Tag Archives: humour

More Back Pain Stories

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve been suffering lately with a lot of back pain and I thought I might as well have a bit of a moan here and just get things off my chest. I’ve had a little mild back pain for a long while. I don’t mind that, I really don’t. I’m retired so I’m officially old so it’s only right to expect a little pain. I can’t run anymore; in fact, I can’t even remember the last time I ran. Maybe it was for a bus or something, I don’t really know but it’s certainly not something I can do now.

The very first time I had back trouble was back in the 1990’s. You won’t believe it but this is what happened. I was in the bathroom cleaning my teeth and when I went to put my toothbrush back on the holder I dropped it on the floor. I bent down to pick it up and then something happened. I don’t know what it was but I couldn’t get up again and ended having to hobble back to the bedroom. I was off work for a long time. Nothing seemed to help and someone suggested I see a chiropractor, one of those people who manipulate your bones.

This particular lady did a lot of work on my back and towards the end of the treatment she slid her arm under my back and then popped a pillow on my chest. My first thought was that she was going to suffocate me with the pillow. I know the two of us hadn’t really gelled but suffocating me, that was a bit extreme. Anyway, she urged me to shut my eyes and relax and then did exactly what I wasn’t expecting, she jumped on me and my back made a very loud cracking sound.

I didn’t feel any great improvement but not long afterwards I was able to go back to work. Fast forward to earlier this year. We had jetted off to the island of Lanzarote for some winter sun and warmth. The flight over there was pretty comfortable but the flight back was five hours of pain (the aircraft was delayed for an hour on the runway) going from slightly uncomfortable to highly painful. I’m sure that is what has set me off on the present trend of back pain.

A few weeks ago, Liz and I were in one of our favourite eateries, Olivers. We were dining there before going over to the Victoria pub to watch a band that we really like, The Boogie Brothers. The meal was excellent as usual and when I heard Angela, the boss lady of the restaurant behind me, I twisted round to ask for the bill and that’s when I realised that I had made a big mistake. Something had happened in my back. It wasn’t a crack or a twang. There was no moment of something giving way but my back began to hurt, so much so I could hardly walk. I staggered out of the restaurant looking and feeling like a complete cripple. I never made it to the concert, I had to call a friend and ask him to drive me home.

That was certainly a low point, not just the pain but the embarrassment of staggering out of one of my favourite eateries. Hope the owners didn’t think I was drunk.

Here’s another thing about back pain, how it affects your decision making process. The other day we were in Ego, another favourite eatery. I happened to pull my phone out of my pocket and a handkerchief slipped out at the same time. What could I do? Well, in the old days, my younger days, I’d just bend down and pick up the handkerchief. Easy! Today, it isn’t so square cut. Firstly, I can’t bend down, I just can’t reach it but the more I try I will just attract a lot of attention. What is that old guy up to? If it was a tissue, a paper hanky I would probably just leave it there. A proper hanky though and I would want to retrieve it, especially if I happened to have a runny nose. I could try and spear it with a knife or fork or I could kick it over to where Liz could grab it, assuming she wouldn’t mind picking up my slightly grubby hanky. Yes, we old guys have to make decisions like this all the time.

Finally, despite having little faith in some of our medical professionals I decided to try for an appointment at the doctors. I got in to see the practice physio and he seemed to take a little more interest in me this time. He actually decided to have a look at my back and to actually probe it with his fingers looking for the sore spots. As things happened, I was feeling pretty good that day and though I was a little sore, no amount of pressing could find any painful areas although they were there, I assured him.

He sent me off for an X ray, the results of which apparently take two weeks to get over to the surgery. Perhaps over in the X ray department they haven’t yet heard of email.

In the meantime I decided to take up an offer of acupuncture from Liz’s daughter, Zoë. Acupuncture works like this; the body is made up of two energies, the yin and the yang and acupuncture tries to balance the energies out, so healing whatever ails you. Those energies flow through meridians or pathways in the body which can be accessed and balanced by inserting tiny needles.

I lay down on the special bed in Zoë’s clinic and she chatted away quietly as she slipped in the needles. Some slipped in painlessly, others actually hurt which apparently is a good sign as those are the spots that will really help.

Later I felt better, again there was no ‘I’m cured’ moment but I did feel that my back had eased a little.

Another thing that interests me about my situation is that like a lot of people these days I look for solutions on the internet. As most things in cyberspace are connected especially by those cheeky little things called cookies, most of the adverts that I see online now seem to be about amazing cures for back pain. Everywhere I go I seem to be bombarded by items like the new miracle formula capsules that have enabled some old guy to take long walks again or some amazing potion that has not only enabled some arthritic old biddy to get out of bed but also to walk to the shops again, pain free!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said earlier, I don’t mind a little pain. It’s only to be expected when you’re getting older but I’m not yet daft enough to expect a miracle cure.

Still, how much were those miracle cure pills again?

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Another Blog Writing Day

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s always good to pick up my iPad and see that my scheduled post has been successfully posted but the next task is to start thinking about a new one for next week. What can I write about? Has anything interesting happened to me? Have I read a great book or watched something good on TV? No? Well, that’s me up the creek without a paddle then.

Just lately I’ve haven’t been much of an early riser. I wake up late on a Saturday morning, visit the bathroom and then make some tea and take it back to the bedroom for Liz and myself.

Next I’ll open a new page on my laptop and just start writing about anything that comes into my head. After about ten minutes and I see the page is still blank I think that perhaps the best course is just to do what I usually do this time in a morning which is to check my emails. 500 deletions later I’m back to that blank page again. Perhaps I could write about my emails? Nah, I’ve done that already.

My next move will be to drink my tea and perhaps see what Liz has tuned the TV into. This being Saturday it will usually be Saturday Kitchen. Perhaps I could write a foodie post? Nah, done that a few times already. After drinking my tea and surfing through my social media I reckon I’m ready for some breakfast, to eat rather than to write about.

Time for a wash and a shave and then I get dressed and see what is on offer for breakfast. It’s a little late so we decide to go for a bacon and egg butty. Excellent. While we eat that we crank up an episode of the TV words and numbers game Countdown to get our brains working. Countdown? Could I write about that? Well, I could give it a few lines anyway.

Countdown was the first show to be broadcast on what was then UK’s new terrestrial TV channel 4 back in 1982. It is a fairly simple format with two contestants who have to make words out of 9 random letters, the winner being the one with the longest word. They also have to choose 6 numbers and then use those to make a number chosen randomly.

Back in 1982, the show was presented by Richard Whiteley with Carol Vorderman supervising the letters and numbers stuff. Richard Whiteley continued to host the show until his death in 2005. After that various people have presented the show including Des Lynam and Anne Robinson but the current host is Colin Murray. Carol Vorderman left in 2008 and her role was taken over by Rachel Riley. Also on the current show is Suzie Dent in charge of dictionary corner along with a celebrity guest. The show is currently the longest running game show on UK TV.

Personally, I am no good at Countdown whatsoever which puts me off trying to become a contestant. Liz is pretty good but sadly has no desire to be on the show. However, if she cannot get the random number, we usually have the TV on pause until she does. I then tend to say things like ‘you’re disqualified’ which can sometimes elicit a verbal reaction and so then I usually leave the room to make more tea.

Tea, now there’s a thing. Could I write about tea? Come to think of it, I have mentioned tea a few times but it’s hardly a subject for a blog post. Here are a few comments on the subject that kicked off a past holiday post;

Even on holiday in wonderful warm Lanzarote I’m a man who needs a cup of tea, and by tea, I mean hot tea. Just think of all the workers in far off India who have worked to grow and cultivate tea leaves and package it and send it off to people like me. I wouldn’t dream of insulting those people by drinking a cup of lukewarm or even cold tea. Liz however doesn’t mind cold tea but after chatting further I found our earlier experiences have shaped our attitude to tea. She, whilst at school, worked in a café and usually found that she was so busy that she had little time to drink her cuppa and generally picked it up when it was cold.

Once, many years ago, I had a cigarette vending round. I visited pubs in Merseyside, serviced their ciggy machines, filled them with cigarettes and took away the cash. A lot of the time I was in a hurry to get going to the next site. Even so, I would never turn down a cuppa and so many times I would have to drink a steaming hot cup of tea quickly so I could move on. The faster I worked, the earlier I finished and I very soon developed the knack of drinking hot tea,

Maybe I could build that up into an entire tea related blog post but would that interest any of my readers? I’m not so sure. Come to think of it, they mention tea in one of my favourite episodes of Columbo. Columbo is hot on the trail of Robert Culp who murders a man in the lobby of a cinema and he entices him there by putting subliminal cuts into a film which make him go in search of a cool drink. Anyway, while Columbo is chatting to the projectionist he mentions he is thirsty and the projectionist offered Columbo some tea, some iced tea!

