1863 Exqusite and necessary forms of Pain. Sophe Calle, International horror and Wallander

Over the past decade there are three series of images of human suffering on a scale which is difficult for most human beings to comprehend except through the circumstances of individuals. The first was those of 9/11. The terror of those in the aircraft which flew into the twin towers, the Pentagon and the fourth where the passengers attempted to overcome their captors knowing that pain and death was likely, coupled with those trapped in the higher floors of the building, especially those who decided to jump, and of the fire, police and other rescue workers who went into those buildings and then realising they were collapsing on top of them,

The second was the Tsunami rush of water which swallowed up populations of towns, villagers and holiday makers.

The third is only emerging now and I find them even more difficult than usual to bear. The firemen standing among the rubble of a community school where their dogs have confirmed what surviving local have said, there is no one left alive here and where those who survived are too shocked and full of grief to do anything of themselves.

Then there are the uplifting stories of the survivors, two children brought out from under the ruins after a week, a young woman who immediate sang a hymn of gratitude to her rescuers and her God. The frustration of the reporters, undertaking the essential task of bringing the horror to the attention of the world so that Government, agencies and you and me with reach into our pockets to provide a little of what will be required and press the authorities to get their act together and provide more and better help than they are have been able to do until now.

What impact will these experiences have on them and all those who are directly helping, the locators of bodies and providers of burials of the unknown reminiscent of the mud swamps of the first world war. This is real suffering and real pain although experienced at a safe distance by the majority able to continue with the rest of our lives as if nothing unusual has taken place.

The work of Sophie Calle, the contemporary concept and performance artist, photographer and mini film maker, which continues to impress me most is Exquisite Pain in which she compares her changing thoughts and feelings about a personal experience which devastated her at the time with that of friends who have experienced personal loss and physical pain of varying intensity and circumstance. The work is a brilliant demonstration of how our thoughts and emotions usually change over time and how in each individual situation it is usual to be overwhelmed and unaffected by everything else that is happening around us, including the pain of others, which objectively may be worse, until a distance develops between the actual moments of our individual experience and we can place the experience in the context of the rest of our lives, before and since, as well as in the context of the lives of others and the history of human and animal kind and our surrounding physical world.

In the same way that some people enjoy films about horror and blood shedding, including recreations of acts of extreme violence, I wallow in work of emotional intensity. I cry with any sentimentality at the cinema and over the past year have discovered the sophisticated grandeur of the live operatic experience of loss, self sacrifice and death with Madam Butterfly, Aida, Il Travatore and Carmen, and of Turandot, but to less extent. Five years ago I rediscovered the emotional fix live drama when the Playhouse reopened in Newcastle, and the Sophie Calle work was made into a theatrical performance without interval. This work had the most influence on how I approached my own project since visiting the Saatchi 100 show at the former County Hall building followed the same day by my first visit to the Tate Modern further along the south embankment of the river Thames. My two visits to the Sophie Calle exhibition at the Whitechapel in December of last year has not had such a dramatic impact as those before but reinforced and reinvigorated my work rather shifting it into a new direction. I returned to the gallery just before Christmas because of wanting to experience the bank of screens in which women performed the letter at the core of Take Care of Yourself, some adding their reactions. I watched what I thought was a set cycle in which one of the continuously playing screens became the centrepiece with sound. I discovered that the order of showing within each cycle changes which pleased me considerably. After the performance of Exquisite Pain at the Playhouse I had attended a short open session with the Director and actors and asked if they varied the order in which the experiences of Sophie’s friends are interjected between the changing account of her own. The reaction for the Director was in effect that I was daft to raise such a suggestion which seemed to me to miss a fundamental point of the work.

My visit in Christmas week also reinforced my view that that three distinct groups of people visit art exhibitions. There are the tourist attraction visitor who goes to the Tate Modern or the Baltic at Gateshead who have had no previous interest in contemporary art or prepared for the particular exhibition(s), who pass through and who may stop at a particular work, usually for seconds before moving on. There are those with an interest in contemporary art, knowing something of the work and the artist before arriving and may spend time in reacting and considering the exhibition and to individual works, but rarely from my experience attempt to take in everything in one session. And then there are the artists usually students and young who go to study as well as experience and enjoy, and where at the Calle, there was more evidence than previously experienced of those sitting somewhere with a note book. It was evident from both visits to the Whitechapel that the majority if not everyone had come with prior knowledge of the work of Sophie Calle, even if they had not experienced the work directly before. Having said this only one other individual appeared to stay experiencing the different screens as they went through a cycle. The average stay was for one or two screen performance. Perhaps having grasped the concept they were not interested in its execution and therefore missed the extent which the same subject, a letter, can be read and interpreted and in this instance performed by singers and musicians as well as read.

Pain was also the subject of the last Wallander of the second series of three dramatizations of the nine novels of Henning Mankell. As with the other works, the subject is familiar, that of revenge killings where there is similarity in the modus operandi but the absence of an link. The killings are all of men where the victims die horribly. One retired man spends his time watching birds, and is impaled when he falls from a tampered viewing area. A florist is kept prisoner, starved and then tied to a tree to die. A jogger is placed in a bag loaded with rocks and dropped into water, with only the face exposed and also three were able to look into the face of the murderer before they departed, Only the fourth is prevented, a railway guard as he is about to be pushed under an arriving train.

Wallander and his team gradually discover that the connecting link is a self help group for women who have experienced violence within a relationship and that the organiser of the group is the likely murderess whose mother had also been a victim and had recently died. And then we come to the significant difference between this work and most others and will become an award winning episode among all three award winning masterpieces of dramatic storytelling scripting and acting.

The special ingredient is the character and life of Wallander and acting of Kenneth Branagh.

In this episode there is the sudden death of his father. Wallander visits his father at the residential home where the man has placed himself aware he is a burden to his family as Alzheimer’s takes stronger hold and he pleads with Wallander to takes him home where his life had some meaning. In one of the brief moments of clarity he talks of the joy of just sitting watching the passing of nature’s time and tells his son that he also should have someone to sit with him. Shortly afterwards, Wallander, while in the midst of the murder inquiry, is told that his father has died and he rushes to find that this is so and is immediately confronted with all the unresolved issues of their relationship, his father’s rejection of him, which was not just illness generated, and his own failure to spend more time with the man, and where the nature of his work and its demands was an important factor, but only one of several factors in the gulf between them, a gulf which one suspects had always been there.

I project this because of my own experience where my biological mother denied my existence in public throughout my life until going into care at the age of 96, when Alzheimer’s had already taken a strong hold and showed no affection during my childhood, never talked of my father or of our subsequent relationship and where in fairness several aspects of my life did live up to her fears about me and that I never measured up to any hopes and good wishes she possessed for me. And this was so until moving her to a residential home in South Shields where she progressed from the sad and angry stage of the disease into a demonstrable loving and happy person retaining the childlike belief in her Catholicism until her last breath, despite the pain and discomfort of her last weeks and days at the local general hospital. I was in the fortunate position of being to visit almost every day staying an average of one hour and although at times as he was unsure of who I was and although our ability to communicate directly ended over time we communicated and stabled a bond stronger than ever before and I had my childhood through her progress into babyhood and felt atonement for my many failures in other relationships and experiences.

This was not so for Wallander and worse was to come when arriving just in time to meet his daughter at the station for the funeral he found that his ex wife was with her at his daughter’s request. This was the first time they had met since the divorce and both communicated the challenge of the situation and he was confronted by his own loneliness and inability to come to terms with what had happened between them, especially when she confirmed that she was happy in the life that had developed since their parting. She has moved on, he had not. The film ends with both returning to his father’s graveside, and he leaves his wedding ring behind.

There are two other memorable magic moments. The first when he calls at the home of someone who had a relationship with one of the murdered men who physically abused her against her wishes. He is attracted to the woman who also reacts in a positive way to his visit as does her young son. On the wall he sees one of his father’s paintings which she inherited when acquiring the apartment. She thinks this is a print and he explains that his father only painted the same scenes with slight variations throughout his life, producing thousands of editions. The moment was wonderful because of the way Kenneth Branagh was able to communicate the pride felt in being able to explain about his father’s work and recent death to someone who appreciated the painting.

However the moment which was one of the most the most remarkable of dramatic portrayals of reality I have experienced during my own lifetime was when Wallander confronts the murderer and who manages to take him prisoner producing a gun with the consequence that colleagues, including a marksman, focus on the murderer. Wallander pleads with the woman to surrender or she will be killed unless she puts down the weapon and for a few seconds it looks as if he is successful as she breaks down in floods of tears in his arms but then turns the weapon on her self.

What had emerged beforehand is that the killing spree had commenced shortly after the mother of the women died and Wallander having just experienced the death of his father knew from his recent experience which included, meeting his wife after a period since their divorce that it can trigger extremes of behaviour with some children experience relief and a sense of freedom where others are devastated because of the closeness and bonds which had existed. There was also empathy for the murderess built up during the episode as we learnt of the extent to which those killed who had physically violated their partners, some assaulting a succession of women. Branagh was playing someone whose work and conviction was to apprehend the guilty and bring them to the justice of the society which employed him for such a purpose. At the same time Branagh also conveyed a man who believed he understood why the woman had behaved as she had. She would still have to face action of society against her and indeed punishments for actions for whatever the trigger and justification, the killings were premeditated and horrific involving torture and infliction of intense pain, but he also wanted her to have the opportunity for atonement and redemption. The level of acting was extraordinary.

