The internet is simply awash with pornography as I mentioned before when discussing the banning of books in American schools, but there is something much more horrible, so much so that I sometimes find myself wishing there was such a thing as censorship. Quite by accident I came across a site on the internet which was so anti-Semitic it was without doubt one of the ugliest entries I have ever read. It’s a long long time since I heard the word Kike though I notice Yid wasn’t used at all which was always the word of abuse I heard when I was young. Nigger got a few mentions as well of course when ugly comparisons were made. There are some truly frightening and sick people in this world including unfortunately some Jews themselves. Did you know there is an organisation in California called Jews for Jesus? and it’s not run by Christians; make of that what you will. All the old myths and clichés were bandied about and what struck me most forcibly was the feeling of fear in so much of this despicable diatribe. Hitler is alive and well and living in the United States. What do you make of someone who writes (in German) ‘I still have gas for Jewish youth.’ I am not so naïve as to believe the days of anti-Semitism or any kind of racism for that matter are over but I never realised just how virulent it can be. More fool I you might say and with reason. I decided to explore further by opening a site on racist jokes and this proved to be even sicker, especially when it came to the holocaust and jokes about gas etcetera. The nigger jokes were just as obscene many of them referring to hanging. Obviously the KKK is still alive and kicking or, if not, wishful thinking by all those white supremacists and rednecks from the boondocks that it was. All this got me to thinking of what Jews have meant in my life. I don’t want to come out with that hoary old saying about some of my best friends (and lovers) being Jews, true though that it is but, when I think about it, I have certainly been enriched by the influence of Jews, both personal friends and out in the big wide world. My first sort of best friend at school, Peter Lasker, was Jewish. My drama teacher, Pearle Celine of blessed memory, without whose generosity, encouragement, and coaching I may never have entered the theatre, was Jewish. All our friends in New York whose hospitality we have enjoyed over the years have been Jewish. Alas time has now robbed us of them. The person to whom I am indebted for my living and working for a while in the United States, Tom Arthur, is Jewish. It was one of the happiest periods of my life and among other things resulted in my making many friends and writing two plays, directing and acting in plays I would never have been given the chance to in the commercial world.
Music, a great part of my life, the list of Jewish composers, classical, modern, Broadway, jazz is endless. What enjoyment I get from their work. Same goes for Jewish musicians, Jewish writers, Jewish performers, Jewish artists, Jews in the theatre, film and television. When I think of it, it is impossible for me to be anti-Semitic; I would be in self denial. The world owes a great deal of gratitude to the Jews in many fields and it is much more frightening to consider someone like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his kind as the real threat in this world.

One of the symptoms of growing old is it becomes more and more difficult to keep the butter on the knife. Another symptom of growing old of course is that sex is no longer an imperative. For youth however it is another matter.
A university in the US state of Utah has suspended a star basketball player for having pre-marital sex with his girlfriend in violation of the school's strict "honour code". He was dropped after admitting the transgression to staff at Brigham Young University. More fool he, why would he do that? Guilty conscience or just plain stupid? His team, ranked third in the nation in college basketball, immediately lost against an unranked team. The BYU honour code requires students to be "chaste and virtuous". BYU officials have defended the decision after the news was first reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, saying that students are fully aware of the rigorous code, and often choose the school because of it. "We live this. This is who we are," said Tom Holmoe, BYU athletic director. The Utah-based university is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known to most people I suppose as the Mormons. All students agree to abide by the honour code, which reflects Mormon values. And this is a sect that started off allowing a man to have multiple wives! The code includes prohibitions on drinking, smoking, drugs, tea, coffee, swearing and sex, as well as a commitment regularly to attend church. The student’s suspension has garnered headlines across the country because it comes at the beginning of the prestigious NCAA tournament - a nationwide contest for university teams, often called "March Madness". The BYU team, the Cougars, was set to enter as first seed. Reportedly the sinful transgressor has apologized to his teammates but I cannot help wondering how many of them are totally innocent. Not one lascivious thought, boys? Not one instance of top sheet tapping? Not one date with Mrs. Palmer and her five children? In America, honour codes are mostly associated with military academies, but a number of universities, including the University of Virginia and Princeton, also enforce them. (Enforce? Note that word – enforce.) I can understand religious institutions, particularly fundamentalist ones like Bob Jones, having an honour code but I’m really surprised to read that Virginia enforces one. The girls I saw walking about that campus on a lovely summer’s day were sex personified on two legs and the boys couldn’t keep their eyes off them. At Bob Jones in South Carolina the girls were much more discreet and modest in their attire and did not flaunt their sexuality in the same way but I should think at all these institutions it’s masturbation time morning, noon and night. You simply cannot chase out nature like this and expect her to meekly give in. Why is it that for Christians sex is top of the list when it comes to sinning? Indeed, is sexual desire a sin at all? If it is, why did God invent it? Oh, I know what the answer to that will be – there is a time and a place, the time being when you are married, the place being the marital bed, the reason not to enjoy but to procreate, and in the missionary position if you please, none of this Karma Sutra nonsense thank you. That is what God invented it for. Go forth and multiply, not go forth and enjoy this gift I have given you. And, as an afterthought, what punishment did the girlfriend receive for this little lapse in honour? After all, it does take two to tango.
