Murder'd Sleep

Now it's past my bed I know
And I'd really like to go.
Soon will be the break of day
Sitting here in Blue Jay Way.
Please don't be long, please don't you be very long,
Please don't be long, or I may be asleep.
George Harrison (Blue Jay Way)

I HAVE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING for about a month now. Not just being unable to sleep at bedtime, at night, but finding that I’m falling asleep when it is not convenient or appropriate.

I might be on a comfy sofa in a room with a number of my friends and associates, straining, admittedly, to connect with the conversation as I’m a tad deaf thanks to many years of very loud music (I have some roaring in my headphones at this moment, Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” sung in English by Kiri Te Kanawa and Thomas Hampson, I cannot write in silence) and I am suddenly aware that my eyes have closed and if I take one slow, deep breath I’ll be fast asleep. And I worry I might start snoring. I quickly open my eyes. One of my mates is an expert on the sleep of others. “You were falling asleep, Ross.” And there’s no denying it. “I was. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

I seem to sleep well enough one night, and then have a few nights reading until an hour before sunrise. At 5.00 I figure it’s not too early to get myself a mug of coffee: I make it with skimmed milk rather than water, and I use artificial sweeteners. Four minutes in the microwave. And back to bed, and the book. I switch on the radio as well, 6 Music, and deactivate the alarm. And, almost immediately, I fall asleep propped up as I am. Next thing I know, it’s after 7.00, the room is quite bright and Cailean is emerging from under the duvet. He needs to pee. My coffee, untouched, is cold in its mug next to my bed. It can be reheated, and is. The day is under way.

Another night I find I’m struggling to keep awake after the early evening news on the BBC. Lying on the sofa would be fatal, so I sit upright on it. There are, at times, programmes on the television that I do look forward to and enjoy. I’m missing some of them, even those that air before ten o’clock. I set the BT Vision Box to record anything that I definitely cannot miss, and it has a replay feature so that much of the programming on the major channels can be accessed for a week after it first airs. However, that means trying to catch up another night. I’m not much for watching television in the daytime.

I have a growing collection of DVDs. I buy them on the cheap usually, when there’s a sale. I also get them from second-hand dealers. And the DVD rental shop in Amble sells off its titles after a month or two, sooner if they’ve not been popular. I don’t like to spend more than £1.99 on a used DVD. One can get movies for £2.49 when the online outlets have specials on slow-moving stock. The great thing about DVDs is that I can watch a film for, say, an hour, and before I get too sleepy (as I tend to, no matter how exciting the story) I can note where I was, and switch it off. Another evening, I can pick up where I left off and, because I have a rather good memory, nothing goes missing.

I’ve not been to the cinema in over a year. Well over a year. I believe the last movie I saw was Martin Scorsese’s “Shine a Light”. The nearest Cineplex to Amble is about 35 miles away, and it’s not on an easy bus route, so I can only go with friends in a car.

I will tell you that I kept wide awake during Shine a Light which was, of course, a concert by the Rolling Stones. The theatre had an incredible sound system, we sat in the front row, and the volume was deafening (meaning, I could hear it). Other trips to the movies have had me struggling to keep awake. I stayed with “In Bruges” but slept through “Pirates of the Caribbean” even though the latter was a good deal noisier. Pirates, frankly, was rubbish. Loud rubbish.

When I can, I go to live concerts. It is almost impossible to doze off with a rock band in the hall. I fold away in the car on the way home. Live theatre, plays, can be dodgy. I’m always anxious that the actors will lose their way (a holdover from a few years involved with amateur theatrics) and don’t often relax. Should one be relaxed when the action is live, a few yards away, music or dramatics?

In another life I recall the first time I addressed the congregation in a particular church. There would have been about 400 people present. I noticed only those in a row of seats near the door at the back of the chapel, a dozen or so elderly High Priests. Before I’d even finished my introduction, the old men were slumping sideways, fast asleep. I can see why some preach Hell and Damnation with the speakers on high. My soft-spoken Peace and Love is Seconal for the soul.