We all need to experience both kinds of pain, that of the actual relayed and that of the drama and the performance. We do not need to experience directly and many people’s experience is limited in their lifetime although I suspect those who never experience directly are small in number. Because of this there is need to prepare for the eventuality and where through the reporting and experiencing in dramatic form we are able cope better when it happens to us and to show compassion and provide support to others when it happens to them.

1861 Don't go down to the woods at night if you do not want to get in the soup and a great week for Babylon 5

It is Sunday evening. Late after watching the most brilliant and likely award winning episode of Wallander with Kenneth Branagh, following from managing to recover sufficiently from the cough cold to get to Newcastle for the relayed production of Carmen for the New York Metropolitan at the Tyneside Film Theatre which together with watching the Placid Domingo on the iplayer beforehand will become another memorable day, leaving me feeling privileged. I need to write about these experiences but they will have to wait

Last week was a bonus week for my interest in science fiction although there was more fiction than science! The FX channel commenced the important third season of Babylon Five with episodes 45 Matters of Honour, 46 Convictions, 47 A Day in strife, 48 Passing through Gethsemane and 49 Voices of Authority.

Unknown to Commander of the Space station, John Sheridan, the unknown space craft which approached and offered medical and scientific knowledge in exchange for responding to a test appeared to be a Shadow probe. A recorded message stated that if the station failed to provide all the information required or if the information did not meet standards, the probe would self explode destroying the station with it. In the last seconds Sheridan changes his mind and decides not to send the information, correctly fearing the probe is an intelligence seeking device to establish if the station will pose a threat in the coming war(47).

Lt Keffer’s visual of his encounter with a Shadows craft reached an international media service before his destruction and Earth Force send an investigation team to the Space Station in episode 45. Sheridan and Ambassador Delenn continue to express ignorance about the Shadows as they do not trust the Earth Alliance government or want the Shadows to know they are aware of the threat they pose until they have made preparations to defend themselves. When the investigator approaches Ambassador Londo Mollari, he, understandably, feigns ignorance while G‘Kar explains his knowledge from the historical book which appears to be some ancient manuscript/book of knowledge that he studies. Returning to earth we the audience learn that Earth through Psi Corp had had contact with the Shadows.

In Voices of Authority Draal, the wise Minbar who has become part of the great knowledge, insight and defensive system on the planet below, uses a holograph of himself to visit the station and advise Sheridan that he wants to help with the defence against the Shadows now that he has time to adjust to his new situation and Sheridan and Delenn have proven themselves, He believes it is opportunity to try and contact some of the other ancient races who fought the Shadows 1000 years before along with the Vorlons and suggests that Sheridan uses the machine to try and locate where they are, Sheridan is prevented from making the appointment and sends deputy Ivanova who identifies that one group are hiding close to a planetary system within close travelling time a la jump gate and Ivanova goes on a first contact mission with one of the Rangers who is able to communicate with the Minbari space craft provided through Delenn as a gift from the Minbari religious leaders without the knowledge of the Grey Council and which has Minbari and Vorlon technology, It is called the White Star. as a cover for the operation. Ivanova uses her recently learnt negotiating skills to persuade the race to assist if necessary, by pointing out that the Vorlons are already helping and by implications this meant the Vorlons were better than this other race.

The reason why Sheridan has to send Ivanova in his place is the arrival of an Earth Force Political Adviser as part of the Night Watch. She speaks traditional totalitarian truth reorganisation with Orwell’s Animal Farm the classic example. All Earth languages are redefined so that there are no social problems and the government does not make mistakes. Anyone who questions must be a traitor and eliminated and she signals that the purges are about to commence. Nightwatch on the station are to double their efforts to check on what is happening and to report directly to her. As part of her attempt to take effective control of the station she offers herself to Sheridan who she warns will be replaced if he does not submit to the new regime in every respect.

While temporarily replacing Draal to make use of the great machine Ivanova is able to tap into what happened to the former President Santiago and she is able to record a visual conversation between the new President and the Psi Corps confirming his part in the assassination and taking of power. Sheridan arranges the evidence to give to his contact with the Earth Force hierarchy who ensures that the information is released to the media. Far from toppling the new regime they ensure the evidence is branded as a fake and example of why it is necessary for the government to commence its purges and tightening controls on opponents and dissenters. The Political Adviser is recalled to earth to assist in dealing with the threat from the recording.

Meanwhile G’Kar is put under great pressure by the arrival of a new Narn Ambassador to replace him. The Ambassador has a personal security guard whose life Sheridan saved and therefore there is a bond between them. G’Kar is told that he must return to his homeworld where he and his family is promised protection and he must halt the opposition to the Centauri take over or else the families of Narns on the Space Station known to be helping him will be in peril. G’Kar decides this is his destiny knowing that if he returns he will be killed. Security chief Garibaldi had previously maintained a good relationship with G’Kar and advises him not return which moves G’Kar in realising that other races have concern for him and the position of his people but he explains it is his duty to follow his conscience even knowing what this is likely to lead to,

I have been faced with a similar predicament in life more than once. It is not an experience I wish to face again although my intuition tells me it is to happen.

Whereas Garibaldi cannot persuade G’Kar to stay on, the combined company of Narn’s remaining at the station do, They argue that G’Kar has become an important beacon of hope for their countrymen and while they and their families know what is likely to be in store, they express the age old belief that it is better to fight and lose, to die than to remain enslaved. He stays.

Meanwhile Ambassador Mollari is feeling increasingly isolated and threatened. He meets the Shadows agent and informs him the services of the Shadows will not longer be needed. The contact, Modern, then advises that he as bypassed London and done a deal with Lord Refer who is effectively running the Centauri home world. In part because his assistant Vir has repeatedly warned him about the consequences of the actions he has taken and in part because of genuine concern for the future of Vir as a consequence of his misgivings about the new regime, and we suspect, in part for some purpose as yet undisclosed, Londo persuades Ambassador Delenn, and Lord Kefer, that Vir is the ideal person to be appointed to reopen a consular link with the Minbari. Vir is reluctant to leave Londo on his own despite promises of more money, status and opportunities for relationships with the opposite sex. Londo also tries to establish contact with others such as Ambassador Delenn and Garibaldi without success. G’Kar on the other hand gives Garibaldi his ancient text about the Shadows which he says will help. This is part of his attempt to find out what is going on as he ahs found out about secret meetings (the Babylon 5 War Council) and secret missions.

There are two episodes where the main subject can be considered a digression. An order of Catholic Monks arrive at the station and offer their services although Sheridan is hesitant even if they promise to pay their way because of their knowledge of technology and other skills. In Passing through Gethsemane one of the monks, a man of peace, and artistic skill who offers his services to everyone is suddenly besieged by disturbing experiences. The episodes reveals that Earth has developed a new way of dealing with criminals who in the past would receive the death penalty. Their minds and therefore their personalities are wiped and a new peace loving and socially responsible personality is imposed. It is learnt that the monk was a former serial killer and that the families of his victims have gathered together at the space station, having tracked him down, to seek revenge. Having made him realise who he was, the monk can only seek punishment and place himself in the hands of the relatives all of whom, but one. find that they cannot physically act against him. One does tortures the monk and then crucifies him as Sheridan and Garibaldi are unable to save his life by the time they find his whereabouts. The man who commits the murder is tried and sentenced to have his mind wiped and he then becomes the replacement monk at the request of the head of the group.

The second divertissement of a kind is in Convictions, where a disaffected member of staff commences a series of bombing outrages with his last effort a device with the capacity to destroy the entire station. Sheridan has to use all his courage and skills to contain the man when his whereabouts are discovered while Garibaldi and crew work out where the device is located and disarm it. This is not the first encounter with near death for Sheridan recently as he has had to deal with a potentially violent group of dissenters over their conditions of employment. At one point he is challenged by one of the men who says that Sheridan is hiding behind his weapons where he only has a tool of trade. Sheridan calls the man’s bluff and exchanges weapons, or does he, disclosing to Ivanova after the man has backed down that he had removed the power clip before passing his weapon over. The highlight of this episode is however when Londo and G’Kar become imprisoned in a lift as a consequence of one of the explosions and face death as they run out of breathable air. When they first encounter Londo decides to take another lift but has to change his mind as a fireball comes along the corridor. He expect G’Kar to attack him but G’Kar laughs explaining that although he would like to kill Londo and give up his life in doing so he was prevented by the threat of the Centauri to kill 500 Narn for any Centauri killed by a Narn in the future. Now he is to have the joy of watching his enemy die slowly without repercussions. They are rescued of course.

There is one other minor sub story which is to have along term consequence. Garibaldi had found out that his friend Dr Franklin has become dependent on Stimulants and as all other addicts, he denies the problem when they are confronted by family or friend, they claim that they are in control and that the substance helps them cope with the pressures and stresses of their life, in this instance significant staff shortages and 36 hour shifts. After reacting with hostility and resentment when Garibaldi raises a subject which he knows all about, having been dependent on alcohol, the good doctor does make a serious attempt to stop but gives after a day when he under pressure from the Commander to supply the required information for the space probe, a translator is not available so he can help an individual patient and he has become tired and generally stressed, He gives in and then lies about the situation to Garibaldi.

