One

Oh, little did we know when first we viewed this episode how much of our lives we would spend thinking about the man in it.

Animal Magic

On Tuesday I visited my friend, who recently adopted two retired breeding Bengal cats, Juniper, a shy petite queen who resisted being photographed, and Bear, a huge stud. When he was a tiny kitten Bear's mother had caught his eye with a claw, so he has lived his life happily with just one.




I made another trip to the zoo last Wednesday, and though the tiger cubs did not appear, a new baby llama made its entry into the world. This is the sweetie at just 2-and-a-half hours old:




One reason why the cubs may not have appeared is they had their first vet encounter, where they were vaccinated, microchipped and sexed - two boys and a girl.

No Exit

This one tragic episode, misery from start to finish. Bobby's only smile was when he was suggesting the girl who committed suicide was probably drunk and wearing a lampshade at the Christmas party.

Cutely Cubtastic

I returned to London Zoo twice this week, on Tuesday and on Friday. The cubs didn't put in an appearance on Friday, but on Tuesday I was able to show them off to Helen, my boss.

Mum brought them out to see the world, and for the world to see:



Mum had enough of one of the cubs and slapped him down. Please excuse the loud noise - there is a giant brass tiger paw that kids can operate to understand how the claws retract. Some parents think it's OK for everyone else to have to suffer their kids' intrusive behaviour.

My Good Name

I would really like to be showing Bobby tackling his suspect to the ground, but he was just moving too fast.

The Joys of Motherhood

On Monday I went to see if I could have the pleasure of videoing the tiger cubs for myself. After an hour waiting opposite the exit they would take from their den, I couldn't wait any longer for a pee. When I came back...armed with a sandwich too...they were out! Poor Melati was trying to get all three in the same place at the same time, either in or out, but without much success.





Bye, everyone!





Of course, I continued to wait, this time from a different vantage point where long grasses wouldn't block the view so much. Both there and in the previous place a dedicated core of people waited. And waited. and waited. For six hours, for Melati to appear at her usual time, 4pm. Except the clocks had gone forward, so her usual time would now be 5pm. Such a happy social time we had. But Melati hadn't reappeared with her tiny gang by the time I left at 5.45.

Meanwhile, my friend Julie is about to have a landmark birthday. She had her party before the date. From the photo, can you guess the landmark number?

A Murderer Among Us

Rather a far-fetched motive in this one, I thought. But Bobby is delicious.

All Kitties Great and Small

My dear cat Dandy is a big small cat, if that makes sense. He's just a kittie, but he's a pretty big boy, despite his thyroid problems. Dandy is nearly 18. He is very vocal, and I just had to film him "talking" to me, even at the expense of revealing my un-vacuumed floor...




Then there are the small big kitties at the zoo, who have just made their first proper outing:

Monster

One thing Bobby is not.

Jaspa at 20

My oldest kitty cat Jaspa turned 20 on the 21st.

She is very slight, not much more than 2kg. She mostly accepts the pill she takes for hyperthyroidism, which she doesn't like, because she knows it is immediately followed by her kidney tablet, which she loves - she'd take the whole packet at once if I'd let her!

 

My pretty little old lady thinking about her next move.

 

 

Her next move is to approach the camera and show off the cat milk dripping from her chin.

Mis-Labeled

This is an exceptionally nasty episode. And Bobby is exceptionally tasty.

Masquerade

There's not a single moment in this episode that he's not completely perfect.

Best. Day. Ever.

I was at the zoo today when the news broke. I was wrong when I wrote last month that Melati the Sumatran tiger was pregnant. She had already given birth, to three cubs.

)

The babies were born on 3rd February. They are not yet on show. However, as those who have the concentration of a gnat wandered away, I continued to watch Jae Jae over by the gate, where Melati joined him from the other side. Then she walked way - with a cub in tow! I was the first visitor - almost the first person - to see a cub in the flesh! I squealed, and people reappeared, one with a powerful camera with which she took a movie. She promised to try and send it to me if the file isn't too big. Jae Jae had already thrilled us with his athletic feats and his beauty.




And for those interested in meeting the neighbours from hell:

Founders' Day

The first Thursday in March is the day when my old school (my current employer) celebrates Founders' Day, with a celebration in a local church in the daytime, and a reunion for old scholars in the evening.

I wasn't working on Thursday, but I took my atheist body along for the service, which opened with the School Song (a very rare thing for a school to have, they usually adopt a hymn and call that the school song, but my school has its own custom written song).

These days, this sentimental old baggage can't sing it for crying. There's a verse dedicated to each House (Addeys - Green; Stanhopes - Blue; Pepys - Yellow; and Evelyn - Red).