Iced tea? Jesus, what planet is this guy on? Who drinks iced tea? That is a crime against tea. Dear me. Anyway, it’s time for a break. It’s a sunny day so Liz and I pop outside and settle down on the patio with our tea. (Our hot tea.) We’re creatures of habit so we always tend to kick off a session on the patio with a sudoku puzzle. Sudokus are little number games invented by those wily Japanese and once again, it keeps our brains active while we drink our tea. Most of the time Liz will beat me but the thing is, even while I’m trying to solve that sudoku I’ll be trying to think of something to write so that’s my excuse for Liz winning. If I really worked at those little number games, really worked at them, well, then it might be a different story.

After a quick sudoku session I pick up my book for a relaxing read in the sun. I’ve currently got a few books on the go. One is about the flight of Rudolph Hess and his mystery flight to the UK in 1940 and the other is about the JFK assassination. If I were ever to appear on TV’s Mastermind I would probably choose the JFK assassination as my specialist subject:

What is the grassy knoll?

It is an area of Deally Plaza in Dallas where it has been theorised that a frontal shot was fired at the president.

Who is Lee Harvey Oswald?

He is the alleged assassin of JFK.

Who was Alek Hidell?

That was an alias used by Oswald.

What is the magic bullet?

It was a bullet fired from the Texas School Depository that supposedly hit the president and then exited his body and then hit John Connally.

Who was John Connally?

He was the governor of Texas riding ahead of JFK in the presidential limousine.

Who shot Lee Oswald?

Jack Ruby.

I can imagine doing pretty well there but then going to pieces in the general knowledge round. Having said that there is a general knowledge round in the weekly quiz we attend at the Lord Derby pub in St Annes and we tend to do reasonably well.

If the weather stays warm we might stay outside for a barbecue and these days rather than getting the coals ready, lighting them three or four times before they finally get going and getting my favourite shorts covered in coal dust and grease, we nowadays use our little portable gas barbecue. Perhaps I could write a barbecue post? Well, I could probably write a barbecue section of perhaps another foodie post but an entire barbecue post? Probably not.

While I’m on the subject of barbecuing I think it’s important to share these two universal facts regarding a traditional coal barbecue;

One. Always watch your barbecue because if you don’t it will burn itself out before you’ve had a chance to set the table and serve the salad.

Two. Never watch a barbecue because if you do it will just take ages and ages to get going and just when it finally reaches optimum cooking temperature well, it’ll probably be time for bed, which is why we now use our trusty gas barby.

Liz and I tend to start off with a big salad including a large portion of Liz’s home made coleslaw and then munch our way through a selection of sausages, kebabs, burgers and steaks all washed down with some imported red wine which we select from French supermarkets on our annual travels.

I do love a barbecue from the first satisfying hiss as the steak hits the hot metal of the barbecue to the final mouthful of burger and the last glass of red wine. As the sun goes down it’s time to clear up and go back inside for some evening TV. Should I do a little work on that blog post?

Nah, there’s always tomorrow.

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Naming That Hurricane

Posted on by Steve Higgins

These days I’m retired but back in my working days I sometimes dreamt about having a really interesting job. You know, something special, something really interesting, something out of the ordinary, something like a Hurricane Namer. Let’s face it, someone out there has to do it; someone has to name those pesky hurricanes. Whenever I was having a bad day at work I used to think that one day I’d search just that little bit harder, go that extra mile and maybe, just maybe I’d land a job like that.

Today in the 21st century, searching for a job is a completely different thing to what it used to be. No more searching through the situations vacant columns in a newspaper. Job hunting nowadays is pretty much internet browsing. OK, you’ll still see jobs advertised in newspapers but the internet is where the job action is. Technology has even reached a point where you can have an online interview. Once I had a video interview with the BBC. I’m glad to say I passed the interview but as so many people applied there wasn’t a job available for me. Pity as I really did fancy working for the BBC!

I had another interview not long ago which was for a weekend job manning the helpline for a bank. I started off by entering a lot of information about myself and answering some questions and then I came to a section about selling. Selling? I wasn’t going for a sales job so when the question came up asking if I was confident about selling financial products I answered ‘no’. Big mistake because the interview terminated there and then. I later learned that part of the helpline job including trying to interest the customer in the bank’s financial services.

I remember once back in the 90s when I was unemployed for a short while I was sent to join the ‘job club’. There was one compelling reason to go, attend or we’ll stop your unemployment benefit! OK, fair enough I said, I’m on my way. The very first day at the job club in Levenshulme, Manchester, the club was that packed we couldn’t all get in. It was just a case of give your name, register and get going.

The next week there were slightly fewer people and by week four our numbers had reduced to just a small group. We checked the job cards in the unemployment office, checked the newspaper job advertisements and worked on our CV’s. The staff gave advice on interviews, letter writing and so on, and in between we supped plenty of tea, ate a considerable amount of biscuits and generally had quite a friendly, sociable morning. Why people didn’t want to attend I really didn’t know. I kind of liked it. When I actually got a job, I used to find myself thinking, ‘wonder what the guys are doing down at the job club?’

Many years before that I embarked on a career with GM Buses, the main bus operator in Manchester. It was always intended to be something to pay the rent while I found a proper job but somehow, I never found that proper job I was always looking for. After a few years I started to realise that, so I started trying for promotion. One day I put in for an inspector’s job. It was more money, it was a supervisory role and best of all it was based in the depot so I didn’t have to deal with the great unwashed public. There were two vacancies, one in the Ardwick depot, about ten minutes from the city centre and another in Rochdale which was on the other side of Manchester. I wasn’t interested in the Rochdale one as it was much too far away and I didn’t have any transport at the time. Ardwick though was pretty easy to get to, a quick bus into Manchester from Didsbury where I lived and then there were lots of buses heading south from the city centre through Ardwick.

The interview seemed to be going pretty well. There were three interviewers all coming at me with various questions and, because I had just read a book about how to have a great job interview, I had a shed load of answers as well as a host of questions to throw back at them. Anyway, after a while they asked me to step out of the room. When I was called back they asked me what would I do if they offered me the Rochdale job. Rochdale? That’s miles away I thought, so I said no thanks. No thanks? It felt like a good decision at the time, well, for about five minutes anyway.

These days I’m retired but even so, I haven’t cancelled my job alerts and the crazy thing is I’ve actually had quite a few job offers lately. I get a lot of messages from the sites where I have uploaded my CV and two lately were from companies who liked my CV and asked if I wanted to be interviewed for two managerial jobs. Thanks but they were a few years too late. One job I did apply for was to be the Belfast correspondent for ITV news. I sent off my CV and linked in some of my ‘talking to camera’ videos. I didn’t for a minute expect to get the job but I did get quite a nice email back thanking me for my application and interest in ITV News.

Anyway, back to the Hurricane Naming job. I suppose it was a bit of a silly dream really, not unlike the accountant on Monty Python who wanted to be a lion tamer . . .

Hurricane naming must be one of those home working jobs I imagine, perhaps one where you have to be on call, after all a hurricane could erupt out of the weather front at any time, night or day. Maybe there’s a control room or central office where you are based but I’d guess that every few weeks or so you’d have to work from home and perhaps be on call at the weekend.

I can just imagine the scene, it’s the middle of the night, I’m tucked up in bed at home and my work’s ‘Hurricane Naming’ mobile rings . .

STEVE: Hello, Hurricane Naming Officer.

CALLER: (AMERICAN ACCENT.) Hey, this is the Pacific weather station and we’ve spotted a new hurricane forming over the south west. We need a name straight away.

STEVE: OK, give me a minute here, bear with me.

CALLER: OK but look, we need that name.

STEVE: OK I’m on it. (If my work’s ‘hurricane’ laptop is anything like my own laptop it does take a heck of a long time to boot up!) Let me see, which letter are we up to? Oh yes, J. So it’s going to be . . Joan. Yes, Hurricane Joan.

CALLER: Joan? Hurricane Joan? Look, this hurricane looks like be a real ‘kick ass’ hurricane and I’m not sure Joan is up to it as regards a name.

