Death of a Star

Mollie Sugden as Mrs Slocombe

John Inman's Mr Humphries and Mollie Sugden as Mrs Slocombe

I FIRST EXPERIENCED TELEVISION in 1958. For many years the single channel available in Bermuda aired tapes, usually from the American CBS Network, on a delay basis of, I think, a week. The CBS Evening News, however, was flown to Bermuda on tape and broadcast the night after it aired in the USA.

Television only aired from about five o'clock in the evening till midnight at the latest. There was a locally produced programme that went out live called Junior Club. Children, just a very few of them, joined host Bob Harbin, a magician in the studio and were encouraged to look enthusiastic as Uncle Bob did his magic. A peculiar machine had to be tweaked by one lucky child to permit taped cartoons to be run for the viewers. It was very simple, very white. My sister and I went along once. Later a black presenter, Auntie Nell, expanded the format. The magic had gone, I think Uncle Bob left the Island.

The Bermuda Evening News was read by Wilf Davidson, a Canadian. I think everybody knew Wilf was as gay as pink ink, and liked his vodka. He was known to frequent the Horse and Buggy bar where he'd chat up sailors. On a Saturday night the television station pulled out all the stops and ran a late movie that Wilf Davidson would host from an armchair. The advertiser was a local liquor merchant and Wilf would sip Smirnoff Vodka in front of his fake fireplace in commercial breaks through the featured film, getting more and more inebriated. At the end of the film Wilf would give a brief overview of the day's news and the latest weather report. Famously, one night that I did see for myself, the very squiffy Wilf predicted dizzle and frog for the overnight weather forecast. He realised his mistake and went into a fit of drunken giggles. I suppose he wobbled out of the studio and rode his Vespa Scooter to the Horse and Buggy before the rains came.

Wilf eventually hosted an early evening interview show called Date before Dinner with Jane Bainbridge. I went on that programme once to chat about a magazine I was involved with. Wilf left Bermuda and returned to Canada, and died many years ago. Jane Bainbridge left Bermuda too, but did not return to her native England. She died in the USA just last month.

When I lived in the UK in the 1960s I finally got to watch some real television, though I recall that many of the popular programmes were imports from the American networks, particularly the westerns like Rawhide and Bonanza and animated shows like The Flintstones.

In the early 1970s a BBC situation comedy classic was launched. Are You Being Served? probably needs no introduction anywhere in the world as of 2009. A cast of odd characters work in a rather dusty and inefficient and outdated department store called Grace Brothers. I dare say viewers of the original series and the endless reruns that continue to this day around the globe will have their favourite characters and episodes. Camp Mr Humphries in menswear, who usually was able to chirp "I'm free" when asked if he was busy, was played by John Inman who died in March 2007. Sexy Miss Brahms was played by Wendy Richard. Ms Richard went on to do almost 20 years in Eastenders as the not very sexy Pauline Fowler. She died in February of this year, 2009.

My favourite employee in the Grace Brothers ladies' department was Mrs Slocombe. Actress Mollie Sugden was Mrs Slocombe, and always will be, with a different colour hairdo each week and her worries about her pussy. Mrs Slocombe was bossy, pompous and ridiculous and I'm not sure that even a run-down establishment like Grace Brothers would have kept anyone like her on staff. Mind you, who would dare fire her?

I suppose someone a good deal younger than I am, in search of a degree, might write a thesis comparing Mollie Sugden's Mrs Slocombe to Lucille Ball's incarnations over in the USA. Lucy (which is not to say the actress) was shallow and usually clueless. Mrs Slocombe put on airs and graces and had opinions about everything. One doesn't recall Lucy having anything important to say. But both characters would get into bizarre situations (thanks to the writers) that stretched belief. Of course, Lucy could not say anything suggestive and the British viewers demanded that of Mrs Slocombe.

If John Inman's Mr Humphries was as camp as a row of pup tents (Inman was gay, for all I know he may have walked that way easily), Mollie Sugden's Mrs Slocombe must be a gay icon. People do dress up as Mrs Slocombe, and if you have a pastel-coloured wig, why not? I'm not much for drag, but the best Mrs Slocombes are male. She was that kind of character.

Mollie Sugden died yesterday, 1 July 2009, after a long illness. She was 86. Mrs Slocombe and her pussy will live a good deal longer.

CAMP CARRY ON - BIG BROTHER 10

Please, saviour, saviour, show us.
Hear me, I'm graphically yours.
Someone to claim us, someone to follow,
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo,
Someone to fool us, someone like you.
We want you, Big Brother, Big Brother.
David Bowie (Big Brother)

THERE ARE NOW OVER 30 CCTV cameras within a few hundred yards of the flat where George Orwell lived when he was writing 1984. I'm guessing that does not include the cameras on buses and in some other vehicles. Of course, there are cameras mounted outside buildings everywhere, and in shops. It must be increasingly difficult to get away with murder.