I once fell asleep at a live concert in the Rosebank Theatre in Bermuda. It was a fundraiser, a number of acts and rather haphazardly arranged. A little of Handel’s choral music, then a calypso. Some tap-dancing. That bloody “Summertime” by a mezzo-soprano. Sleep was a welcome escape.

One evening, forty-mumble years ago, I went to dinner with friends at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. The RBYC was hardly my usual eatery. This was the sort of meal that started with drinks on the terrace, and then there was wine with the meal. More drinks to follow, and a couple of Valium. This particular dinner is memorable because afterwards we went to the Island Theatre (an oddly charming, if awfully run-down place) to see Laurence Olivier’s film version of “Othello”. This was a charitable airing of the film. I cannot imagine Bermuda providing more than one show’s audience, and that in a very small cinema. I’m not even sure that a play with a white man in blackface was entirely acceptable. (I recall being absolutely horrified to see “Black and White Minstrels” on stage in Morecambe as a child ten years earlier.)

We sat in the back row, upstairs, of the Island Theatre, in the corner. The Island Theatre had tattered, uncomfortable seats. I can still relive the feeling. One was allowed to smoke in the movie theatres then (just about anywhere but church, actually, and I’d have gone to church more often if I’d been able to light up during the Family Communion Service), but I was with people who would have frowned on that. I recall the opening titles, and feeling fuzzy in my Bacardi and Valium haze. And that was “Othello” for me. I slept soundly through the next (almost) three hours. Thank God!

Jumping ahead 25 years, I saw “Phantom of the Opera” staged in Los Angeles in June 1993 at a very large and well-appointed theatre, but from the cheapest seats. Call it “The Gods” if you will, but these Gods were totally out of touch with the world far, far below. I could not make out the words, dialogue or the lyrics of the songs. I had no opera glasses, I have rubbish eyesight, and I could not tell one over-dressed character from the other. What to do? I tried to clamp my eyes shut and get away from it. Could I sleep? No! I was trapped, awake, for a couple of hours. Happens that after the performance I was taken around to the stage door to meet the actor, Davis Gaines, who played the Phantom. Mr Gaines was very pleasant, posed for a photograph with us, and asked how we’d enjoyed the show. “Brilliant!” was my reply. “Loved it!” Though, to be honest, I hadn’t been able to make any sense of it. (I’ve seen the movie version on DVD and still don’t know what the heck is going on. I really don’t like the play except for the one song “Music of the Night”.) Phantom may have bored me silly, but Davis Gaines took the lead 2,000 times, playing to five million people. He must have liked it well enough. I wonder if he slept soundly when he got home after the show.

It happens that in 1977 the future Grammy award-winning musical director of Phantom of the Opera (and many other musicals on stage and film ), David Caddick, spent his Easter vacation at my home in Bermuda with his partner. David should know that I quite liked the film "Evita", which he produced, and that I stayed awake all the way through it.

Last night I slept well. I switched the light off around midnight and next thing I knew the telephone was ringing. I’d not set the alarm, a friend was outside. I did my best to sound wide awake, as if I’d been up for hours. It was 8.15. I’m feeling well-rested today. Well enough to catch up on my correspondence seeing as I’m not out in search of a pub lunch with some friends. I was going to read, but I’m so enjoying the music of the day, in my headphones, I believe I will trip out on that. Eugene Onegin is far, far better than Phantom.

Will I sleep tonight? The pattern is too unpredictable. In a week, I seem to catch up on missed sleep. Chances are I’ll be wide-eyed. Well, unless there’s something I really, really don’t want to miss.

I will go through the motions. Hot water bottle, pillows plumped, Cailean lifted onto the bed (he’ll vanish under the duvet for his 8 hours). But, also, a book or two, my reading specs, and the radio at hand. The musing of the night.

