Our friend Xanthippi who is constantly e-mailing us the most amazing photographs, cartoons, and items of interest has sent one called “How small we are” showing the relative sizes of planets starting with the smallest Pluto, followed by Mercury, then Mars, and Earth three times bigger than Mars followed by Venus, bigger than Earth but not by all that much. Jupiter is enormous compared to earth but is completely dwarfed by our sun which is gigantic, but it doesn’t end there. Sirius is eight times or more larger than the sun but smaller than Pollux which is three times larger but completely overshadowed by Arcturus which is proportionately the size of a football as opposed to Pollux like a cricket ball. Moving up even further Arcturus which was previously the size of a football is now the size of a walnut in comparison to Rigel slightly bigger than a golf ball in comparison to the walnut and Aldabaran a bit bigger than Rigel. But now comes Betelgeuse the size of a melon and, to top them all, Antares about a third or more larger again, the 15th brightest star in the sky and 1000 light years away. Printed out this way only gives an indication of this giant. To see it in picture form truly shows how very very small our little earth is. I wonder where god is in all this.
On Vouli (the government station) last night was a BBCTV programme “The Story of God” skirting over the three monotheistic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, starting with Abraham of course whose tomb Muslims can see from one side, Jews from the other, just in case blood flows should they view it together, and the line (I probably paraphrase here) I remember most from the programme was one in which I wholeheartedly concur, “Considering the suffering caused by the religious in the name of their god, maybe it would be better if god didn’t exist.” Here I’m on my soapbox again beating my drum, blowing my tin trumpet because “If god didn’t exist man would have to invent him” I change to “AS god doesn’t exist man has had to invent him.” Here endeth the lesson
Finished the week’s film watching with one I thought was going to be rubbish and which I would hate but it turned out to be completely the opposite. Titled “Replicant”, In the first place it starred Jean Claude Van Damme in the duel role of killer/clone who not only ran the gamut of emotion from A to B but went a whole lot further, possibly even as far as P and Q. Basically a thriller about a serial killer, with a bit of science fiction thrown in with the introduction of his clone – set a thief to catch a thief only in this case set a clone to catch a killer. No big star cast, (unless you rate Van Damme in that category) no multi-billion dollar budget but a better film than the biggies I watched (or tried to watch) earlier in the week Not an award winner but gripping nevertheless and why did I keep on thinking of Frankenstein?

Thought I’d watch “Ocean’s Thirteen” and lasted one hour forty before switching off. A more pretentious, almost impossible to follow, ridiculous and irritating film it would be hard to find. I’ll never know the outcome and couldn’t care less. A stellar cast of big names adding up in the end to sweet f.a.. I’m surprised I had the patience to last one hour forty and didn’t turn off sooner. Whoever said of a certain actress that she ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B could very well say the same of Mr Clooney, possibly the most vapid actor ever to disgrace the silver screen. Guess the female fans all go for his soft charm and looks but, as the old saying has it, looks ain’t everything.
Friday again already. Friday’s we get the Athens News and The Daily Mail. Ever since, after forty odd years of readership, we decided to boycott The Sunday Times that gave less and less in the overseas editions for the same price; the straw wot broke the camel’s back was withdrawal of the culture section, I get the Mail on Fridays for the film, theatre, and book reviews. Unfortunately last week I missed out on Friday’s paper and took Saturday’s instead. Goodness gracious me as Peter Sellers might have said, talk about purple prose! Full pages on the return of Peter Mandelson to the labour cabinet and a seat in the Lords at the invitation of Gordon Brown. Enormous headline on the front page – ARISE LORD SLEAZE and referred to as “disgraced Prince of Darkness!” On pages 6 and 7 another huge headline MANDELSON BACK IN TRIUMPH (PART 3). I presume the Mail’s legal advisors didn‘t think the appellations awarded Mr Mandelson as libellous but, if I said of someone that they were malignant, malevolent, mendacious, an odious discredited creep and a cancer on British life I would more’n likely be issued with a writ. There is another full page on 9 giving a history as to why Mr Mandelson has been called all these names. Actually he should sue for hurt feelings, isn’t that what everyone does these days? And he could be awarded millions then he wouldn’t have to cheat and lie about his finances in order to buy another multi-million pound home.
With the enormous headlines the Mail is sprouting it is heading closer and closer to The Sun. Someone aught to tell the editor that we can read.
Discovered a chirpy journalist by the name of Deborah Ross (styled the non domestic goddess – that sounds like a title the old music hall performers used to use – “the comic singer and grotesque dancer”) whose column “The real truth about all the stars I’ve never met” was great fun. But this week, sorry Deborah, it’s back to Friday’s paper.