The most interesting other consequence is when Lyta Alexander, the original Psi Corps telepath on the station returns on a Vorlan ship saying she has been changed by her experience of being allowed to live on their home world. A medical examination reveals that the illnesses and physical problems previously experienced have been removed. In the last of the five episodes she has a meeting with the Vorlon of the station in which it appears they have direct communication which raises the question as to whether a Vorlon is in fact inhabiting her body.

Whereas no episode of Babylon % goes by without some development in the two main story lines of the coming of the Shadows and the development of a totalitarian dictatorship on Earth following the assassination of the previous President, the same cannot be said for the X Files

There was no progress in the episodes of series of the X Files last week. However this is because although going back to the Pilot for the series and then the first episode proper, the editors switched episodes around and to appear to have concentrated on those which involve excursions into the Forests.

In the Jersey Devil, episode 5 of season 1, the murder of a homeless man leads to Mulder suspecting there is a mutant creature, ape like with human features, inhabiting the forest around Atlantic City in New Jersey. The classic story feature is the local police who dismiss the idea that a monster is on the lose because of the likely impact on tourism. The police are also responsible for killing the creature when it is cornered after having to come into the city to forage. However there is a child who we learn survives as the episode closes

In Darkness Falls, episode 20 season 1 a group of loggers disappear and Mulder is interested because a similar situation is recorded in 1934. The sub story which contains the message is the activities of an environmental disruptor’s group, (disruptions as opposed to eco terrorists) who are challenging the loggers who are destroying some of the ancient trees of over 400 years and which are protected. The episode reveals that the loggers have unintentionally released some micro-organisms which go in the search of food at night and because they are micro can penetrate vehicles and envelope in a cocoon before draining the subject. Sculley and Mulder escape but require hospitalization.

Die Hand Die Verletzt the 14th episode of the second season concerns the death of a school pupil who evoked the devil in a ceremony in the forest in a community of long standing devil worshippers, generation upon generation cantering on the local school. However they have long since ceased to believe and even carry out the their daily ‘prayers’ and services. One of the girls who were involved in the ceremony makes allegations against her step father claiming he raped her and her sister and sacrificed babies although in reality her sister died at eight weeks., She appears to have committed suicide and her step father who is the least committed of the group dies in a situation where we the viewer know it was death from a boa constrictor/python snake. When the remaining teachers trap Sculley and Mulder with a view to killing them, they kill each other under the influence of a temporary natural history biology teacher who disappears having exercised hypnotic and magical abilities over the community as punishment for not keeping the faith. She appears to have been an agent of the devil if not the devil herself!

In Our Town episode 24 of season 2 we moved from forest to jungle. Although a lose connection because the plane in which the owner of the small town chicken producing factory crashed into a jungle some forty years before and escaped bringing back with him a their knowledge of long life through a cannibalistic soup. In fact Mulder is called in when a witness claims to have seen a foxfire at the time lover of a local resident was killed by a man wielding an axe when he went into the woods. I cannot remember what a foxfire in this context was. The local Sheriff, as usual, dismisses the claims staying it was just local people burning trash and that the missing man probably went off to another own with one someone else and that his work as an Inspector at the local factory had no bearing. Mulder is less sure when he finds that the man was about to submit a report critical of the factory production methods. Then a woman who appears in early twenties and is forty seven dies of Creuxfeldt-Jacob disease and then a truck driver from the factory runs off the road into a lake and it is found that the driver has also dies of the same disease. Mulder was concerned when visiting the factory to find that the chickens were fed the remains of the processed chickens and that lake is badly contaminated with the effluent from the factory which includes chicken blood. Mulder insists that the lake is dragged and this produces the bones of nine human beings including the missing inspector minus their heads. The bones have smooth edges as if boiled. When Mulder visits to the owner of the chicken factory to arrest him he finds he is missing but he has a cabinet with the missing heads. Meanwhile Sculley is tricked into going to the home of the lover of the missing man where is abducted and taken to where local residents are enjoying soup and where first the owner of the factory is behead as punishment for feeding them from the body of the inspector who had the diseased which is now being transmitted. They are about to behead Sculley when Mulder Intervenes and the man in the mask wielding the axe is of course the local Sheriff.

At present I cannot remember what the other episode of the week was about and a search of those in the first four seasons did not trigger memory except if you go down to the woods at night you are in for a big surprise.

1363 The Ipcress File, Cadfael and The Flood

For the greater part of the day I was unsettled and my productivity was minimal. I relaxed later although this only resulted in a moderate level of work activity. There was much watching of television and playing of games at the computer and eating, all comfort activity and not good for the body.

I ended the day watching the greater part of the Ipcress file with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, the kind of creative trained serviceman that is used by arm's length government bodies to resolve situations using methods outside the law, but as credible reality to the fantasy of James Bond, In the days when the film was released the enemy was a clearly defined devil, usually a communist government, or agents of communist governments. It is an exciting, dangerous existentialist life where it can be guaranteed the women of easy virtue are honey traps, at best informants, but also blackmail assistants or multi talented assassins. If the lass is genuine she will be killed in the cross fire thus underlining that good girls should not get involved with any man who says he leads a secret life and which for official reasons cannot be shared. This is not to say that such a couple cannot make a good and long term team, but the odds are against, and the converse is also true.

I also watched a rerun of a Cadfael, the Derek Jacobi medieval monk detective. He is also an individualist creative tolerated by the establishment of his monastic order because of the service he performs to the general community in days when law and order was a matter of aristocratic power. The series remains was very enjoyable even if it does not paint a flattering picture of monastic life. The reason why Cadfael is successful is that he had experience as a soldier and a sailor in the first Crusade. He also has excellent relations with the opposite sex in terms of treating them with an understanding and respect unusual for the time. The back story is that he was once engaged but she married someone else while he was away. A feature of the books and series is that there are usually star crossed lovers who he assists and his idealistic and romantic nature draws him into relationships which challenge his vow of celibacy. He discovers that he has a son by Mariam of Antioch and the young man is introduced into series and appears from time to time. The twenty books were published between 1977 and 1994 and cover the historical events of 1137 to 1145. Five books were adapted for radio starring Glynn Houston or Philip Madoc. 13 of the books was adapted into television films lasting 75 mins and were filmed in Hungary and all star Sir Derek Jacobi. The TV films are in general faithful to the books except for two where in one instance there is a very different story and in a second a character is a villain in the film whereas they are not in the book.

The third creative is played by Sir Tom Courtenay in ITV's holiday blockbuster, the Flood as the individualistic scientist and meteorologist studying the impact on severe weather conditions on coastal defences floor plains and who had predicted that the Thames flood barrier has limitations. Being a British made for TV film the work concentrates more on realities of weather forecasting and the emergency services, with the unstated back story of the great wind which flattened southern England and the floods of last year which the weathermen were unable to predict to the extent that adequate preventive measures could be undertaken, despite the increased sophistication of weather forecasting and the vast improvements in coordination and leadership of civil emergency systems at national, regional and local authority level. In Flood Robert Carlyle plays Courtenay's son estranged son who is responsible for the maintenance of the Thames Barrier and David Suchet (better known for Hercules Poirot) the Deputy Prime Minister who is required to take decisions that school children be saved at the expense of some hospital patients and moving the emergency services from central to west London so that at least a reasonable proportion of the population will be saved.

The programme brought back immediate memories of my war/civil emergency training in the days when the expectation was a nuclear strike on a city and the control more localised. Last night first of two parter raises the issue that in the event of what was national emergency situation where the entire East coast was affected the extent to which central government control would have concentrated and taken responsibility for London rather than Mayor Johnson and the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police with the designated Military Commander for Greater London. The kind of choices and decisions taken in the film were text book for the training I experienced twenty five years ago. In our situation we faced such issues as directing food to those with a chance of survival and away from those where radiation gave them no prospects, and did you at least try and apprehend looters and then give them a proper trial when the crisis was over or did you empower the military to shoot them on the spot. My lasting memory is not on the quality of the decision taking during the crisis in which collectively we performed better than many previous training course but still were estimated to not have saved a substantial number of lives which could have been possible, but on the behaviour of everyone after the crisis was over and the first meetings on the reconstruction of the city, where everyone appeared to quickly reverted to the behaviour which had led to the bomb being dropped. There were two fundamental tests. How did individuals who usually had a support structure cope with a crisis situation when they had to take decisions based on inadequate and changing information and to what extent did those with power quickly abandon the rule of law and democratic principles? Although as a former insider the film was predictable, it should have educated as well as entertained many viewers, reminding that's whoever coordinates the emergency services are also human vulnerable and that priority needs to be given to protecting their loves ones if they are to function effectively in the job they are required to do.

Such was my interest in the film that I forgot that the latest new episode of Lost was being shown on a multi start basis. The Flood was sandwiched between the Tory Bemner Fortune and Bird comedy sketch show which was again magnificent and very very funny and much superior than Headcases where I fear the computerised graphic take away from the barbed wit. This reminds me of the awful BBC TV programme on local government election night which lost the baby with the bathwater. There was too much attention to what national politicians have to say, and to new graphic showing off at the expense of local results and what local politicians have to say. This was a nil points production and bad public service broadcasting.

I completed the revision of the analysis of the medical records early in the day but decided to postpone further action until today given that there was no postal collection over the weekend from early on Saturday until tomorrow morning without paying premium rates.

