Tag Archives: DVD

A Slice of my TV Life

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week I thought I’d continue with my theme of real people in TV and film and throw in a few personal thoughts too. It’s been a quiet week. The weather in November in the UK has been the usual dull and dismal November weather and October wasn’t that great either.  Despite October being my birthday month it isn’t a month that I’m really keen on. There’s Hallowe’en for instance when perfect strangers knock on your door and ask for treats, then comes bonfire night when it’s the usual nightmare of fireworks going off at all times of the evening and night.

While I’m having a moan I might as well mention my back which has been sore for quite a while. To be fair I’m not in any kind of agony but it’s sore all the same. A few months back the doctor sent me for an x ray. Apparently, it didn’t turn out so good so then they sent me for another one. The other x ray didn’t turn out so good either but by then my back pain had eased off so I wasn’t that worried but then I got a call from the doctor asking me a whole raft of questions and suggesting a third x ray was needed.

This sounded a little odd to me, especially when I went into the doctor’s surgery to pick up the card that you need to take down to the walk in centre where they take the x ray. I must have misunderstood they told me, you don’t need another x ray. To be honest I don’t think I misunderstood at all and I tend to think that they need to get a grip at this surgery.

Until I Kill You

Anyway, let’s move on. I mentioned above about a post I published a few weeks back about real people portrayed in films and this last week I’ve watched quite a bit of TV on this theme. One particular programme was Until I Kill You. It was a true life drama in four parts and it was pretty scary. It was about a woman, Delia Balmer, who gets involved with a man called John Sweeney who turns out to be a serial killer. The couple move in together but Sweeney is a bit controlling so Delia asks him to leave. He responds by attacking her, tying her to the bed and repeatedly raping her. She is lucky in that she has a friend who is looking out for her. The friend telephones when Delia doesn’t turn up for work and doesn’t believe the story Sweeney gives and tells him so, threatening to call the police.

Later when Delia has been released, she goes to the police, reports the assault but the judge decides to parole Sweeney so he returns and tries to kill her although the next door neighbour intervenes and calls the police and ambulance. Despite stab wounds Delia survives but it is only years later when Sweeney is connected to other murders that he is finally imprisoned.

The police and the justice system don’t come out of this looking good but at least Delia was finally able to put things behind her and carry on with her life. You can stream the four part series over on ITVX.

Back to the Personal Stuff

A few days later the doctor’s surgery called and asked me to see the doctor that same day. The doctor discussed the x rays and said he had to send me for an urgent CT scan. When I asked why, he used a lot of big medical words and it was only after we were ushered out, Liz, who has some medical knowledge, told me he was saying that I might have cancer.

The first thing I thought of was I hoped that this wasn’t going to ruin our long stay in Lanzarote we have planned for next February. I started thinking about having chemotherapy and being stuck in hospital when I should be relaxing in the sun and I began to think maybe it’s time to get my things in order and write a will or something. My dad lived until he was 72 so I was kind of hoping I might have a few years left.

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson

When I was on holiday in France not so long ago, I picked up a DVD in a vide grenier, a car boot sale. The great thing about DVDs is that even if you buy a French one, as long as there is an English language option you can watch it in English. The DVD I picked up was called Sully and it falls quite easily into the theme of real people portrayed in films.

If the name Sully doesn’t quite ring a bell at least you might remember an incident that happened in New York in 2009 when a passenger airliner had to land on the Hudson River. The aircraft, piloted by Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, had just left LaGuardia airport when it was hit by a flock of birds which disabled both engines and forced the crew to ditch in the Hudson. That was pretty dramatic but you could be forgiven for thinking there wasn’t much material to make a film out of. Even so, the film, directed by Clint Eastwood was pretty exciting and concerns not only the landing in the river but the following inquest in which the civil aviation authority tries to make out that Sully could have made it back to the airport.

Various simulations seemed to show that an emergency landing at the airport was possible but at the hearing, Sully questions that the simulations were done without the human factor. The simulation pilots knew the engines would fail and were ready to turn immediately back to the airfield. Sully and his co-pilot did not. They followed procedure to restart the engines which failed and only then did they realise the only option was landing in the river.

Sully cooly asks how many attempts did the simulator pilots have before getting the landing right. The answer was 17. Sully of course only had 1 attempt.

Tom Hanks plays Sully and plays, as usual, a good part and if you happen to notice Sully on your TV listings, it’s well worth watching.

Back to the Personal Stuff

One day I received a text message asking me to come to have a CT scan at Victoria Hospital in Blackpool. I had to click on a link to confirm I was attending and that was pretty much it, until a few days later I got a confirmation letter and I realised the scan was at a drop in centre and not at the hospital. Anyway, I went along for the scan which was a very quick fire experience. I went into the scan area and lay down on a bed. I was expecting to have to strip off and get into a hospital gown but no, I lay down fully clothed, handed over my specs and wallet and the machine arch ran over me a few times and that was it.

Lord Lucan

I reckon I need another true life film or TV show to finish this post off. This week I watched a TV documentary about Lord Lucan which was pretty interesting. I tuned in thinking it was a drama but it was actually a documentary. It was an interesting documentary but a very slow and long winded one. It was in three parts and followed a Hampshire builder, Neil Berriman, who had been adopted as a baby and finds that his birth mother was the nanny murdered by Lord Lucan.

Back in November 1974 the body of Sandra Rivett was discovered in a Belgravia basement and the chief suspect was Lord Lucan, who promptly disappeared. Neil teams up with an investigative journalist and together they track Lucan down to Australia where they reckon a man using the name ‘John Crawford’, is actually Lucan. It all looked pretty likely that Crawford might actually be their man but then other evidence emerged that seemed to invalidate that claim. It was pretty interesting but to be honest, this very slow moving documentary could have easily been cut down to two or maybe even one episode. If you are interested you can stream Lucan on the BBC iPlayer.