Blog 7

The pomegranates are ripe and falling attracting the wasps so we are well into autumn now and the drop in temperature confirms it. It’s a pity they’re such messy things to eat as I am led to believe they’re very good for you. They make a mess when they hit the concrete as well and split open.. Jenny Gore has been known to sit in the courtyard with a basin, a pile of pomegranates and stained fingers peeling them and making juice which is delicious but is it worth the time and effort? Guess it’s time to start reaping the quince as well, the oranges are ripening and the ground beneath the walnut trees is covered in nuts. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness just missing the mist.
Had actor’s nightmare last night. As I haven’t acted in many a moon why should I still be having actor’s nightmare? Just an anxiety dream I suppose though whenever I think of my times as an understudy I get the cold shivers as, being the lazy bugger that I am, I was never really prepared to go on and fortunately never had to. Anyway, it was ridiculous, if I had to go on for Alistair Sim half the audience would have walked out and demanded their money back. Every actor I’ve ever spoken to about it has experienced this dream when you are standing in the wings and about to walk out on stage and you don’t know a line, sometimes you don’t even know what play you’re supposed to be in. It’s quite distressing really as the dreams are always vivid. You wonder if you can wing it, if you can play a scene, scurry off to swot up your lines and then play the next .One actor’s nightmare I had involved not one, not two but three plays, the third of which I hadn’t even read let alone studied and it was due to open. Remember a revue I saw in London way back, must have been the fifties with Hugh Paddick, and was it Fenella Fielding? Anyway, the sketch was supposed to be about them performing Romeo & Juliet in rep and the actor playing Romeo enters below the balcony to hear Juliet say the immortal line, “I have given suck!” with much emphasis on the “suck” to which he hisses in response, ‘You give suck on Thursdays, dear!’ Of course everyone knows the suck line comes from The Scottish King.
Accidentally saw most of a film on ET1 (missed the beginning) which I really enjoyed. I say accidentally for two reasons, one I had no intention of watching tv at that time of the day but thought it would accompany lunch and two because it was a substitute programme (again? Yes again) because ET1 ET3 and NET were suffering yet another strike and scheduled programmes between 10 and 3 were off. Anyway, the play starred Meryl Streep and was set in Ireland and I kept on wondering what it could be until the end when the penny finally dropped and I thought – Dancing At Lughnasa! I checked on Google because I never saw Brian Friel’s play and sure enough that is what it was. Lovely performances from all and beautifully shot in wonderful country.
Now I really really really must go and start that burning! Perfect overcast day for it.

I really must get this desk cleaned up. It hasn’t been done for months. It is littered with pieces of paper, notes, cuttings, reference books, scripts, and dust, and no matter what Mister Quentin Crisp might have said about it, the dust simply has to go, especially as now that the summer is over and their time is up dead flies are going to be dropping all over the place. Maybe tomorrow. I’m still trying to rake up the will to go into garden and start burning. The thought of all the trees that need pruning and I’m ready to go back to bed. Picked and froze 32 mixed peppers yesterday. The veggie garden has done well this year thanks to all that good horseshit.
Going back to the world of PC, had dinner the other evening with Nick and Jenny Urwin, both of whom are (were) teachers of long experience who loved what they did. They were telling me that now you cannot touch a child without first asking the child for permission. So the child has fallen over and is lying on the ground. ‘Excuse me, child, do I have your permission to lift you to your feet and ascertain you are not hurt in any way? And if you think my lifting you to your feet (with your permission of course) might be just a tad too intimate, would you accuse me of sexual harassment?”
“Excuse me, child, but I couldn’t help but notice you have grazed your knee rather badly. It will need an application of antiseptic and possibly a very large band-aid; do I have your permission to send you to the first aid room? And, if not, and your knee turns really septic and you have to go to hospital for a goodly spell, my child, will your dear parents sue me for negligence?”
“Excuse me, you two… Boys! Boys! Listen to me! Please! Stop fighting! Boys! Oh, I see you’re not boys, you’re girls. The boots are misleading. Well whatever you are you’ve had too much alcopop and you’re beating the shit out of each other and there’s nothing I can do about it except plead with you to stop because, if you don’t and someone is really badly hurt, your parents will only blame me.’
“Fuck off, Miss.”
“And please don’t use that kind of language in the playground or I will have to report you to the headmaster.”
“He can fuck off as well and, if he doesn’t, I’ll set my mates on him.”
“And you others, pleases stop taking photos on your cell phones. I know you want to put them out on the internet and then my name really will be mud, my career over. I can only hope your phones will be stolen before you can do that, which in all events is quite likely to happen the second you step out the school gates anyway.”
Is it true that a five year old boy (or was he four?) in America was charged with sexual harassment because he kissed a little girl in kindergarten? Anything is possible in America. I wonder what Jonathan Swift would make of that country if he were writing today. A Texas woman was awarded $80000 against a furniture store when she was tripped up by a roaming toddler who just happened to be her own son. A Philadelphia restaurant shelled out $113500 to a woman who slipped on a spilt drink and broke her tail bone. Thirty seconds before in a blazing row she had thrown the drink at her boyfriend. Another woman bought a Winnebago, set it to cruise control while driving and went back to make herself a sandwich. She said it should have been in the manual that she couldn’t do that and was awarded over a million dollars … And would you believe Winnebago have put it in their manual? Oh, well, and you say the world hasn’t gone stark raving mad?