I recall a very few cameras in Hyde Park about 40 years ago which seemed to be quite obvious and intrusive. I don't notice the darn things now. There are a number of them here in Amble by the Sea which may, or may not, be switched on. A friend had his shop vandalised, a brick through the glass door, and a CCTV camera on a building directly opposite had no record of the crime. There is a sign in the window of one of the funeral parlours in Amble warning CCTV is in operation and that footage of any illegal activity will be passed along to the appropriate bodies. Bodies? All the buses seem to have cameras now; they look a bit like the HAL 9000 outlets.

In a bigger city, apparently, one might be recorded over 300 times a day. Something to think about if you're on a hot date and your wife doesn't know about it. Suddenly somebody commits a crime and you and your companion are taped witnesses and the Police are looking for you.

My youngest sister boasts that she and her son frequently climb over or under pay turnstiles to save a few pence. One day she'll be nicked when the authorities aren't watching possible terrorists and have to meet a quota.

There are now CCTV cameras that are manned full time by security officers who can, and do, speak to the people they are observing if necessary. "Would the chav in the tracksuit please pick up the cigarette packet she just dropped?"

I once applied for a job with a security company, to work nights monitoring a bank of TV screens and alarms. I lasted one trial night, it was a horrible experience. Boring beyond belief. I should mention that I was unable to communicate with anyone who appeared onscreen. If anything was dodgy, I was to telephone the Police or other emergency services. I believe I had only one event that night, an open window in a building that was supposed to be sealed shut.

In 2007 I watched Big Brother 8 UK on Channel 4 from time to time. I'd never watched one of those reality captive shows before and it was somehow compelling for a while. I actually remember a few of the contestants and the eventual winner, Pete, who was notable as he was a pleasant punk with Tourette's syndrome who twitched and ticked and screamed (usually Wankers!) a good deal. Pete was involved, in the Big Brother House, with a daft girl called Nikki. Nikki complained about everything and her shrieking was a match for Pete's outbursts. Both Pete and Nikki, whose attachment did not last after the series ended, continue to appear on the television as guest panellists and commentators.

Last year, 2008, the Big Brother Housemates were a dull and forgettable lot. The only thing I recall now is that a skinny and incredibly naive boy from, I think, Wigan, called Luke, was somehow paired with a large, slightly older woman with enormous boobs, which she often flashed at her fellow housemates and the Big Brother cameras (and those of us daft enough to be watching), called Rebecca (Becks for short). They both got voted out of the House within a few weeks of the show starting and I stopped watching. Luke and Becks did pop up as commentators on this year's show and they are, they say, still an item. Some things one doesn't like to picture…

Three weeks ago some 16 people ranging in age from 18 to just over 40 moved into the Big Brother compound. I don't know how many weeks these things run, but it will be through the summer. Of the 8 males, 3 admitted to being gay-bisexual; I believe at least two of the 8 females bat for the other team. I'm not sure that 5 out of 16 is statistically representative of the sexual preferences of people in Britain. It seems that this year the producers decided to go with camp.

Two contestants have been given the push and one simply walked out of her own volition. Another contestant didn't earn the right to be a Housemate. There are now 7 boys and 5 girls circling each other, plotting and trying to look appealing to the viewers who vote them in or out.

After three weeks, the Housemates are all horny and tetchy. Indian lad, Sree, is stalking the prettiest girl, Noirin, who clearly detests him. Kris is courting Dogface's huge knockers. (Dogface? She had to change her name to stay in the House. Another contestant is now called Halfwit.) Charlie, a former Mr Gay UK runner-up, is getting attention from the boys and girls (including those who are supposed to be straight). The youngest Housemate, Cairon, from Atlanta, Georgia, was evicted last week. He'd been very homophobic, and awfully immature. He then shoved a peeled banana up his arse on camera. Over 70% of the votes to evict went to him. He earned them!

There's no censorship on our Big Brother. Language has deteriorated rapidly, nudity is becoming common, and the snogging may soon lead to sex for the cameras if the show moves along like those in other years. The boy on boy action is prevalent this go round, even among the straight lads. Whatever gets you through the night?

All of the contestants this year have been quite attractive physically, though Dogface's breasts are a bit over-inflated (they are implants and she wants bigger ones, a mindset I cannot understand). I like only two of the Housemates enough to hope one of them might win.

Angel is a Russian girl in her 30s, a boxer, trainer, magician and would-be pop star. She's wonderful looking. Not beautiful, but wonderful, better somehow. Angel is fairly fragile for an athlete, when the House gets to be too much she heads for the garden with her jump rope. Angel breaks down and cries too, but offers a shoulder to the other Housemates. If I were 20 years younger…

Dogface, whose real name is Freddie, is an upper-class twit, complete with a stately home and boarding school education. He wants to be a Tory politician. Dogface has something fairly interesting to say about everything. The other Housemates, proles all, perhaps not surprisingly, detest him and keep nominating him for eviction. So far, Halfwit has survived because the other nominee has been less attractive to the viewers. He's a good-looking fellow, plays for both sides. He's English in a House that has mostly foreign types. I'd like Halfwit or Angel to win.