And Finally

After about a week I noticed a report on my MY GP phone app about my scan which said ‘abnormal results, contact patient.’ No one had contacted me so I called up the surgery and asked to speak to the doctor. After about 20 mins the doctor called me back. Happily there was no need to worry, the scan had showed no trace of cancer and the ‘abnormal’ report referred to my back and the need for further treatment at the muscular skeletal unit.

I have to admit to a warm feeling of relief when I put the phone down. I wasn’t about to die after all and I could look forward to a month in Lanzarote. The only thing is, watching Sully has put me off air travel. Wonder if we could sail to Lanzarote instead?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry collection.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Click here to visit amazon and purchase Timeline, my new anthology.

Remembering James Dean

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Back in the 1970s my Saturday ritual involved getting the bus into town and scouring book and record shops for, yes, you’ve guessed it, books and records. One day back then I was flipping through the posters in one particular shop. The posters were the music stars of the 70s; Elton John, Mick Jagger, Suzi Quatro, David Bowie and so on but one was a picture of a really good looking guy with a fifties combed back hair style. In some pictures he was dressed like a cowboy and in others in a red jacket and denim jeans. The guy behind the counter must have seen me wondering who the guy was and he told me he was a film star called James Dean. He handed me a paperback book about the actor and I took it home and read it and very soon I was trying to find out everything I could about him.

James Dean had been killed in a car crash in 1955 and had only appeared in three films and at the time of his death, only one of those films had been released. I read a great deal about Dean when I was in my late teens and from what I could find out, the biography to read was written by his best friend, William Bast. I never managed to get a copy of that book back then but Bast produced a made for TV film version, James Dean: Portrait of a friend with Stephen McHattie as Dean.

As TV biopics go, Portrait of a Friend was pretty enjoyable but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it repeated on TV. I used to have a VHS recording of the film but when I looked recently I was unable to find it. Funnily enough, not long ago I was in one of those budget shops, it might have been Poundstretchers and I saw a copy of the film on DVD. It was a very poor version, in fact it looked as though it had been copied straight from an old VHS tape but even so, it was interesting to see it again.

Watching that DVD got me interested in Dean again and so I had a search through my book collection to see what books I had on the subject.

The paperback book I bought that day in the record shop in the 1970’s was probably James Dean: A Short Life by Venable Herndon. It wasn’t a great book but an interesting introduction to Dean and who he was. It detailed his struggle for acting roles, TV work in New York, his apartment at 19 West Sixty-Eighth Street, his three films, his doomed affair with Pier Angeli and of course his death.

A similar book although bigger and with more photographs was a biography by John Howlet. I couldn’t find that particular book although I’m certain I wouldn’t have given it away or thrown it out.

A slightly different book I bought back in the 1970’s was a Japanese book about Dean. I’m not sure of the title, there are some Japanese ideograms and the name in English, James Dean, on the back cover. There is little text inside the book, basically it’s just a picture album and I guess the Japanese read books from right to left as the book starts with his last film and then finishes with his first film.

My Japanese James Dean book.

James Dean by David Dalton was another purchase back in the 1970s. It’s a much more in depth look at Dean’s life and skimming through it I came across a few pages about Dean’s last day, Friday September 30th, 1955. The author presented a short timeline of that day starting from 8am when Dean picked up his silver Porsche from Competition Motors in Hollywood to 5.45pm when he was killed in a car accident.

James Dean was competing in a car race in Salinas and had decided to drive his competition car, the Porsche, to the event as the car was brand new and Dean wanted to get some miles on the clock.

As well as my books on the famous actor I also have a box set containing his three films.

East of Eden is based on the final part of the book by John Steinbeck. It’s about two brothers who compete for the love of their father. Dean played the ‘bad’ brother and the father was played by veteran actor Raymond Massey who was continually shocked by Dean’s bad language and sullen and moody demeanour.

Rebel Without a Cause is probably the most well known of Dean’s three films. Dean plays Jim Stark, a rebellious teenager who has been in trouble at school and has either been expelled or forced to leave. The film follows him on his first day at the new school as he attempts to make friends with a group of fellow classmates but the result is that he makes more enemies. He gets involved in a ‘chicken run’ with fellow classmate Buzz in which the two have to drive a stolen car towards a cliff edge and the last one to jump out is ‘chicken’. Buzz fails to exit his car and is killed.

It’s a great film even though James Dean looks far too old to be still going to school.

His final film was Giant based on a novel by Edna Ferber. The film is set in Texas and is about millionaire ranchers and cattlemen. Dean plays Jett Rink, a sullen ranch hand who unexpectedly inherits some land, finds oil there and suddenly becomes rich. After punching ranch owner Rock Hudson, Dean, covered in oil after striking oil, drives away as Chill Wills says, ‘you should have shot that fella a long time ago. Now he’s too rich to kill.’

Another book I picked up only recently was another picture album James Dean: Portrait of Cool edited by Leith Adams and Keith Burns. It’s an album of photographs found in the Warner Bros archive and some have not been published before. Included are all sorts of documents such as casting sheets, production notes and messages. Dean’s address is listed as 3908 West Olive Avenue which I think might have been a place he shared with Dick Davalos who played his brother in East of Eden. During Rebel Without a Cause, Dean was listed as living at 1541 Sunset Plaza Drive.

1541 sunset Plaza Drive today from Google Maps.

Last Christmas Liz bought me one of my favourite presents, a copy of the Bill Bast memoir I mentioned earlier. Bill Bast shared apartments in both Hollywood and New York with Dean. In Hollywood, Bast became frustrated sharing a home with his friend. In the book, Bast accuses Dean of being untidy and moody and seemed to feel that he was subsidising Dean at one point as Bast was the only one with a job. After a dispute Bill decided to move to another apartment although the two remained friends. The book is written almost as if Dean was the love of Bast’s life and perhaps he was. In later life Bast wrote another memoir in which he claimed he and Dean had a gay relationship.