In 1973 I bought a house in Richmond Road, Dalston, in the socialist borough of Hackney, East London, for which I paid the magnificent sum of £6500. (Six thousand five hundred pounds). People tried to warn us off, saying that Hackney Council had designs on the pretty area of Victorian houses known as Mapledene and indeed they did have, intending to bulldoze it en bloc, maybe two hundred properties if not more and replace the houses with council flats, but we formed the Mapledene Residents Association and fought them off. You will never win against a council, people said, councils always win, but in this instance they didn’t and Mapledene still exists, I should think much to the horror of the socialist borough of Hackney who wanted to take it over and build council flats because, to the left-wing mindset, gentrification was setting in with the middle classes like us buying property there. Of course one has to ask if they did their sums proper like with this grandiose scheme which would have included (a) compulsory purchase, (b) demolition, and (c) building, at what cost? Well I see that the house we paid £6500 for thirty-five years ago is today back on the market at £899,950 (I won’t even bother putting that in words) because, if this isn’t cloud-cuckoo land I wonder what is! When Jeremy Nightingale, following our example, bought his house in Eleanor Road, Hackney for £139000 we thought he was totally out of his mind. Presumably that house is now worth somewhere in the region of £650-700000.
Talking of the left-wing mindset I remember when we approached Hackney Council to possibly sponsor us in putting on Champagne Charlie in the borough, possibly for old people’s homes – whoops! elderly facilities – etc., and Chris, talking to some girl on the telephone said the show was professional and excellent, the reply he got was “We don’t believe in excellence, excellence is elitist.” End of call. It’s really hard to credit but then political correctness started to go stark raving mad some time ago so there it is. Our friend Ray Peters who lives in Richmond Road and who must by now be sitting on a small fortune retired early from teaching because PC had come thundering into Islington (another socialist borough) school at such a rate he couldn’t take it any longer. GBS and The Fabians must be turning in their graves to think of what it has all become. Thank that mythical old god George W. is always in communication with that it hasn’t come to Greece – yet. But don’t count your chickens.

Betty has escaped from Alcatraz, from Colditz, from the Gulags, from wherever that was supposed to be escape proof. She was going absolutely stir crazy and literally climbing the walls, only in this instance it was the kitchen window from the top of which she squeezed out through the narrow ornamental bars of the fanlight and dropped a fair distance down on the outside. Houdini could not have done it better. I have no doubt we won’t see her for a while. She’s not going to want to come back to be incarcerated again.
Have reread a play "A Corner For Dreams" I wrote in 1957 while I was acting in Julius Caesar at The Library Theatre in Manchester. I have always been of the opinion it is not a very good play and had delegated it to the darkest corner of the script cupboard all these years but I have now changed my mind and decided, with a little bit of work, I think it might very well do. I don’t suppose it is at all relevant to any of today’s issues but interesting as a period piece and period seems to be coming back into fashion.
I have just been informed the escapee has returned and is at the moment polishing off her breakfast.
The above was written yesterday and this won’t be posted till tomorrow but just to say the escapee has disappeared again so the fanlight window is about to be replaced. It needs to be anyway as the cooler weather settles in.
Have finished the Ustinov book and enjoyed it to the end. Going back to the upcoming presidential elections here is a quote when reminiscing about presidents, politicians and statesmen of the past who he has known, and later comparisons: “It seems to be the habit to elect presidents for their lack of evident vices instead of their possession of evident virtues. The existence of vices is allowed to become apparent during the incumbency.” Oh, perspicacious Mr Ustinov! I wonder what he would have thought about Clinton, George W, Bush, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Not much I warrant.
Started to watch Howerds End but got bored and gave up. The usual fine attention to period detail one came to expect but everyone appeared to be just that little bit too frenetic in order to liven up what seemed a rather drab script, and failed. The headmaster’s note on the end of term report would read “Merchant Ivory has done. better.”