PS: Twenty one priests in Philadelphia have been indicted on child abuse charges. Po po po as a Greek would say.
PPS: Blog delayed once more by power cut 7.30 to 4.20 – the third in less than two weeks and the coldest day yet!

Carnival week: we’ve had the parades, naturally some of them rained on; the floats, the costumes, the singing, the dancing, joyful exuberance and it’s all over for another year. Every evening Television stations have beamed out hours and hours of it all, some of it pretty impressive stuff from the larger centres though nothing of course quite as big as Rio. Our little one in Kalyves is fun and fortunately this year was not rained upon. The kite flying on clean Monday was a bit wet though. I wonder if the kites managed to get up and stay up or, sodden, remain firmly earthbound. Now the festivities are all over, it’s good-bye to meat and the beginning of Lent and forty days of fasting, fasting that is for those to whom it matters. This is the time of year when the manufacturers and purveyors of halva have a field day. I remember going to a supermarket in Stoke Newington many years ago and buying as a treat an ounce or two of very expensive halva whereas here it is purchased by the kilo, dates too that in England were a Christmas luxury that came in fancy boxes complete with toothpicks so you didn’t get sticky fingers.
With the almost continuous rain and grey skies we’ve had for the past week the lobby is flooded and the interior of the car is a swimming pool. Without some warm sunshine it ain’t going to dry out. Why the car is flooded I really don’t know except for the fact that she’s an old girl now and obviously leaking in places that should be watertight. (It comes to all of us in old age does it not?) There seems to be no logic in the Greek way of thinking. The government wants people to give up their old cars and buy new ones so what do they do? They bump up the tax on old cars as an incentive to get rid of them and so make it that little bit more difficult to afford a new one.
For the past weeks (how many weeks?) This house has been a hive of activity. Chris busy on his stained glass windows and he and Douglas both beavering away preparing for the launch in Wilton’s Music Hall, London, on the 22nd of this month of Chris’s biography of George Leybourne titled “The Heaviest of Swells” (available on Amazon). It’s going to be a sort of Leybourne few days as not only is there going to be the book launch but he will be performing a shortened version of the show I wrote for him “Champagne Charlie (playscript available on Amazon) so many years ago, and this will be followed up by a music hall bill the BBC are interviewing him for and filming. If it is anything like the preparations that have been going on they’re going to come back totally exhausted but I’m sure it will be worth it. Chris is as happy as a sandboy rehearsing. He was born to perform and will be a performer till his dying day whereas with me there came a time when it no longer had appeal. Locally he has twice given a talk with music and illustrations which seemed much appreciated. They leave for England on the sixteenth and the house is going to be very quiet for the following fortnight. Wilton’s is a wonderful venue for the launch, being the last surviving music hall in London and Leybourne performed there on that date 131 years ago.
www.heaviestofswells.com

Wilton’s website is www.wiltons.org.uk with all the details.