I took 1300 photographs of completed work which accumulated while the camera was being prepared (development, creatives and recent cultural experiences) and there are another 1000 or so to be undertaken later to day

I cooked a full chicken for lunch, enjoying smoked salmon and horseradish a started for lunch with a glass of Prieure de Lauran 2006, from the Languedoc region of France and north west of the great walled city of Carcassonne where I once camped having decided on the spur of the moment to get in a small car with a small tent and just go and find the sunshine without any pre-booking of travel or accommodation in the height of summer. Unfortunately the wine is not as good as my memories, I just eat a third of chicken and then some butterscotch ice cream. There was a mixed salad with slices of brown bread for the evening meal, more ice cream, grapes, water and lots of tea and coffee

1858

The snow has gone from Tyneside, hitting Yorkshire and elsewhere, but my nose cold has become worse, but did not create such a bad night as it looked as the evening progressed

Benny Goodman Big Swing Hits
Lets dance and Don’t be that way
Mr Meadowlark
Minnie the Moocher’s wedding Day

The outstanding event since my return from Christmas was the second episode in the new series of Wallander based on the original books of Henning Mankell- The Man who smiled. The significance of this episode is personal although the performances of Kenneth Branagh as the Inspector is outstanding, as is that of a former policeman turned security guard who has experienced similar emotions from a similar situation.

Benny Goodman Swinging 20
King Porter Stomp
How long has this been going on
Six Flats unfurnished and Stomping at the Savoy

Wallander has taken extended leave since killing a murderer in self defence, handing in his gun and leaving when asked to attend the formal interview which follows such an incident in most police forces across the earth planet which do not operate a police dominated state. He cuts himself from his family, staying in a holiday home and walks the beach, drinking more than usual and disregarding his personal appearance.

Benny Goodman Swinging 20
Avalon
And the Angels sing
Jersey Bounce
Sugarfoot Stomp

Sten questions the verdict that his lawyer father met his death in an accident. We know the death is questionable because the father exits his car when driving on a deserted county road and seeing a figure sitting on a chair stool in the middle of the road. Sten asks Wallander why were the car keys on the floor of the vehicle and mentions that the key is the fourth on the ring.

Benny Goodman Swinging 20
On the sunny side of the Town
Bach goes to Town
Peter and the Wolf
A smooth one

Wallander rejects the request but the plea nags at him and he returns to his town home long before he is ready to cope with his former job. His home is a mess with energy and telephone cut off and his fridge full of decaying food suggesting its is months rather than weeks since his hurried departure and when he goes to the police station he see the secretary/housekeeper of the friend’s father who calls to him that he is too late as Sten has committed suicide in his father’s office. Wallander’s office is deserted as the team has been broken up and the team responsible for the road accident and investigating the suicide do not welcome his sudden intervention and questioning of their conclusions.

Benny Goodman Swinging 20
If dreams come True
Lazy River
Goodbye
Sing Sing Song

Wallander is in further trouble when he arranges a further autopsy without prior approval and this yields that a bone in the neck has been fractured in several places suggesting a killer blow rather than from the accident. An investigation of Sten also reveals similar neck injuries which raises doubts about self strangulation at the office of his father. A visit to the office and the father’s home reveals that the lawyer had one major client to which he had devoted his time over several years. This is a well known Swedish business man and philanthropist who has a charitable foundation undertaking work in Africa. When Wallander visits the home with the housekeeper he is shown a picture postcard with a message where the obvious interpretation is a threat. Downstairs in the basement where the Foundation records were stored, Wallander finder only a wall full of expensive icons worth a fortune beyond the means of the lawyer, together with and a plastic container. The records are not there. My query is that having removed the records why were the icons and the plastic container left/

Essential Benny Goodman
Lets Dance
Bugle Call Rag and King Port Stomp
Don’t be that way


Wallander gains permission to talk to the international businessmen as the investigating team had only a five minute telephone conversation. The man lives in a large office and home complex with a former police man on the gate as security. There is a helicopter within the grounds and on a second visit Wallander meets the personal assistant security man and these appear to be the only people at the property despite its size. The man appears genuinely shocked at what has happened to his former lawyer and the son who had recently started to help the aging father with his work. He also impresses Wallander with his evident commitment to African charitable Foundation.

Essential Benny Goodman
When Buddha Smiles and Sing Sing Sing
Big John Special
Get Happy

Wallander asks for confirmation of the time the left on the day when they accident took place. When Wallander shows the postcard the man produces a similar one which he has received within the past couple of days, since the death of the former employee and Wallander takes this with the accompanying envelope.

Essential Benny Goodman
Superman and Oh Baby
Goody Goody
There’s a small hotel

The envelope reveals it was sent from a country hotel where Wallander as a boy and his father used to stay to go fishing. The Hotel is now closed as the Owner has become infirm but they remember the Swedish man, the only the other guest on the day when the first postcard was sent and this provides a name, and that of the young woman, the man’s daughter, who Wallander discovers is a Doctor who works in Africa and holds meetings to raise public awareness of the needs. She is blown up in her car shortly after Wallander tries to speak to her.

Essential Benny Goodman


He is then contacted by the girl’s father who is attacked before Wallander can get to him but who he manages to save by inserting a biro case into the mans throat so he can breathe. The team then discovers that the plastic cases is used for body parts and they find a store of several hundred of these, where as the local general hospital might order a dozen containers for transplants where one corpse can yield a hundred thousand dollars.

There are two other strands to the story which make the difference between a criminal investigation and a major drama. Following the visit to the hotel where eh went with his father he goes to see his father who has become a resident in a residential home in the City where he finds his daughter visiting, resentful at the lack of contact and failure to seek her help. He tries to explain but is called away. Father rejects his visit but does not want his daughter to leave afraid of what will happen to her when she departs. She is his link with his past and its diminishing reality.

Wallander is recognises by the former policeman security guard at the gate to the property of the International businessman. The man was a good officer but who has killed a young woman when on his way home from an evening out through drunk dangerous driving. He was dismissed from the force and the death haunts him, but also the loss of his job which he explains when he calls with the information about vehicle departure timings on the day the lawyer was murdered on his way home. The man pleads with Wallander to have him reinstated when he later provides information, a timed photograph showing that in addition to those listed in the schedule, the owner’s vehicle had left the property minutes before, driven by the head security assistant.

Essential Benny Goodman
Can’t Teach my old heart new tricks
This can’t be love
I thought about you
It never entered my mind

The man argues is that police work was his life, his identity and although he made a major mistake he believes he still has a great deal to give but he has been given no choice. Although the situation is different as Wallander acted in self defence he feels guilty about continuing with his work, unable to face carrying a loaded weapon or his badge of office, but he has choice whether to continue with the career or not. The former policeman wants the same choice. What has emerged as the plot unfolds is that the International businessman was making a fortune from the sale of body parts from poor Africans and where consent to living donorship is in question. Through her work the Doctor had uncovered the role of the International business in the trade and her father had attempted to blackmail for funds to aid her work. It looked as if the businessman would get away the crimes because all the records were in the name of the killed lawyer and even these had been removed, so even if it was possible to tie the murders to his security assistant the man behind the trade and the murders would get away with it. It is this moral discrepancy which leads to Wallander unsuccessfully pleading the case of the former policeman.

Essential Benny Goodman
How long has this been going on
After you have gone and Running wild
The Man I love

The two men, Wallander and the disgraced policeman are two of a kind and when the former policeman contacts Wallander to say the business man and security chief have closed the estate and are about to leave in the helicopter for the airport Wallander does not hesitate to rush to the scene, alone, loading his gun and taking his badge from out of the desk, but urging the man to wait for his arrival. The former police is wounded by the time Wallander arrives as the businessman is making his way to the helicopter with a box of records. The former policeman also manages to prevent Wallander being killed by the head of security who he kills. Wallander is then able to disable the International business man shooting him in the leg. Wallander goes back to his post having put himself back in order as justice appears to be done, one way or the other. This programme and the predicament of Wallander and the former policeman struck not one but several chords with me 1985 1986, 1991/2 and three occasions in 2003.

Essential Benny Goodman
Moonglow
Flying High and Rose Room
Airmail special

I have written before of my liking for the C S Forrester Hornblower novels which were made into an excellent TV series. The Even Chance was the first film (1998) in the series in which young Midshipman Hornblower joins the Justinian under the ruthless bully and coward Jack Simpson who terrorises vulnerable new recruits. Although Midshipmen are junior officers, they were in effect apprentices, responsible of a small body of seamen. The son of naval officers, the landed gentry and professional men had to pay to gain their first step in the naval hierarchy. These days the officer cadet has their training at a service college, but where bullying and feuds are not excluded but less likely. Then abuse was widespread and where any questioning would lead to official punishment

Essential Benny Goodman
The World is waiting for the sunrise
Wholly Cats and Rachel’s Dream
Riding High

The structure of the services is Admiral of the Fleet, Admiral, Commodore, Captain, Commander, Lt Commander, Lieutenant, Sun Lieutenant, and Ensign, Midshipman.