Addeys are named after the Elizabethan shipwright John Addey, whose 1606 legacy for the poor children of Deptford was later used to co-found the school. Stanhope is for Dean George Stanhope, a local churchman of the early 18th century. Pepys (pronounced by us Peppies, not Peeps) is after the 17th century diarist. Evelyn is as after John Evelyn, another noted diarist from the 17th Century. All had local connections.

The last verse of the School Song celebrates John Addey's craft, which would have been of great use to Elizabeth I at the time of the Spanish Armada. Britain's shipbuilding and ships are known as Hearts of Oak, and here's the final verse:

 

Hearts of Oak that Deptford made

Guarded England well.

The ships are gone, but stands the School,

The shipwrights' worth to tell.

As builded they right sound and true,

So builds the School, and shall for aye,

Sing Addeys, Stanhopes, Pepys, Evelyns,

Prosper School always!

As I recently mentioned, next year is the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Stanhope school, which later incorporated the Addey bequest.

This year I managed to persuade one friend along for the evening. Next year, I plan to entice lots more, whether I'm still working there or not.

Meanwhile, enjoy the sight, as I enjoyed the taste, of the cupcakes bearing the school badge served up to the evening visitors:

Malignant

The thought of Bobby wrestling is almost too much for me.

Maledictus

Just goes to show how dysfunctional the rich can be, especially when they go to private schools. Not meaning anyone in particular, but the British cabinet may fit the bill...

But isn't Bobby gorgeous when he's playing? I could look at this picture all day.

Baby Days

You know that human babies do absolutely nothing for me. Animal babies, on the other hand, send me into paroxysms of delight.

As I was taking my friend to the zoo as a birthday treat, I was very happy to see that a new emperor tamarin had been born. The official photos showed the baby with its mother, but the last time there were babies, the female-only golden lion headed tamarin group had acted as nannies.

So it was again - but their movements were so fast it was almost impossible to get a clear picture. Even when the baby got off and moved about by itself, it was incredibly brave and swift for an animal only a couple of weeks old.

The emperors tried to get the baby back on several occasions, and one must wonder how the poor little creature manages to feed!

On the nanny's back you can just make out the white mouth of the baby where its moustache is beginning to develop.

The tiny tail of the baby can just be seen as it follows the nanny tamarin it's just left. Not as brave as it thought!

When I entered Tiger Territory I was immediately struck by the fact that the opening alongside Jae Jae's favourite perch was boarded over. I wondered if the purpose was to limit his view of something or somewhere, or to limit someone's view of him. Such as Melati.

Later he came down and got his daylight and fresh air through another opening:

I did see a glimpse of Melati through the closed gate to one part of the enclosure, but she was not able to access the outside.

Then I saw the pool where the baby was allowed by keepers to drown - and it was not only drained, but filled with chipped bark. Ding! Light bulb moment. Melati's pregnant! I couldn't find anyone to confirm this, though the girl in the gift shop did smile a lot and said they "were not supposed to say anything" (ie. there was something to tell...)

Well, it looks like this time they've decided to be a bit cleverer about any new arrival and its safety. My meeting with the boss man seems to have paid off. I'm sure there were many other people who made their opinions known, but I'm glad to have played my part.

Magnificat

I really dislike this episode in every possible way, including how tired our man was.

Mad Hops

Love it when Bobby's angry.

Legion

I guess I'm not alone in finding the scene in the recording studio hot and funny.

Honours Board

Working at my old school has certain advantages - for instance, every time I go up a certain staircase, I cannot help but see two of my three entries on the school's Honours Boards. When I first appeared, in 1969, 16-year-olds who had just passed five or more 'O' Level exams were included under the box containing 18-year-olds who had gained three or more 'A' Levels. But the numbers were getting so large that the hall would soon have been swamped with boards, so the following year only those with 'A' Levels were included, and that's where I am under the 1971 entry. You can see both in the first two columns, almost side by side in the top half of the board. Tried and failed to find a way to highlight it...

Sadly, I also have to look at the previous board where my bitch sister appears. Only once, though, 'cos she only got 2 'A' Levels.

Legacy

It may have been a crap season, but with looks like this our Bobby kept the interest up.

Apologies

Sorry, folks, I've already spent a couple of hours just getting my computer to do anything but freeze. I'm going to have to leave visiting you all for a day or two more.

Lady's Man

I can't believe they now use this man as the DA in SVU. He has creepy eyes, and cannot act his way out of them. Sorry, he's perp material, not the stuff good guys are made of.

Unlike our beloved.

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.