2001: Quite the Odyssey

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
I'm half-crazy …
HAL 9000

I FIRST SAW THE FILM 2001: A Space Odyssey in July 1968 in a specially adapted cinema in Soho, London. It might have been on Greek Street, I remember seeing the street sign and thinking: "The offices of Private Eye must be here somewhere." I was a big fan of the Eye. I wasn't really a fan of science fiction, however. Happened that my mother was visiting me and we spent several weeks in London, staying in a B&B not far from Marble Arch, a school friend of mine joining us most days.

My mother had come across a remarkable package deal for accommodation, transport and entertainment in and around London. I think she had a book of vouchers which we exchanged at ticket booths and box offices. We visited Hampton Court, the Tower of London, galleries and museums, went to many films, saw some live theatre, and did some organised tours in the capital. My mother had visited most of the tourist attractions when she was a girl, and I had seen them too, but it was great fun having a shared experience. My school friend took us on a few expeditions that she had come across that were not listed in all the guidebooks. We traipsed through old graveyards at midnight, wandered in cellars below Charing Cross, and examined public loos with some historical interest.

2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed in Super Panavision 70, and certain cinemas that had specially adapted, deeply-curved screens, advertised it as a Cinerama experience. We saw it in Cinerama, and had seats in the front row of the balcony and benefited from that. It really was quite different. For someone who had seen most films in his lifetime on a diminutive screen in a tiny movie theatre in Bermuda, this was pretty far out. Not that the cinema in Soho was that large, but it was well-equipped with the latest gadgetry for 1968.

I'd watched the Flash Gordon serial films on a Saturday morning at the Island Theatre in Bermuda and a very few creature features, along with Jules Verne stories, at the Island Theatre and Playhouse, Rosebank and Little Theatre in Bermuda. Nothing like 2001 though for a science-fiction story.

In 1968 my mother and I and my friend had seen Yellow Submarine at a cinema at Oxford Circus just before seeing 2001. Yellow Submarine was something rather different for someone brought up on Loony Tunes. I didn't know much about 2001: A Space Odyssey except that the reviewers didn't much care for it. I'd never heard of Arthur C Clarke or Stanley Kubrick. I had studied evolution in Biology and had heard that the film did depict, in some way, the evolution of man. I've since thought that might not be exactly true.

It was a fairly long film, broken by at least one intermission for ice-cream. Were the reels changed during those intermissions? I think I must have watched it in stunned silence, perhaps thinking "Whoaaaaaaa!" when Dave Bowman flew into the Star Gate. In Yellow Submarine the sequence with "It's Only a Northern Song" had a similar effect. When we left the cinema we were not sure about the film, what it meant.

I went and bought a copy of Clarke's book and I think I understood 2001 a bit better.

Over the last 41 years since July 1968 I have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey many, many times. I have seen it in cinemas and on the television. One does not always have the opportunity to see a particular film at a movie theatre over and over, year after year. Except for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have seen the RHPS at a theatre more times than I've seen 2001 at one, but I can easily recall seeing 2001 on the big screen six times. One of the more interesting theatres was the Olympus Starship on the eastern benches of the Salt Lake Valley in Utah in 1980: The theatre was built so as to give the impression that the viewers were in a space ship, and there were lasers and holograms along with Jefferson Starship's "Have You Seen the Stars Tonite?" before the main feature.

How many times have I seen 2001 on the television? It's one of those films I always tune in to if I see it listed, or stay with if I come across it while channel surfing. I have seen it three times since I got Cailean a year ago.

Cailean watches the television set intently and gets quite excited at dogs and when there are strange noises. He will bounce around and bark. 2001 really gets him going, from the moment the apes appear (dog-like, but I think the screeching gets Cailean yapping back). However, it is the beeping and buzzing and whirring that worries him the most. When HAL shuts down the life-maintenance systems of the crew members in deep-sleep Cailean goes quite mad. The colours in the Star Gate turn both Cailean and me on.

We watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again yesterday, a perfect activity for a Sunday afternoon. Cailean barked, I noticed things I had not picked up on during earlier screenings (the towels in the bathroom in the Louis XVI rooms in the last scenes). Of course, I got thinking. We are well past the year 2001 and we are not travelling to Jupiter in search of monoliths emitting signals (we haven't been as far as the moon in over three decades). Those black monoliths are sentry boxes placed by an advanced civilization. Yes? To keep an eye on how the Universe develops. Or did gods place them here and there? When Dave Bowman becomes the Star Child, is he reincarnated? Are the monoliths active or passive?