I’m not sure why someone like me, a council house boy from Northern England, should connect so closely with James Dean but back in the seventies the late star became one of my personal heroes. I remember going to a cinema on Oxford Road in Manchester to see back to back showings of East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause on a very hot summer’s day. I bought a soundtrack album of those movies too, in the days before video and DVD.

Dean was a counterpoint to actors like Richard Burton; he mumbled and mispronounced things. I think that was what I liked about him; he was natural and imperfect. He had an image more rock star than 50’s actor. There was a great documentary about him made in the 70s and the music of the times, Bowie and Elton John featured heavily. Anyone remember that Eagles track ‘James Dean’?

Dean met his end on September 30th 1955 as he sped towards a race meeting in Salinas. He had already been stopped by the police and given a speeding ticket while driving his Porsche. In the passenger seat was his mechanic Rolf Weutherich and following behind was photographer Sandforth Roth and his friend Bill Hickman. They were towing the trailer on which the Porsche was originally mounted before Dean decided to drive.

As Dean approached the intersection of routes 466 and 41 in Chalome, a Ford station wagon turned across the path of the Porsche. “That guy up there’s gotta stop.” said Dean. The two cars collided. Rolf was thrown clear but James Dean was killed.

Today, years later, thousands of fans make pilgrimages every year to see Dean’s home in Fairmount, Indiana and to the intersection on highway 466 where he died. At his graveside in Fairmount fans chisel away bits of his gravestone for mementos and a bust of Dean by the sculptor Kenneth Kendall was ripped from its plinth. In 1977 a Japanese businessman named Seita Ohnishi had a chromium sculpture erected at the crash site on highway 466 in memory of Dean.

So why do people still hanker after James Dean all these years later? Well, I simply don’t know. As a young man I thought Dean was the epitome of cool and like many others I made him into my hero. Whilst doing some research about Jimmy Dean I came across this line on another site: “Some people are living lodestones. They get under the skin of people. You can’t explain why.” I can’t disagree.

Still, heroes come and heroes fade away. My heroes today are not the ones I used to love and worship thirty years ago. The thing is though, after writing this essay about Jimmy Dean I felt that I must find the time to look at some of his films again. Now where did I put that James Dean box set?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

 

Sandwiches, Questions and New Technology

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Back here in Manchester it was nice to have a few days to myself after Christmas and New Year. One thing I tend to eat a lot of when I’m alone is sandwiches. Yes, I’ve always loved the humble sandwich. As a child I took sandwiches to school, either ham, cheese or corned beef, almost always on white bread. Occasionally I’d have a salmon or salmon paste sandwich but generally salmon or any kind of fish just isn’t my cup of tea.

In a quiet moment during the Christmas holidays, I was skimming through Pinterest and came across a pin for a hot pastrami sandwich. I can’t say I’ve ever had pastrami either on a sandwich or not but the thought of one brings to mind American films where the characters go into a New York delicatessen to eat.

In the film When Harry Met Sally the two main characters, played by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, visit a real deli for the film’s most famous scene. It’s the one where Sally shows Harry how easy it is to fake an orgasm by demonstrating it there and then in the deli. According to Wikipedia, the location was actually Katz’s Delicatessen at 205 East Houston Street in Manhattan. Also, just while I’m in the mood for dishing out useless information, the lady in the film who says to the waiter, ‘I’ll have what she’s having‘ when Meg Ryan, who played Sally, had finishing orgasming was actually director Rob Reiner’s mother and the line was suggested by Billy Crystal who played Harry.

Woody Allen’s characters spend a lot of time in New York Delis. In Broadway Danny Rose the film opens up in another actual deli, this time the Carnegie Delicatessen on Seventh Avenue across from the Carnegie Hall, where a bunch of comedians discuss a well known theatrical manager called Danny Rose who has had a sandwich named after him in that very place.

As a great fan of the sandwich, I reckon it would be pretty cool to have a sandwich named after me and in a previous post I put forward for consideration a sandwich of my own creation.

The Ham, Cheese and Coleslaw Higgins Special.

I prefer this with a fresh white bap but it’s equally as good with a brown bun; split and butter it, slap on some thinly sliced honey roast ham, then some grated cheddar and to finish off add a generous portion of coleslaw. Settle down, tune the TV onto your favourite channel, pour yourself a cup of tea and enjoy. Give it a try, it’s lovely.

After writing the above I decided to pop to the shops and pick up some pastrami and cheese so I could have a go at making that hot pastrami sandwich I mentioned earlier. On the way out I picked up one of those free supermarket magazines. On the back page there was a question-and-answer article with a celebrity. The celeb in question was Fearne Cotton who I have to say, I’ve never heard of but anyway, here were her questions and I thought I’d have a go at answering them myself

Tell us about your new book.

Well, I don’t have a new book, just an old one, Floating in Space which you buy from Amazon. It’s about a young lad back in 1977 who gets fed up of his boring office job. Why not buy yourself a copy and help me out with that big electric bill I just received?

Best advice on keeping a positive outlook.

Well, I’d have to refer you all to my spiritual mentor Marcus Aurelius. He said that you and I have power over our minds but not external events, so any pain you might feel about any situation is not caused by the situation itself, but by your own thoughts which are under your control. Wow, bet you weren’t expecting philosophical stuff in this post, were you?

And your first novel is coming out in June 2024.

Actually, no it isn’t but if I manage to pull my finger out, I might have a short story collection ready round about then.

Who is left on your celebrity wish list for the Happy Place?

It turns out the Happy Place is a podcast which Fearne runs so if I was having a celeb on my podcast who would I ask? Lewis Hamilton perhaps. I’ve never seen a decent interview with him. Then again, I wouldn’t mind having Oliver Stone on for some serious chit chat about cinema and the JFK assassination.

You’ve got a busy schedule. How do you unwind?

Busy schedule? I don’t think so. I don’t even know what a busy schedule is.

As a vegan, what are your tips for anyone wanting to try a plant based diet?

A plant based diet? Listen, plants are for pots on the windowsill or out in the garden. I have grown chilli peppers before now which are great in a dish like chilli or curry. I’ve even grown small lemon trees from a pip but I’m still waiting for that first lemon. A plant based diet? I don’t think so.

