I Have An Electric Boot!

It's true! It's true! The Crown has made it clear...

Sorry, a little Camelot outburst got me, but it is true, I do have an electric boot - on the borrowed car I am driving at the moment.

Now I understand how, with hands full, the quick press of a button on your key fob will enable you to deposit your burden into the boot, the lid rising majestically at your control but how lazy and incompetent do you have to be to then have a separate button to press which lowers the boot again?

The car also has bluetooth for your mobile phone so you talk through the radio - it's all a bit technical but one thing is for sure, it runs the battery down on your phone too quickly.

The car even has a little flashing light which displays a number from 3 to 6 and it took me a little while to understand it was advising which gear you should be in.

Eventually they will design a car that does not need a driver, nor passengers - there will be countless empty cars roaming the streets looking for parking spaces.

But why do you have this new car I hear you ask...my own chariot is in the hands of the mechanics undergoing the surgery I spoke about last week, fly wheels and clutch.

Yesterday I arose early and drove to Derby to do the swap over, then quickly back home to get changed before driving to Lincoln then Grantham, then Lincoln and home arriving at about 8.15pm.

I had managed to find a small window in my schedule that allowed me to call in at our favourite chinese restaurant, The Ocean, in Lincoln. After nibbling a few prawn crackers, I dispatched a spring roll and then devastated a Kung Po chicken.

When I did get home, the house was empty but for our two doggie lodgers, Mrs B was off at the theatre drooling over Anton Du Beke.

I put the telly on and watched the end of a concert filmed in 1973, it was the great Marlene Dietrich. Aged about 72, sewed into a skin tight dress, she lisped her way through her catalogue of songs and gave a performance that only she could get away with.

She was never happy with the results of this taped concert but she did get paid £250,000, which was a lot of money back in the early 1970's.

It reminded me of a great night that Mrs B and I had in the theatre, we went to the Theatre Royal in Lincoln to see Sian Phillips in a play about Dietrich, simply called Marlene. Phillips was brilliant, and it had to be about the best thing I ever saw done on that stage - with the possible exception of Tony Fielding-Raby in La Cage.

Of course all the shows I did on that stage were breathtaking - but I didn't see them so I can't comment.

So, it was a long day and today will be equally busy and then I must rescue my car and give up the one with the electric boot.

It also has sliding rear doors so in short...

there's simply not, a more congenial spot, for happily-ever-aftering than here in Camelot.
       
Bloody Camelot-itis now!

How many Dicks do you know?

Hi Di Hi

Whilst watching Breakfast TV this morning, I noted the appearance of Richard Westcott, reporting on the demise of the public toilet - as I have already stated elsewhere, with his scruffy beard and clothing and in the manner with which he nonchalantly leaned against the toilet door, he gave the impression of a French rent boy.

It got me thinking about other Richard's famous or not - that have crossed my path.

I have a brother called Richard, he is not famous - yet. He did have his moment in the spotlight as a boy soprano. My mother wept tears of joy as he stood before the congregation and sang the opening verse to Once In Royal Davids City for a Christmas carol concert. His singing career petered out after appearing as one of Fagin's gang in a production of Oliver.

Being from Mansfield I must mention Richard Bacon, now I don't know Mr Bacon but I have met his mum and dad, does that count?

Last night I heard Miriam Margoyles on the Graham Norton show stating her dislike for the late Richard Harris - he was grumpy apparently.

Now Richard Widmark looked grumpy but was a very nice man by all accounts and then I recalled Richard Whitleley but after that I started to run short of famous Richards.

Oh wait, Richard Roundtree just jumped into my mind - he was the original Shaft of course...

And another flash - many years ago Mrs B and I were on holiday and we happened to be in LA on the day that Little Richard was being given his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - didn't meet him but we got close enough to see that it was really him, or what was left of him after all the plastic surgery.

Dick Dastardly - but he was a cartoon character...

Dick Sargeant - from Bewitched...

suddenly all these dicks were flashing in my head!

But there must be more so how to jog my memory and dredge up some more names - I know, the internet....


Dear Readers, please take my advice and  type "famous Richards" NOT "celebrity dicks" in your search engine. I got quite a shock.

I am going to leave you now to come up with your own Richards and Dicks.

Enjoy.

Footsteps in the Sand

Hello, how very nice to see you all again. I hope you didn't have any trouble finding me.