However, I believe the money is on Brazilian bisexual Rodrigo to take the title. He may turn out to be too boring as the weeks go by. Rodrigo is camp, but straight Siavash, an Iranian chap, is camper than a row of pup tents, and noisy with it.

As the weeks go by, I have no doubt that language, nudity and sex will decide the thing. The more graphic, the better the chance to overcome.

I Love My Cat

I AM OLD ENOUGH to have bought Cat Stevens's albums the first time around, when Cat was a rather geeky-looking Greek who loved his dog. It pays to love your dog, it went well after that. Cat ditched the mod clothes and grew the trademark beard and hair.

A friend of mine attended a Cat Stevens concert in the USA in the early 1970s and was disappointed. Cat complained about audience noise and threatened to walk off. Frankly, I cannot fault a musician for that. A theatre full of tripping college students wouldn't be my ideal soundboard.

I'll admit I never liked a Cat Stevens album the first time I heard it, perhaps because every one was quite different. It was a bit like hearing a new artist twice a year.

Didn't everyone have the Tea for the Tillerman album? I recall buying copies of Numbers for quite a few friends who were wary of buying it. I listened the second time and was transported. I played Catch Bull at Four at the opening of a four-person art show which featured my work (I rarely paint now, in case you wondered). I played Foreigner over and over and bought the sheet music so a friend could have a go at the piano music in the Foreigner Suite. While sick as a dog, recovering from glandular fever, I managed to improve my mood with Izitso.

A friend with a guitar would serenade us with Into White, still one of my favourite tunes.

Cat Stevens had a difficult early career. Stoned, drunk and cold, as he put it in the song I Never Wanted to be a Star. He caught tuberculosis. He left Britain for Brazil. One day he was swimming out of his depth and was being carried out and under. He says that he prayed that if God would save him, he'd devote the rest of his life to God. A big wave came up behind him and pushed him suddenly ashore.

What next? He auctioned his guitars for charity and funded a school with his song royalties. He changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The Bible and Koran character Joseph (Yusuf) was a favourite of his. And Yusuf vanished pretty much until the fatwa issued for Salman Rushdie. At that time, Yusuf was asked his opinion on the fatwa and he said that the Koran called for such things. He didn't tell Muslims to go out and get Rushdie, though the Press decided that he had. Pretty soon people (particularly the US Government, which has been terrified of bearded men ever since Walt Whitman) decided he was a risk to national security. While being awarded a prize for promoting peace by Europeans, Yusuf was prevented from travelling to America.

A couple of years ago, Yusuf's son brought a guitar home and left it in the family living room. Yusuf saw it there and picked it up. Tempted, one might say. He plucked and strummed and found that even after 25 years he still knew the tunes.

I'd like to think a long night had ended. Not necessarily a bad night, because we all need sleep. Yusuf realised suddenly that making music need not be contrary to Islamic laws and culture. Perhaps the opposite.

The man once known as Cat Stevens has been making music again.

I bought Yusuf's album Roadsinger last week after seeing a preview on the television. The first time I listened to it I wasn't sure that I liked it. Some things don't change. The second time I played it I was over the moon.

The lyrics are peace and love, pictures are painted. Yusuf's voice is not quite Cat's voice, but it is remarkably close to it. The man is my age and he's not been on the road and in the studio for going on 30 years. The melodies and the working of the instruments are, I think, reminiscent of Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman. Rather than Matthew and Son or Buddha and the Chocolate Box.

These are songs I'd love to have a friend play and sing to me in front of the fire on a cold winter's evening or in a balmy summer's twilight in the courtyard.

What should you do? Try and listen to the Roadsinger album by Yusuf, the man you might have known as Cat. Listen at least twice.

Double Feature

ANOTHER ELECTION DAY, and another miserable showing for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party. Truth be told, I imagine most of the Prime Minister's parliamentary and party colleagues might just be thinking they'd rather not be associated with him and want to claim the Labour Party back for themselves.

Gordon Brown was not elected Prime Minister by the British people, he had been promised the post by outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair who had realised, after ten years, and feeling the points of the knives in his back, that his time was up.

I'd supported the first Blair Government, elected back in 1997. We needed something really different after all those years of Thatcher and Major, and Blair was not so much Old Labour as Moderate Conservative with a heart. Unfortunately, Tony Blair took us into Iraq after sexing up reports of weapons of mass destruction. At times he was not so much George Bush's poodle as his guide-dog, getting the clumsy President through sticky situations. It paid the Press to leave a mike on near the President. Watch his choice of words though, the Christian President could curse. The Christian Prime Minister Blair could cover for him.