What is your go to dish for those evenings when you’re stuck on what to cook?

Well, chilli and rice is one of my favourite dishes. I tend to start it in the morning in a big pan and then throw it all into the slow cooker. For something quick I usually have a jar of pesto in the fridge so I’ll just cook some pasta, throw in the pesto and then serve with parmesan. Of course, there is always the pastrami sandwich.

What are you most looking forward to in 2024?

Let me see, there’s our trip to Lanzarote in a few weeks. I look forward to the summer when we’ll once again be taking our motorhome over to France but most of all I’ll be looking forward to some warm weather. I really do hate the cold.

New Technology

I think I’ve written before about my brother and how when we were younger, we were always swapping things. My brother, whose name is Colin although I always call him Jimmy (I’m not sure why) still swaps things today, mostly with his friends. He recently came into possession of a television set which he didn’t actually want. It was quite a big TV set, much bigger than mine and so I offered to swap a portable TV set which I knew he had always wanted for this new, bigger TV set. He wanted the smaller portable because it had a built in VHS player and he wanted to play some of his old VHS tapes. Anyway, we did the swap and I plugged in the TV set which seemed to be working well and all seemed ok. Later I decided to set it up properly and to link it to my trusty old DVD recorder.

It’s a long time since I bought that DVD recorder and technology has moved on quite considerably since then. Back then the universal connecting element between TV sets and DVD players and set top boxes and so on was the SCART plug. These days it seems to be something else, the HDMI plug. Anyway, I shifted furniture about as I realised the new bigger TV wouldn’t fit on the old TV stand so I shifted more stuff about and put the TV on an old computer desk but I still struggled to fit the DVD recorder into the same area. Then I realised the new TV didn’t have a SCART socket. It did have an AV socket though but even though I had an AV lead I just couldn’t get the two devices to connect together.

A few years ago, I was in Currys or some other kind of TV technology hardware store and when I told the shop assistant that I wanted a new TV with a DVD player, He told me to forget about that as a DVD player was ‘old technology’. Of course, I could see his point, why buy a DVD when you can download a film or any TV show to your hard drive without a shelf full of discs? Even so, I had to tell the guy to go away because the thing is I actually like old technology, I like DVDs, I like their special features, I like the director’s commentaries and the ‘making of’ documentaries.

That night I ended up flipping through the TV channels because there was nothing much worth watching and to watch one of my DVDs I would have had to put everything back together with my old TV just the way it was before.

Oh well, that’s enough TV for today. Might as well give that hot pastrami sandwich a try.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Everything you need to know about Shopping.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Believe it or not, I like shopping. Yes, really! I actually like shopping. Although born into the latter half of the 20th century I am a man who has embraced 21st century ideals. I don’t expect women to stay at home and do the cooking, washing, cleaning or shopping. No, as a new age man I am willing to get in there and sort out the shopping. Not the daily shop you understand, more of the occasional shop. .

I love shopping in Lidl and Aldi and I love checking out all those special offers in the centre aisles. You know things like, well the other day I saw this great set of ski goggles in Lidl. They had these special lenses and this special strap, and they were tinted and had this special anti-glare stuff on the lenses. Now it just so happens that I have never actually done any skiing. In fact I’ve never really been that interested in it. I mean actually paying to go somewhere that is cold? I don’t think so but then again. Imagine being on a flight that gets diverted and ends up in the French Alps. What would I do then? Sorry, can’t go skiing because I haven’t any ski goggles. You can see just from that quick example those ski goggles might have been worth it. Anyway, I managed to resist them in the end.

Another item that caught my fancy was some really tasty drill bits in a really nice case. I was tempted even though I don’t do that much drilling. Of course I do some drilling. I have a really rather nice drill and it was only months ago when I used it last. Actually, it may have been last year, or was it 2017? I know I did put up this really cracking set of bookshelves back in 1995 but anyway, once again I managed to resist the temptation to purchase.

Interestingly, a few weeks back Liz and I went into Curry’s to look for a new TV. We had already seen one on the World Wide Web but thought why wait for delivery? Why not just run up there and pick one up?

Of course the TV that we wanted wasn’t available. ‘You’d have been better ordering on the Internet’ said the salesman. No wonder Curry’s is only one third of the size it used to be; everyone is just ordering on the Internet.

When we mentioned we wanted a 32 inch TV the guy said ‘right, it’s for a caravan is it, or for the bedroom?’

Actually it was for the lounge, it’s just that we don’t want an oversized monstrosity taking over the entire room! (Actually now I think on, I quite fancy one of those huge TVs!)

When we mentioned we wanted a integrated DVD player the guy once again looked right down at us. A DVD player? ‘Well that’s old technology’ he said. ‘People tend to use Netflix nowadays.’

Look, whatever, It just so happens we want a DVD player, OK!

Right, said the guy but what about a Smart TV? You can watch Netflix, YouTube and all sorts of things. You do have Internet don’t you?

We do, only Liz’s bungalow is rather long and the Internet tends to stay over the other side of the house. Sorry Mr Smarmy Curry’s salesman: no sale and if I want a DVD player I’ll get one elsewhere!

Of course most of my shopping I do for my elderly mother in her local Asda store and there are some excellent departments there that I do like to visit. The CD section in Asda isn’t quite as interesting as the music area used to be. Now it’s a rather small section with only a limited few CD’s on sale because a lot of people tend to download their music. Sorry but once again I’m of the old school of music buyers, I want something physical for my money. I know I’m not going to get a big sleeve like in the vinyl days with some interesting sleeve notes. These days the sleeve notes are so small I need a magnifying glass to read them but I like to have something I can hold and look at and touch.

Sometimes I think back to those long gone Saturday afternoons flicking through records in the numerous record shops in Manchester. Sadly, that is just a distant memory now. Once I was always down at HMV in Manchester where they had an in store DJ. She was a really nice girl, very approachable and very into her music. She recommended all sorts of albums to me but I was usually in there hunting for some album or artist I had heard on the radio.