Watched a film called King Arthur, because this is what was written in the Athens News television listings – “US adventure (2004) directed by Antoine Fugua. The Roman Empire is stretched across many nations, including Britain. In their conquest for more land, the Romans went into Sarmatia(!) where they fought the very brave Sarmatian cavalery.”(sic)
Cast: Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd
Whoops! Just been into Google and Sarmatia actually existed. We learn something new each day but I am a bit confused already because in the movie the Sarmatian cavalery (I presume) were informed they had to go to Britain on Rome’s behalf and their leader, I think, was Arthur. Does this mean he was of Iranian origin which the Sarmatians originally were evidently?
So what made me want to watch this particular movie? The answer is the fact that it is set in Roman times which is when the real Arthur lived and, at last, or so I thought, we get away from the sword in the stone, round table (oho there was a round table in the movie, quite a posh one too!), Holy Grail, lady of the lake, Mordred, Camelot, the once and future king whimsy.
Now there are two aspects of Greek television, no three if you count the inordinate length of commercial breaks; not only time to put the kettle on, but time to make and consume quite a hefty snack or even take a shower, and the two aforementioned are a total disregard for time and an uncanny knack of changing listed programmes just when you’re in the mood to watch something only to find a different programme being broadcast in which you have absolutely no interest whatsoever.
Well the film was scheduled to start on ET1 at 10 but by the time we’d got to twenty five past I was impatiently beginning to thumb the remote and so missed the opening title and credits. I caught it just as a date came up on the screen which I seem to remember was 427AD. First mistake, out by about 370 years if Arthur was around in the time of Claudius.
What I am going to write now is from memory of my research when I did the poster for Abydos Publishing and that was like a thousand years ago so I might at times be slightly off beam, but my research led me to believe this about the legendary king – Arthur, Welsh name Arivagu, Roman name Caractacus, was the son of Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), grandson of King Llyr (Lear). Together with his brother, Togodumnus, they defeated “the great boar of Caledon” so what exactly was this “great boar”? Caledonia at that time was near where Chichester is today and when Claudius’s legions landed they were met by Arthur’s Britains and roundly thrashed. So where does the boar come in? Well Claudius was an Etruscan and his household symbol which would possibly have been on his legions’ shields was a boar’s head. This episode definitely gives the time of Arthur’s existence as a British chieftain, that of the Catuvellauni, but not yet a king. Eventually our hero is captured and taken to Rome where, because of his bearing and courage, he is feted to such an extent, instead of being executed or sent into slavery, a villa is placed at his disposal, the Villa Arthur which, I am led to believe exits to this day. But the Romans never let the grass grow and the Brits were giving them such an almighty headache they persuaded Arthur to go back and this time, as King under the aegis of Rome, try to subdue the tribes, unite them and stop the nonsense. This all worked for a while until Arthur, sickened by Roman atrocities, which weren’t atrocities in Roman eyes, merely a means of governing, turned against them and once more became Rome’s enemy. Eventually he was betrayed and fought his last battle from his hill fort in Wales. This then is the true King Arthur. Now what about the film? Well they got right the whole bit about his fighting for Rome, but when he met Guinevere in the strangest of circumstances too complicated to go into here and a complete load of old codswallop, “I’m Guinevere” she says, rather like “Me Tarzan, you Jane” and starts to berate him about being nasty to his own people for the benefit of Rome and putting him on the right track, that’s where I gave up, so I have no idea how the film ends. If I were to give it a pitch it would be Seven Samurai comes to Roman Britain.
So I turned to Alter and saw the remainder of a Hannibal Lecter film but as I missed those credits as well and the film, being a substitution, wasn’t listed, I don’t know what it was. It kept me going till 1.30 anyway so it wasn’t a totally wasted evening.
Footnote, Lancelot du Lac was the son of a Roman governor of Gaul, hence his being known as the French knight. He had a split personality. Did he go for temporal satisfaction, his love for Guinevere? Or did he go for the spiritual, his quest for the grail? An interesting character who plumped for a bird in the hand as it were, rather than pie in the sky. In the film he was played by Mr Gruffudd but why oh why do the Americans have go over the top the way they do? Was there any reason why Lancelot had to have two long handled swords at his back, sticking up behind his head? Made the talented Mr Gruffudd look a right Burk.
One last observation, the Arthurian legends did not start in Britain, but in Italy, carried over to France by the troubadours, possibly even further north to Germany and Holland and finally across the water to England. One day someone might make a film that gets it right.