Thus ended any admiration and hope I had for Tony Blair and his New Labour. Suddenly we had someone to hate in unison, much as we'd all despised Mrs Thatcher. Perhaps that is a good thing, bringing the country together like that. Try and get Blair out, though. The Conservatives had no viable alternative Prime Ministerial candidate for a start.

And Gordon Brown claimed the throne in 2007, and downhill we've gone. Brown says that he was not responsible for our problems (the Recession and the Members of Parliament Expenses Scandal). However, Brown was Blair's Chancellor for the ten years and seems to have failed to anticipate or hedge against anything like what we are going through. He'd promised, back in the day, the end of boom and bust economies, and then completely failed to even take the edge off the big bust of 2008-2009. Brown seems to say: "Not my fault!" so easily. He always claims to be candid and honest, but will not own up to anything or answer any question directly (and honestly). He will say, over and over, "I'm not arrogant." He's also saying, now, "I won't quit." Any CEO with his company so unprepared and so unsuccessful would have been removed by his Board and his Shareholders. Not our Gordon.

On Thursday morning this past week I popped into the Polling Station, conveniently located next door to my flat, even before I had breakfast. I was the second person to cast a vote in this district. I've voted wherever I could, when I could, since 1968, in both local and national elections. I believe that if one does not vote, one cannot complain about what one doesn't like about a government.

This week, in Northumberland, we only voted for the European Parliament. Don't get me started. I despise the EU and support the work of parties like the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) to get us the heck out of Europe.

There was quite a long ballot with choices by party. One cannot choose a particular candidate by name. One "X" in a box next to the party you want to send its nominees to Brussels. Our big three parties (Labour, Conservative and Liberal-Democrat) were listed, and UKIP, and the British National Party which is anathema to most of us being racist and more. Then the Green Party, which most of us have heard of: I suppose they hug trees and save the whales, but do their leaders and supporters walk or pedal to their rallies, or drive? There were more parties and one had a rather long name that went something like this: "The Christian Party Proclaiming Christ's Lordship". And I wondered if that was some sort of Christian Taliban. I did not see "The United Party of Satanists", but I think one would know better what to expect from such a group. There's a good line in the film Chariots of Fire, spoken by a Scottish minister's character: "The Kingdom of God is not a democracy!" That's worth considering before you give Jesus a seat in Brussels.

The sign outside the Polling Station, with those two words on it, was on a piece of stiff cardboard tied with string into a prickly hedge. Arrows on pages, printed on somebody's computer, were stuck on the side of the building indicating that one must go around into the church hall to vote. The church's rather large (very nearly life-size) figure of Christ on his Cross loomed over the driveway. Vote for me!

By Friday night the county council election results were in, and Labour, our Government, had only 23% of the total vote, in third place after the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats. Gordon Brown's Cabinet was breaking up, big names quit. He patched together a new one with unelected peers from the House of Lords (no Labour MPs seemed willing to join a Brown government) and gave a most irritating press conference on Friday evening. He said, I don't know how many times, "I'm not arrogant!" and stressed that he was the only person who could lead the country at this time.

A reporter asked Gordon Brown what he felt made him qualified to be our Prime Minister. You're thinking he's not arrogant. What Brown did not say speaks volumes. He did NOT say he loves this country, that he loves the people and represents them as a person, and that he is like them. He did not say he loves our parliamentary democracy. No affection was confessed for England's mountains green (of course, he is Scottish). Brown did not say that he wants to serve the nation so long as it wants him. No hand on heart for Queen and Country. No, no, no.

Tomorrow the European Election results will be published and estimates are that Gordon Brown's Labour Party will have done even worse in those than in the English county elections. I'm wondering if UKIP will bump Labour into fourth place. I'm hoping that the Labour Party finally faces up to what this country needs: an elected Prime Minister. I'm hoping they'll somehow get rid of Gordon Brown.

The Conservatives are better at ousting their unpopular or no longer capable leaders: think Churchill in the 1950s and Margaret Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher fought it for a couple of days, but then off she went into the wilderness in tears. Gordon Brown, however, has chained himself to this rock he won't confess to loving. It may take more than long knives; it may take sledge hammers and chisels.

I voted, so I'm complaining about Gordon Brown. He may not think to say he loves Britain, but I love it.

THIS AFTERNOON AFTER CAILEAN'S WALK, which a friend joined me on, the three of us came back and watched a 1979 movie on the telly called The Black Hole. This was not the Disney film of that name, which I've not seen (were there cute animals in that one? I have seen The Cat from Outer Space). The Black Hole on Channel Five this afternoon stars a number of now-dead or decrepit actors. The blurb in the Radio Times guide says: "Intriguing if rather unwieldy sci-fi epic in which the crew of a space ship encounter a disturbed scientist." Maximillian Schell plays the nutter on a large platform floating in space near a black hole. He's turned all his human crew into robots. Robert Forster leads a small crew studying the black hole from what looks like a cannibal's cooking pot without the broth. The crew float around suspended by wires, and the harnesses show. The strings holding the spaceship together start breaking, steam pipes burst, and they have to look around for a place to land. And Schell's space platform happens to be just around the next star.