I hope I never figure it all out. I'd like to keep on tripping.

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.

Cashing in on Your Attic

FIRST AMBASSADOR: Thus, then, in few.
Your highness, lately sending into France,
Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right
Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third.
In answer of which claim, the prince our master
Says that you savour too much of your youth,
And bids you be advised there's nought in France
That can be with a nimble galliard won;
You cannot revel into dukedoms there.
He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,
This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,
Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim
Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
KING HENRY V: What treasure, uncle?
EXETER: Tennis-balls, my liege.
William Shakespeare (Henry V, Act I, Scene II)

I LIVE IN A GROUND FLOOR FLAT and have no attic, so any items that might be converted into cash some hungry day are pretty much within plain view. In fact, I don't even have built-in cupboards (what the Americans call closets); I make do with a gigantic wardrobe that fills my bedroom. This is so tall and deep that it takes a considerable effort to move and remove the suitcases and boxes I store on top of it. Inside, the wardrobe is spacious and I'm fortunate enough that I can admit that it is really quite full of clothing. If I get fearfully bored and lonely I can push through the coats and trousers and visit Mr Tumnus. He's a nice chap, reminds me of James McAvoy. It's a very English wardrobe.

We have a great many television programmes that involve items found in attics, loft spaces, cupboards, garages, storage units and enormous wardrobes being identified, valued, and sometimes sold at auction. The owners, on discovering that their old box is worth thousands always say: "Of course, it's a family heirloom; we'd never part with it." And then they make the arrangements to sell the treasured thing as soon as they can get out of the valuation room and grin silly and ecstatic grins. "We can be in the Seychelles for Christmas."

There are a number of game shows on the television here in which teams compete to buy items in bargain shops, in flea markets and at car boot sales, and then sell them on at auction or at another thrift sale. The items in these shows tend to be small potatoes in the antique market. Read, for that, junk. "This isn't just plastic … it's Bakelite."

I suppose the best-known programme, that has been running for three decades, would be Antiques Roadshow. The items valued on location, usually in grand country homes or castles, are not sold … Well, as mentioned, not right away. However, from time to time, the Roadshow does an update programme and one hears about some of the astonishing prices people got for the old painting from the cellar "We had no idea it was a Turner!" or the Jacobean crockery they'd kept hidden because it was so ugly, but great-auntie had passed it along on her deathbed. Native American and Inuit artefacts seem to do very well. "Uncle Bill brought it back from the USA in the 1850s, got it in exchange for something pointy."




A favourite programme of mine, mid-day viewing if I'm home, is Cash in the Attic. I got hooked on this show in Bermuda: Attic was aired on one of the cable channels I subscribed to. The host was, at first, usually Alistair Appleton, a most personable presenter with a plummy accent. When Alistair spoke of Art Nouveau with one of the regular experts, Paul or Jonty, called in to select and value items for sale at auction, one felt that he knew what he was talking about. A good accent in the auction business is everything. Alistair Appleton now presents a real estate programme; he finds homes in the country for city dwellers. He's a some-time actor and Buddhist, holds spiritual retreats and, is openly gay. My sister was crushed to hear that, she'd been having fantasies in the attic with Alistair. "Are you sure he's gay?" "It's on his web page."

On the subject of accents: Most of the people clearing their attics or buying up knick-knacks at French yard sales are ladies with shrieking accents that I file under "Fishwife", or "Monty Python Woman", and they are irritating in the extreme. One woman, madness in her eyes, was asked if the nasty bit of tat she'd brought in to be valued might be important to her. "Oh, yes," she screeched. "It's a family hair-loom." When asked how long it had been in her family, she said: "My mother got it at a flea market six years ago." I'd not make a very good presenter for this sort of show as I'd soon lecture people on pronunciation and good taste. "Talk slowly and softly, you silly old moo; we're not in Grimsby."