STEVE: Well sorry you don’t care for it but as of 02:35 hours I’m officially naming this hurricane; Hurricane Joan.

CALLER. Holy smoke. Joan? You gotta be kidding?

STEVE: No. Joan it is.

CALLER: The thing is, my old Mom was kinda looking forward to having a hurricane named after her. She’s 86 this year and not in the best of health. In fact, (fights back the tears) I wonder if she’s going to make 87.

STEVE. Well, what’s her name?

CALLER: Betsy. Hurricane Betsy would be just great, a real gutsy hurricane name!

STEVE. Yes but we’re up to the J’s. We did the B’s a while back, last year actually.

CALLER. Well what about Juliet, my wife’s name is Juliet.

STEVE: Juliet? But what about your old Mum?

CALLER Well, this way we kind of keep it in the family and well, when it comes down to it, that’s my frikkin’ hurricane. I found it and I can’t believe some goddamn limey is going to choose a name like Joan!

STEVE: Well what sort of a name is Juliet? Joan has got an old world feeling about it and here in Hurricane Naming we like to keep old traditions going.

CALLER: Juliet is the name of the woman married to the guy who found the hurricane!

STEVE: Well it just so happens that I am the duty Hurricane Namer and as I said earlier, I’m naming that hurricane Joan!

CALLER: You Limey b-

LINE GOES DEAD. STEVE SIGHS AND MUMBLES TO HIMSELF: It’s all in a day’s work for a hurricane namer!

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6 Takes on Dreams

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I was looking back at some of my old blog posts the other day, hoping for a little inspiration. I usually find that my older blog posts are much shorter than the current ones and sometimes I can rewrite them or extend them and actually make them into a new post. Around the same time I noticed a blog post on the BBC web site about dreams in TV and film. That sent me searching for an old blog post about dreams and so here it is, suitably rewritten and extended.

My Dream

The other day I woke up far too early. It was 6 am when I stretched out and fumbled for my phone to check the time. It was a Friday and I didn’t have a completed blog post for my usual Saturday morning deadline, the deadline that for the past few years has kept me honest as a writer. I padded off wearily to the bathroom, had a glass of water and availed myself of the facilities and went back to bed. I don’t dream that much although a few years ago my dreaming seemed to increase, so much so that I started a dream journal, a notebook just by the bedside so that when I awoke I could jot down the details of my dream. Later when I came to review the notes, I tended to find a whole lot of gibberish that not only made no sense but didn’t in any way nudge my memory and bring back those quickly forgotten dreams.

A long time ago I awoke after a crazy dream in which I was out with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, and somehow, don’t ask me how, I had lost all my clothes. We had been out drinking and were walking home then something happened and suddenly I was somewhere without any clothes. I woke up then but that wasn’t the end of it.

The next night I had a sort of follow on dream. I was wandering around with no clothes, although I had come across a blanket somehow, and with me was Michael Portillo (yes, the ex-MP who hosts a show on BBC about railway journeys). Well we ended up in this hotel and I was starting to worry. Well, who wouldn’t? No clothes, no wallet, no mobile. Who could I call? Should I try and cancel my bank cards? What happened to my keys? Where am I and what has Michael Portillo got to do with it?

Michael was standing nearby and using his influence as a famous former MP. Someone brought him a phone and he started chatting into it. Clothes were brought for him and I could hear him speaking to his bank. It actually brought to mind that sequence at the beginning of one of the Bond films where Pierce Brosnan has been in a Chinese prison, escapes and finds himself in Hong Kong. He walks into this posh hotel, his hair long and unkempt, his clothes in rags and the guy at reception says “Will you be wanting your usual suite Mr Bond?”.

Some people just have that manner about them don’t they? Me, I’d have been unceremonially kicked out of that hotel, assuming I’d even made it past the front door! I can just imagine the scene:
“Your usual suite Mr Higgins? Just a moment please?”
The manager beckons to a large man looking similar to Oddjob from the Bond movie Goldfinger. The next moment Mr Higgins hurtles through the front door. As he is propelled into the street he murmurs, “that’s a ‘no’ then is it?”

TV

I mentioned earlier about the BBC post about dreams. I noticed it advertised at the bottom of a page I was looking at and I didn’t actually read it until later. A lot of the films mentioned in the post were ones I had never heard of but in the TV category was one probably everyone knows about. The return of Bobby in Dallas.

In case you have never watched an episode of Dallas here’s a quick resumé: It was about a rich family living in Dallas. The family’s money came from oil and the head of the family was Jock Ewing. The other main characters were his wife Miss Ellie, his sons JR and Bobby and their wives Sue Ellen and Pam. Larry Hagman created the famous character of JR, Patrick Duffy was Bobby, Linda Grey played JR’s wife Sue Ellen and Victoria Principal was Bobby’s wife Pam. There are more characters but those were the main ones. After season 8 Patrick Duffy decided it was time to leave and pursue other acting roles and so his character was killed off. The ratings dropped during season 9 and so Patrick was enticed back to the series, the only problem was how could he come back? His character died surrounded by friends and family so what could the writers do? Well, the answer they came up with was this: It was all a dream!

When you come to really look at it, what else could the writers do? Patrick could return as Bobby’s long lost twin brother. Or perhaps he didn’t die after all. That one would be tricky as he did die as I mentioned above, surrounded by friends and family so they could hardly try to make out he didn’t die. Maybe a double, a fake Bobby really died but that idea is a bit silly, after all Dallas wasn’t a spy or a sci fi show. So what happened was this, at the end of season 9 with Bobby dead and his wife Pam involved with another man, Pam walks into the bathroom and finds Bobby in the shower. The season ends there which was quite a finish and we had to wait for the next season to find out that Pam was having a dream and Bobby hadn’t really died after all. Some fans hated it but when it comes down to it, what else could they do?

The Novel

Dreaming a story and making it into a novel or a screenplay isn’t quite as strange as it seems. In 1898 an American writer, Morgan Robertson, wrote a story about an unsinkable ship called the Titan which sailed from England to the USA, hit an iceberg and sank. The story was published fourteen years before the Titanic disaster. I remember reading the story of this writer years ago, even that the writer saw the story played out in front of him like a movie but all the research I did on the internet for this blog seems to imply that the author was a man who knew his business where ships were concerned, felt that ships were getting bigger and bigger and that a disaster like that of the Titanic was inevitable.

The Quote

The Hit Single (John Lennon; Number 9 Dream)

The Film

It took me a while to think of films based on dreams but then an obvious one finally came to mind; The Wizard of Oz. The film is about a young girl, Dorothy, who lives in a small town in Kansas. She decides to run away from home when her dog is about to be taken away from her. A friendly vaudeville entertainer encourages her to return home but when she tries to she is swept up in a tornado which deposits her in the land of Oz.

Once, back in the 70’s or 80’s, The Wizard of Oz had a cinema re-release and I took my mother to see it. She was a big fan of Judy Garland. When the film came on mum let out a sort of disappointed shrug and I asked her what was wrong. She told me that when she had seen the film originally it had been in colour. ‘Perhaps they couldn’t find a colour print or perhaps it wasn’t in colour after all,’ I told her. ‘I was sure it was in colour,’ she replied.

Later, when Dorothy wakes up in the land of Oz, the film goes from black and white to colour. I looked over at mum and she smiled back. ‘I was right after all,’ she said.

The change from colour to black and white also denotes that Dorothy had entered not only Oz but the world of dreams. Later in the film when she returns to Kansas, it is only then that she realises that her adventure in Oz had been a dream and that the cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and even the Wizard, were based on characters from the farm where she lived.

The Wizard of Oz was a classic film made in 1939 and was an adaptation of the book by Frank L Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland was forever linked to the film and in particular to one of the classic songs she sings in the film; ‘Over the Rainbow’.

To finish I think I’ll pinch a few lines from my original post.

Not so long ago I remember travelling on a luxurious aeroplane, not the cramped budget airline I usually fly on but something very special. I was in first class in a very comfy seat with lots of legroom. The hostess was handing me a drink, not in a plastic cup but a very elegant crystal glass. As I reached forward to take the drink, I slipped and went head over heels towards the floor.

I lifted my hand up to check my fall but I was back in bed at home and everything had been a dream. I looked over and Liz was scrolling down her mobile phone. ‘Bloody hell!’ she said, ‘that snoring was going right through me. Where’s my cup of tea?’

