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.
It’s cold, in fact it’s bloody cold and it’s no secret that I hate the cold. I could write about the cold I suppose but then I’ve done that before. This is my 695th post so it’s no surprise that a lot of what comes to mind I’ve actually already written about.
I’ve not done anything particularly interesting lately worth writing about. As usual I’ve been dining out at a number of restaurants. As I’ve mentioned in my introductory page, dining out is one of the great experiences of life, especially for someone like me who is perhaps in the evening of his life. I’m not the sporty or athletic type, I’m more of a quieter, more relaxed type of guy.
One disappointing aspect of dining out recently was having a really poor meal at not one but two of my favourite restaurants. A restaurant I suppose is only as good as its chef and until these two restaurants gets themselves new chefs they will have to make it through life without my custom. I really do hate getting a sub-standard meal, it just really ruins my evening. After one meal last week we were going on to our usual pub quiz and to make up for the bad food I ordered a portion of cheesy chips to go with my pint. The cheesy chips weren’t that great after all and nothing, not even the winning of the quiz (actually a joint win, we tied with another team) could cheer me up.
When we returned home I picked up my iPad and one of the first items I clicked on was a routine by the comedian Peter Kay about people in a restaurant who complain about the food to themselves but smile at the waiter and tell him everything is ok. Won’t be coming here again they say when he has gone. That is probably the essence of being English. To be fair, I am quite happy to send food back when I can’t eat it but I just try and muddle through when it just isn’t very exciting.
What else have I done lately? Well, as usual I read quite a lot. I’ve recently finished a book by Mia Farrow called What Falls Away. It’s an autobiography that was really interesting and very well written. I particularly liked her memories of her youth in California with her mother and father and family. Her father was a film director, John Farrow and her mother was an actress who was most famously Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan. The family lived at 809 North Roxbury Drive, Beverley Hills, an exclusive area of Hollywood and it turns out a whole lot of famous people lived on that road. Her next door neighbours were the Roaches, the family of Hal Roach, a producer who was at the centre of the silent comedies of the early part of the motion picture boom. Other neighbours were Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Peter Falk (Columbo) Ginger Rogers and in later years, Madonna.
In the latter part of the book Mia talks mostly about Woody Allen with whom she started a relationship with in 1980. I’m a huge fan of Woody and his films. The two met in 1979 and were introduced to each other by Michael Caine. Woody invited her to his New Year’s Eve Party and later, in April of 1980, Mia received a call from his secretary asking if Mia would like to meet Woody for lunch.
Mia builds up an affectionate picture of Woody and gives the reader some interesting anecdotes. Woody may look in his films as though he just throws any old thing on to wear but in real life he is super keen about his wardrobe. According to Mia he pored over Vogue magazine and many of his suits were tailor made for him.
When he came to stay at Mia’s summer house he refused to use the shower so Mia brought in a builder and had the whole thing redone to his requirements and guess what, he still wouldn’t shower there, even though he brought his own shower mat along.
Woody had a long retinue of doctors for each of his many ailments and kept their phone numbers on him at all times. He also had a thermometer on his person and when he was feeling unwell would take his temperature every few minutes.
Despite their relationship the two never married or even lived together. They both had apartments on opposite sides of Central Park in New York and the two would blink their lights and wave to each other across the park.
Woody never seemed to be interested in her large family of children, most of whom were adopted. In 1985 Mia adopted newborn baby girl Dylan. Woody appeared to find Dylan irresistible and Mia felt that this had been a breakthrough, that he was finally beginning to interact with her children. Sadly things take a darker tone here and Mia began to feel Woody’s interest in Dylan was more of an obsession.
Later, he takes an interest in Soon-Yi, another of Mia’s adopted daughters and by then a teenager. Mia is shocked when she finds Woody has become involved with Soon-Yi in a wholly inappropriate way and later is horrified when she begins to feel Dylan has been abused.
This of course is only Mia’s side of the story. Did Woody abuse Dylan? The authorities seemed to think not but in a later custody hearing they declined to give Woody visitation rights. Woody married Soon-Yi in 1997 and the couple adopted two children.
Although I love Woody Allen’s films, this book made me look at Woody in a completely different light.
Just lately I’ve been taking a long look at my blogs and I’ve generally been a little disappointed. Not by the content but after quite a few years as a blogger I was hoping to have a lot of followers and readers, sold lots of copies of my books and perhaps even made a little income from my work. I sometimes look at my stats on Google analytics as well as those on WordPress itself and wonder what more could be done to gain a larger readership. Interestingly, almost as soon as I had those thoughts, my stats took on a huge boom and I had a weekend of incredible stats, mostly coming from the USA. Why should Americans be interested in my blog posts? Well, I could also ask why is a guy from the north of England so interested in the USA? I have a great interest in Hollywood, US politics, US TV shows, the city of New York so if I’m interested in all that then why shouldn’t Americans be interested in the things that I write about?
A message appeared on my iPad from Google Analytics to tell me about a huge ‘spike’ in my readership. Well, I did run an advertisement on WordPress. I had a budget limit of $35 and about 36 hours later I received a message telling me that my ad had finished as I had hit my budget limit. Of course that could also mean I’ve sold a few extra books this month.
Wait a minute, hang on while I check my Amazon sales page!
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.
Tell us about your new book.
This isn’t a post about my 
In the film William Bast played by Michael Brandon, leaves Dean in a restaurant and Dean later asks why Bast left. Bast was intimidated by Dean’s important looking friends and Dean replies that he was judging by surface appearances. When Bast questions Dean further, Dean produces his favourite book, The Little Prince and then goes on to read his favourite passage.
Donald Campbell was the son of a famous racing driver and record breaker, Sir Malcolm Campbell. Campbell first broke the land speed record in 1924 at Pendine Sands in Wales which was the first of his nine land speed records. He also set the water speed record in his boat Bluebird K4. He was knighted in 1931 and died in 1948 aged 63. He was one of the few racing drivers and land speed record holders of his era to die of natural causes as many of his rivals were killed in crashes. His son, Donald Campbell, was determined to equal and even surpass his father’s achievements.
This is perhaps where this post might start to unravel. I know the Donald Campbell link was a little tenuous and only based on a film but this next one was based on my own memory which can be prone to failure. I knew Noel was a great fan of the children’s writer E Nesbit and I’m sure I had heard or read somewhere that when he died, he was reading his favourite of that author’s books, The Railway Children. A quick bit of internet research and I see that Noel died after reading Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle. Coward was a lifelong fan of E Nesbit who wrote a series of children’s books. He discovered the books as a child and revisited them many times during his life. In his diary he wrote this about the author:
Woody is one of my 
Just now we are approaching my favourite time of the year. The days are getting longer, spring is nearly here and the days are beginning to get warmer. Understood by our ancestors to be a potent portal of power, the Spring Equinox which happened yesterday, has long been celebrated as an awakening time of growing energy and budding new life. Its earlier roots begin in many of the most ancient myths and tales about the Goddess regaining her power and fertility after the long months of winter. Just now though, all I can think about is what a pain in the neck the coronavirus is turning out to be. It’s pretty easy when you are watching the TV news, to sort of dismiss things that don’t seem to affect us but when you find that you actually are affected then it’s a whole different story.
As I have probably mentioned, Liz and I are on holiday for five lovely weeks in France and the other day it was with some trepidation that I heard the bat phone ring. Yes, the bat phone, that urgent direct line back to the UK and stevehigginslive.com tower, the hub of the stevehigginslive.com empire.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 