Lewis has taken me to task for not including Truman Capote in my list of southern writers and, yes, I admit the omission. I thought about it for quite a while and decided I am not familiar enough with his work. I have read “Other Rooms” and “In Cold Blood” but nothing else. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” I only know as a movie and I haven’t read his short stories. As for Gore Vidal, who I met in London many years ago, who I have always admired and for whom I cooked a curry, can one really consider him a southerner? He was born in West Point and, although he spent much time on his grandfather’s estate in Virginia I still don’t think of him as being a southerner unless one takes into account a southern heritage. Washington DC was (is?) his stomping ground and like many Americans he is particularly fond of Italy but that’s by the by.
Rosa Angela – When we first arrived in Crete we were obliged (actually as EU citizens we weren’t obliged at all but the Greeks took a different point of view and still do) to be issued with resident’s permits so, complete with passport and the usual four photographs, up the hill to the old police station we went. Now for those of you who have never had dealings with Greek bureaucracy I need to point out that, apart from any number of official rubber stamps, it is necessary on any kind of form to have both father’s and mother’s names so, when it came to my father’s name, the policeman behind the desk was totally baffled by Llewellyn. It was the double L’s that got him. I explained that it was a Welsh name but I don’t think that cleared up the matter, nevertheless Llewellyn was duly written down with some humphing and muttering. So now it came to my mother’s name – Rosa Angela. He looked up from his form and there was a long silence. Oh, dear, I thought, what now? He took a deep breath and said “Rosa Angela”…pause, different inflection, almost dreamily… “Rosa Angela”… pause, and now almost singing it, “Rosa Angela” and made out my permit for five years instead of the normal one. We still carry a resident’s permit even after fourteen years and recently had them renewed; a business that took forever as the young policeman in the new police station was not really interested and kept putting it off, especially as foreigners are now to be found in abundance and it was an awful lot of form filling. The village of Gavalohori some time ago was renamed by the Cretans Anglohori. It was a bit like a comedy sketch in a way the number of times we appeared in his office and he was suffering a bad cold at the time so the sniffles never stopped. These new permits don’t have a time limit so, unless we lose one, don’t ever have to be renewed.
All Greeks carry an identity card and I don’t know why the English are so up in arms on the subject, apart from the possible cost of course. God, a British passport these days costs as much as a flight to some exotic place. I suppose in a way it’s the same syndrome as the Americans who are anti-healthcare. The permit of course doesn’t turn you into a naturalised Greek – that will never happen – but it does somehow make you feel more a part of the community and lost without it. When I had the previous one stolen in Athens I felt quite denuded until the new one was issued.

Lying in bed the other night waiting to drop off to sleep I got to wondering about my own boyhood. Like Ron Harris could I write 32 short stories about it? Maybe it was Ron’s book that started me off on this train of thought; maybe it was three days and nights of heavy incessant rain keeping me awake a little longer as I could hear it thundering on my bathroom roof. Whatever the cause, in particular I was thinking of school holidays in Port Elizabeth with Italian uncles, aunts, and cousins, and wondering if I made the most of them. Much much too late now of course to be thinking of the lost opportunities of youth and the saying that youth is wasted on the young is only too true. If only we knew then what we know now but that would create its own difficulties of course. It was my grandfather who was Italian and who emigrated to South Africa so, apart from my Aunt Rosina, you could say the others were really South Africans; Italian South Africans I suppose if one was to go along with the modern ridiculous American trend in ethnicity. Grandfather Bartolo was born in Rizzo but Reggio Calabria was the family home and there are cousins who still live there. Aunt Rosina was Italian, orphaned in a horrific earthquake in Reggio the family took her in and Uncle Frank went back to Italy to marry her. My cousins then were Josephina, Bartolo, Umberto, Jillorma and Vincenzo and I had another cousin, Tony, who was the son of Uncle Vincent and Aunt Sally. Aunt Sally was a da Costa before marriage, a Portuguese name. She was a diabetic and I always used to think she was so brave giving herself that injection every day. Two more cousins, Marie Rose and Joan and were the daughters of Auntie Grace but they were older than I and I really didn’t have much to do with them. The family, with the exception of Uncle Nin and cousin Vincent immigrated to Australia as, being of southern Italian stock, they did tend to be somewhat dark of complexion and were evidently sometimes being taken for “coloured” (or so I have been told) which in apartheid South Africa could prove at times somewhat uncomfortable to say the least. Uncle Nin didn’t go to Australia with the rest of them as, strange though it may seem, he couldn’t take hot weather and ended up in Bournemouth. He and my Auntie Marie were the only members of the family not to be married, which brings me to the youngest - my mother. Aunt Marie was one of the handsomest of women but my mother was the most beautiful and I am not saying that simply because she was my mother. Looking at a photograph of her aged sixteen she was most aptly named Rosa Angela.