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Not Responding

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’m still coming down to earth after five weeks in sunny and warm Lanzarote. OK, we’ve had a few warm days but mostly the weather has been wet and windy and cold.

I retired in 2022 so I don’t have to get off to work every day and, unlike many bloggers and amateur writers, I don’t have to struggle for writing time. Even so, my motivation to get up and write next week’s blog post has been a little deflated by the bad weather. Still, in a few days we will be in April my favourite time of the year. The days are getting longer and warmer and soon Liz and I will be off to France in our small motorhome.

Back in December I decided to save a little money by declaring the van off road and getting a rebate on the road tax but now it’s time to get the MOT sorted and get the van ready for the road again.

I had the van running the other day and it started up ok but there was one little cloud on the horizon, the left rear tyre was flat. It was parked up against the wall so I had to struggle over with my pump and soon the tyre began to inflate but then I realised there was a definite hissing sound and air was escaping. OK, new tyre required for this year plus whatever the MOT throws up.

I mentioned last week how I was glad to finally get a new video ready for my YouTube channel but my big problem with video is that I just can’t leave them alone. The video was all finished and uploaded to YouTube but then, as usual, I decided to tweak it a little. A further issue was that after editing a video on my laptop I usually upload the clips to Animoto and mix another version on the Animoto online editing site but my subscription had run out so I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do. So, it was time to put video editing aside for a while and try and write a blog for this week.

Not much has happened to me lately so what could I write about? My visit to the cinema? No, I mentioned that last week. Some more reflections on Lanzarote? No, I reckon we’ve had enough of that too. Restaurant visits? As usual I’ve had a few of those, after all, dining out is one of life’s great pleasures but then again, that’s another subject I’ve written about.

Putting blog posts on hold for a moment I decided to dig out an old poem I’ve always rather liked, give it a little makeover and make a new poetry video. I made it from scratch on my laptop, just with me reading the poem to camera. What I’ve always found when I record a ‘piece to camera’, as the professionals call it, is that my first attempt, take 1, will always be the best. Later by take 5 I find that I’ve completely lost the plot and I’m mixing all my words up, especially the bits at the end which are so easy I don’t even bother to write down. Things like, Thanks for watching, if you’d like to read more of my poetry look out for this new anthology, A Warrior of Words, available from Amazon.

That came out on take 5 as Thanks for watching my new anthology. If you’d like to er . . Take 6: Thanks for watching Amazon, go to Amazon to read er . . Take 7: Thanks for reading more of er Amazon . . It reminded me of the time when Marilyn Monroe had to do a scene on Some Like it Hot in which all she had to say was, ‘it’s me, sugar.’ The scene took 47 takes to complete!

Time for a break but later I did manage to put together a reasonable sort of video.

Later it was back to trying to knock out this week’s post. Sometimes when I’ve been really stuck, I’ll take an old post and either rewrite it or add to it. After trolling through lots of old blogs I thought the best thing to do was to just open up a blank page and start writing. I did that, wrote a couple of lines and realised that even though I was typing, nothing was happening. After a while a message came up on my screen saying Word is not responding. You don’t say, I thought.

Technology issues can be really frustrating and I’m sometimes rather tempted to resolve them by smashing my laptop to smithereens but I thought, no! The best thing to do, seeing as I had no idea what to write, was to go back and work on another video project. OK. I had a project which was fully edited once again on Animoto. As my subscription had expired, I couldn’t add a narration so it was time to download the result and narrate the voiceover on my laptop.

Download complete, I noticed that when I recorded the voiceover, the recording seemed to be jumping and missing out various words and then another message appeared: Video Editor is not responding! Aaagh! I clicked over to Google and searched for information about optimising sound recordings. I found that I had set my recordings to DVD quality and maybe my laptop just couldn’t cope with that. OK, time to reset to CD quality and finally that was another problem sorted. (I’m happy to report I resisted the temptation to just smash my laptop to smithereens again.)

I noticed then that when I had my narration on my computer screen and scrolled down as I read, the microphone was picking up the clicks on the scroll button. I couldn’t print off the narration as I had no ink in the printer so what I did was upload the narration to my OneDrive and open it up on my iPad and read it from there. On my iPad I was asked to log in to OneDrive. I did but they wanted further confirmation. They wanted a passcode entered which they sent to my mobile. Off I went in search of the mobile. I entered the passcode but I was too late. It had expired! I did it again but this time the password was wrong!

(Steve don’t do it. Don’t smash the iPad to smithereens!)

I was getting more than a little exasperated but I recorded the first section of the voiceover, paused, scrolled the text and recorded some more. Brilliant I thought but then that message popped up again: Video editor is not responding. OK, keep calm I thought, don’t smash the laptop to pieces. What could I do? Perhaps I’d used up too much memory so I took a load of video files and moved them to my portable hard drive. A quick reboot and a check of my C drive: delete my temporary files and finally things seemed to be working properly.

OK, final narration added, time for a few quick changes here and there and that was it. I like to leave the finished video for a few days then take another look and then any minor errors are much easier to see.

In the old days of editing video, the editor began at the beginning and just carried on adding the next clip and then the next and so on. Today, working in digital video, the approach is slightly different. A scene can be easily compiled into a rough cut but then the editor can go back and change clips earlier in the video, trimming a bit here or re-ordering things there. Another great thing about modern video editing is that you can save your project, so if at a later date you want to change something, you don’t have to start all over again. You just open up your saved project, change whatever you want and create a video file for the new version.

I’ve often thought about how wonderful it would be to be a professional video editor but then I always imagine myself at work and the boss comes in and says ’can you have that ready by this afternoon?’. I doubt if I would last long at that company when I handed in the finished product two weeks later.

One of my favourite video editing stories is about Charlie Chaplin. Over a hundred years ago in 1920, Chaplin had just completed his first major film as a director; The Kid. He was in the middle of a messy divorce from his first wife Mildred Harris and thinking she was about to seize the unreleased film, Chaplin smuggled the negative to Salt Lake City where he completed the edit in his hotel room. Despite this, The Kid was released to rave reviews and became the second highest grossing film of 1921.

I doubt whether Return to Stockport Bus Station will get a similar response but I do love messing about with video or as Liz tends to call it; twatting about on my laptop!

A little later I checked my emails and there was one tempting me to renew my Animoto subscription with a half price offer. As a fully paid up member of Northern Tightwads it just not in my psyche to ignore such an offer so I signed up for half price and went about making a new version of my latest video. That would be version 3 and by the way, everything worked fine and I didn’t smash my laptop into a thousand pieces.

OK, time to write that blog post. I opened up word and stared back at the few lines I had written but nothing in the way of inspiration seemed to be occurring. I was getting a new message but in my head rather than on my screen:

Brain not responding.

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The Post Holiday Blues

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s always sad to come home after a holiday, especially when you’re leaving a warm and lovely place like Lanzarote and returning to cold and wet England. We’ve been in Lanzarote for the entire month of February as well as the end of January and it almost felt more of a house move than a holiday. On holiday you know you only have a week or two weeks to do all the things you want to do but with a month out here there is no rush to do anything so you can simply relax.

To be honest, Liz and I don’t do much in Lanzarote anyway except read, swim, have barbecues or go out for meals. All the other stuff that people do on holiday, visiting the sights and things like that, we’ve done it all before on previous visits. We don’t even bother hiring a car, we just get on the local circular bus which is pretty reliable or get taxis.

I’ve often thought about actually moving here. Of course, I don’t speak Spanish which might be a problem but there is a huge British ex-pat community here and I’m sure they don’t all speak Spanish either but of course, knowing the language would not only be a great help but also a way of connecting with the locals. I remember once meeting someone in France who had lived there for years but seemed proud of the fact he did not speak French and had no intention of ever learning it. That seemed to me to be rather pompous and hugely disrespectful to the country that had taken him in.

Another relocation issue I thought about was how would I go on about health care, eye tests and dentistry and so on? Then of course there is Brexit and the fact that the UK is no longer a part of the European Community. We Brits can only stay for 90 days out of every 180 days so I’d have to get a visa. How would I go about that? Is it easy? Would the Spanish even accept me?

Talking of the 90 days, we tried a new bar which was about a five minute walk from our villa. It was only small and served beer, snacks and cocktails but we met an English couple there and we felt pretty pleased with ourselves when we mentioned we were staying in Lanzarote for a month. They were clearly well versed in the art of one upmanship as they promptly advised us that they were staying for three months! Ninety days actually, they stay for ninety days then pop back to the UK and spend 90 days there. When they told me they hated the cold I knew they were talking my language.