I've watched the American version of Antiques Roadshow, which pales against the UK version. American history is only a few decades old, hardly a lifetime. While I live with a castle built some 800 to 900 years ago outside the kitchen window, the best an American can hope for is a Sonic Burger Drive-In. American "Indian" items do well on the Roadshow there, photos of Sitting Bull, that sort of thing. American history is actually that of other peoples.

This morning a couple of women on Sun, Sea and Bargain Spotting bought up several hundred pounds (each) worth of rubbish on the Continent, getting pounds and euros confused, and brought back all their bits and pieces to a market in England where they sold the things for the best prices they could. The woman making the most money in the market would win a bowl. Neither woman had any sales sense, they'd been unable to barter back on the Continent and had considerably overpaid for what seemed to mostly be electrical fixtures (which had the incorrect fittings for British wiring), and their method was madness: Accept any offer. They didn't even ask for what they'd paid. At the end of the competition one woman had spent £350 in Europe and sold the items back in Britain for under £150, a loss of over £200. The winner lost only about £120. It's not just corporate bankers and insurance executives that haven't a clue.

Oscar Wilde said that a cynic was a person who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar said that because it was his job to write cute, irritating lines for his players. Oscar would love to have written the story about the hair-loom bought six years ago at a flea market, though his characters never stooped so low that I recall. Lady Bracknell would never have uttered such a thing; she was anything but a fishwife.

The two oldest-looking things in my flat (besides my reflection in the bathroom mirror) are a teddy-bear and a frog, both dressed in rather eccentric clothes. Both were actually made in China and purchased (new) this year. New is the new old.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

"Marty, if you see anything suspicious, you know where I am."
"The trouble with this swamp is that everything is suspicious."
Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster

IT WAS AN OFFER I had to take up: My Internet, telephone and television service all through my broadband connection, for a combined price saving me some dosh.

Of course, I agreed and asked "When?" and was told that the new Hub for the broadband would be in the post that day. I could set it up myself and in doing that would activate it. The device for the telly, however, would not be delivered until Monday, 5 January, 2009. Wait! The good news: I'd be first on the delivery list and it would be at my door at seven o'clock in that morning on the 5th. Would I be home? Well, yes. In bed. And I could install that machine on my own as well. I'm not very technical. Oh! It's simple. Easy enough for some bloke called Rui in India to say.

The next morning the broadband Hub turned up. It weighs less than the instruction booklet that came with it, if you don't include all the wires, plugs and adaptors that came in a plastic bag labelled "You may not need these. See the set-up instructions."

I called Sky TV and asked them to collect their satellite dish and equipment when convenient. They'd be right round. Before I had figured out what Hub accessories I did and did not need, there came a knock at the kitchen door. The man from Sky. He had everything removed in under five minutes, and didn't charge me for doing it. And I had only my telly and DVD player, and no connection to the outside world as far as television is concerned. I'm now counting the days until 5 January.

One would miss certain things keenly, and, fortunately, a number of our TV channels feature their programming online a day after the regular broadcast, and available to view online for a week or more. I'm not going to miss Coronation Street much to my relief: Maria has realised that Tony had her husband, Liam, killed for having the affair with Tony's fiancée Carla, and Tony realises he has to despatch Maria as well.

Watching things on my computer monitor, in the kitchen, is not the way I prefer to spend an evening. I use my computer a fair bit at other times during the day, recently on my personal genealogy project (577 names as of yesterday), and for some correspondence, and I consider my desk area an office of sorts. I like to get away from it by teatime. The sofa calls.

We have, in Amble by the Sea, a little DVD rental store. Now and then I do rent a film, but the store tends to stock the goriest horror films involving power tools and Disney cartoons. That's what they can rent and make money at it, I guess.

21st Century Movies is Amble-sized: a walk-in cupboard sort of place. Because there is so little room, the rental copies are sold off a few months after first appearing in the shop. As an extra source of income, the owner brings in rental copies from other dealers, puts them in racks out on the pavement, and sells them. And here one can find a shiny seam among all that dark computer-generated gore. I buy used DVDs for a pound or two each.