I remember going in one day to find the in-store DJ had been replaced by a radio version, someone, presumably at head office in London, who broadcast music to all the HMV stores. Later, in 2013,  the  store closed down completely after more than twenty years on the same site. Browsing records and videos in HMV and then popping into my favourite book stores before settling down in some back street pub for a drink, ah, those were the days.

Music shops are few and far between these days so where is left if you want to buy a record rather than download? Oh yes, the CDs and DVD department of your local superstore!

Moving on through Asda I do like to check out the the clothes section. It’s not so easy finding clothes to fit a huge gynormous great lump like me so it’s always worthwhile just checking out the supermarket menswear section because sometimes I will actually find something that will fit me.

Occasionally in the sale section I’ll find some really great XXL shirt lingering among the unwanted items but even then, I find that sometimes one man’s XXL is another man’s L!

Right that’s the proper shopping sorted, now for some day to day stuff, a quick whiz through and I slap a few things in my trolley; bacon, eggs, tomatoes, bread, milk and so on.

The big problem in any supermarket for me is that no matter what, some strange force will unerringly guide me to the totally wrong till. Now, I won’t just jump onto any till. I will observe closely, check out the options and then choose the wrong one.

Here’s a for instance, yesterday at Asda. All the main tills were full of people with a huge trolley of goods, enough to last me about a month so I ignored those and went on down to the basket section. Two tills were open here, one with about four people ahead of me, the other with about ten. A no brainer I thought, go for the one with four people. I just managed to nip in before a crazy looking lady with a failed 1960’s style beehive hairdo. She waited behind me for a short while before bailing out in favour of aisle 2.

Now my usual tactic is not to unload any stuff until I am sure of the lie of the land but on this day I felt confident enough to do so. Big mistake! On till number 2, weird looking crazy beehive lady seemed to be moving forward at a fair old speed while my till wasn’t doing much. Strange because the four people in front of me had only a sparse collection of goods and in till number 2 each of their people had a good selection of items.

Shortly after, crazy beehive woman seemed to be pretty much on a par with me and moments later was actually ahead. That checkout girl in aisle 2 was certainly doing the business. Up at the front of aisle 1 my checkout lady was far too chatty but not only that, something seemed to be going on up there and our checkout girl called over the checkout girl from aisle 2 to assist.

This didn’t go down well with the people from aisle 2 and crazy beehive lady clearly wasn’t happy as she was now stalled only a matter of feet from the till and freedom. Over on my side there was a battle under way to remove the security tag from a bottle of spirits, possibly vodka, but sadly checkout lady 2 gave up and returned to her till while we waited for the manager to sort out the security tag.

I felt like saying come on, do you really need a bottle of vodka at 2 in the afternoon but I kept silent and moments later, crazy beehive woman was off although not before shooting me a victorious look which seemed to say ‘that’ll teach you to nip in front of me at the checkout!’

Eventually, our till got sorted, the vodka bottle was freed up for sale and we moved on.

I knew that till was going to be a big mistake!

Floating in Space is a novel set in Manchester 1977. Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information.

Second Hand DVDs and don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond Films!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I write a lot of posts about second hand books which I am always buying but I do also get hold of a lot of second hand DVDs so its perhaps only fair I write something about those for a change.

James Bond.

Most of my James Bond DVDs, were bought either reduced or at second hand shops and the greater part of my collection was from an Ebay job lot of Bond films. Sadly the job lot contained all of Roger Moore’s Bond films which must surely rank as the worst films in the series. (Please don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond films!) My brother, a great fan of classic movies actually likes the Roger Moore Bond films (Thought I said don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond films!) so happily I was able to just pass those over to him. In a way I’m not sure why I bought any of the Bond films on DVD because they are always being shown on TV and the great thing is that if I come home from work and a Bond film has already started, I’ve seen them all so often that I know them off by heart so I can just get a brew on and settle down to watch the remainder of the film.

Sex and The City.

Recently I came across a box set of the entire Sex and the City TV series in a Lytham charity shop. All the TV seasons in one big plastic box. Great, I thought when I saw them. I already have the individual box sets but now I can keep this giant set near the TV and pop the discs into the DVD player whenever I like. The price tag was a paltry £2.50 and so one day I settled down to watch them planning to take in, one DVD at a time, the entire series.

DVD 1 was popped into the player but what had we here? This was DVD2! Back to the DVD box and I see that DVD2 was in position one but position 2 was empty! How had I not spotted that the first DVD of the entire series was missing? What the heck, my whisky and dry was all ready, so was my cheese sandwich so I had no choice but to start with DVD2. Carrie was already involved with Mr Big, my favourite character of the series by DVD2. Just in case you have never seen Sex and the City, Mr Big is not only the coolest guy ever but actually takes cool to new unexplored heights. Carrie and Big are finished by the end of series 1 but by series 2 they were back together again. Towards the end of series 2 Carrie is asking Big about their summer holiday arrangements but Big reveals he may be off to start work on a new job in Paris. Carrie is stunned and eventually they agree to go their separate ways and Big goes off, we assume to Paris.

A few episodes later, Carrie and the girls are spending time in the Hamptons -now, I’m not sure exactly what the Hamptons are but I guess they are some kind of resort or country area near to New York. Come to think of it, despite all the films I have seen set in New York I sometimes wonder about New York geography. Is New York in Manhattan or is Manhattan in New York? Anyway, at a party in the Hamptons, Carrie bumps into -Mr Big! Apparently the Paris job fell through and there is Mr Big -with new girlfriend, Natasha! Carrie is not amused!