Sunny Disposish and Body and Soul
In The Even Chance, also known as the Dual, the situation is reached where Hornblower feels obliged to challenge Simpson to a Dual but against his wishes he is replaced at the last moment by an older Midshipman who feels he should have stood up and protected the younger ones before. He is killed and Simpson wounded letting it known that Hornblower is a coward. Fortunately war is declared and Hornblower and another midshipman, both the subject of bullying, are sent to a frigate The Indefatigable, the Indy, nominated by the aging captain of the Justinian who has some knowledge of what actually has happened.

Essential Benny Goodman
Sweet Leilani and Roll’em
Life goes to a Party
Avalon

So too does the Captain of the Indefatigable who orders Hornblower not to get involved with a dual in the future. When a French Merchant ship carrying rice is captured Hornblower and his team are ordered to take the craft back to an English port for be sold as bounty for distribution among the officers on a pro rata basis. Unfortunately the ship is holed below the waterline and the swelling rice leads to it sinking before the cargo can be jettisoned, and when on in the lifeboat the French regain control, Hornblower outwits by charting on the map a different course to the one he is following so that instead of heading back into France they run parallel to the coast until in sight of the Indefatigable where he is quickly regarded as hero among the men for saving their lives and recapturing the prisoners.

Essential Benny Goodman
Swingtime in the Rockies
My Gal Sal
Stealing Apples

While on patrol they run into a sinking Justinian and among the rescued they pick up is Simpson so when a party men is sent to try and capture the French vessel responsible, hiding in port Hornblower and another abused midshipman are put in charge of a boat in the expedition, Simpson a surplus officer volunteers and his experience accepted and in the resulting action he first kills the other midshipman and then attempts to shoot Hornblower when he is in the rigging but causes him only a glancing blow from which he falls into the sea but is rescued. Unfortunately the captured French vessel- The Papillion comes under fire from shire batteries and the two senior officers are killed, the most senior placing Hornblower in charge shortly before Simpson comes aboard and demands to take charge. Hornblower places him under arrest. And they set out to find the Indy which has come under fire from three French warships and is systematically being destroyed. Seeing the situation, Hornblower continues to show the French colours until close enough to open fire on the unsuspecting enemy. One is badly damaged and the other blown up, so out numbered the remaining ship surrenders. Simpson denies the accusation and challenges Hornblower to a dual which the Indy Captain allows, withdrawing his former order to Hornblower not to do so. When Simpson fires in advance Hornblower is given the opportunity to shoot at his leisure and Simpson grovels for his life so Hornblower fires in the air. Simpson then grabs a knife but is killed by Captain Pellaw of the Indy observing the scene from nearby rocks before he can harm Hornblower. The captain rewards Hornblower by saying that he will keep an eye on the young man who he thinks is going to have a great career in the navy. The series is noted for its authentic portrayal of navy life and for not pulling back from showing the brutality and the horror of combat including the primitive and difficult medical care provided.

None such reality accompanied the Triple Cross the 1966 film based on he real life story of criminal turned wartime double agent Eddie Chapman, or does it?

100 Goodman
Sometimes I’m Happy
King Porter Stomp
Body and Soul and Goodbye

Eddie Chapman was born at Burnopfield in County Durham in 1914 which is not Tyneside one claim which is reported to have been made. It is known that he joined the army (Coldstream Guards) but absconded commencing a life of crime. Something of a conman, showman and ladies man it is unlikely anyone will establish the nature and extent of his criminality unless it is contained in the records held by the national government. One sources states he was a successfully safe cracker, with Odeon cinemas the main target, part of a gang who were using gelignite as soon as it became available. A family source argued that he was minor and unsuccessful, exaggerating his criminality to impress other criminals and his German captors.

100 Goodman
I hope Gabriel likes my music
These foolish things remind me of you
Moonglow and Bugle Call rag

In Scotland he had been charged with blowing the safe of a Co op but while on bail fled to Jersey where he was eventually caught and imprisoned. All sides in the war, The Americans with the Dirty Dozen, is perhaps the best fiction account. freed convicted criminals with the promise of pardons in the unlikelihood they survived dangerous missions and this is one aspect of the second world war which Government have understandably continued to be coy about. Having discovered that the island had been occupied by Nazi Germany, in true fashion to character, Chapman offered his services as a spy and saboteur and was taken to France for training. He was then parachuted to England to blow a de Havilland Factory. He firsts contacts MI5 who fortunately for him had prior knowledge of the mission, otherwise he would have been apprehended and shot as a traitor. Instead after interrogation it was decided to use him as a double agent and he was returned to Germany via Lisbon. The intention was a suicide assassination of Hitler as Chapman believe he could get close through his German spy handler. Explosions at the de Havilland factory were faked and Chapman claimed to have been awarded the Iron Cross although it is suggested that more likely it was the War Merit Cross, which in my view is neither here or there.

100 Goodman
Jam Session and Goodbye my Love
I want to be Happy
Rosetta

There is no doubt that returning to Germany was a very brave act. He was sent to Oslo Norway to train German spies where he had a relationship with a local girl to whom he became formally engaged, Dagmar Lahlum who as a young woman joined the Norwegian resistance and gained intelligence by going with Germans to their nightspots and after taking up with Chapman she was labelled a German whore by her community as he was thought to be German. He officially recruited her to MI5 but told her to keep the true nature of their association secret. After the war Chapman abandoned her and she was charged as part of the 1947 treason trials and given a fine, and is said never to have recovered from Chapman’s treatment of her. The Norwegians never knew of her true position and following her death from Parkinson’s disease in 1999 a nice discovered unsent letters to Chapman which she destroyed. The truth of her relationship and position only came to light after the release of previously secret British Papers.

100 Goodman
Sing Sing Sing and Roll’em
Life goes to a party
Lullaby in Rhythm

Chapman was then sent back to England this time to find out the location of the dropped V1 and V 2 rockets. He was used by the British to send false information which led to the rockets being sent to unpopulated areas and to being shot down. Chapman was a mercenary throughout receiving money from the Germans, £1000 he was allowed to keep and a £5000 payment as a kind of retirement gift to go straight after the war. While this was a significant amount of money at the time it is suggested it was used on high living and it was feared he would return to crime, which to some extent he did, with MI5 providing character references to offer a degree of protection. He also published several fictional works as well as an autobiography followed by a biography after his death in 1999 and the availability of former secret papers to evaluate his version of events. He married and ran a Health Farm at one point with his wife. He said to have had countless relationships some of which led to pregnancies. He also maintained contact with his German handler after the war as well as his British

100 Goodman
Wrapping it up and Bumble Bee stomp
And the Angels Sings
Opus 3/4

This brings me to the 1966 Film Triple Cross with a well cast Christopher Plummer as Chapman, Yul Brynner his German handler and Rory Schneider as his German lover and Trevor Howard his British link. The film has Brynner as an aristocratic career officer who is shot for his part in the failed Hitler assassination plot as the film ends. Plummer is seen winking at the street wise policeman who first believed in him and then suspected he was a double agent as he leaves for England. Chapman is said to have been disappointed with the film and it would be interesting to learn why as his confident and attractive risk taking personality came through. He had been a criminal who became a mercenary, but in the end what he did saved lives and that has to be remembered as it appeared to be by homeland security.

Sunday also marked the return of the delicious Lark Rise to Candleford in which an Oxford City Journalist visits the Lark Rise to tells the Timmins Family they are beneficiaries to a legacy of £120, He befriends Laura who shows him her diary of observations which he uses to paint a devastating picture of the village and of Candleford betraying her trust and the friendship of the Timmins family.

The prospects also threaten the couple as Robert does not want to lave the village to run his own business in Candleford but goes along because he thinks this is what his wife wants while she is supporting the idea because it will enable him to do the work he has always wanted to do, but is equally dreading leaving the village as do the rest of the family. They have resolved to remain, which is just as well when they find that their share is only a part share which comes to less than £10 if accepted without going litigation. Meanwhile the Pratt sisters have had a sale and one has used the funds to buy one of the new fangled showers. Lay preacher Thomas Brown, the postman. has settled down to married life with his school teacher wife under the impression that she will conceive a child if they get up to pray seven times a night. He is led to the light by Twister Turrell who has seen wife Margaret dancing naked in the night, no doubt under the influence of his wife Queenie who he advises Thomas he once cause doing likewise in solicitude to the pagan Gods. Back at the post office once the centre of Candleford Life, Minnie Maude continues to find it difficult to tell the truth if it puts her in a bad light and when pressed to always do so by Dorcus Lane she suggests that Dorcus admit she wants James’s son to call her mother and he likewise. This moves the relationship onto a closer footing

I was also struck that so much of the Morse plot did not matter, so much of the enjoyment was the character of Morse and his interaction with his work assistant Lewis, together with the sights of Oxford City and the County. I must spend more than a night there next summer.