Turns out that Schell and his crew (now humanoid robots) were supposed to have returned to Earth twenty years before, but Schell refused to leave his spot on the edge of the black hole. He's gone quite mad, and wants to fly right through it, never mind it will almost certainly destroy him and all those with him. A bit of a Gordon Brown.

Highlights of the film are the lame special effects and the incredibly clumsy floating in space. Ernest Borgnine is in the film and has a moustache. Yvette Mimieux looks like an American housewife. Anthony Perkins is attacked by a large red-eyed robot called Max that is more Waring Blender than humanoid … and it literally makes mincemeat of him.

My friend had to leave before the film ended, but I settled down to watch it till the bitter end. However, Cailean next to me, I fell fast asleep.

So I cannot tell you how The Black Hole ended, or, at this moment, whether Gordon Brown is still our unelected Prime Minister representing a party less than a quarter of Brits support.

WHEN PROTONS COLLIDE - Politics, Religion & Bombs

Knowledge rains down and floods the Earth like a Bermuda hurricane;

wisdom grows deep below the surface like stalactites in crystal caverns,

perhaps an inch added every ten thousand years,

and that incredibly fragile.

YESTERDAY WAS SUNNY very nearly to a fault. I don't like to get sweaty and my around-the-town jaunt with Cailean got me moist (and not in a nice way). Odd to have a holiday weekend in Britain with bright, warm sunshine, though Amble by the Sea is more temperate and cooperative than most of the Isles.

Did I lie out in the sun by the River yesterday, Cailean on his long-lead sniffing at the air while I listened to the noises in my head? Actually, no. I'd taped the film Pearl Harbour on Saturday night and decided to put my feet up on the sofa and spend three hours in 1941. I'd rather expected a remake of Tora! Tora! Tora! And was relieved that it wasn't as that's a hard film to beat. Pearl Harbour is an action film in the Jerry Bruckheimer tradition: two handsome flyboys fall for the same pretty nurse and single-handedly take on the Japanese air force on 7 December 1941 when every other aeroplane is destroyed or grounded. They also bomb Tokyo for good measure a few months later. One boy comes back in a box, but the pretty nurse is expecting his baby. The other boy marries the girl, adopts the baby, names him Danny after his father, and takes him for a spin in a crop-duster. Life goes on.

As I watched the film, I wondered what in the world the Japanese were thinking in 1941. They'd been making simply horrible decisions about their role in the world for some years before that (Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking should be compulsory reading). I wondered if it was religion that prompted the Japanese to take such a dim view of peace, love and life. The sort of religion that says you must lose your life in order to gain it. Like Christianity. Like Islam. Like Dictatorship.

The Japanese revered their Emperor as a god. Perhaps some still worship his descendants. The writer Yukio Mishima denounced Hirohito for renouncing his divinity at the end of the Second World War. Did Mishima consider Hirohito no longer a god? Can one turn off godhood so easily? It seems to me that even fallen gods should turn up somewhere and face the music and not claim to be retired from all that and spending their time reading foreshortened poetry.

I would have hanged Hirohito, god or not. The Western Powers turned hundreds of thousands to dust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the god kept his haloed crown and his head to set it on. And for all we know, Hirohito's family and friends still called him God at the dinner table.

I'm not much on religion these days. In fact, I'm nothing on religion these days. I was Sunday-Schooled in the Church of England; my first book (which I still have) which I received on my third birthday was a child's hymnbook from Canterbury Cathedral. At Warwick Academy I had Religious Knowledge classes until I was about fifteen years old. We sang hymns and chanted prayers every morning until I left that school at the age of seventeen. By then I had joined the social set that went to Sunday services and youth group events at the Anglican parish church. Had I a clue about God? Looking back, I think not.

I was excited by Mormonism because it promised family togetherness. Whether it has ever delivered on that promise, I'm not sure. Most of the Mormons I know have struggled at best. But that's good they claim. You have a rubbish life and then a splendid hereafter. Lose your life to gain it.

I am asked, now and then, how I managed to believe that Joseph Smith stuck a seer stone in his hat, then put it over his face and translated the golden plates. In such a posture, he wouldn't have seen any golden plates lying around. I didn't know about this, actually, back in the day. I thought he wore fancy spectacles, the Urim and Thummim, clear stones set in silver bows and sat at a table flipping golden pages pretty easily, reading the translated text to Oliver Cowdery and others. Nothing as easy as that. Pull down the hat.

Joseph Smith taught that our God (the Christian one at least) had been a man once upon a time and had moved on up, as it were, having been an obedient and successful man. Joseph also taught that a plurality of gods created the Universe and that there are gods responsible for other worlds besides ours. Many houses, many mansions, many tenants, and quite a few landlords. The Bible can be interpreted to agree with this. The Bible can be fiddled with to justify anything, and is.