The weather was fabulous from day one and in fact we only had one or two bad weather days and when I say bad, they weren’t even that bad really, just a bit dull and windy. On day one the holiday stretches off into the distance and then at a certain point when you still think you have ages left, you realise you only have a week to go. Suddenly the end of your holiday is rushing towards you and then there you are, waiting for your taxi to the airport.

Flying into Lanzarote there must have been a pretty big demand for the journey because our aircraft was upped to an airbus with more seats. They were set out in 2 4 2 formation, two seats, an aisle, four seats then another aisle then two seats. The change of aircraft meant that Liz and I lost our pre-arranged seats so I called the airline up, had a moan and they put us together although we were sat across from each other on either side of the aisle. I had a very pleasant family sat next to me and Liz had a spare seat next to her but she decided to stretch out onto the empty seat. My seat was quite comfortable but on the smaller aircraft coming home I was really cramped and very uncomfortable, so much so when we got back to Manchester my back was killing me.

It always makes me laugh to see the way air travel is portrayed in films and TV. They always, especially on American films, have big seats and lots of legroom. In the second of the Die Hard films, Bruce Willis’ wife is stuck on an aircraft with lots of room and can even make telephone calls. Clearly, these updates to air travel have not yet made it over the Atlantic to UK aeroplanes.

Coming back Liz and I had a free seat next to us so I was able to move over to the window seat. I was all ready with my camera to record the take-off but when we taxied over to a waiting area, the captain advised us that we had a problem with something on the underside of the wing and someone was coming over from the airport to take a look. The guy came over and all was ok but it meant we had to wait for over an hour before we could finally get going.

When we did get going, I felt I needed a wee but almost as soon as the seat belt light went out, a big queue formed for the bathroom. OK I thought. I wasn’t desperate, I can wait. We were on row two so we were one of the first to be served by the ‘in-flight service’. Liz and I had two small bottles of wine each, a cheese and ham toastie each and we both chose the special offer half size (or was it quarter size) packet of Pringles.

A few glasses of wine later and perhaps it was time to try for the facilities again. There was one guy waiting to go in but very quickly a queue formed behind. Before I could get up the queue began to get longer. The guy must have been wondering if there was actually anyone in the toilet and he tried to open it but nothing happened and he resumed his wait. After a while the stewardess came down and she tried knocking on the door. Nothing was heard so she tried the door which opened. The bathroom was empty. There was a communal moan from those waiting in the queue but finally they all began to move up.

There were two people waiting when I decided to get up. Liz had to move to let me out and I had to shuffle along the seats, making sure not to knock over our remaining wine. Just as I managed to squeeze out of my seat, we hit some turbulence and soon the seat belt light was on and the stewardess asked us all to sit down. She went onto the intercom and told everyone the toilets were to be locked while we went through the turbulence. Sadly, I had to squeeze back into my seat.

Despite closing the toilets, the turbulence was clearly not bad enough to affect our in-flight service. By this time, I was having serious tea withdrawal symptoms. I’d only had one cuppa earlier that morning so I ordered a tea. The seat belt light went out but I couldn’t get to the toilet because the stewardess trolley was in the way. Frustrating I know but I’m a big fella and I told myself that I must therefore have a corresponding big bladder so I settled down to enjoy my tea.

A little later I’d finished my tea and I needed to go, I mean I really needed to go and soon I saw my chance. There was one woman waiting and then the bathroom became free and she went in. I asked Liz to move up and she did so, happily blocking someone who was planning to pinch my place. I stepped up to the bathroom. Finally, no one could stop me now. Even if we hit turbulence, I was going into that toilet. What was that woman doing in there? Reading a book?

Finally, she stepped out and I managed to gain entry and relieve myself. Happy days! I zipped myself up, washed my hands and went back to my seat. I finished off my tea and then, wait a minute, I’ve just had a wee, why do I need another one?

That was a very uncomfortable flight back to Manchester but happily our friend and taxi driver Craig, was ready to drive us back to St Annes.

Hasta la vista baby!

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The Big 601

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s that time of the year when Liz and I depart for the substantially warmer climes of Lanzarote. I wrote a post a while ago called It’s C C Cold which really sums up my feelings about this time of the year. I really hate the cold. Yes, I admit I it, I hate this time of year. To be fair, this winter hasn’t been so bad in the north of England. Yes we’ve had to put up with two big storms but to be honest, they weren’t that bad, not in my part of the world anyway and apart from a few chilly days it’s not been so cold either. Even so, the cold isn’t my cup of tea.

A long time ago I relocated to a place called Newton-le-Willows. I worked in the GM Buses control room at the time and our control room was about to relocate to Atherton, a mere stone’s throw from Newton-le-Willows hence our move. I’d even been to Atherton depot and checked out the offices that were to house our new northern control room but then our bosses decided to relocate to Oldham instead. I’m not sure why but then when Atherton depot was closed down, reduced to rubble and a new housing estate was built on the spot, I pretty much understood.

Assured of the move to Atherton I went ahead and bought my new house and a short while later I was forced to drive to Oldham to report for duty at our new control room which was a heck of a journey. In the winter I left Newton which was usually raining or sleeting to find there was about 2 foot of snow in Oldham and most days of the winter I had to dig my car out of the snow before returning home.

Anyway, getting back to the present, Liz and I have jetted off to Lanzarote for a little winter warmth. I don’t mind flying, at least not the actual flying but all the other related stuff can be a bit of a pain. Going through customs and passport control for instance. I always take a bag on board the flight for my camera, iPad and laptop, all of which have to be extracted from the bag and placed in a tray in order to be X rayed. Can take you jacket off please sir? OK, jacket off. Watch off as well? No sir you can keep that on. Belt off? No you can keep that on sir. Happy days. My stuff disappears towards the X ray machine and I myself go through the electronic portal and then- Can you take your watch off please? Is there anything in your pocket? Yes, my wallet. Can you take your shoes off please? Are you wearing a belt? Take it off please. Bloody hell!

Further down the queue I’m trying to grab my laptop, put my shoes on and fasten my belt all before my trousers drop to my ankles. I can see the headlines now: Flasher arrested in passport control!

After all that the flight itself was rather enjoyable. When I left home that morning a tune was strumming around my head and it was still there as I buckled myself into my seat. I tried to hum it to Liz but she didn’t recognise it. Anyway, I glanced through the flight menu, decided what I would order later and settled down.

When we checked in online we had a bit of a panic. We had booked the flight about a year ago and we chose our seats right at the front. Since then however it looks like Jet2 have decided to use a different aircraft. It was an airbus something or other and it was one of those planes with a 2, 4, 2 set up. Two seats then an aisle, 4 seats then another aisle and the final two seats on the other side. Anyway, we had to choose our seats again and the only ones near the front of the aircraft were ones sat either side of the aisle.

Only the other day I was watching a documentary about the early days of passenger flights and the passengers boarding their aircraft were served food on proper plates and had tea in proper cups as well as wine in actual glasses. Our cheese and ham toasties were served on a piece of cardboard and the wine came with a plastic cup. So much for the advances in passenger transport.

Lanzarote may be just a big volcanic rock in the ocean but it’s a warm rock, a friendly rock and full of welcoming bars and restaurants and just the place for a winter getaway. Prices seem to have rocketed in the last few years though. Looking at my video from Lanzarote in 2021, most of the tapas at the Berrugo bar, a favourite haunt of ours were round about 4.65 to 4.85 euros. This year most of those are in the 7 or 8 Euro range and the meal we had there the other day was €8.95 and it was nice but so much smaller than it used to be.

The flip side was that it was January and we were sitting outside eating and drinking in the warm evening. That tune was still in my head and I tried it on Liz again but she still didn’t recognise it. Do you remember any words she asked? Sadly no . .

Anyway, moving on. I knew I had my 600th blog post coming up soon and this last week before getting my passport and driving licence together, sorting some euros and packing my case I tried to put together a few thoughts about what to write about. Not a lot came to mind and to be fair, I did have a lot on my mind, all those things I’ve just mentioned as well as sorting out our airport transfers and so on as well as getting a blog post ready for Saturday, the day before we left the UK. Imagine my surprise then when I realised that last week’s post, the one about romcoms was actually my big 600th blog post and I never even realised.