My grandmother, who definitely looked Italian, in fact there could even have been a touch of the tar brush in her features, was in fact English. I discovered this fairly recently on a trip to Italy. I had always wanted to see the family home, the “Casa Mutilati” in Reggio ever since as a child Aunt Marie told me about it. Would it be anything like I imagined down through the years? No! It was not a house as I had always thought but an apartment block and the Paino’s home is a flat therein. One cousin, Giuseppe was still there when Douglas and I visited. I don’t know if he is still there now. We haven’t been in touch for a while and he is into his eighties with one sister even older but she has a flat of her own elsewhere. My grandmother’s name was Maria Charlotte, nee Brockman and her family came from Deal in Kent, her father being a James Brockman. She died in 1939 shortly before my eighth birthday and left a very respectable sum of £1553.15.5 to be divided equally between the kids. All six inherited £91.13.4 each from the first part of the estate and my mother got £113.2.0 from the residue. The others all got £113.2.1 but 5 doesn’t stretch to 6 so mom missed out on that last penny. Was it because she was the youngest? Who knows?
I remember arriving at 38 Bullen Street, South End for our holiday in Uncle Vincent’s ancient Chevy, lots of weeping and wailing, gnashing of teeth, renting of clothes, sackcloth and ashes (wild exaggeration of course, couldn’t help it. No disrespect meant.) and my being ushered into Aunt Rosina’s kitchen while my weeping mother went to say her farewells to granny in the seldom used best front room. This was my first experience of death and so I never got to meet my maternal grandmother which was a great shame. From the tales I’ve heard tell, she was a feisty lady. Grandpa Bartolo died in 1927, four years before I was born.

There is no copyright in titles and it would seem finding original titles is very much a lost cause. No one as yet, as far as I know, has thought of using ‘No Official Umbrella’ but there is no way to stop someone using it if they so wish. Many years ago the first stage play I had produced was called ‘Oh, Brother!’ Shortly afterwards the BBC came out with a comedy television series set in a monastery and starring Derek Nimmo, he of the prehensile toes, and naturally it was called ‘Oh Brother!’ Later I was asked to write a screenplay I titled ‘Speed.’ I originally wanted to call it ‘Torque’ but that was fine written down, not so good when spoken – was it ‘talk?’ I also liked the title ‘Images’ if pronounced the French way (so romantic) but who would know that? People would simply say images. Anyway the film never saw the light of day but shortly afterwards a film called ‘Speed came out of Hollywood.’
I can’t seem to come up with original titles for the Thornton King books, not for the first three anyway, apt though each one may be. ‘Dead On Time?’ there are at least half a dozen, ‘Just in Case?’ another with that title published shortly afterwards, ‘Dead On Target?’ Don’t know about this one but I’ll bet my bottom dollar if it isn’t already used it soon will be. I don’t think anyone will come up with another ‘The Cinelli Vases.’ Think I must be safe with that one, but I notice on Amazon my novel ‘Angel’ has a companion title. When I wrote it there were lots of titles with the word ‘Angel’ in them but not, as far as we could find, one using just that single word. Well there is one now. Hey-ho, think I’ll write a book called ‘Gone With The Wind.’ Oh yes, ‘Blood River’ was another title I wanted to use and that has also seen the light of day.
UK copyright laws to be reviewed says David Cameron, “to make them fit for the internet age.” He said the law could be relaxed to allow greater use of copyright material without the owner's permission!!!!!!!! Note that will you? Without the owner’s permission, the owner’s permission being exactly what the copyright law protects.