I am writing this in sections because I have just rescued two beagles from the evil clutches of a creature called a Twillets. Sadly she will repossess them later but for now they can run, skip, play, eat, drink and then crap all over the garden.

They like a bit of attention and they like to run in and out of the house dragging with them bits of wood, empty crisp packets and other rubbish. They also manage to leave a few footprints as they go about their business. It'll all hoover up later.

Anyway, it reminded me of a little verse I came across the other day, an except from A Psalm of Life by Henry W Longfellow:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time


I often get asked to read that sickly sweet poem about walking on the beach with god and how he carries you when it gets rough, (load of bollocks), but I liked this verse because it talks about the things we leave behind - not real footprints, but the inspiration and the example we can leave for those who follow.

Some of us will have been lucky enough to have had parents who showed us the way to live and although they may not have achieved greatness, they still leave an example that is worth following...

hold on, I have a visitor....

ok, Miss Lottie had gone to play again, where was I?

oh yes, examples, sand...

I was watching the Human Planet and the remarkable journey that the women of the Tubu tribe make - having committed to memory the location of the only waterhole for miles around they struggle in the heat for three days to locate it and re stock their water supply before heading off to market - and these are women! Mrs B couldn't find her way to Manchester with a Sat Nav, let alone on a camel.

In the desert the footprints in the sand are obliterated within seconds - but the respect and the trust that one generation has for the previous is concrete - they believe that the information they are given and example they are shown is something they can and should trust implicitly.

The Longfellow verse was given to me by a family who had nothing but respect and admiration for the recently deceased father - a teacher by profession and a teacher in a broader sense too - he loathed religion and dogma and embraced the potential of humanity as something to believe in and nurture. His grandsons have literally followed in his footsteps, that is the depth of his motivation and inspiration.

They followed his lead - and yet last night I spent time with a family who were leading lives that were the opposite of what their father had showed them.

His style was to be dismissive and belittling, sometimes downright cruel but his son said to me that his fathers example had still shown him how to be a good father - he just knew he had to do everything that his father could not - love, support, inspire.

I think I may have lost my thread somewhere along the way but I hope in this rambling you can see what I am getting at - that we all leave footsteps in the sands of time - for good or bad - and it is for those who follow to decide whether they should be a guide or a warning.

Dogs barking - hang on...

It is such a beautiful bright evening that I think I should take the dogs for a walk, we shall go down on the park and I will be careful where I tread because sticky brown footsteps are the worst footsteps of all.

Alright dogs...I'm coming.

Who'd be a Prince?

Good morning/afternoon/evening (delete as applicable).

Poor old Prince Andrew, you have to feel sorry for him don't you?

First of all he gets born into this rich family and then he joins the military and serves his country and then he manages to find a little job using his position or status to raise the profile of British companies - what a bastard.

He gets to go to lots of functions and meets lots of people, some of whom he makes friends with and then it turns out some of them are not quite all they seem...oh dear. Because that would never happen to anyone else would it?

Now the papers are having a go because he associates with sexual deviants - but he can't help what his brothers and ex wife get up to.

I think he's an easy target and perhaps the SAS can use him as a training exercise - crikey things have gone downhill for the SAS. It used to be Who Dares Wins - now it's Who Does What?

I think we should blame the Liberal Democrats in the coalition - it's all gone wrong since they got into power.

Why are we, the British, so intent on sticking our necks out in Libya? Where is the EU or NATO or the UN?

Cameron and Hague are sitting in the war room in Downing Street playing Risk for real - and they don't seem to be very good at it.

Change of topic - Daily Mail hat on - parking in Nottingham for council employees...red mist descends.

Unison want to go on strike - lazy gits - and one of the things they don't like in the cuts package that the council is considering, is a parking charge of between £1 and £10 per day, depending on your wages.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - there are many people who go to work in Nottingham and they either pay to park or they pay and take public transport - so what makes Unison members so different?
Go to work you lazy, work shy mob of moaning socialists. (Removes Daily Mail hat).

Change of topic - Leonardo DiCaprio - you cry like a girl! There again, perhaps I would cry like a girl if I realised I'd let Martin Scorsese trick me into making a pile of poo like Shutter Island. You were excellent in Inception and I hope Clint Eastwood draws a performance out of you in his biopic of J Edgar Hoover - but honestly Leo, that was just awful - please go stand in the corner.

Change of topic - can you still buy Topic?

Goodbye