This week then is my 601st blog post, stretching back in a line to the 23rd of May 2014 when I created my very first post. It wasn’t anything exciting, just three paragraphs about the book I was writing and about to publish on Amazon. It was actually a pretty dreadful post and I like to think my blogs have improved a little since then. There is more to them certainly. A typical post for 2014 had 638 words, and a post in 2024 has on average 1626 words. I’ve had over 52,600 views and I’ve been shared over 12,000 times each on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit as well as other social media sites. Every post I’ve ever produced finishes with a little bit of a plug for my book Floating in Space or my poetry anthology so clearly I’m getting my message out there but as sales for either haven’t yet gone viral I’ve had to call Ferrari and tell them to put a hold on the new sportscar I ordered a while ago. I hope that when I can finally afford it, I’ll still be able to actually get in it as my back is giving me a heck of a lot of pain lately.

The plan for this holiday has been to take it easy and do a little light exercise like walking and swimming and try and slim down a little. So far I’ve managed to swim every day and when we visited Casa Carlos, another of our favourite restaurants, I found I had to move my trouser belt up to the next notch which must be a good sign.

Another plan was to make a big effort at writing and while I have done a little of that, the lure of the pool, the sunbed and a good book has so far been a little too much.

Yesterday I still had that tune in my head and I finally began to recognise a little more of it. The singer was Neil Diamond and yes, I finally recognised the tune.

“What is it?” asked Liz.

“Yes I’ve finally got it, it’s The Reverend Blue Jeans!”

“What?”

“You must have heard it. Neil Diamond, The Reverend Blue Jeans?”

“You total divvy! It’s called Forever in Blue Jeans!”

“Forever in Blue Jeans? Really?”

Oh well, I might save that for a misheard lyrics post. Watch this space!

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Don’t Make Me Laugh

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I was watching one of those modern comedians the other day, one of those modern stand-up politically correct comedians who are really just not that funny at all. They don’t come out with jokes anymore, well, not the kind of jokes that I’m used to, you know, the two blokes go into a pub kind of joke. No, these days a comedian tells you a story; he did this, he did that and some of it might be vaguely humorous.  Michael McIntyre is a comedian in this modern category and to be fair he can be quite funny but I still prefer a straight joke to his story about waking up next to his wife and him having bad breath and then a whole lot of repercussions stemming from that.

To be fair there are some modern comedians I like. People like Jack Dee, Gary Delaney, Milton Jones and Stewart Francis.

When I was a child there used to be a lot of TV shows showing the old silent comedies from the early days of the cinema. There were stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. What they did back in the 1960s with those old silent films was to add a few sound effects which might have actually come from the soundtrack of cartoons like Tom and Jerry. In the rumble tumble world of the Keystone Cops they added the sounds of various people being hit on the head with kitchen pots and pans, things falling from great heights and a commentary with a narrator saying things like ‘Look out Charlie’ just as Chaplin was about to get a pie in the face.

Chaplin: picture from flickr

When I first saw those films as they were meant to be shown with just a piano tinkling away in the background and no sound effects, I have to say I was rather disappointed but of course, audiences back then didn’t have much choice, the tinkling piano was all they had. Few of the stars from those silent film days ever made it into the era of the talkies but a duo who did were Laurel and Hardy.

Charlie Chaplin is one of my personal heroes and one of the greats of the silver screen, perhaps the very first movie genius ever, but here’s a flash; he never ever made me laugh. Smile, yes, but laugh, no. I look at his movies and recognise his story telling power, his movie making magic and much more but no, Charlie never really made me laugh. Laurel and Hardy on the other hand, two movie comedians who are not perhaps as lauded the world over as geniuses but who are perhaps more universally loved, well, now they do make me laugh.

Whenever some catastrophe befell Oliver Hardy, whenever he stood and looked straight at the camera after a cabinet landed on his head or a car accident befell him and he stood up straight amid the shambles of a house exploding around him and Stanley would go into his helpless ‘it wasn’t my fault’ act, that would not only crack me totally up but would leave me helpless with tears of laughter running down my face.

Way back in my school days Monty Python was on TV late on -I think- a Thursday night. It was certainly a week night and it was certainly late as I had a running argument with my Mum about staying up to watch it. The next day at school the talk would be all about the latest episode.

One day for some inexplicable reason I completely forgot about it and in my first lesson the following day one of my schoolmates approached me and said ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ I looked blankly back at him and said something like ‘What are you on about?’ Only to get the disgusted answer ‘Didn’t you watch Monty Python last night?’ and then the lad moved on to someone else. Moments later I heard something again about the Spanish Inquisition and then two boys rolling with laughter. I was totally left out and I didn’t know what to do about it until later when I had an idea.

Monty Python Team

In my next class another friend asked ‘Did you see Monty Python last night?’ and after a brief moment I decided to take something of a chance and answered ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ and the two of us rolled about in laughter and this trend continued throughout the day.

My friends never discovered that I hadn’t actually seen the Spanish Inquisition sketch and in fact I didn’t see it until years later when some digital channel started showing Monty Python repeats. I lied to my friends just because I didn’t want to be left out of some schoolboy banter. Funnily enough, the Spanish Inquisition sketch is one of my favourites.

One of the founder members of Monty Python, John Cleese, followed up Python with a comedy series about a small hotel and its madcap staff. The owner of the hotel was hotelier Basil Fawlty played by Cleese and his wife – played by Prunella Scales and the series was called Fawlty Towers. At the time the show had a very mild reception but these days it is considered a TV classic. Cleese and co-writer Connie Booth who played a hotel maid in the show, made only two short series. Recently Cleese claimed to be making a follow up series though it’s a pity he didn’t do that many years ago as most of his co-stars are either no longer with us, like Andrew Sachs who played the Spanish waiter, or not in a position to perform like poor Prunella Scales, suffering with dementia.

Woody Allen is a different sort of film comedian although in his early days we can see there was clearly a sort of slapstick influence on his work. One of my favourite scenes in his older pictures was from Take the Money and Run where he decides to rob a bank but the bank staff have difficulty reading his note demanding money. His later pictures are warmer and more thoughtful rather than hilarious but they are still funny but in a different way.

Two comedy films that come to mind now are films that I’ve always found absolutely hilarious – Airplane and Police Academy. Both films spawned a series of not quite so funny sequels but the originals still kill me to this day.

I thought I’d finish with a look at a few particular favourites

The Naked Gun

This is one of those laugh out loud comedies that also spawned various sequels and even a TV series. It also rejuvenated the career of actor Leslie Neilson who played the hapless police detective throughout the series.

Some Like it Hot

Some Like it Hot was written by Billy Wilder and his longtime writing partner, IAL Diamond. Wilder also produced and directed the film which starred Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.

The film itself is something of a farce; musicians Curtis and Lemmon witness a gangland murder in 1920s Chicago and go on the run from mobster George Raft. To escape they join an all girl band dressed as women. The two both fall for singer Sugar Kane played by Monroe and Tony Curtis pretends to be a millionaire in order to pursue her. Curtis takes Sugar on board ‘his’ yacht while the real owner, millionaire Mr Osgood is diverted by Jack Lemmon still in his disguise as a woman.

The film has passed into legend for the problems Marilyn had during production. One scene in which she was required to say ‘It’s me, Sugar’ took 47 takes although another scene which Wilder thought would take three days was shot in 20 minutes.

When Harry Met Sally

This film is a very Woody Allen-esque film although Woody had nothing to do with it. It was written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner and starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as the eponymous Harry and Sally. The two make a great film pairing, much more so than Meg and Tom Hanks with whom Meg starred in two other films. It’s about a couple who start out as friends and finally become lovers.

Tootsie

Dustin Hoffman stars as an actor who always goes out on a limb to give the perfect or at least the most authentic performance possible. His big problem is that in doing so he usually makes it hard for everyone else, making shooting go over schedule and over budget. No one wants to hire him so when he tries to help his friend Sandy get a part in a TV soap opera, which she sadly doesn’t get, he decides to masquerade as a woman and try for the part himself. The crazy thing is, he actually gets the part and has to continue to pretend to be a woman even though he finds himself falling for his female co-star.

The idea of men dressing up as women has been used time and time again but Tootsie and Some Like it Hot both work because of the high standard of the writing and the performances. In one of my favourite scenes in Tootsie, Hoffman as actor Michael Dorsey has to kiss the senior doctor but he improvises and does something else. The director isn’t happy but Hoffman apologises. At least he didn’t have to kiss the doctor he thinks but then the doctor grabs him and kisses him anyway. Throw in a little slapstick which wouldn’t be out of place in a Chaplin film and the result is an outstanding film comedy.