Now the great thing about Sex and the City is that all these relationship issues roll happily along with a touch of comedy, and a great deal of sharp and finely tuned observations about people, relationships and, of course, sex. I’ve not yet reached series 3 but I’ve seen it before, years ago when it was first broadcast and I’m pretty certain Carrie gets involved with Aiden, another very cool dude with a coolness of a different category to Mr Big. Aiden is a woodworker, a beer drinker and an outdoor sort of guy. Carrie cheats on him with Mr Big if I remember correctly but season 4 is really where this whole series reaches its zenith. Carrie gets back with Aiden and in one episode he takes her for a trip to his log cabin in the country (might even be in the Hamptons but I’m not certain.) Mr Big is having his own relationship problems and wants to talk to Carrie about it and a drunken Big is forced to spend the night in Aiden’s log cabin. Tensions erupt in the morning when Big and Aiden have a mud fight after a rainstorm but by the end of the episode they are best buddies.

The Maltese Falcon.

I’ve had a copy of this video for a while but recently a dispute occurred between me and my brother. He borrowed my copy and claims he returned it. As it is now not to be found I claimed that the version that resides at his place must be mine. No he says, that is his copy. Why then did he borrow mine in the first place? I rest my case you honour! Anyway, rather than argue further I spotted a cheap version on Ebay, available for 99 pence and snapped it up.

According to that mine of information Wikipedia, The Maltese Falcon has been recognised as the very first major film noir. It was written and directed by John Huston and based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Humphrey Bogart stars as Private Eye Sam Spade who tries to unravel the mystery of his partner’s murder and along the way comes across another mystery, that of the jewelled figure of a bird known as the Maltese Falcon. A number of people are after the bird, Joel Cairo played by Peter Lorre, Kasper Gutman played by the unforgettable Sidney Greenstreet and Brigid O’Shaugnessy played by Mary Astor who makes the mistake of thinking that Sam Spade is corruptable.

It’s hard to put the finger on my favourite scene but one of them is this exchange between Bogart and Greenstreet:

Gutman: We begin well, sir. I distrust a man who says “when”. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much, it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does. Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding. [They drink.] You’re a close-mouthed man?

Spade: No, I like to talk.

Gutman: Better and better. I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell you right out – I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

Spade: Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?

Gutman: [chuckling] You’re the man for me, sir. No beating about the bush, right to the point. Let’s talk about the black bird, by all means.

The Shape of Water.

Now, there are those who seem to think I only ever look at black and white classic movies. Not so, I like modern films too and just to prove it I picked up the Shape of Water, again for a few pounds on Ebay. You may remember that the film won the Oscar for Best Film at this year’s awards and it looked pretty interesting in the various clips I have seen. Everything I had heard about the film was positive but the first warning sign was the extensive availability of DVDs of the film on Ebay and the second was the rather low prices. Anyway, I got my DVD and watched it and how this film won an Oscar I really do not know. Yes it is well acted. The photography was excellent although everything is presented in a sort of greenish hue that the director perhaps feels enshrouded late fifties and early sixties America. However the content just didn’t do it for me. It’s about a young mute woman cleaner in a top secret government installation who falls in love with a strange creature, half man, half fish, that is held captive there. She and her father rescue the fish man and take him back to their apartment high over a cinema and install the creature in the bath.

The Guardian said this about the film: Guillermo del Toro’s escapist fantasy-romance The Shape of Water was the biggest winner, (at the Oscars) the story of a young woman’s love for a captured sea creature — with best picture and best director, setting the official seal of approval on what is, by any measure, a beautifully made movie to which audiences have responded with distinctively sensual delight.

Don’t believe a word of it, the fact is the Shape of Water is a dismal weird film and my copy will soon be available once again on Ebay. It was so bad it even made me hunger for one of Roger Moore’s Bond Films. (Don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond films!)

Floating in Space is a novel by Steve Higgins available from Amazon as a Kindle download or a traditional paperback. Click the links at the top of the page for more information or to buy.

Two DVD’s, a TV Movie and a VHS Tape

Posted on by Steve Higgins

To Rome with Love.

I do love getting a new DVD, especially when it’s one from eBay and only cost a couple of pounds. My latest buy was this one from Woody Allen. It’s quite a significant one really because it marks the first on-screen appearance of Woody in one of his own films since the 2006 film Scoop. It’s a lovely gentle relaxing film, with no car chases, shootings, murders or explosions. There are a number of intercut stories in the film, none of which ever converge together or are even related, except that they all occur in Rome. Woody plays a retired classical music producer who tries to record his daughter’s new father in law who happens to have great singing voice when he’s in the shower. Unfortunately, singing out of the shower doesn’t work for him. Another story is that of a local Roman who suddenly becomes famous and is mobbed by the media every time he appears. Beautiful women pass him their numbers, paparazzi photograph him constantly, TV crews ask him questions whenever he steps outside. One day the press attention disappears and passes to someone else. At first the fellow thinks great, I’ve got my life back. Later he starts to miss the attention. The disappointing thing is that no reason is given for this attention. Clearly the director is making a point about fame but if it was my film I think I’d have tried to explain things more, maybe the guy is interviewed on TV and becomes popular or something. Still, I doubt if Woody Allen needs advice from me!

There are two other intercut stories, one involving a young girl who gets involved with an Italian movie star while her boyfriend is waiting to introduce her, his future bride, to his parents. While that is going on a prostitute mistakenly enters the boyfriend’s hotel room and the parents mistake her for the future bride. Another story is a love triangle with a female friend moving in with a couple and the boyfriend gets the hots for her.

A great deal of the dialogue is in Italian with English subtitles which gives the film a real continental feeling. All in all, an excellent film that has its faults but I loved it all the same.

Midnight in Paris.

I’m not a great fan of Owen Wilson but this is the first film of his I’ve ever seen where I have actually started to like him. Wilson plays Gil Pender, a writer who is trying to finish his novel. He comes to Paris with his wife and the in-laws who he doesn’t particularly care for. They also bump into his wife’s friend Paul, a know-it-all character who Gil dislikes. Gil wanders away from the others at midnight and finds himself in the Paris of the 1920’s, meeting Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway and other past literary figures. The encounters with past figures continue and they help Gil to sort out both his book and his love life.