I've picked up some classic old movies, better newer films, concert films, documentaries. One never knows what to expect. There are a great many westerns, a genre I'm not terribly fond of, though I've been to Kanab, Utah, a number of times, where many of the great westerns were filmed, and loved the place. I don't care for the face. Sorry, Duke. And there are horror films. The chainsaw features sell immediately, leaving the likes of The Lost Boys, Bride of the Monster, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and real horror like Gallipoli for me to pick through. Curiously, nobody had taken In Bruges and Phonebooth and Alexander, recent offerings. Do we not care for Colin Farrell in Northumbria? In Bruges and Phonebooth have an element of horror, Alexander is just horrible.

Last night, at two o'clock in the morning, I put Bride of the Monster into the DVD player. It was made before I was permitted to go to Saturday matinees, or just never made it to Bermuda's Island Theatre. In fact, those horror and sci-fi films were missing from my childhood, with the exception of serials like Flash Gordon that ran before features that tended to be gladiator flicks. I looked for Ed Wood films after seeing the Johnny Depp comedic bio-pic.

Bride of the Monster is hilarious, camp, and makes one wonder. Was Ed Wood serious, or just having a laugh? The film features a monster which appears to be file footage of an octopus, references to that creature in Loch Ness, super-men, mind transfer, devious hypnotism, a heroine with perky breasts strapped to a gurney, electric shocks, flashing lights, sliding fireplace backs, cabins in the woods, an alligator, bumbling coppers, big cars, thunderstorms, swamps, the famous giant rubber octopus without a motor that Bela Lugosi had to manipulate himself, lights in the sky, and it ends with an atomic blast and cloud and the cop saying: "He tampered in God's domain."

There was so much thunder added to the film's soundtrack that I didn't notice that we had a storm going on outside my flat. To be honest, I expect the storm was affecting the whole of Amble and inland for a few miles. When the film ended, I heard the real storm and a metallic clanging around in the courtyard. Cailean looked out from under his blanket. Fix that, papa.

I went outside, of course, and there were plant pots tipped over, and the lid of the barbecue had taken wing, looking not unlike the saucers in Ed Wood's Plan Nine from Outer Space. The wind was howling; I could hear the sea booming on the beaches.

I secured the barbecue's lid, and looked upstairs at the windows and saw lit, real candles burning, flickering. It was three-thirty in the morning. One doesn't feel too happy knowing someone upstairs in an old building has candles burning while they might be unconscious. That really is scary. There was no sleeping on the cards for me.

Telly Like It Is

Cailean had his monthly flea and tick treatment earlier today - Advantix, a Bayer product - and is feeling poorly. This has happened each time for the last four months: a few hours after the dab on the back of his neck he becomes restless, then listless, and insists on getting as near to me as possible. Clearly, the poor boy is unwell. A day later, he's back to normal.

I managed to get some of the chemical on my fingertips. Nervous creature that I am, I chew my fingertips unconsciously. No telling if a residue of imidacloprid and permethrin gets into my system as well. If so, I'm coping better than Cailean does. I haven't had any fleas since May either!

Cailean is, in his misery, trying to coil himself on my lap. He's a very small dog, but just a tad too big to comfortably do that these days. Typing here is a circus act in early rehearsals.

As it is raining quite heavily outside (it rained inside once when the people upstairs replaced some plumbing pipes in their floor without benefit of someone from Poland), we are not going far today.

I spent most of yesterday reading. I finished off Julian Clary. At least his autobiography, A Young Man's Passage, which was rather a good read, and I actually was breathless from laughing out loud a number of times. If outrageous stories about buggery don't bother you, look for this book.