1857 A surfeit of TV -Babylon 4. X Files, NCIS. Irma La Douce. Ivana Trump La Douce

The weather continues to be freezing with small flakes of snow falling layer upon layer but only creating a blanket of inches until overnight on Sunday morning when there was something of a thaw as the temperature here in the north east arose more than the midlands or south. This was unexpected as according to forecasts more snow with drifts should arrived over next 24 hours. So it is too early to believe a breakthrough has occurred. Yesterday it was - minus 10 when I got up and did not improve much during the day, some 21-22 Fahrenheit rising to 26-27 still below freezing.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Lets Dance and Riding High
Moten Swing
and Nice work if you can get it

I had been remiss about the plants outside having not prepared for winter before the cold weather but yesterday brought the containers and pots as much under cover as much as I could. The damage has been long done I fear with the earth frozen solid and solid ice in the base water holders. It was dispiriting as the continuing cold which brought back the sniffles as the day progressed into night. I decided to try and conserve fuel by going to bed earlier and staying later but the plan failed miserably as I awoke around four unable to sleep or become comfortable again because of a blocked nose so had to rise, make some coffee which I then drank only a little and played games against the computer for a couple of hours with the heat on, which I turned off again on going back to bed around 7 and then sleeping for just two and a have hours, but it was a good sleep and I now feel refreshed, psychologically happier with the thaw, suggesting it is not going to be a repeat of 1947. However it could be lull according to the forecast with heavy snow everywhere. The 10 am news featured that the situation in France and Germany is worse with the army on standby. This is no consolation

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Vibraphone Blues
Sheik of Araby
Peckin and Sunny Disposish

Season 2 of Babylon 5 has ended with my view that this is the best science fiction series todate confirmed. Episode 21 ‘Comes the Inquisitor’ is the first time that the series strayed off course with a divertissement which involved Jack the Ripper having been taken by the Vorlons and turned into the Inquisitor, someone who is used over the centuries test those who might stand against the Shadows should they rise again. His target is Delenn, and by association, Commander Sheridan and he subjects them to physical and psychological force. Despite the spurious need to embroider a well written tale by introducing a notorious historical figure, the verbal interrogation is excellent going through the various motives which often governs the belief in individual superiority over the judgement and experience of others. It is always desirable to severely question anyone who presumes to know what is good for others, especially those with idealistic or dangerous Missions which can put the safety and welfare of others at great risk, and yet without such individuals a society will degenerate until it is overtaken by stronger forces whose ways may be worse. Delenn and Sheridan pass the sternest of tests and prove that they are the right people in the right place at the right time.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Nagaski
Whispers in the dark
St Louis Blues
and Life goes to a Party




G’Kar starts to purchase weapons from funds raised by those of his race onboard the space station but has to do so at exorbitant rates. His leadership is questioned by those contributing and he seeks help from Sheridan, who uses the Rangers to find out about the family of one of those marooned on the space station and when they are able to enclose a visual message, he and the others accept the leadership of G’Kar, Sheridan gets wind that G’Kar is using the station to buy arms and uses Garibaldi to provide a solution which will enable the work of G’Kar to continue without directly involving the space station and its official neutrality.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Sugarfoot Stomp and Moonglow
I’m a Ding Dong Daddy
and I haven’t anyone but you

In the last episode of the second series The Fall of Night, the Sheridan faces his greatest challenge to date. There is evidence that the Centauri, buoyed by their successful slaughter of the Narn World with the help of the Shadows and the use of illegal weapons of mass destruction, have started to attack outposts of the Drazi and Pak’ma’ra who protest to Sheridan and who then reports to Earth. When earth sends high level members of the Ministry of Peace, Sheridan assumes that they have come to objectively report on the position. However the visitors are to try and defuse the situation and avoid Earth being drawn into the conflict until a non aggression treaty can be signed by Earth and the Centauri at the expense of everyone else.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Bumble Bee Stomp
Down South Camp Meeting
That Naughty Waltz and Sweet Leilani

Unknown to them Sheridan has been contacted by the only Narn fighting ship to escape the Centauri and Shadows blitz and which was in need of repairs and supplies. He offers help through the neutrality of the space station but when the news reaches the visitors they contact earth and order that the whereabouts of the Narn ship is disclosed. Sheridan refuses and maintains his position when a Centauri fighting craft arrives threatening to attack the station. The Commander orders the station and its fighters to be prepared to respond to any attempt to prevent the Narn spacecraft from leaving via the hyperspace link. When the Centauri ship opens fire Sheridan has no alternative but to respond. He destroys the Centauri warship and the Narn vessel escapes, much to the horror of the Ministry of Peace and Earth Government. However as Sheridan was right to take the action in the circumstances he is let off with a severe warning and an order to apologise in a public way to the Centauri government through Ambassador Mollari. The Centauri needed the neutrality of Earth at the time with the historical parallel of Germany in World War II and the British policy of Appeasement.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Bumble Bee Stomp
Down South Camp Meeting
That Naughty Waltz and Sweet Leilani

When Sheridan goes to eat humble pie at a reception he is the subject of a bomb attack while travelling in an overhead monorail where the reception is being held and he falls into a deep area of space within the station only to be rescued by Kosh who exits his suit. This is a symbolic gesture with everyone seeing Kosh in the form the Vorlons are willing to show with only Sheridan and Delenn seeing the true creature, angel like in the common depiction of the concept. Others see him as a manifestation of their Gods and all except the Centauri see what happens as an indication of Hope in the dark times ahead. Londo says he saw nothing leaving open the possibility that this was so or it was in a form which only reinforces his growing anxiety about the course being taken. This is an anxiety shared by Vir, his assistant, with that of Delenn’s assistant and they agree to meet for a drink and a casual chat on a regular basis.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Vieni Vieni and Sometimes I’m Happy
Always
When Buddha Smiles

The assistant to the Minister is a member of Nightwatch, which I thought was the name given to the group, including Sheridan and his senior officers, convinced that the former President had been assassinated with a view to installing a puppet replacement for the Psi Corps and their supporters, to defend those out to destroy democracy and develop an autocratic police state. In fact this episode confirms that Nightwatch is in effect the undercover secret police network of spies and informers set up on behalf of the new regime. An approach to Ivanova is rejected out of hand and others are also find their previous support challenged when tittle tattle it is used to arrest anyone who criticises the regime or expresses concerns about what is happening.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Minnie the Moocher’s Wedding day
Laughing at Life and Running Wild
You’ve turned the tables on me

Starfury fighter pilot Keffer who survived the experience of an encounter with a Shadow craft has his concerns reinforced by another pilot and then goes on his own to investigate. Before he and his craft are destroyed he manages to get a visual of the Shadows’ craft broadcast and this is picked up by a news station which relays around the universe. Thus the existence of the Shadows is known by the public and the attempts by Delenn, Sheridan and Kosh to prevent disclosure until there has been greater preparation to build a defence alliance has ended. The die is now cast.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Darktown Strutter’s Ball
My Gal Sal and Bugle Call Rag
Mama, that Moon is here again

The episode does raise some questions about the integrity of aspects of the story. Until this episode the impression has been given that space within the station was at a premium with the main transfer between levels by elevator. In a previous episode the Commander and Ivanova were to be charged rent for the proportion of their private quarters larger than other staff Although in fact the impression until then is that all the Ambassador and senior staff have the same accommodation space area. All the gardens, restaurants and bars are also modest in size although there has been reference to orchards and other areas for cultivation for the station population of a quarter of million. The only reason for such a large space where the apology is to take place and the overhead monorail is to fit the role of Kosh and the form he takes with its different impact on races and individuals. It was also my understanding that Kosh and other Vorlons can only exist in their special suits for a brief period and that otherwise they needed an especially controlled atmosphere which humans could only enter wearing protected space suits. What happens in this episode is therefore a puzzle, but does not reduce the overall excellence of the series.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Clarinet Marmalade and Time on my hands
Stardust and In the Shade of the old Apple Tree
When I first left school and went out to work I exerted my independence by going out in central London in the evenings after work. Buying a half season ticket for the Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall was one example and joining work a colleague and his friends for visits to Traditional Jazz clubs in and around Soho was another. I supported the repertory Theatre at Croydon and Concerts of USA Jazz musicians but visits to central London Theatre land were infrequent. One venture was the musical Irma La Douce. This was a Parisian musical first performed in Paris in 1956 and brought to the West End in 1958 and New York in 1960. The story is that of a Prostitute who is befriended by a Lawyer/Policeman who becomes her Pimp after a fight in which he rescues her from the existing man who becomes more violent and greedy. Nestor falls in love and cannot stand that she spends her evenings and nights serving a wide range of clients, despite the lifestyle this brings. He devises a plan to pretend to be an old wealthy client who insists on two visits a week paying 500 francs each time on the understanding she has no other clients. In order to fund the visits he has to sneak out at night and undertake heavy work in the Paris Markets, returning exhausted before she wakes and wanting to enjoy her days off. This leads to tension and her belief that he is seeing other women when she catches him returning home very tired one morning.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Benny Sent Me
Everybody Loves My Baby
Moonlight on the Highway and Josephine

This leads Irma to seeking solace with the older client and trying to persuade him to take her as his mistress. Nestor decides it is time to depose his arrival and hides the clothing and disguises in the River Seine, spotted by the former pimp who has been trailing Nestor who was seen with the money which the older man was to have paid Irma. Although the body is not found this is sufficient evidence to convict Nestor and he is sent to prison despite the defence of Crime Passionel. He escapes and returns recreating the role of the elderly client in order to convince the police there has been a miscarriage of justice so he can marry and live happy ever after with Irma who gives birth shortly after the ceremony. The show had ten numbers in each half and starred Keith Mitchell as Nestor and Elizabeth Seal as Irma. It won seven Tony awards including best musical and best actress in a musical.