The Bible, probably all bibles, is foremost a political text. Laws listed by a ruling class to perpetuate itself. Eat this, don't eat that. Don't go there. Make war, not love. Men are not ruled by a god but by men. Or men who claim to be gods. As Oscar Wilde said: The worst sort of tyranny is that of the weak over the strong.

[I watched several programmes on Himalayan places and customs this past week. I rather enjoy the prayer flags in the high places, scattering good wishes over the world. One commentator explained Buddhism and reincarnation a little and summarised by saying that all life is transitory. Everything is transitory. Things are moving along. That fits in with the Big Bang Theory. This is what I believe in just now. Life, everything, flows. As a bonus, life overflows after death into another life, perhaps lesser, perhaps greater, perhaps much the same. My dust may raise poppies; my spirit may raise a bug that climbs a poppy stalk.]

There was talk in the news this week about the Hum. The background noise so many of us hear when we stop shuffling our feet and rest our tongues. Someone said it sounds like a fridge. The Hum is not new; there was a Hum in Bristol in 1979. However, one wonders if there was a Hum 200 years ago. Perhaps lovers, lunatics and poets only heard the voices of the gods?

In North Korea today a nuclear or atomic test of some sort has been triggered deep underground. Everybody is having a bit of a fit about it. North Korea seems like a most unhappy place. Any place where happiness is mandated must be unhappy. What in the world, or above or below it, does North Korea want with an atomic bomb? Why do hungry nations spend their resources on munitions? What do North Koreans believe? Is Kim Jong-il considered to be some sort of god? Do the people of North Korea have a bible of some sort? A little red or green book? Is it acceptable for thousands of children to be hungry while dozens smile at some computer screen showing troughs and a sudden peak and the world picks up a new hum from six miles below North Korea?

Why do I think that Kim Jong-il sees the stars in the sky as so many blemishes on his preferred black universe?

Is North Korea, I'm wondering, in about the same place that Japan was in the 1930s?

On Being Raised (As I Was) With Penguins

Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me
from mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
William Shakespeare (The Tempest. Act I, Scene II)

I WAS HAVING LUNCH with one of my cousins at Barter Books up in Alnwick yesterday and he happened to mention that his son had recently had the opportunity to see a great many penguins in their natural habitat far, far south of here. I felt a little envious for I was, in a way, raised by penguins. Not many hundreds of thousands of them on an icy beach, of course. But more than a few times a Penguin or two accompanied me to Horseshoe Bay in Bermuda, more frequently to our family's dock on the northern shore of Warwick Parish there.

When we were very young, my sisters and I would be taken to the Aquarium in Bermuda by our father. This was one of those separated (and eventually divorced) parents' situations. Father could have us on a Sunday if he wanted to, and if we wanted to be had. As Sundays on the road with our father meant being away from our friends, there was certainly good reason to call it off from time to time. However, many, many dozens of Sundays in the late 1950s and early 1960s might be spent lunching in a greasy hamburger bar somewhere (no desserts, too expensive) followed by a drive over to Flatts Village and the Bermuda Aquarium.

The Bermuda Aquarium was not (and is not) particularly incredible as aquariums go, the biggest draw being a black spider monkey (not a fish, not an arachnid, but a scruffy, skinny monkey of South American lineage) which would take the peanuts we offered through the bars and leap about shrieking in delight, and then have a bit of a wank (as primates will no matter the blushes they create).

Between the fish tanks and the spider monkey was a small pool with a wooden and canvas umbrella arrangement above it. In that pool, and on a few rocks and diving platforms around it, lived (at the most, as I recall) four penguins. They were small, rather shabby penguins and not particularly friendly. There was nothing one could throw to them by way of food as an enticement to do tricks. Wealthier folks would try and bounce big British pennies off their heads (turtles came in for the same treatment and were an easier target), but we had spent our pennies on peanuts for the filthy little monkey round the corner. I recall the penguin population shrinking to two. It was quite pathetic. And then there were none. The monkey made an exit as well. Last I was at the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo, as it is now styled, the penguin tank had become home to a few small seals, and the place where once a monkey ranged was a hollow with a dusty alligator in it.

Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, is one of the largest second-hand bookstores in Britain. Hundreds of thousands of books ranging from rare and expensive first editions to recent best sellers. One can buy books (and it's hard to not find the ones you're looking for with so many titles) or sell them. Not exactly sell, but barter them in exchange for purchases at the time or in the future.

The bookstore is housed in a former railway station, with the arched roof and layout so familiar to those of us who travel by rail here. There are a number of rooms and areas devoted to particular subjects. There's a restaurant (I recommend the cheese toasties and a pot of Earl Grey) and a bank of computers in case one wants to compute. A valuation service is provided daily. Dogs are welcome. There are huge murals. Couches, chairs and tables are available if you want to rest (you'll most likely need to as hours can pass). Old railway stations being what they are, there are coal fires to sit by for warmth. And non-gender-specific (unisex) lavatories, which seems European somehow. There's a children's area too, always a plus if you haven't got a caged monkey or penguins.

