Heavy black storm clouds over the mountains, the first in months, a few droplets of rain and a lot of thunder though I haven’t noticed any lightning. Have brought in the garden furniture though just in case because, as sure as God made little apples as my sainted mother used to say, if I don’t it will pour down. Hope Douglas on the high seas is enjoying his journey. He has another four hours to go. That is if the boat is on time. The anti travel sickness chewing gum has probably been brought in to full effect! Whether it’s the stormy weather or not the sky is suddenly full of swifts and there are long lines of them settled on all the electric wires around the house. It’s like Hitchcock’s Birds. I think they’re swifts, could be house martins, could just be swallows, black with white breasts. I’m no ornithologist so I wouldn’t know one from t’other. Whatever they are I only hope they’re feasting on the mosquitoes while they’re here and before they continue their journey south which I presume is what they’re doing.

Mention of Hitchcock made me think of film and watching Arsenic And Old lace the other night before Douglas left for Athens. Both of us felt on renewed viewing it wasn’t quite up to the high marks we originally gave it and our leading man certainly gave a consistently one note performance – high and hysterical. However, we also felt how good it was to have a dialogue scene sans music and, when music was used, how it was background music and discreet, not the thumping great noise we now get in movies. Every budding film director should watch Arsenic And Old Lace and learn how to use music in film to advantage without going over the top. I come back to my constant complaint of not being able to hear dialogue because of the way music and sound effects are used these days; also of course the fact that so many modern actors don’t know how to use their mouths – not to talk with anyway.

Having problems with my server (always at weekends) so this will have to wait until the computer genius sorts it out or greciannet comes back into service.

Sunday – back on line. The storm passed us by but evidently the chewing gum was used!

At dinner the other evening Jenny Urwin asked me what I was reading at the moment. The conversation at some point will inevitably turn to books as she is an avid reader. I usually have three books on the go: one beside my bed, one for the loo, and one in the conservatory cum dining room. That one right now of which I am halfway through is Peter Ustinov’s delightful autobiography Dear Me first published 1977. We have the Penguin edition and I have no idea how long it has been on the bookshelf or even where it came from and the only reason I started on it was because one of our cats, Betty by name, has a habit of finding the strangest, usually high up, places in which to hide herself to sleep and a short while sago, and only for a while until she found somewhere else, it was a bookshelf above a door. In jumping up there she knocked down half a dozen paperbacks, one of which was the Ustinov biography. I picked it up and thought, well, let’s have a go at this and am thoroughly enjoying it, so thank you Betty.

Apart from the wit and the beautiful writing (one can imagine Ustinov speaking) it is full of little nuggets, especially as far as the theatre is concerned. For example I didn’t know that the South African, Leonard Sachs who I worked with on television actually started the Players Theatre in London, a place we visited so many times when we lived there; that is until they had to move to new premises which had none of the atmosphere of that tatty old barn of a place underneath the arches. I seem to remember one visit, maybe two, and then for us the Players and so many wonderful evenings was no more.

Something else which struck me was, if I am allowed to quote, “It must be understood that the British theatre of the period was beset with distinguished elderly actors and actresses who were determined to be liked by the public even if they were playing totally unsympathetic characters …. The audience was beset by little signals from such performers, signifying that although they had just killed their wives or husbands on the stage owing to the exigencies of a particularly silly script which only the difficulties of the times had made them accept, they were not really like that in life at all.” Why this observation struck a chord with me was because, when I first arrived n England in 1953, there were two shows I wanted to see; one was Porgy And Bess and the other was The Innocents starring Flora Robson. Both came off a day or so before my ship docked. I thought Miss Robson a wonderful actress (the opinion changed when I saw her on film playing Elizabeth l) and I sent her my very first play The Rive Of Sand. It came back with the cryptic note “what would my fans think if I played a woman like that”! I still, even after all these years, cannot understand what she objected to in the character of a strong, sympathetic religious Boer woman. Perhaps Ustinov has given me the clue. He also has some wise observations to make about critics with which I wholeheartedly agree.

This book would make a marvellous present to any drama student about to step out into the big wide unjust world.