Speaking at an event in the East End of London, at which he announced a series of investments by IT giants including Facebook and Google, Mr Cameron said the founders of Google had told the government they could not have started their company in Britain. He said: "The service they provide depends on taking a snapshot of all the content on the internet at any one time and they feel our copyright system is not as friendly to this sort of innovation as it is in the United States. "Over there, they have what are called 'fair-use' provisions, which some people believe gives companies more breathing space to create new products and services. So I can announce today that we are reviewing our IP laws, to see if we can make them fit for the internet age. I want to encourage the sort of creative innovation that exists in America." The six month review will look at what the UK can learn from US rules on the use of copyright material without the rights holder's permission. It will also look at removing some of the potential barriers that stand in the way of new internet-based business models, such as the cost of obtaining permission from rights holders and the cost and complexity of enforcing intellectual property rights in the UK and internationally.
The announcement was welcomed by internet freedom campaigners, who said the government had to redress the balance after the controversial Digital Economy Bill, which strengthens the ability of copyright holders to block access to websites hosting illegal content. It is hoped the government would introduce "basic user rights" so that people could make personal copies of music and videos, or transfer them from one format to another, without fear of prosecution. Wrong.
But the Publishers Association, which represents some of the big names in book, audio and digital publishing in the UK, sounded a note of caution. "The immutable fact remains that the people who generate and invest in creativity deserve and need to be rewarded." Right.
For someone who is fighting a giant corporation, Twentieth Century Fox, for breach of his copyright and in consequence non-payment of royalties, I am not sure this is not good news at all.

“Oh my darling, my darling, my darling! Please hear me. The only one I have ever loved at all, the only one who has ever loved me….Oh, Tom, my darling! Don’t forget it. If you know how I love you, how I have always loved you in my jealous morbid moods, in all my exacting selfishness. Oh Tom, my darling, my darling! Can’t you say one word, one little word before we part?”
Al Jolson might have been willing to walk a million miles for one of his mammee’s smiles but, if I had it, I would bet a million dollars this book will never be found in any school library. The quote is from a nineteenth century American novel by one Frederic Loring and the picture he paints is not one of a girl saying good-bye to her sweetheart but a union soldier over the form of his dying friend. Interesting, no?
These musings all started off with Mark Twain but I continue with writers and writing. To start with I cannot understand parents banning books when the internet is simply awash with easily accessible pornography and on film and television kids are subjected to the most brutal violence, pretty explicit sex scenes and, after the gate was opened and the four letter word allowed to escape, directors have used it to such an extent in movies that, maybe they don’t realise it, but it has lost all meaning and dramatic value and is irredeemingly boring. I am wondering if it is reality that American parents are afraid of, as the Nazis were afraid of books they didn’t approve of, or which could disseminate dangerous ideas, and so burnt them. Watching film or television is a shared experience, reading a book is a solitary one to one and so much more intimate.
I’m afraid I am not up to scratch as far as “serious” modern American authors are concerned. All my American reading these days seems to have been concentrated on thriller writers like Karen Slaughter, but I have just read a book that is a little masterpiece by an author as yet unknown. It is being published by DCG and is called “Mister Boy – Tales of a Southern Gentleman” by Ron Harris. It consists of 32 short stories all based on fact, all about growing up in rural Alabama and it is a gem. It is written with such charm, such style it speaks directly to you: full of wit, of observation, of nostalgia for a lost more innocent world and, yes, of love; a world before computers, mobile phones, I’pods and any other modern paraphernalia that have become the norm. Maybe I took to it so much because there were reminders of my own boyhood growing up in South Africa in the thirties and forties, the days before television when kids had to make their own amusement, find their own way in a world that at times could be quite mystifying if not alarming. Reading this book I am reminded of other southern writes of note; Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Beth Henley, yes Tennessee Williams, Thomas Dixon Jnr., William Faulkner and more. How come the south produces so may wonderfully gifted writers? Now, as far as I am concerned, you can add the name Ron Harris to the list. I devoutly hope this book when it is in circulation will not be banned in America’s schools even though three or four stories involve the adventures of the pee-pee! If junior America can turn away from the computer screen just for a while, “Mister Boy” will give them a wonderful insight into a lost age.