Wilson is excellent in the film and actually reminds me a lot of Woody Allen himself, playing a part that Woody would perhaps have played had the movie been made back in the 70s or 80s. All in all, a lovely film and another cheap addition to my DVD collection thanks to eBay.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

I’ve not seen this film for a while so it was great to see it pop up on my TV screen recently. I sometimes think of Four Weddings as a sort of modern Ealing Comedy, if Ealing were still making movies of course. There are a couple of elements that stop it from being perfect. One is the use of the F word. Why make a gentle comedy and then throw in a few gratuitous F words? I really don’t get it. The other thing is this, Hugh Grant plays a character who falls in love with a girl played by Andie McDowell. Andie McDowell, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t do it for me at all. She’s not, to me, that great looking and has a particularly irritating voice, all of which makes it a little difficult for me to identify with the Hugh Grant character, who, as I mentioned, has the hots for her.

In many ways I have a similar problem with the Steve Martin film LA Story. Steve’s character has the hots for a girl played by Victoria Tennant who is very pleasant, very nice but sadly, she doesn’t do it for me either. Happily, I can honestly say that in Casablanca I can fully identify with the Humphrey Bogart character, although whether I would have put Ingrid Bergman on the plane and stayed behind with Claude Rains, well that’s another matter.

Four Weddings and a Funeral is the movie that brought fame to writer Richard Curtis and actor Hugh Grant, as the announcer on Film 4 mentioned. Strangely, he didn’t mention Mike Newell, who directed the film. Funny how the credit from a successful film doesn’t always get spread equally around.

Capricorn One

I think I’ve mentioned before about staying at my Mother’s house. Upstairs is my little bedroom, so very similar to the room I used to inhabit when I was a child. In there I have lots of my books, tapes, vinyl record albums and a stack of my old VHS tapes. For those of you who were not around in the VHS era, a standard VHS cassette lasted around three hours. You could get two-hour tapes or even four-hour ones but three hours was the standard. In recording terms that meant this: You could record a two-hour movie and a one hour show onto a three-hour standard tape, or even three one hour shows, six half hour shows or any combination in between. I don’t know why but I used to really hate having an hour of empty tape left after a movie so I was always trying to fit something in there so I’d be always finding room for a sixty minute documentary or something.

On one old tape I came across, the label had been torn off so I popped it into my old TV/VHS recorder combo to see what had been recorded. I watched a half hour segment of a news report about buses in Manchester. All fairly interesting but as I fast-forwarded through the tape I came across that great movie Capricorn One. In case you don’t remember it, the film was about the first manned mission to Mars which is faked by NASA. The crew of the space probe are forced to go along with the deception but later change their minds. The film was, I think, inspired by those conspiracy theorists that think the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked. Anyway, I stopped the film, put it on pause, nipped quickly downstairs to make a cup of tea and a sandwich. Returning quickly back to my room I settled down with my snack, got myself all comfy and pressed play. About an hour later, Capricorn One had burned up in re-entry because of a heat shield malfunction and the crew who were never even onboard were trying to escape when there was a clunk and the playback stopped. Yes, back in 1987 or whenever, I had tried to record a two-hour film and a documentary on a two-hour tape! Three into two, as they say, does not go. Oh well, back to the search page on eBay!

Steve Higgins is the author of Floating in Space set in Manchester, 1977. Click the links at the top of the page for more information!

Adventures on eBay!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

ebayOn eBay a while ago I came across a listing for a razor handle for a pound. I remember thinking at the time what plonker is going to even think about buying that? Well, more about that later. Still, there are a huge amount of crazy things on eBay, things like broken items for instance. Quite a few times I’ve come across something on eBay at a fraction of its usual value. That’s where you have to stop and take a closer look. Check the small print because many times you will find something like ‘not working’ or ‘for parts only.’ That’s right, your old mobile phone packs up -flog it on eBay because somewhere, there is someone either collecting broken mobiles or using the parts to fix other broken mobiles and re selling them to make money. Of course it could just be some weirdo who collects broken phones, who knows?

Not long ago, my partner Liz, asked me to bid on a dress or a top on eBay and ever since I have been getting e-mails from eBay advising me about even more ladies dresses and tops. I also bought an iPad on eBay so now I’m inundated with emails about iPads for sale. Pay attention eBay, – I’ve already bought an iPad. I don’t need another! And please stop sending me emails about ladies dresses!

I do love old movies and eBay is the perfect place to find them. Yes, enter a film title into the search page, click on movies and DVDs and within a few moments there will be the DVD you are after. You can search by price, by time left to the end of the auction or by distance to your home but if the movie is on DVD and is out there, you will find a copy. Here are a few of my e-bay buys, some successful, some not so . .

High Noon.

I picked up a very cheap copy of this on e-bay a while ago. No cover or box, just the disc in a plastic wallet and I parted with just £1.60 for my purchase. High Noon is the story of a small town sheriff who has just got married. He is about to hand over to a new sheriff due to arrive the next day when he hears that the murderer, Frank Miller – the man he sent to prison when he cleaned up the town – is on his way back and gunning for revenge.

The sheriff played by Gary Cooper has just married the lovely Grace Kelly, but how can he leave when the killer, along with his gang, plans to get him when he arrives on the noon train? If he leaves, the gang may hijack him out in the country, so the sheriff reasons his best bet is to stay in town and fight it out on his own turf. However, for one reason or another, the help he is hoping for from the town’s residents fails to appear and Cooper must face the men alone. The movie counts down relentlessly towards noon with the memorable sound in the background of ‘Do not forsake me oh my darling’ sung by Tex Ritter.

I mentioned this to my brother the other day and he related a story my Dad had told him. My Dad saw the film during his army days in Hong Kong. The film was shown in a corrugated Nissen hut and afterwards when everyone had left the hut all that my Dad could hear was his fellow soldiers humming and whistling the theme song.

The Ghost and Mrs Muir.