Spent last evening going through hundreds of programmes: theatre, opera, dance, music, UK, Continental, American, (I even have one South African one – Henry lV Part l, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg) all the shows we have been to or been part of, almost fifty years worth, in order to separate mine from the rest. This is because there are actors in photographs which will go into my biography whose names I simply do not remember. Not only that but there are plays I don’t remember. For example, there is a photograph of me sitting on a couch with two ladies, one young and beautiful, one middle aged and, yes, to be gallant, still beautiful. Who were they? Over the years one has worked with so many many people it is impossible to remember them all. I did know the photograph was from when I was at The Theatre Royal, Northampton, but the play? Well I knew I would be reminded of it if I could see the programme and, yes, the play (though I still have no memory of it whatsoever) was “The Bride Comes Back” by Ronald Millar and the actresses on the couch with me were … yes … well now … One character was just called A Young Woman so that would have been Caroline Maud. I played the part of someone called Jason Kilpatrick but there are two female Kilpatricks in the cast so would the older actress be Janice Edgard or Judy Child? I honestly don’t know. Aha! Turning the page I discover a photo and yes, it was Judy Child playing Isabel so that sorts that out.

I see the next production advertised was “Cinderella” in which I played Baron Hardup, a good ten (David Lyn) and twenty (Lionel Hamilton) years younger than my two stepdaughters and really hardly old enough to have sired Cinderella but that was life in rep.

It was really interesting going through them all, stopping every now and again when curiosity took over; a whole lifetime of theatre working and theatre going and so many thespians who have since departed to join the heavenly hosts acting in the sky. I wonder if God gets house seats. Most of the critics of course will have gone to the other place and serve them right.

B stands for Big. B stands for beautiful. Big is not necessarily beautiful. It might be impressive but it can also be very Boring. Started to watch the final ceremony of the Olympic Games and what can I say about it that I didn’t say about the opening ceremony only this time with knobs on and, after 28 minutes to be exact, we were both of the opinion that this was Boring – note the capital B and we switched off. Maybe it improved after that, who knows? Who cares? Maybe it wasn't boring for those in the stadium but it certainly was watching it on TV

Another week gone. This time last Sunday we were thinking about going to Fanis and Eleni’s wedding at the rather posh Perle Hotel on the Akrotiri. Like the Olympics it must have cost a small fortune. There is a tiny chapel in the hotel grounds that holds nobody so everyone was gathered in front and the priest did drone on for ever and ever amen. Orthodox church services: sometimes I wonder if the pappas is paid by the minute and the longer he drones on the more he makes before he closes his holy book, discards his vestments and heads off into the heavenly sunset. It was a heavenly sunset as well. This was the second wedding we attended at the Perle. The first was a Born Again, happy clappy one and did not take place anywhere near the chapel but in a lengthy side room in side the main building and was just as boring in a different kind of way with the parson, minister, or whatever they call him, a regular young jockey jock such as seen on American TV. In both cases though the brides looked beautiful and the food was simply marvelous. There must have been twenty or more main hot dishes, a dozen salads and a dozen or more desserts plus trimmings like crisps and the honeyed pastries the Greeks are so fond of, and the wine kept a coming. Naturally the meal had to end with tsigouthia (raki) in traditional Cretan fashion after which a lot of people got up to dance, beginning with rock, ending with Greek, or supply themselves with exotic cocktails. Like I said, cost a small fortune, not in the Wayne/her class of course but I should imagine that, like the Olympic ceremonies, their’s might have been a wee bit on the boring side. Big is not necessarily better. I wonder what London might be planning to top both the Greeks and now the Chinese? London will be bankrupt for the rest of the twenty-first century I reckon.

So what with Jannis’ memorial service in the morning and the wedding in the evening, all Douglas needed was a Baptism in the afternoon and he could have had a completely Orthodox day.

George Leybourne, aka Champagne Charlie had a song titled There’s Nothing New Under The Sun, or The Same Old Thing, the chorus of which went

It’s the same thing over again,

The same thing over again,

As the world goes round it will surely be found,

The same thing over again.

What brought it to mind was something I read in a book A World To Build by David Kynaston about the rebuilding of Great Britain after World War ll surtitled Austerity Britain 1945-48. So what George was singing about in the nineteenth century, is applicable to the twentieth and to the twenty-first as far as the Labour Party or New Labour, which is exactly the same as old Labour, is concerned. Witness: (If Mr Kynaston will allow me to quote. If I am breaking copyright here Mr Kynastan I apologise.) ‘Nor was a society seemingly pervaded by pernickety, pettifogging bureaucracy any more attractive for a veteran Fabian.’ And ‘The whole world is full of permits and control of people.’ Fast forward to the 21^st century and what have we got? More of the same only much more so. It would seem that socialism is a mindset that believes unless the state can control every aspect of your life, it is not doing what it is meant to do, that and voting more loot for themselves.

Should the Conservatives win the next election as it seems likely they will (surely the electorate won’t be insane enough to vote Labour in again) instead of worrying too much about reducing all the taxes Labour has burdened the country with, (starting with elf and safety, yooman rights and the compensation culture and making judges, like Solomon, use their common sense) they should set about getting rid of all the pervasive pernickety pettifogging laws Labour has brought in in the last ten years. Taxes then will sort themselves out and all those little piggies can get their snouts out of the trough.