I thought I’d finish this slightly oddball and meandering look at comedy with some classic TV comedy from the 1970’s. (I’m tempted to mention MASH here, my all time favourite TV series which was a fabulous mix of comedy and drama. I won’t say any more because a while back I wrote an entire post about the show which you can read by clicking here.) Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker were major TV comedy stars in the late sixties and early seventies when some enterprising producer decided to team the two up for a TV show called The Two Ronnies. Some of the top comedy writers of the day contributed to the show, even some of the Monty Python stars and one of the most famous sketches was the Four Candles sketch.

That’s pretty much it for this short comedy ramble. What makes you laugh?

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Captain My Captain

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This will be my 592nd post and as you can imagine I sometimes struggle for new ideas. Scrolling through the internet the other day I chanced on something about Robin Williams and the post mentioned the film Dead Poets Society. It isn’t one of my favourite films but if you’ve ever seen it you might remember the poem O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman which features a lot in the film. It got me thinking about Captains so I thought I might kick of this post with a few words about my favourite captain, James T Kirk.

Captain James T Kirk

The first series of Star Trek starred William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk. Forget Captain pointy head Picard, Kirk is a proper Captain and after a good twenty minutes of any episode he will usually have blasted a number of aliens with his phaser (a sort of ray gun) and done some pretty serious kissing of any beautiful girl, alien, android or otherwise, within a 100 yard area. Mr Spock was played by Leonard Nimoy. He is the ship’s science officer and as a Vulcan rarely displays emotion, logic being his primary motivation. Doctor McCoy played by DeForest Kelley is a doctor of the old school and he and Spock frequently get into verbal confrontations. Together they are the chief officers of the starship Enterprise on its five year mission to go where no man has gone before.

william_shatner

As a schoolboy I wrote to Desilu studios where I believed Star Trek was made, based on credits shown at the end of the show. After a while I received a set of glossy pictures of the show’s stars. They were all signed by the various actors, Shatner, Nimoy and so on but the signatures, I have long suspected, were made by a machine.

The original Star Trek, like many TV programmes of the sixties was shot on film and today it looks pretty sharp compared to shows from the 80’s that were shot straight to video. It was given a digital makeover a few years back with digital effects and new CGI spacecraft and is looking pretty good these days. Which was my favourite episode? Well I’d have to say it was the one that fans voted the best Star Trek episode ever; City on the Edge of Forever. The crew of the Enterprise arrive at a distant planet searching for the source of some time displacement. The source is a time portal, left among the ruins of an ancient civilisation which although abandoned, still emits waves of time displacement. In the meantime, Doctor McCoy is suffering from paranoia brought on by an accidental overdose of the wonder drug cordrazine which any Star Trek fan will tell you can cure any known Galactic ailment. McCoy in his crazed state bumbles through the time portal, back to 1930’s America (handy for that old 1930’s set on the Paramount back lot) and changes history. Kirk and Spock are forced to also go back in time, stop McCoy from changing history and restore things to the way they were. Joan Collins plays a charity worker at the core of events; does she have to die in order to restore normality?

What happened to Kirk? Well in the movie Generations, the character of Captain Kirk was sadly killed off. Generations which started off pretty well, combining the usual sci-fi elements of Star Trek with an intriguing mystery; who is the mysterious Soran and what is he up to? As it happened what he was up to wasn’t really that interesting, but the film marked the cinema handover from the original Star Trek cast to the new one. Pity really because as I mentioned above, I never really took to the Next Generation. However in the last two Star Trek films, the producers returned to the original characters, Kirk Spock, McCoy and Scott and with new actors playing the old characters, the story of Captain Kirk continues. As I write this William Shatner, who played the original Kirk is still active even though he is in his 90s. Wonder if they could get him to play Kirk one last time?

Captain Scott

Captain Scott planned to make an expedition to the north pole but then changed his mind and went for the south pole. At pretty much the same time Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, decided he also wanted to make the trip so a kind of race began. Who would get to the pole first? Amundsen decided to travel in classic fashion with teams of dogs pulling sledges. Scott decided he would use new mechanical devices, vehicles with caterpillar tracks, all of which broke down in the cold. Scott also used ponies but they were not acclimatised to the cold and fared poorly. Amundsen’s dogs turned out to be the best choice.

Why either of them would want to go to the pole is completely beyond me. All that they found there was a shed load of snow and ice which most people could have predicted anyway.

As we all know, Scott got beaten to the pole by Amundsen. The gallant British explorers then had to face the task of getting back to civilisation, however the weather worsened and the men froze to death in their tent.

You can watch the story of Captain Scott and his tragic expedition in the film Scott of The Antarctic. It is a sad film although John Mills as Scott plays a good part as usual and James Robertson Justice plays a serious role for a change, that of Captain Oates who disappears into the snow after telling his friends that he ‘might be some time.’ Oates perished like his friends but his courageous actions have never been forgotten.

Captain James Cook

Captain Cook was born in 1728 and died in 1779. He was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, who left behind a legacy of geographical and scientific knowledge.

He achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. His mapping of the Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand changed the face of world geography. Before his famous three voyages to the Pacific and Australia, he also had made detailed maps of Newfoundland.

Cook was attacked and eventually killed by the natives in the Hawaiian Islands, during his attempt to kidnap the Hawaiian chief to reclaim the cutter stolen from one of his ships.

Captain Scarlet

Captain Scarlet was a TV puppet series made by producer Gerry Anderson in 1967. It was the first of Gerry’s puppet series to use puppets with realistic body proportions which although they looked more realistic were difficult for the puppeteers to manipulate. The idea for the series was that earth was under attack from the mysterious ‘Mysterons’, a race from the planet Mars that had been disturbed by the Zero X Mars exploration missions. The Mysterons have the power of ‘retrometabolism’, a way of reconstituting matter after an object or person has been destroyed. Captain Black has been recreated in this way and is under the control of the Mysterons. A similar thing happens to Scarlet but somehow he has broken free from Mysteron control. Scarlet is a member of Spectrum, an organisation set up to defend earth. All the agents have colour code names, hence captain Scarlet, voiced by Francis Matthews and Captain Blue, voiced by Ed Bishop.

A computer animated reboot was broadcast in 2005.

Captain Nemo

Nemo was a character in the Jules Verne novel 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea. The novel was first published in 1870 and reappears in another of Vernes books, Mysterious Island written five years later. In the first book a French scientist has joined an expedition to find a sea monster. They ship is attacked by the monster and the biologist is surprised to find the monster is an advanced submarine. He and other members of the ships company are taken prisoner where they meet the mysterious captain Nemo. Not much is ever revealed about Nemo except that he seems bent on revenge after his homeland, wherever that was, was conquered by a powerful imperialist nation.

There have been numerous film versions but my personal favourite Nemo was played by actor James Mason.

Captain America

Captain America was a comic book hero first created in the 1940s. Steve Rogers is a frail man who volunteers to use a new serum which will rapidly boost his physical powers. He combats the nazi menace with his sidekick Bucky Barnes but an accident leaves him in a state of suspended animation until he is revived in the modern era and becomes the leader of the super-hero group The Avengers. I can’t say I was ever a great fan of the captain even in my younger comic reading days. Youngsters these days may know Captain America from the current wave of super hero films. Captain America: The First Avenger was released in 2011 starring Chris Evans as the eponymous hero.

Captain and Tennille

Captain and Tennille were a husband and wife recording duo who had most of their success in the 1970s. Daryl Dragon was known as the captain because of his habit of wearing a captain’s hat when he was the keyboard player for the Beach Boys. He and his wife Toni Tennille had a number of hits throughout the 1970s although the one I particularly remember was ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’, a number one hit in the USA.

Captain Von Trapp

Never heard of captain Von Trapp? Well clearly you haven’t seen the Sound of Music. The story of the Von Trapp family of singers is actually a true story and Maria Von Trapp wrote a memoir about her experiences which was published in 1949. The book was made into a German film in 1956 and was so successful that a sequel was produced. Naturally Hollywood became interested but before that producers Leland Hayward and Richard Halliday secured the rights to make the story into a stage musical. They employed Rodgers and Hammerstein to write new songs as the German film had no original songs and just used Austrian folk songs. The musical was a huge hit and later became the famous hit film. Julie Andrews starred as Maria, the trainee nun who becomes a nanny to the Von Trapp children. Their father, Captain Von Trapp played by Christopher Plummer eventually falls for Maria and the family manage to escape from Austria just as the Nazis take hold of the country.