After that, I picked up The Lodger by Charles Nicholl, which is sub-titled Shakespeare on Silver Street. This is a study of William Shakespeare and his world when he was about forty and lodging with the Mountjoy family in Cripplegate. In 1612, Shakespeare gave evidence for a lawsuit, a family dispute, over an unpaid dowry that Christopher Mountjoy's son-in-law was claiming. There is a statement, dictated by the Bard, and signed by him: Shakespeare's personal words, not those of one of his many characters. That statement is not great art, quite perfunctory, he sounds to have been bored by the whole business. However, Charles Nicholl then uses his research to reconstruct post-Tudor England, London in particular, and to give us glimpses of the Great Man through the eyes of his contemporaries. Not a lot of buggery in this book, but still a very good history, and in easy language.

Rather than read today, I thought I might have a look at the television.

I will say upfront that I've been both annoyed and bamboozled by the BBC coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games which are being aired at this time. There seems very little enthusiasm here in Great Britain for these Olympics. I expected the media guides to have detailed information, but not even the magazine covers are mentioning the Games or showing pictures of our hopefuls (much less those from other countries!) and one wit said: "The only people who are watching these Olympics are those who are too fucking lazy to reach for the remote…"

Beggin' yer pardon, me luds, over the choice of words, which I have quoted exactly, but on our television we have no censorship.

Could I find the times that I might see some gymnastics (another wit: "Something to keep the paedophiles happy …") or diving events? Not a chance.

One magazine on the rack in the newsagents had a cover announcing that Jordan is having her "5th Boob Job". How many boobs does the woman have? Remember the opening sequence in Fellini's Satyricon? Jordan must be aiming for that, or better.

Another magazine has the story on Big Brother 9 contestants, Luke and Bex, who, now that they have been given the boot, are supposed to have consummated their relationship. On our version of Big Brother, the boys and girls are encouraged to bed down together, and stick-insect, retiring, virginal and whingeing Luke from Wigan wound up sharing a duvet with the awfully buxom and outgoing Rebecca from Coventry. Well, Bex's buxom bosoms were certainly outgoing: they were out for all to see every day, every night. Poor Luke, lost somewhere in Coventry! A euphemism.

I picked up the Radio Times with a non-Olympics cover featuring Sir Terry Wogan, a BBC Radio 2 presenter that I just cannot abide. He may be 70, he says, but he feels like 15 at heart. He's overpaid and getting crabby: qualities that do not endear him to me. He also complains that young people these days just wouldn't have the good fortune that he had in even getting into broadcasting. Sir Terry earns in excess of £800,000 as an aging rock DJ, and is actually paid by the BBC for hosting the Children in Need charity fundraiser each year (and has been since 1980). Perhaps, if he retired, all that money might go to raise up some new blood that the Beeb simply cannot afford to take on right now?

To watch some television this afternoon then?

It is still raining steadily. The postie just poured my post through the letterbox. Apparently, my Clifford James catalogue has spent the weekend in the River: ordinary rain could not have soaked it so thoroughly. It cannot be peeled open, which is a shame. I think there might be a Solar Cherub on page 5 for under £20. Its three fountain basins charge in the sun and glow at night, while a plump female cherub has her way with a smaller boy. Bex and Luke! How camp is that?

I could watch Gok's Fashion Fix on Channel 4, but could you watch a bloke with a name that sounds like a cat hawking up a hairball?

On Medical Investigation a man is spreading a flesh-eating virus through a hospital. Before my dinner? I think not.

There's a game show called Golden Balls, and that makes me blush to think on, knowing that just about anything goes on the telly here. Pass.

Flog It! From Windsor, it says, sounds promising. No doubt it's Prince Harry in Nazi gear. At the very least, it could be Princess Anne dealing with a dead horse. Maybe.

The CSI franchise has just about filled up an entire channel's schedule. I like the opening sequences with the theme music from The Who. I'd like to write a play, CSI: Amble by the Sea, and feature Pete Townsend's Rough Boys. I could skip the television this afternoon and fantasise about that.

Or, I could just gather up Cailean and settle back and watch the Olympics, it is Women's Trampolining. Bex from Big Brother could certainly bring a little zing to that event!

You know, aching eyes or not, I'm going back to Shakespeare in The Lodger.