The View from the Hill on Saturday 22nd May

The worst thing about decent weather is the predictable stampede to buy cheap burgers and chicken legs, cook them badly, give all your friends food poisoning and alcohol poisoning and call it good fun.

I know I'm miserable - but I just want to walk around Tesco without having to battle to buy a decent venison burger or some luxury potato salad - there will be hordes of lower class people, many not wearing shirts instead claiming that their cut away vest top qualify as clothing, the fact that they have never been up the toiletry aisle (that sounds a little rude) will only add to the rancid atmosphere.

I sometimes think that there must be an annual prize given locally for the most offensive body odour - sponsored by Mansfield Tip and Sewage Farm.

That's my little grumble out of the way - now I want to talk about something that makes me happy....

and the other thing about these troglodyte shoppers is they always buy the wine that's on offer - Mrs B and I are loyal to our brand and there is usually enough to feed our habit, but then they put it on offer and  you can hear the clatter as they fill their trollies, not worried about the taste only the cost and the effects.

The things you will always find plenty of at Tesco, healthy eating cottage cheese, shower gel, free range chicken and eggs, muesli, radishes, beetroot, broccoli and deodorant!

Sorry, I slipped back into moaning mode - I wanted to talk about something that makes me happy....

and when you get to the check out, you have one of two scenarios to go through, either the smelly shopper insists on standing right behind you or you get the ignorant check out lady who insists on checking all your items and passing some grunted comments about the cost - even offering on one occasion - "they have cheaper chickens you know"!

I hate Tesco, I have started slipping into Sainsbury as it is just as near and their selection of salads is lovely - potato salad with garlic and herbs, bean and pasta salad with a parmesan cheese dressing, all very middle class and very tasty...AND no smelly people - the only trouble is the pensioners.

I wonder if Mrs B fancies trying on line shopping?

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Give a man a bbq feed him for a day. Teach a man to bbq and feed him for the summer


 Anon or is it Jesus?

The View from the Hill on Friday 21st May

It's almost an automatic response to getting out of bed in the morning - I go to the kitchen and run the cold tap, open the back door for Jake, fill the kettle and drop the tea bags into cups ready for that first cup of the day - in the same way some reach for that first fag, Mrs B and I reach for the first cup.

Today, having arisen at 6.55am (thank you Jake for the lay in) I went through all the motions of making the tea only to be reminded by Mrs B that I couldn't drink it...at 8.45am I am having a blood test - a fasting blood test!

8.45 is the middle of the day! I would normally have destroyed two cups of tea by then and eaten a poached egg or a bowl of granola. I'm not sure I will have the energy to drive to the doctors let alone book myself in via their computerised booking in system nor to make my way to the blue chairs where the nurses will more than likely find me in a coma.

As I sit here now typing, I can just hear the chink of a spoon on a mug as Mrs B makes her second cup.

When I go and get showered and brush my teeth, there will be a real desire to eat toothpaste - but I will resist.

By the time I get back from the doctors it will be 9.15 at least and I then have to drive over to Nottingham for a 10.30 funeral, so no leisurely breakfast and extra tea this morning - I will make up for it later when Mrs B and I join Miss Twillets and Co to celebrate her birthday - I think she is about 42, it is always hard to age little people.

A group of us are going to the pub for a meal, and considering how anti social I am this will be a big effort on my part, especially as I am already prepared to be grumpy having missed breakfast.

Only another hour and three quarters before I get that first cup of the day...I think I better go and brush my teeth.

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There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.

Bernard-Paul Heroux


Well Monsieur Heroux - what about the trouble of not be able to HAVE a cup of tea - you stupid French philosopher!

The View from the Hill on Thursday 20th May

One of those days when Jake and I can just kick back and do nothing all day - except make a curry for tea...and hoover the bedrooms...and go and see a family tonight regarding a funeral next week...and BUGGER!

I needed a stress free day today after a rather stressful funeral yesterday, it was a real palaver with joss sticks and felt pens, missing orders of service and rather racy language.

The deceased had a cardboard coffin which his family had decorated with various photos and drawings, and then during the ceremony every one else had a go with some felt pens. The smell of chinese joss sticks pervaded the air (and my clothes) and a friend of the deceased read the 6 minute verse called The Great Smoke Off by Shel Silverstein. If you don't know it I will attach a link for you to hear it in all its glory but is basically about cannabis smoking. It contains the wonderful section:


And as she reaches out her hand for another stick of gold
The Kid he gasps, "Goddamn it, bitch, there's nothing' left to roll"
"Nothin' left to roll?" screams Pearl, "Is this some twisted joke?"
"I didn't come here to fuck around, man, "I come here to SMOKE!"

After the smoke had cleared the chapel attendant said to me - "well, that was certainly a unique funeral".

I took that as praise and left to try and get the smell of joss sticks out of my nostrils.

Trying to give families the opportunity to say goodbye in a unique manner has its challenges but it also has its rewards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCdCfJ3B4ok

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      “Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

Shel Silverstein

The View from the Hill on Wednesday 19th May

What does your Facebook or Myspace friends list say about you?