I’m not a great fan of musicals but I do love The Sound of Music.

Captain My Captain

O Captain My captain is a poem by Walt Whitman about the death of Abraham Lincoln. As I mentioned earlier it is perhaps most famous for being used in the film Dead Poets Society starring Robin Williams as an unconventional teacher.

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Tapes and Tape Recordings

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I started work in 1973 and one of the first things I wanted to buy with my new found income was a cassette tape recorder. To be honest I can’t think of anything that had such a profound effect on me until the video camera or the home computer which both came along many years later.

I had a huge amount of recorded music of course. By the mid-seventies my record collection was already pretty big and I was buying vinyl records, usually 45 rpm singles, every week. My tape recorder had a built-in radio so I could record my favourite tracks straight onto tape for free and I spent a lot of time taping the new top twenty which came out every Tuesday. The other thing I could do with my tape recorder was record myself with a microphone.

I used to write some rather silly plays made up of sketches based on Monty Python and Spike Milligan and my brother Colin and I used to read the parts. One tape I digitised some years ago featured a cowboy sketch with dialogue something like this:

Colin: (Fake John Wayne voice) You’ve got a helluva chip on your shoulder.

Me: (Fake James Stewart voice) That’s not a chip, it’s a potato!

If you think that was bad, here’s another sketch, this one was a spoof on The Glenn Miller Story.

Me: (Fake James Stewart voice) You know I’m still searching, still trying to find that sound, that special sound . . .

(Colin aka Special effects man: Flushes the toilet.)

Me: (Fake James Stewart voice) That’s it! The sound, the special sound I’ve been looking for!

Later on, I bought myself a music centre which for the benefit of any younger readers was a record deck, a tape recorder and a radio all in one unit. I could then record my music onto a tape and make up music collections. They called them ‘mix tapes’ which to be fair was not a phrase I ever heard back in the seventies but I seem to hear quite a lot these days. Anyway, I used to make lots of mix tapes which became even more important when I bought my first car. To record music back then you had to actually play the record to copy it onto tape so each of my tapes in a way reflected the atmosphere in my bedroom as I played and copied one track after another, each track in turn inspiring the next and then the next and so on. I loved my mix tapes.

Probably the most famous tape in TV fiction was the tape used in Mission Impossible.

The TV show was created by producer Bruce Geller and concerned a team of special agents known as the Impossible Missions Force. They are a US government agency which takes on hostile foreign governments, South American dictatorships and criminal organisations.

A great feature of the series was the opening title sequence which involved a match being struck and then lighting a fuse shown over quick clips of the upcoming episode to the sound of the iconic theme tune written by Lalo Schifrin. Next, Jim Phelps, the head of IMF would listen to his tape-recorded instructions which, after being played, would then self-destruct. Phelps would then look through his agents’ files complete with photos and choose who he wanted for the mission. Sometimes a guest star would play one of the agents who would be introduced by Jim checking out his dossier. A team briefing would then take place and the mission would get under way.

The show was re-booted in 1996 as a film franchise starring Tom Cruise.

When I bought my music centre, I realised I could actually connect my old tape recorder into the music centre and make tape to tape copies so I began to edit my tapes, particularly those radio recordings where I could edit out things like DJs who talked too much or songs I didn’t like. I also used to review my recordings and put together what I called a Tape Review in which I spoke with a microphone and introduced various recordings.

Another tape I made was called ‘Self Portrait in Tape’ which was me yakking away into the microphone talking about my favourite books, TV shows and of course introducing some of my favourite music.

My childhood friend Steve and I were both big record buyers and music fans. We interviewed each other on tape about our music loves in the style of a radio show of the time called ‘My Top Twelve’. The show was really a rip off of Desert Island Discs in which a celebrity is interviewed and talks about their favourite music and Steve and I did the same. I reviewed my tape back in 2017 when I digitised it and transferred it to a CD. I have to say I was surprised at some of the music choices I had made back in the mid-seventies and in the CD version I did give certain tracks the chop and add some additional ones plus I added some comments in a new voiceover discussing how my musical tastes had changed.

In the 1990s I bought another music centre, a mini one with a CD player and tape recorder with which I used to copy my CDs onto tape to play in my car. My car at the time was a Rover and it had a tape player and it wasn’t until 2020 that I bought a car with a CD player and it was only then that my mix tape producing days were over.

The Watergate Tapes.

I have always understood that John F Kennedy was the first President to install a taping system in the White House though Wikipedia seems to think the practice began with Roosevelt. Many of the recordings made during Kennedy’s presidency have been released to the public including those of cabinet meetings during the missile crisis of 1962.

President Lyndon Johnson carried on the tradition of taping and recording phone calls and numerous calls have been declassified and released by the authorities. Some with a special poignancy were even recorded on Air Force One on the 22nd November, 1963, the day Kennedy was shot and Johnson elevated to the presidency.

Anyway, despite his two predecessors, the President most famous for taping in the White House was Richard Nixon and it was the ‘Watergate tapes’ that were at the heart of the Watergate scandal.

The White House under President Nixon was worried about security. When Nixon realised the FBI weren’t willing to do his bidding, he created a security team which became known as the Plumbers. It was their job to plug the leaks to the press and they were also used to get information on Nixon’s rivals in the election.

A team of five men entered the Watergate building on the night of June 16th/17th 1972. Sometime after midnight on the 17th a security guard noticed that various doors into the building had been taped, preventing them from locking. He called the Police and the five men were arrested. They all had connections to the White House. Various investigations began and the President himself was implicated but things changed when investigators became aware that conversations in the Oval Office had been recorded. Would the tapes prove or disprove that Nixon knew about the break in? Well President Nixon refused to hand over his tapes at first but when he finally succumbed to pressure and handed over some, they revealed him to be foul mouthed, bigoted and small minded.

Nixon resigned from the presidency on August 8th 1974.

The Watergate tapes can be listened to on the university of Virginia’s Miller Centre for Public Affairs. (millercenter.org)

I read on the internet that cassette tapes are making a comeback. CDs and digital recordings are of a much higher quality than cassette tapes but tapes are handy, easy to use and certainly in the old days they were pretty cheap. I’d make a music tape up and if it jammed or broke, I’d just throw it away and record a new tape. Recording a music tape was always an experience because, as I mentioned earlier, you had to record it live, you had to actually play the record or CD to copy it onto tape unlike the CD compilations I make nowadays. Those are made by just dragging and dropping a track into the CD burner file so you only get to hear it after it is made.

Tape cassette

Prior to the digital revolution, singers and musicians recorded their songs on vinyl but the vinyls were produced from master recordings made on tape in a recording studio. Pressings of a record are made from a mixing of the master tapes. These days, quite a few classic albums have had their master tapes digitised and many new mixes of old recordings have been released. I’ve got a few albums which have been rereleased in this way; they are a little like ‘director’s cut’ versions of old albums with new mixes, outtakes and alternative versions, so Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run becomes three CDs instead of one, same for Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Two interesting albums but to be fair, I prefer the original versions.

As I write this, the Beatles are once again running high in the pop charts with a ‘new’ release. Back in the 1970s, John Lennon switched on his cassette recorder high up in his New York apartment and recorded a demo of a song he had written called Now and Then. Yoko Ono passed the tape to the surviving Beatles some years ago and Paul McCartney, Ringo Star and George Harrison tried to make it into a new song. Alas, the background hum on the tape could not be removed and neither could the sound of Lennon’s piano. Recently however, new technology has enabled Lennon’s voice to be cleaned up, Harrison’s guitar has been added as well as new additions from Paul and Ringo. The result is what people are calling the very last Beatles song ever.

Many fans think the result is wonderful and it’s certainly pleasant and interesting but hardly in the same class as the Beatles classics that we know and love.

These days I tend to listen to music via Spotify. One of the great things about Spotify is that it listens to the kind of music you choose and then suggests similar music. On my Spotify page I have various playlists I can listen to but you do need that all important Wi-Fi connection which isn’t always available. Of course, as a fully paid up member of the noble order of Northern Tightwads I still only use the free version of Spotify which means every now and then I have to put up with the bane of the music world – advertisements! (Even the Beatles video above starts with an ad!)

Perhaps that’s why I’m still listening to my mix tapes!

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