How is it that on an island like Crete where the equivalent of council tax depends upon how much electricity you use and is a fraction of what people have to pay in the UK, rubbish bins are empted twice a week, Monday night and Friday night (it used to be Wednesday as well but there has had to be some economising) and these is no nonsense about how or what you put in the bin or where you bin should be or any of the other pettifogging restrictions that seem to have come in since we left the UK ten years ago, accompanied by fines of course if you don’t obey them. And you pay through the nose for it.

What does one say about the Baxters because they are going to read this and, as sure as God made little apples, if they were to be aware of what we truly think of them their heads would grow to twice their normal size and I for one would hate to be the instigator of such deformity. An evening at the Baxters for barbecue, conversation, laughter, and fun has so far (superstition creeping in here) been a blazing 10. May it continue to be so. (superstition mollified).

There was an extra face yesterday evening, Inez’s friend, Columba (hope I’ve spelt it right: my spell-check gives me unbia, ombia, ombo, umbic and umbus – the last two definitely wide of the mark) and the food preparation was evidently a shared experience – Columba doing the pork souvlaki, Lucy did the beef and Nina did the chicken, Inez cooked the potato dish and delicious it was. I only had a taster supposedly still being on diet. James as usual did the barbecuing.

Late in the evening a tiny head appeared above the terrace steps and the body of a rather fine looking cat followed. There was some souvlaki left over so Ursula, being the generous and sentimental soul that she is, threw a chunk a fair distance. The cat grabbed it and fled back to the steps. A moment later the head reappeared. This happened a number of times, each time the cat gathering its courage to move a little closer until finally it sat happily, tail wrapped around its legs, only about two feet from the table and only tended to shy away if a hand went too close to it. It really was a beautiful animal and Lucy named it Jeremy. Douglas finally got close enough to confirm it was a Jeremy and not a Jenny and, as some of the conversation had been about the works of Steven Sondheim, starting of course with Sweeney Todd, of which Nina seems to remember an awful lot despite none of us being enthusiastic about the movie, the cat ended up as Jeremy Sondheim, a moniker he should be proud of.

There, 350 words and not a single one about how we feel re the Baxters. Aren’t I a geniarse?

Spent an hour or more this morning sitting in the doctor’s waiting room in Xania. Finally decided to do what Chris has been wanting me to do for a long time and that is to have a thorough check-up. Well that was certainly started as we left her office with no fewer than six pieces of paper and headed for the IKA building in Souda. I was very glad to have Douglas do all the enquiries as his Greek is certainly better than mine and when I am spoken to in Greek I can tend to get a wee bit confused. Directed to that part of the building where all the medical bibs and bobs happens, a charming lady who spoke perfect English said we could see the cardiologist immediately and the rest of the tests – X-ray, kidneys, liver, thyroid, prostrate and goodness knows what else could be on Sept 2^nd. So up to the second floor we went and to room 22 where, on Douglas knocking and opening the door, we were faced with Dr Billy Goat Gruff seated behind his desk and with, until our entry, nothing to do.. Very naughty for a cardiologist to be at least three stone overweight which maybe is why he is a Billy Goat Gruff. At least there was no hanging around for an hour here although there were a number of people in the corridor but obviously not for him. It took him a while studying my IKA book and the doctor’s note for him to agree that okay he would do as she requested and yelled “Eleni!” at which I was ushered into the next room and the administrations of the charming Eleni, after the doc himself had listened to my heart for quite a long while through his stethoscope. Eleni plastered my chest, arms and ankles with all those multiple electrode things. “Breathe normally,” Eleni said, ‘and don’t move.’ We were then ushered back to Billy goat gruff to read the resulting tape. Would you believe that, apart from a couple of hiccups at the start, my heart was, as Gary would say, as sound as a bloody pound! It couldn’t have been beating at a steadier rhythm. There’s nothing wrong with your heart said Billy Goat Gruff and ushered us out. He is the second cardiologist to come to this conclusion, the first being at the Xania hospital when I had that dose of pneumonia. I think what they mean is there is nothing needing drastic treatment so it’s just a case of continuing with the Tildiem – twice a day according to my good but naughty lady doctor. Just as BGG is three stone overweight, she smokes. This is a country of smokers, that’s for sure. Didn’t notice whether BGG does. We popped straight across the road to get the stuff with the prescription but did not buy the blood pressure thingy the doctor recommended – not at over 90 euro! And then home, starving hungry. It’s been a day for medical treatment. Douglas has just gone back into Xania with Betty the cat with her wretched skin infection. Hopefully she won’t need any more treatment after today.