By Trailer screenshot (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir trailer) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Trailer screenshot (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir trailer) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is a movie that I could add to a previous blog, one about movies rarely seen on TV. I have seen it on TV though, some years ago. Mrs Muir is played by Hollywood star Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison is perfect as the formidable sea captain whose ghost scares off all occupants of the cottage his former living self once inhabited. Mrs Muir – a widow who longs to live by the sea – defies him and after a while the ghostly sea captain begins to fall for his mortal tenant. Money problems beset Mrs Muir but the captain decides to dictate his memoirs to her in the hope that when published, his tales of seafaring will make enough money for her to buy the house. This she does but also meets a suave writer played by that elegant actor, George Sanders. Mrs Muir falls for him much to the chagrin of the captain. Didn’t he – the captain – advise her to go out and meet other men and to enjoy herself, asks Mrs Muir when confronted with the captain’s jealousy? The captain retreats then, back into his ethereal world and leaves Mrs Muir with only the memory of old daydreams about sea faring captains. I won’t tell you about the end in case you want to see this lovely film but rest assured you will enjoy it. In some ways it’s a bit of a theatrical film with a lot of stage set scenes and there is an overriding sense of sadness in the film; a bittersweet feeling of lost love. Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney both give excellent portrayals.

The Signed Letter from Richard Nixon.

Yes, only £1.50, a signed letter from Richard Nixon. Couldn’t be real could it? Well, that’s what the eBay listing said, signed by Richard Nixon. I paid my money and guess what? It was a photocopy! When I complained the guy said did I really expect a signed letter from President Nixon for £1.50? Well no, but where did it say ‘Photocopy’? Somewhere in the small print obviously.

The Clothes that were Too Small.

Yes, it only goes to prove that one man’s XXL is another man’s XL. I keep saying I’ve learned my lesson but one day I will buy a leather jacket that actually fits me!

The Razor Handle.

I had one of those Wowcher emails a while ago offering me thirty razor blades ‘compatible’ with my Wilkinson’s razor at a very cheap price indeed. Blades are pretty pricey these days, so, OK, I clicked on the link, bought my voucher, then went to the razor blade site, and added my voucher code. OK so far but then I had to add a few quid for postage. Well, I wasn’t happy about that. That extra money was eating into my savings. Anyway, eventually the blades arrived at my door. Not sure what kind of service was used but it certainly wasn’t the next day courier service, more like the next month slowest possible but we get there in the end service. OK, I get the blades but then there’s another problem: They won’t fit on my razor! Now, things get confusing because there are so many razors available these days. There’s the Hydro, the Quattro, the Quattro Titanium, and a shed load of others I couldn’t even begin to name. The blades were for a Hydro which I didn’t have but guess what? Remember that razor handle I told you about earlier? The one selling on e-Bay for a pound with free postage? Remember I asked what plonker would even think of buying that?

Yes, that plonker would be me!

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

What your Mother never told you about Jason King’s tie

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Like many people I’ve got reminders and bookmarks all over my digital life both on and off the internet. I got hooked on e-bay some years ago, had a big buying spree then gradually settled down and instead of buying anything and everything began to for look for things I’m interested in. I get e-mail alerts about many things; books, motor sport memorabilia, and so on and a while ago I got an alert about a DVD box set I’d fancied for a long while. It was Department ‘S’, the TV series that introduced Jason King (remember him?) to the world. Department S was made in 1969 and was produced by ITC, a company founded by TV mogul Lew Grade and the show was the brainchild of Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner who together made a string of action and adventure series in the sixties and seventies like The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk, The Baron, The Champions and a spin-off from Department S, Jason King. All these series were shot like feature films on 35mm film and that is the reason why they look shiny and new today, available on DVD box sets.

Jason King

Jason King

Jason King was played by Peter Wyngarde and Wyngarde used all his own clothes in his portrayal of the character. In the late sixties and early seventies ties were becoming bigger, trousers and jacket lapels were flaring and Peter Wyngarde brought this all to the TV screen with his characterisation.

I was a school kid in 1969 and we kids all loved Jason King and his flamboyant outfits and we went out of our way to get a giant tie knot, just like the one Jason had in ‘Department S.’ Most of the kids got the big knot by tying their ties way down at the fat end of the tie making their ties short but at least with a big knot. I got some help with my tie from an unexpected source: my Mum!

We were watching Department S one day and I was wishing out loud for a big fat tie like that and she said to me “You could make one yourself. It’s easy.”

“Easy?” I said. “How?”

“Well, all you need is another tie to go inside the first one and make it bigger.” Sounds good I thought but how do you get one tie inside another? My Mum showed me how with a big safety-pin! What you had to do was get your second tie, the one that needs to go inside the other, pin the safety-pin to it and then you can thread it through the other one, manipulating it along with the safety-pin which you can feel through the material.

I dug out an old tie and threaded it through my school tie, took out the safety-pin and then tied my tie in the usual way. Result; one huge knot that Jason King himself would be pleased with.

The next day I went into school wearing my new fashionable tie and half the school –or so it seemed to me- were stunned by my trendy new school tie. Where did I get it from? How did I get such a knot? Did I tie it in a special way?

I remember once after games, getting changed in the changing rooms and everyone turned to watch as I fastened my tie. There was me, fastening the tie in the mirror with all my school mates watching. I had become a sort of mini school celebrity: The kid with the trendy tie!

“Here it comes,” said someone as I made the final tie of the knot, “Super knot!”

Well, my fifteen minutes of fame came, went, and vanished as other people worked out how to make their own special ‘super knots.’ Jason King went on to star in his own spin-off TV series then he too vanished into TV’s Golden past. Fashion moved on and in the eighties ties went the other way; narrow thin ties were the norm. Trousers lost their flares, jacket lapels slimmed down once again. ‘Penny round’ shirts were forgotten but then, that’s the great thing about DVDs: pop your disc into the machine and you can experience it all again!

If you liked this nostalgic look at Jason King you’re sure to like my book. Look out for Floating in Space at amazon!

Floating in Space