Benny Goodman Radio Broadcasts 1937
Killer Diller an Someday Sweetheart
Caravan
Goodbye


I cannot remember if I have ever seen the 1963 film, a non musical with a core by Andre Previn touching on the main theme of the stage production. If I did may have quickly switched off because the film without the singing is a nonsense and a mixture of Inspector Clouseau and Guys and Dolls with Jack Lemmon as Nestor and Shirley McClain as Irma. The local hang out is Chez Moustache and the wealthy client is Lord X from the UK. The Propriety of the bar announces that in past roles he has been many things including an attorney who acts for Nestor and a doctor who then delivers the baby at the wedding. He arranges the prison escape using thin handkerchiefs after Nestor is able to wrench open the bar of his cell which happens to go down to the street. The owner adds, that’s another story to each of his incarnations. At the end of the film the last man to leave the church is none other than Lord X while Nestor is with Irma and his child, Moustache adds, that is another story. Fortunately a sequel was not created.

Benny Goodman 1 Mazhel
Mahzel and Tattletale
Eight, Nine and Ten
The best things in Life are free

I have been dipping in and out of the 4th and 5th years of the X files and when suddenly we are offered the first season untitled pilot in which Dana Sculley is assigned to work with agent Fox Mulder, pronounced Molda, in order to separately report on his work from a sceptical and scientific basis. At her appointment interview there is the Silent man smoking a cigarette who appears to represents the enemy throughout the series until the final episodes. The first assignment is to visit Oregon where a number of former High School young people have died or ended up in the local Mental Asylum having gone into the woods to celebrate graduation. One of these is Billy Miles who appears to be in a catatonic condition and is revealed to be the son of local Detective Miles who discourages the investigators from visiting the site where events occurred. The daughter of the County medical examiner is revealed to have attended the graduation Party and her father appears to be in league with the Police and other in covering up what happened.

Benny Goodman 1 Mazhel
Dizzy Fingers and You brought a new love to me
Close as pages in a book
Sweetheart of all my Dreams


Mulder insists on having one the coffin of one victim examined and finds remains which appear to be that of an alien. It also noticed that the two in the hospital have marks on their back and the body in the grave an implant in their nostril. An attempt to examine remains of other victims is thwarted and a fire attempts to destroy evidence at Sculley’s motel room. When they go to the site one time there is a reappearance of the bright light which we the audience have experienced earlier in the episode with a mysterious figure in the distance and too far away in the darkness to identify. They work out that Miles, the son is being directed at night to break away from the hospital and he responsible for bringing the victims to the woods and this includes the daughter of chemical examiner who vanishes when the white light appears and then vanishes leaving the boy normal with no marks on his back The boy explains under hypnosis that aliens abducted him and his classmates when they were in the woods at the Graduation party, Mulder submits the evidence of the nostril implant to his superiors although other case files goes missing. In the Pentagon the Cigarette smoking man puts the implant in a box in an giant room filled with row upon row of boxes in storage units suggesting that this is but one but of hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence of evidence. The Pilot programme met with some success in the USA but did not immediately become a major mainstream national.

Benny Goodman 1
Two Little fishes and Five Loaves
Gotta be this or that and Love walked in
June is busting out all over

I had mixed feelings when the next episode of the first season of the X Files followed. Did this mean I was committed to watching the whole nine years back to back? “Deep Throat” is also about aliens or is it, and builds on the alleged Rosswell sightings and acquisition of a spaceship in 1947. Mulder is interested in investigating the case of an airforce Colonel who has disappeared for several months after getting into a state and being taken away by colleagues. Mulder is warned off the investigation before leaving by Deep Throat, someone who is to reappear and draws on the Deep Throat character in All the President’s Men, the book and film of the two journalists who broke the Watergate break-in story. Mulder and Sculley then find that the airbase is not any map. He makes enquiries with the local flying saucer watchers and is shown a photograph of a three pointed craft and they encounter a couple of young lovers who have a way into the airbase from where they watch mysterious aircraft of the kind in the photograph perform extraordinary aerobatics, travel at incredible speed and hover still.

Benny Goodman 1
Aint Misbehaving
Its only a paper Moon and My head says yes
How Little we know
I’m going to love that guy.

They then find that the missing Colonel has returned although his wife claims the man is different and Mulder finds that he has forgotten some of the basics of flying airforce jets. The case has to be closed but before leaving Mulder makes a visit to the Airbase where he is picked up and subjected to some treatment which makes him forget what he has seen. Some 6.9 million households were reported to have watched this episode in he USA, more than subsequent episodes in the first series


Benny Goodman 2
Mean to me
Putting on the Ritz
I knew new and Lazy River

Unlike Babylon Five and the X Files there is no grand design or master story to NCIS where the programme’s success arises from the interaction between the team of characters with the aging former Illya Keruakin, David McCullum, is the best known face from the past who plays the forensic doctor and psychological profiler Ducky - Dr Donald Mallard. The operational head of the homeland national unit Leroy Jethro Gibbs played by Mark Hammon who has a good TV career beforehand including a four episode spell in the West Wing. They are well supported by the Gothic Abigail-Abby Scuto -Pauline Perrette, forensic back room genius, and special agent Timothy McGhee (Sean Murray) the methodical and systematic but at times creative geek with the constant interplay between one night stand action man Tony DiNozzo(Michael Wetherly who has some insight into his behaviour and is exceptional at his job. All the agents including the field boss are in awe of Mosad placement Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) who speaks a dozen languages as well as being a markswoman who also uses her swiftness of movement and manual techniques to disable and if necessary kill. After a series of devastating incidents the boss leaves the unit to work with his hands and beach Cantina with his former mentor and work colleague in a Mexican hideaway. However when first Ziva David is framed he returns to clear her name and shortly afterwards he and his team also need all their skills to clear Tony from another frame although in my book the obvious suspect was the sudden appearance of a forensic assistant to Abby.


Benny Goodman 2
Sweet Sue Just You
Music Maestro Please
Making Whoopee and Cherokee

Parts of the Big Brother House nightly reviews are worth watching especially after the arrival of the multi millionaire 60 year old grandmother Ivana Trump, the former Olympic Skier and fashion model and wife of Donald. She has married twice since, with a legal separation from her last husband 24 years her junior and who has appeared in the Italian Celebrity Survivor show. Stephanie Beecham and the other USA contingent were suitable impressed although some of the young Brits had no idea. The first candidate setting himself up for eviction is the Swedish singer with a great voice but dubious social habits from smoking to bed sharing within the first week of arrival.

Benny Goodman 2
The Maid of Cadiz
Love is Just around the corner
I know what you know and the Bannister Slide

Sunday was a good day for TV with the film Tripple Cross, a new episode of Lark Rise to Candleford and of Hornblower. and the second in the new series of Wallander in which he and a former policeman explain the predicament of all those wedded to a work role which comes to an end suddenly because of a major error, in one instance sacked, and in the other filled with self doubt and regret about continuing. It was brilliant and will be the main subject for tomorrow with also reference to a Morse.


Benny Goodman 2
Benny’s Boogie
How High the Moon

1856

I bought myself three Christmas presents, a beautifully bound 1977 first edition of two John Galsworthy series of three novels, The Forsyte Saga and a Modern Comedy 1052 pages, together with the DVD set of the 2002 and 2003 Granada TV series in six 90 mins episodes, plus Take Care of Your a brilliant visual, tactile and audio reminder of the Sophie Calle work.

I begin with book 1 of the Forsyte Saga A Man of Property which contains a helpful family tree. Joylon Forsyte the earliest recorded ancestor was born in 1741 possible an upper middle class farmer who had four sons and a daughter. One son became a Mayor and another married the daughter of a country solicitor, and this eldest son also Joylon, a builder has who are the generation who have roles in the saga.

The eldest is Anne 1799 1866, who becomes a formidable a spinster wielding considerable influence on family standards and activities.

The eldest son also called old Joylon, at kind heart but upholder of the family’s Victorian moral standards 1806-1892 whose wife dies in 1874 before the break up of the first marriage of their only child, a son, Young Joylon 1847-1920, a visual painter and who with his father are two of the main characters in the Saga. Old Joylon made his money from Tea and married the daughter of a barrister.

His brother, James 1811 1901, founded a firm of Park Lane, London based solicitors where he is joined by his eldest son Soames 1855-1926 also two of the main character of the series. Soames has three sisters, Winifred who marries Montague Dartie, an adventurer, while the other sisters remain spinsters, Rachel 1861 and Cicely 1865. Soames is to marry Irene, who together with Young Joylon and their children form the core contrasting and rival characters of the Saga.

However the rest of the grandfather Joylon’s ten children also have roles. There is Swithin an Estate and Land Agent born 1891, a bachelor living at Hyde Park Mansions. Roger 1813 is into house property has four children who I shall introduce later along with those of Young Joylon and Soames. Julia Aunt ‘Juley’ lives from 1814 to 1905 and her marriage is short lived as her husband dies and she returns to live with her spinster sister Aunt Hestor 1815 1907. They live with another bachelor brother, a publisher and investor, Timothy in the Bayswater Road. There are two other brothers who marry and whose six and five children respectively are to have roles of varying importance.

The Forsyte family are described by Galsworthy as upper middle class with the full panoply of London Houses, carriages and servants and where every important family and season event was marked with a family gathering at which the main course was a saddle of beef, when they presented themselves in their finery and yet the author warns on the first page, no branch had a liking for another and within branches there was often little sympathy expressed between its members.