But Barter Books does have Penguins. Penguin Books. Thousands of them.


Penguin Books was founded in 1935 with the promise of inexpensive books for everybody and anybody. The price of a pack of cigarettes, I believe was standard, say 6d. That was six old pence. I remember buying Penguin Books for about 1/6 (one shilling and sixpence), but I don't hark back as far as 1935. When I was paying 1/6, I would guess a pack of ciggies was about that much as well. I no longer smoke and honestly have no idea how much cigarettes cost now, but a pack would be over £5, I'm sure. A new Penguin paperback of a classic novel could be less, most of the second hand copies at Barter Books cost about £3.

When I was in my early teens my father remarried for the first time. Beryl, my first step-mother, who I really liked immediately because she had more books than anybody I'd ever known besides the public library, may have brought most of her book collection to Bermuda (from England) when she came out on a teaching contract as she had many, many dozens of the original 6d Penguin paperbacks. Orange and white covers for general fiction, green and white for crime, dark blue and white for biographies, and Beryl even had some of the rarer purple and white covered essays.

While I was looking through Beryl's history books, Penguin was fighting the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity case (which it won). Not many years later I was buying my own Penguins, all of DH Lawrence's writings, including the four Lady Chatterley's, as well as all the modern classics (I was partial to Huxley, Mann, Orwell, Woolf and Gide and can still recall my shelves filled with everything I could buy from those writers).

I would go to rummage sales and second hand bookstores in Bermuda and one couldn't go wrong looking for Penguins. The spines on so many of my books were bright orange. Like real, feathered penguins, the thousands of Penguin publications are as individual and different, and each has its own call and is recognised immediately and exactly, even in a huge crowd, despite the similar outfitting.

In Barter Books yesterday I noticed that their very old 6d version Penguins are on display at the ends of rows in their alphabetical fiction section. I recognised titles that I've had in my time, plays by George Bernard Shaw, and Erewhon by Samuel Butler, and many titles by DH Lawrence (before Chatterley). I looked inside one book and it had, in ink, the name of the original owner and the date 1935, and a college address. A charming discovery.

If I were on an ice sheet with a million penguins and could take a few home with me, I think one might appreciate that any two would most likely be fine given the colony. In Barter Books yesterday, with hundreds of thousands of titles in something of a blur, and having only scratched the surface in my favourite sections, I came out with a couple of books that will, I'm sure, be winners. One is not a Penguin, but a large pictorial biography of Lewis Carroll (I went down a great many rabbit holes when I was younger and I'm still partial to Alice and mushrooms).

So far as I can recall, I've never binned a book that I've owned and wanted to dispose of. When I have uprooted myself from time to time and couldn't afford to take all my books, the ones left behind would go to second hand bookstores and rummage sales. I do that reluctantly, though there may be something selfish about withholding a book one has read (and might not read again or refer to) from a second hand bookstore.

Berwick falls to the Dachs

Mount you, my lord; towards Berwick post amain:
Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds
Having the fearful flying hare in sight,
With fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath,
And bloody steel grasp'd in their ireful hands,
Are at our backs; and therefore hence amain.
William Shakespeare (Henry VI Part III. Act II, Scene V)

WE'VE HAD A VISITOR FROM AFAR. Family, actually, my mother's long-lost first cousin from Lancashire, by way of Canada. Just for a few days, staying at the Harbour Guest House and Tearooms (that certainly sounds English, eh?) here in Amble by the Sea. Jack gave the Harbour Guest House a big thumbs-up. I did not see his room, but I walk past the place with Cailean a few times a week on that particular loop around the town, and it's in a great location just yards from the water as well as the Town Square. I noted that after Jack had finished the full English breakfast provided at the guest house, which he said was terrific, he was too full for lunch. So, I shall recommend it for my visitors who aren't up to camping in my flat.

Early on Wednesday last I got Cailean into his harness and we three boarded the 518 bus for Alnwick at ten o'clock, arriving a half-hour later. There we joined the 501 bus for Berwick-upon-Tweed. This is the slower service snaking north along the coast and diverting into any number of small seaside villages (all of which feature a castle or ruin or something rather quaint). The scenic route takes two hours, and it is worth it for the professional sightseer or journeyman with the time to spare and an eye for beauty.

One sees Alnwick Castle, the strange and bleak ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, the looming Bamburgh Castle, and distant Lindisfarne on Holy Island.

With early summer well under way this year, the countryside was green with trees and meadows and some crops, the rape fields are bright yellow just now. Our travelling day was grey (and windy) overhead. The North Sea was the colour of steel. In the open it was chilly.

