Jones

Anyone out there who does not list this among their favourites?

In The Wee Small Hours

Outstanding episode. Meaningful look. Bobby's not happy. But he is gorgeous.

1950s Childhood

When the hideously low-class Rab C. Nesbitt decided on TV this holiday to become Rab In Hoodie, we were treated to the iconic opening of the 1950s children's TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Ah, memories:

Comfy Snuggles

My sweet silver Jaspa, who will be 20 in March, snuggles up with her sometime foe Dandy, who is 17-and-a-half.

Bless.

In The Dark

Yuck. Very unpleasant episode. Stone baby syndrome indeed.

But then we do get Bobby "in the dark".

Nothing New

But how could I resist sharing two tempting tiggers with you?

Sweet Melati relaxing.

 

 

Hunky Jae Jae snoozing.

 

Have a click for a bigger pic.

Big Mistake

Just watched an episode of SVU where Dean Winters (who plays Olivia's boyfriend, and was also the crooked cop at the night club with Goren in Purgatory) was accused of rape. The officer in charge of the sting at the end that saved him appeared to BE him. Even the voice was the same.

Then I remembered seeing another Winters in the opening credits. So I looked them up Scott William Winters is Dean's younger brother by one year.

I really think using a looky-likey soundy-likey was a very confusing mistake.

Anthony, not Dick

That's the artist Van Dyck, not the actor Van Dyke. Sounds the same though.

For nearly three decades the BBC had produced a programme called Antiques Road Show, in which antiques experts tour the country, and in prime locations film them examining and valuing people's treasures. I believe it also exists in other lands - Canada, Australia, possibly the US too. Certainly they have done "specials" from those places and achieved a following.

Occasionally they find a total gem of exceptional monetary value. One such was the rare slipware jug  Ozzie the Owl, who sold for over £20,000:

A few months ago a priest brought in a painting he had bought for £400, hoping to find it was worth more, so he could sell it to get his church bells replaced. The experts thought it just might be a lost Van Dyck, which would make it worth rather more than the man thought.

Turns out it is - and it may be worth £400,000! Much restoration and research seems to reveal it might be a sketch for a group portrait that was destroyed hundreds of years ago.

Don't know about you, but if I gambled £400 on an art work, it would turn out to be worth 40p!

The Insider

Nasty FBI guy. Lovely hint of tongue tip.

Ten Years Later

Just been watching Zoonotic and A Person Of Interest. How did it take me 10 years and more to notice the header of the letter Nicole was shown raising doubts about her citizenship and whether it was obtained by bribing the judge? It said "Austrailian Ministry of Citizenship"! AUSTRAILIAN!!!

Very official-looking.

Inert Dwarf

How irresistible are the curls, the shoulders, the neck. Sigh. The man.

Remembrance of Things Past

 Back in 1606, a shipwright in Deptford in south east London called John Addey died and left in his will £200 towards "the relief of the poor people of Deptford to last forever". So says the tablet to his memory in the churchyard of St Nicholas', where both he and the murdered playwright Christopher Marlowe were buried.

How do you make £200 last forever? Well, the executors invested it in some land, and later the funds were used to open a school a school was for the children of the poor in the area.

In 1715 Dean George Stanhope, chaplain to Queen Anne, also founded a school for the poor children of Deptford. In the 19th century this building was opened in Deptford High Street:

You can see the boy and girl statues over the central window.

Towards the end of the 19th century the two schools amalgamated to form Addey and Stanhope school. Eventually it became a grammar school, which means pupils were selected on the basis of an exam at age 11. Eventually the education system changed again and the school, while maintaining its small size, became a comprehensive. Although it is publicly funded, it still has funds from the original endowments with which it can fund developments. It still owns the very small plot on which it now stands (not the original or secondary site) and has recently expanded by demolishing buildings on adjacent land that it also owns, and built a very modern extension.

The oldest part of the current building dates to 1899:

The modern addition is very futuristic:

This is where the old post office used to stand.

 



 

The top floor of the blue stripy building is the new sports hall.

The tarmac you can see is the only outside space the school has.

 

So why am I telling you this? Well, from 1964-1971 I was an Addeyan. As a representative of the poor children of Deptford, I was just the sort of pupil they liked to have. I loved it, and they did me proud. I was even Head Girl in 1970-1, and I appear on three Honours Boards.

 

Yesterday my agency sent me for an interview for a temporary post there. They wanted a full-timer, and I was supposed to have a job-sharer, but she pulled out at the last minute. But they still interviewed me as well as a full-time prospect. They appointed her for the interim post, but didn't want to lose me, so they've decided they can afford to employ me for two days a week for at least 6 weeks. This suits me fine!

 

It's the kind of school people stay loyal to, and many ex-pupils have always returned to teach there. When I was a child, the Geography teacher was a former pupil. He stayed for his whole career, only retiring a relatively short time ago, having risen to the post of Deputy Headteacher. He married an ex-pupil briefly, and later was romantically involved with two or three members of staff. Another pupil came back to teach PE, having always had a crush on the History teacher, and she snagged him!

 

The boy statue was lost many years ago - perhaps more than a century - but the girl still has pride of place, standing today in the entrance of the new building.



How did he make it to 81?

I was saddened but not surprised to hear yesterday of the death on Saturday of Peter O'Toole. It says much of the man's stature that he was top of the news broadcast on the BBC's most serious radio station, Radio 4.

I was not even 10 when Lawrence of Arabia came out, but I saw it when I was very young, and was bowled over. At some point I even requested T. E. Lawrence's book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, as a school prize.

