any reason, it actually diminishes us.

I am as guilty as anyone of throw away comments about people I don't happen to think very highly of, but I hope I try and couch those comments with an overall belief that all men/women are equal and entitled to be annoying!

Even those people who even now are ringing or writing to the BBC to demand the sacking of Mr Du Beke may well have overstepped the PC line themselves on occasion, as I am so fond of saying, none of us are perfect. Perhaps though, we can all agree that hating someone because they are different and acting on that hatred is no good thing.

I support the Matthew Shepard Foundation in their efforts to raise awareness of hatred in our society and I'm not sure what difference this will make but just talking about it, accepting that it is there and trying to step in wherever you can to challenge bigotry and hatred might be a start.

Besides, how are you different?

http://www.matthewshepard.org

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On this day in 1959, a little boy called Simon Cowell was born. Actually Simon was not born to Mr and Mrs Cowell, he was actually abandoned on the steps of a dairy run by a family friend with a little note saying please look after Simon. Of course, being in a dairy, they had plenty of milk to feed the little fellow and as he grew and prospered in that dairy he became very fond of a Jersey cow who always settled in the 12th stall of the dairy for milking, but as the farmer was numerically challenged he had not numbered the stalls but painted letters of the alphabet over them, and so whenever his wife would shout, "where's Simon?" he would reply "Cow L" - and it stuck.

And that's a fact.

The View from the Hill on Tuesday 6th October

I don't know what the weather is like for you, but here it is wet and miserable and so I want to bring you a little ray of sunshine.

First of all I do have the permission of the family concerned to share with you this story, a story I recounted at a funeral yesterday, and a story which caused a few ruffled feathers!

You may have seen the coverage on the telly recently about the evacuees remembering those days from 70 years ago when they left home and were sent off to the safety of the countryside, the lady whose funeral I conducted was one such evacuee.

Sent from London to North Wales, she was loving the freedom to run and play in the hills around the little village, and from that vantage point you could watch the German planes as they lined up for their bombing runs over Liverpool.

As you may well know, any bombs that were not dropped on target were released by the pilots before their return journey and on this day a bomb was dropped very near the village. This was a big event and the whole village went out to look at the damage. The little girl ran down from the hill and joined the rest of the people as they stared into the crater and in amazement commented about the hole that had been left, then they fell silent. Through that silence came a little cockney voice - "call that a hole, I've got an arsehole bigger than that!"

She was sent back to London.

Now when I told this tale I had pre-warned the congregation that as the lady concerned was well known for her colourful language, there might be the odd word that was not normally heard at a funeral - it still went down like a, like a...well make your own assumption.

I make no apologies for telling the tale, the family requested it be included because it reflected the nature and character of their mother, a lady they loved and wanted to remember in all her glory. We often say at the beginning of funerals, we are here to pay our respects, so how is it respectful to not talk about people honestly?

To those who didn't like this story, well I have only this to say - arseholes!

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Today is the anniversary of the death of Tod Browning, the film director who bought us such classics as Freaks. In that film the Freaks catch a beautiful and vain trapeze artist and turn her into a chicken, what many of you might not know is that the actual chicken used in that film was hatched from an egg supplied by my great great grand Uncle, Theo Albumensen. He later went into business with a Colonel from Wisconsin called Flanders and but for a delay in applying for the patent, I could have been enjoying the benefits of inheriting vast fortunes from

Colonel Flanders Wisconsin Fried Chicken!

And that's a fact.

PS - It's also the anniversary of the death of Hattie Jacques - hence today's video choice.

The New View from The Hill on Monday 5th October

I say New View because I am changing the layout, just got fed up of the TV thing so something a little more challenging for me to take its place will appear as of today.

I have to say thank you to my father who suggested an idea for the blog and if I don't use it he will find out, so here we go. I received a letter in the post the other morning from my doctors surgery, to attend on the 24th October for my flu jab. Why do I get a flu jab, I thought, isn't that for the old and vulnerable? It then explained that I was now one of the vulnerable or as my father put it, 'a member of an endangered species'!

Makes you feel like a dinosaur, which brings me nicely to the AHC gathering yesterday, I did promise to report back.

Nine members turned up and it was a glorious autumnal day and we sat in the sunshine and they all had a real good chinwag about the old days. Most of them are past their 70th birthday, in fact some are nearer their 80th, hence my eluding to the dinosaurs. Between them they had carried out more than 100,000 funerals and we established that in the years ahead, with the expansion of non religious ceremonies steadily increasing, there will be a need for new celebrants to be trained. So, any volunteers?

The day was thought a success, a lot of fat was chewed and the carvery lunch was excellent! I also managed a walk around the lake so all in all a good day.

Facing a busy week at work this week, if I keep going as long as those gents I met with yesterday I will be adding quite a few to that total of 100,000!

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Now the new section, a sort of daily fact in the manner of six degrees of separation. I will find a fact linked to the day and then find a link to me. This section will be called And that's a fact!

Today's fact:

Today is the anniversary of the birth of the actor Donald Pleasance, he would have been 90 if he had not been killed by psychopath in a hockey mask!

Pleasance was from Worksop in Nottinghamshire which I visit several times a month but that is not the link, the link is, I met his brother at Lincoln Magistrates Court where he used to be a Court Usher. He was a charming little man in a black cloak. He was always happy but he and his brother did not get on, "Donald always tries to stake me through the heart" he once said, "it's the cloak you see, he thinks I'm Dracula!"

And that's a fact.

PS It is also the anniversary of the birth of a favourite singer of mine;Mrs Miller. Video attached.

The View from the Hill on Sunday 4th October

Saturday night telly throws up some magic moments just every now and again, well there was a moment last night but perhaps just for me and for people of my generation and sensibility.

Watching Strictly on Sky+ (just so I can FF through the Tess Daly bits as her wonky eye is starting to freak me out) and enjoying the passion and romance and disaster that unfolded and then a moment of sheer nostalgia, Andy Williams singing Moon River.

There he was stood on a little podium looking like a life size music box, in his sparkly shirt and comfy shoes, professional dancers whirling around him, waltzing their little hearts out. His voice may have lost a little of its smoothness but he still sold that song brilliantly and I was immediately transported back in time about 30 years to a small TV in our old house and the family all sat round watching the Andy Williams Show. And the favourite part of that show was...The Cookie Bear!

Do you remember every week that bear came to the door and tried to get Andy Williams to give him a cookie and every time Williams shouted at him, slammed the door and the bear would fall over, doesn't sound much but I used to love it. At this point you're all saying, that explains a lot - he finds a bear falling over funny!

I had a tape of Andy Williams, I played it until it died, I think I might have to download a few of his songs for my ipod and I am going to post a Cookie Bear video if I can find one.

Yesterday I said that I had a blog follower in Missouri, Andy Williams lives in Branson Missouri, he discovered the Osmonds but we won't hold that against him. Anyway you don't suppose he reads this blog do you?

The other thing to note is that for once Bruce Forsyth was not the oldest man on Strictly, Andy Williams does him by a few months.

Right, bacon butties to prepare and then off to Rufford for the gathering of the AHC.

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The View on what to View:

The final choice for this Sunday - I suppose we better see the X Factor conclude the picking of the finalists although I already think we know who will get picked. My choice is Lloyd, Ricky, Joe, Rachel Stacy, Lucie, Kandy Rain, Miss FRANK and the awful twins, Jamie,Danyl and Olly.