The bus driver was something of a joker, taking the mickey out of two foreign ladies who had managed to flag down the bus from the wrong side of the road. We could not make heads or tails of their accented speech, the broken English as much of a mystery as the original tongue they spoke to each other. It was not a Latin language or German or Dutch. I wondered if it might be Finnish. Not that I've ever heard a Finnish person speak, but I knew an Estonian many years ago.

Then about a dozen ditzy women realised that they'd neglected to ring the bell to stop the bus at their destination, about a mile further on. They called out and walked down the bus and asked the driver what they should do. What they meant, I think, was: "Driver, what will you do?" The driver dodged that one and said: "Ladies, it's only a pleasant quarter-hour's walk back. You'll work up an appetite." The next bus in the opposite direction was not due any time soon, and he actually couldn't turn his bus around if he felt inclined to as we were on a narrow country road. The ladies bubbled out onto the roadside and we rolled on.

Cailean had drawn a good deal of attention, as he tends to do, ever since we began the day's jaunt. One group on the bus, about seven or eight youngish people with what I believe we now must say "learning difficulties", went mad for the pup, and he lapped it all up. Cailean looked over the tops of our seat, forward and back, as well as down the aisle, and between the seat backs. Nothing cuter than a dachshund's snout appearing between the seats of a bus! No barking, lots of waggy-tail.

I'd not been in Berwick-upon-Tweed before, just driving past on the way to and from Edinburgh. Berwick is famous for being the only bit of England north of the Tweed, which the Scots consider Scotland. Apparently, Berwick has changed hands between the Scots and the English some 13 times. The bus schedule says that Berwick is still at war with Russia in the Crimea. This is a folk tale, an error, and the odd situation that Berwick was separate from the rest of Great Britain was fixed centuries ago (see The Wales and Berwick Act, 1746). Berwick and Russia are not - repeat not - still at war over the Crimea since the 1850s. Perhaps the bus company should note this. Let's not promote ignorance, no matter how quaint.

We rolled across a newer bridge ... the northbound lane of the older bridge being closed to traffic, the other bridge to the west, a magnificent many-arched affair, is a railway bridge ... above the Tweed and into Golden Square. It was very nearly one o'clock and I was hungry, even if Jack was still happily digesting his full English breakfast. (Just so you know: bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, beans, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, toast and tea or coffee.) A hotel just off Golden Square had an inviting menu and the bartender said that while Cailean couldn't dine inside unless he was a guide dog (I must certify him as such!) the hotel had a lovely walled garden with dining facilities. We walked through a passageway and sat under grey skies, alas, but surrounded by flowers. Jack was coughing and wheezing, and as he'd just come from Canada, one was thinking "Mexican Swine Flu"? I was having a time with hay fever from birch pollen that afternoon. Still, I murdered a pasta lunch; Jack managed a bit of spicy carrot soup.

We then walked around the old town, down to the River, and up onto the fortifications. At times we were below and then far above the bridges.

Everywhere we went we met people with dogs. And Cailean was being particularly quiet (too tired to bark out with all the climbing about), but very grateful for greetings, and he was inundated with them. Dozens of people stopped us to ask after Cailean. Boy or girl? Cailean is neutered, but his todger is still there, for Pete's sake! How old? One year and two months. What kind of dog is he exactly? A dachshund. A sausage dog. A dash-hound. The last added because that's how they pronounce dachshund in Northumberland. How many people said: "Oh! I could just take him home with me. He's lovely!"

Trekking and the meet-and-greet having about done the three of us in, we headed back to Golden Square and sat on a bench by an ice-cream wagon. It was too chilly for ice-cream, to be honest. The bus home, the directly routed 505, taking half as long as the trip up, was very nearly due. A gentleman with what might be called those "learning difficulties" (or "eccentricities" if he'd been rich or posh) ... he was clearly mad as a box of frogs … did a bizarre jig for Cailean. Has the reader ever seen the episode of Seinfeld featuring Elaine's peculiar dance (and the slice of the Duke of Windsor's wedding cake, if I recall correctly)? This really weird jigging gentleman struck poses with limbs outstretched, balanced on one leg and then the other and he cried out to Cailean: "Hell-oo! Hell-oo!" over and over. And he wouldn't stop the dance, not for pedestrians and certainly not for my horrified stare. Cailean is a sweet-natured soul, and he ignored the dancing fool, which scored points with the crowd that had gathered around our bench. A bus was never more a sight for sore eyes than that 505 rolling into Golden Square.

Golden Square, by the way, is neither Golden nor Square. I didn't ask.

We were back in Alnwick at about four o'clock, and home in Amble an hour after that on the 420 bus. About five hours on buses that day, two hours hiking around Berwick. For those who enjoy the view from the bus, this is no hardship.

I'm thinking I might go up to Berwick again, with just Cailean, on the direct route, and spend more time looking down the back alleyways of old Berwick. Crazy dancers aside, it's a lovely town and it fell to Cailean's charms immediately.