His performance as King Henry II in the film Becket, with fellow hellraiser Richard Burton in the title role, just confirmed my admiration for the man. When he reprised the role in The Lion in Winter, the only thing that made me cringe was the appalling Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine (though on the plus side, the identity of that Queen's spouse was the £1 million answer the first time the quiz Who Wants to be a Millionaire was won, and so I knew the answer. Sadly not me answering though, someone else got the £1 million). O'Toole was wonderful.

In my young days the horn player from the English National Opera's orchestra (I was a regular attendee) became a friend. We even shared a birthday, and at his 50th anniversary party the cake had a corner for my 29th. Later that year he was going to his old mate Peter O'Toole's 50th birthday party. He was considering inviting me, and made the mistake of telling me this while giving me a lift home on the night itself. But he was too protective, and didn't want to subject me to the kind of rave-up his pal would be having, so my begging was in vain. Grrrr!

Given the life he lived, it's miraculous that O'Toole made it to 81.

Another film star has also died this weekend aged 96. Joan Fontaine didn't feature on my list of famous faces I could put names to, but her estranged big sister, Olivia De Havilland (the great wartime aircraft...) was always a favourite. And she is still around aged 97.

Ahead of their time

I half heard an interview with someone who helped arrange the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th anniversary concert. Apparently Paul McCartney was upset he hadn't been invited to perform, and said The Beatles had offered to do a Mandela concert in 1965.

The interviewee said he thought this was just an empty boast. After all, who'd really heard of Mandela in 1965? He'd only been in jail for a year.

Well, the guy later found that the people The Beatles had made the offer to had rejected it because he had not heard of them! I mean, who had?

In 1965? Only everyone else in the world!

I must say that this story made me happy to be a lifelong fan of the band.

Today was Mandela's funeral, and for some reason one of my old poems came back to my mind. I wrote it in 1972, and it was written from the point of view of an oppressed black person in a place like South Africa. It ended with a dream of future freedom. The poem may still exist in a box somewhere, but all I recall is the last two lines:

Then shall we say that white men have brains of dust,

Or let them hold their heads high, as we must?

Gosh, Truth and Reconciliation ahead of its time! I hadn't realised how forward-thinking I was age 19!

Ill Bred

Not a favourite episode, but my, how hot is he?

No Sign

If you get the chance to watch some of the Mandela memorial speeches, do watch out for the sign language interpreter. I was a bit puzzled watching him do almost nothing, and none of it meaningful, so I was reassured today to find he seems to have been a complete fraud (no shit, Sherlock) and no one knows quite how he got the gig. Even upstages the selfie Obama let himself get into, much to Michelle's disgust.

Death of a Hero

I cannot let the death of Nelson Mandela pass without comment. His inspirational life should be something we all wish to emulate in our own small way, though few of us would have his courage and perseverance. Given the state of the world we could certainly do with his help right now. I wish I believed in an afterlife where his spirit still exists.

I spent many years boycotting South African produce in the supermarket and signing petitions outside South Africa House. It all seems so small now.

Identity Crisis

I think it's true to say that we did not in general like Season 8. But there's no denying how enticing those curls were.

Homo Homini Lupis

Oh, I  miss those days of Bobby's disgusted looks when he's just got someone to admit to something nasty.

Ambush!

I wish I could say I was ambushed by a tiger in my meeting at London Zoo on Tuesday, but it was just by animal director David Field.

There were two other (unannounced) people at the meeting. I would have taken someone else along had I known.

However, his technique quickly showed his tactics - attack and discredit me. And I kept bringing the discussion back to the important thing, the thing I was there to discuss, the animals.

I can see why the treatment of the gorilla baby and the lion cub went horribly wrong. It wasn't anyone's responsibility. Certainly not his. He's answerable to all sorts of organisations. They are all there for the benefit of the animals.

And yet the animals died.

The decision was made to give the tigress and cub access to the pool enclosure because there were high structures in the "dry" enclosure that Melati could have taken the cub up into, and if it had fallen, they thought that would be more dangerous than the water.

Er, sorry? Aren't young mammals a bit like rubber? When they fall, especially on to soft grassy surfaces, do they not often bounce? OK, still a danger, but not necessarily a fatal one. Drowning? ALWAYS fatal, certainly in circumstances like these, with no possiblility of rescue. A greater risk. Obvious, in my opinion.

The relationship between Melati and JaeJae has become calmer, which I saw for myself. Apparently, when separated, they call for each other. So they will consider letting dad in with Melati and any future cubs.

Other zoos do this with other species of tiger. Not convinced it will work for these two. So be prepared for the next lot of cubs to be murdered by dad.

I hope I'm wrong. Certainly, despite them trying to play the blame game with me over my outspokenness, I'm pretty sure they will be more circumspect next time.

Meanwhile, the reaction to Zoo Check (part of the Born Free organisation founded by the stars of the eponymous film, and now run by their son) was that Mr Field would never speak to them, they are animal rights extremists. He seems to think this is a bad thing. Of course, I let them know of his views when I got home...

I also asked Mr Field how he thinks I came up with his name for my campaign against the incompetent treatment of animals. He seemed to think I'd seen him on the telly! I had to tell him that it was months of building up information by chatting with staff and volunteers, till finally someone named him. I had never seen his face till the day of the meeting. Sorry if I wounded your vanity, sir.

Unfortunately, a programme on the history of zoos and zoo visits aired the next evening, and there was his mug. Spoiled the whole programme.