The internet is full of strange people (thank you) and now one of them has set themselves up as a reader of friend lists - to tell you about yourself and predict the future etc. Well if Jackie Stallone can read arses, why can't some silly arse read lists? No, it's true - Jackie Stallone is a rumpologist and for $125, if you send her a picture of your bottom, she will divine your future.

http://www.jacquelinestallone.com/rumps.html

Anyway, the basic idea behind reading lists is that you count the number of certain types of people and it tells you about yourself, for example if 70% of your friends are Jewish you too are liable to be Jewish - I know it's ridiculous.

On my friends list are 5 dogs - so that's 4.9% of my friends are dogs - so I'm 4.9% dog.

I'm also 47% female, 19% actor, 0.9% pilot, 1.8% employed by the BBC, 11% gay, 13% named something beginning with J,100% white.

Now of course I only have 102 friends and some of them are not really friends, they are Facebook friends - the best sort of friends really because you never have to see them face to face. I know some of my friends who have hundreds of friends - try this experiment and see how accurate your list is about you...or if you don't fancy that why not spend time counting the pimples on your bum and save the $125 to spend on something useful rather than send it to Mrs Stallone - she'll only waste it on botox and lipstick.

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Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare

The View from the Hill on Tuesday 18th May

Any good at deciphering the hidden meaning of dreams?

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...wait a minute, that's not my dream.

Last night I dreamt that I was walking through a very busy and loud indoor market in some Asian country or at least in a Chinatown section of a big city somewhere. There was so much noise with people jostling to get food from the exotic food stands, there were chickens feet to cobble dogs with! There were even some cobbled dogs too - with a tasty mayonnaise dip.

Eventually I pushed my way through the crowds and found my way to a set of dark steps that spiralled upwards and into a dreary flat above the market place - the view was obscured by filthy windows and the smell and the noise made the space almost unbearable and Mrs B was there - not happy that she was being asked to live in such a place and she had shown her displeasure by pouring water over all of the furniture.

There was then a knock at the door and I opened it to find a queue of people I hate, (names omitted for obvious reasons) and they all insisted that I had invited them to come round and watch episodes of The West Wing.

They all came in and of course had nowhere to sit because all of the furniture was wet, so they all left again.

Then Mrs B said she wanted to move house so we packed our bags and left through another door that I hadn't noticed before and we came out in a fancy dress shop. We then walked out of the fancy dress shop and found a house for sale nearby, it was No 52 Festive Road and the seller was a man who used to grade grains for Homepride flour but had an accident and dropped his bowler hat in the machinery, so he got fired and was now bankrupt and forced into selling his home.

Anyway, Mrs B loved the house and we settled in to our new home only to discover that we had turned into cartoons!

And then I woke up.

Any clues?

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Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.

Rebecca - adapted from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier

The View from the Hill on Monday 17th May

I want to talk to you about the dangers of running and this cautionary tale comes to you after I saw, just a week or so ago, a face from the past. I cannot mention the name of the chap I saw but he used to be a Policeman and he used to weigh in at about 30 odd stone I suppose.

He had a moped and so large was his bulk that when he sat on the moped it disappeared beneath him and he just looked like he was levitating down the road on thin air!

Anyhow, one day he and a colleague where sent to a report of a burglary and sure enough, as they arrived, a youth bolted from the back of a house and made his dash for freedom. The huge frame of the man in question rolled into action and he began a slow but steady pace after the youth.

The youth, looking back over his shoulder, must have thought his luck was in but then realised that although the huge man was not fast he was dogged in his efforts - so thinking quickly, the youth ran forward and leapt over a nearby garden fence where he paused and slapped himself firmly on the back for his genius - there was no way the fat bobby would be able to climb the fence...he was right. The next thing that slapped him on the back was the fence as the Policeman ran through it, crushing the youth and pinning him to the ground.

So you see running is dangerous, very dangerous and momentum can be the greatest tool in crime fighting.

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I don't think jogging is healthy, especially morning jogging.  If morning joggers knew how tempting they looked to morning motorists, they would stay home and do sit-ups.

Rita Rudner

The View from the Hill on Sunday 16th May

Whatever happened to Ben Murphy?

Perhaps it's a generational thing, but even though there are many great shows on TV and more channels than you can shake a stick at, I sometimes miss the quaintness of BBC2.....and now Alias Smith and Jones or The High Chaparral or Lancer with Andrew Duggan, who also starred as John Walton in the first episode of the Walton's.

All of those US imported shows were so keenly awaited and devoured and even when we got into the repeats, we still sat and watched them.

I think Alias Smith and Jones was one of the first programmes that made me think about suicide - not committing it but the concept of it - because of course one of the stars, Pete Duel, committed suicide at the height of the shows success.

He was replaced by Roger Davies and the show sort of went downhill - and this prompted my question this morning of whatever happened to Ben Murphy?

He played Kid Curry and he was the one the girls all swooned over, but I don't recall him doing anything after that show - yet when I look at his record on IMDB, he seems to have worked a lot.

Anyway, I now have this yen to watch all those programmes again, a real change from CSI or Desperate Housewives - I fancy sitting down with the box set of The Waltons and wallowing in nostalgia.

Good night John Boy.

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The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Leslie Poles Hartley