Having been brought up in the home of six aunts, evacuated to the home of seventh during the second world war and with four brothers, one of whom I can only remember meeting, this is something I can understand.

I commenced the reading after watching the first of the 6 episode 2 DVD set which appears to have its own approach to story development and appear to create action substance before that of the first book. Obviously as I read further what happens in the first part of the DVD may be referred to in the first book, A man of property”, but for the present the differences are disconcerting and suggest that watching and reading in parallel may not be the good idea which I first considered.

The DVD begins with the relationship between the artist young Joylon, his first wife and daughter and his father old Joylon. The grand daughter June has a nanny and this nanny and Young Joylon spend much time together at the bedside of the little girl who is ill. During their Vigil Young Joylon has sketched portraits of the Nanny and of his daughter but none of his wife. We are thrust immediately into the central dilemma of members of the Forsyte family.

They uphold the great English Victorian values. Foremost is making money with everyone measured by their property and income. Marriage is not about love but how much money can be brought into the extending family. The family has roots and therefore breeding and social status are also important when it comes to judging prospective new partners for family members. Great importance is attached social behaviour and appearance,

The roles of men and women are also clearly and separately defined as it is between family members and their servants or those out of whom they makes their fortunes. As the author points out early on in the first book, the location of their homes and businesses address is also important including the shortness of time it takes to reach the Gentleman’s Club. Who you know is important in sustaining social position. The family is upper middle class but not aristocratic because they do not have country houses and estates, yet. They do not appear to be part of the Court or national politics, although this may change as I read further.

Young Joylon’s wife, Frances, nee Crisson, the daughter of a colonel, senses that the relationship between her artistic husband and the nanny has become closer than the marital one but is uncertain how far it has progressed and she insists that the appointment in terminated. Young Joylon accepts this and tells the young woman she must leave but will be given a character. Being the creative he cannot resist disclosing the real reason for her going or his true feelings and the nanny also reveals her true feelings. Being the man he is, he is not the conventional Victorian of means who takes a mistress, while remaining with his wife and family, as his father suggests to him when he confronts his son about the situation after he has moved out of the family home to their club, and where father and son had enjoyed times together in the past. There is also a scene in which his wife pleads with him to stay because she continues to want him. We learn from the first book that Joylon was prone to fall in an out of love and in and out of passion and which at the time had to be translated into engagements and marriage, traditionally a formal affair spread over time where meetings would be chaperoned and then there would be an introduction to all the members of the family for their consideration to assess if the individual would fit in. Father reminds the son of his previous infatuations and passions and that having taken the vows of marriage it should be life, and what of his daughter June, and will he abandon everything for this impulsive wildness? The answer is yes and father tells his only child, I now have no son. Young Joylon goes to his club and then sets up home with the nanny. Old Joylon remains in his palatial London house.

The TV series then makes a jump of decade to introduce us to Irene who is living with her recently widowed mother, her father was a Professor, on the South Coast at Bournemouth. Mother and daughter are in mourning, restricted to walking the pier in the mornings and their attendance at a classical concert in the evening is open to question among their society as premature. It is here that Soames on a visit to a friend is immediately attracted to the beautiful Irene. Following the disgrace of his first cousin Young Joylon, Soames is now the respected head of his generation under pressure to find himself a wife and to carry on the family heritage with the birth of son.

The TV series had held a family dinner party earlier at which we are introduced to Winifred, the eldest of the three sister’s of Soames, who is also a woman like Joylon to put passion before convention and appearance. The party is to mark her engagement to Montague Dartie an adventurer, gambler and womaniser and where Soames and his father have decided not to provide the kind of dowry he had anticipated. Their eldest son Val will in the future marry the daughter of Young Joylon, Holly. Disgraced Young Joylon in addition to the daughter June from his first marriage has Jolly born 1879 before Holly, born 1881.

Young Joylon played in the first TV series by the much loved by the public Kenneth Moore, had to set up home in St John’s Wood which borders Regent’s Park and is now recognised for the national home of English cricket, Lords. When I purchased my first home it was at Teddington close to Bushey Park, Hampton Court and Teddington Lock in 1967 it cost £5000 and was sold for £7500 three years later in 1967, reached a value of £640000 around 2003/04, or at least its semi detached twin was on the market at that price. The same property situation in St John’s Wood would have cost in the region of £900000, such is the difference location can make, with size of plot an important consideration as it has had an extensive but narrow width garden. A property in the North East Tyneside- and Wearside location in a good area could be purchased for a third of that at Teddington and more like a quarter of that in St Johns Wood and although he differential has reduced it is of the same order now as then..

Returning to Bournemouth which I know from having attended a conference there for a few days in the late 1970’s, Soames having made the acquaintance of Irene and learning of the morning walks meets them the following morning, and seeing the attraction, especially when Soames makes another visit soon after, mother goes walking without her daughter in order to speak with the man, at least a decade older, to question him about his means and prospects and to advise that following the premature death of her husband they have only been left with their middle class home and £60 a year, sufficient to employ a servant but restricting their lives or to provide dowry for her daughter.

Soames presses his interest and is invited to the family home where he proposes marriage and is rejected, much to mother’s consternation, but she pushes her daughter into accepting an invitation for both of them to visit Soames at the family home and there a party is held to introduce Irene to the Forsyte family where there is great excitement and enthusiasm because at last it looks as if Soames has set about finding a wife to further the family line. That she and her mother are poor by Forsyte standards is not regarded as an obstacle in the circumstances.

Irene then shocks some of the older members of the family however by agreeing to waltz with Winifred at which Soames egged on by Dartie intervenes and it he that is swept off his feet with desire for Irene. Irene refuses his proposal again. Back in Bournemouth, and out of mourning Irene and her mother are at a Tea Dance with a wealthy but rather uncouth self made businessman with £3000 a year makes an inappropriate advance and mother takes her daughter home berating the girl for her refusal to accept Soames, and which in the first novel, we learn that she has refused him, half a dozen times. There is then the crucial scene between Irene and Soames which is to govern the rest of their lives and becomes much of what is to follow.

Irene explains to Soames that she will accept any further proposal of marriage from him on the understanding that should at any time in the future the marriage not work she will be free to depart without impediment. Soames who remains desperate to win his bride will agree to anything and in any event he is full of Victorian Forsyte self confidence that he will be able to make her happy and become in love with him.

Events in the DVD then move forward to June - Young Joylon‘s daughter, who has reached the age of 17 years and has been raised by her grandfather without apparent contact with her father, his wife/mistress and their two children. June’s mother having died had paved the way for Young Joylon to marry Old Joylon is therefore facing life on his own in a big house when June announces her wish to marry Philip Bossiney, an ambitious self confident and opinionated creative architect, earning a modest £100 a year. Old Joylon agrees to the engagement but on the understanding that the marriage will only take place when her beau as an income of £400. This provides an opportunity for another Forsyte party at which Bossiney is introduced, attended by Soames and Irene, Winifred and Dartie, the infirm old Aunt Anne who comments that Bossiney is no match for June, together with other members of the family excluding Joylon and his wife. Irene and Bossiney are immediately attracted.

Relationships between Soames and Irene have become even more strained and cool than they were at the time of the engagement. She tolerates his love making at night which he sees as his rightful duty and without regard to her feelings and likings. She is taking steps to avoid having a child. When Soames forbids her to attend an exhibition of art work with June and Bossiney she announces she is moving into separate bedrooms. Soames is horrified as he knows where this is leading and that it will become the subject of common gossip promoted by the servants. It was customary for those attending social function to go by their own carriage as well as taking a lady’s maid who would then gather below stairs while the party took place in the above stairs dinning and drawing rooms. There is a scene a church where the family gather and the situation between Irene and Soames, her failure to produce an heir is the main subject of conversation between family members.

Having enjoyed the DVD I then assumed that the book would begin with the same events in similar chronology and was taken aback to finding this it opens with the party to introduce Bossiney to the family although earlier events are alluded briefly. There is also a moment in the TV series that Old Joylon sees his son and nearly approaches him. In the book he finds out his son is at the club when he makes a rare visit and makes his way to him, explaining his loneliness now that June is on her way into a marriage he wonders what to do about his home and whether to move into rooms eliminating the need for his six servants and the food they has to pay for, I assume Butler/personal assistant, Footman/doorman Cook/housekeeper, a maid or two. Kitchen and household, and then the Coachman.
When Old Joylon dies, the Young Joylon approaches Soames and his father, the Executors for the estate fort eh capital to buy a larger home and they refuse, saying they will stick to the terms of the Will although the dislike Soames has for Joylon and his approach to life is more than evident.

As I left the reading to another day I was struck by the intentions of the authors and TV production team to make the readers and view sympathetic to Young Joylon, Winifred, Irene and June and Bossiney, artistic, passionate individualists wanting to following their feelings and instincts and for us to have less sympathy, opposition and even condemnation of Soames and his father, Old Joylon and Young Joylon’s first wife, Irene’s mother, the undoubted scoundrel Dartie and the spinster arts. Yet I have considerable sympathy, born from understanding and experience for all of them. This is because I the creative artist know all about instinct, passion and belief but not only understand the values and context in which others with so different outlooks hold with integrity, as well as hypocrisy. This is a constant dilemma and a conflict, the source of my insight and creativity as well as the self doubt and self criticism