I was invited back to my old workplace last week because a recent retiree from its library service was to be presented, unbekownst to her, with an Imperial Service Medal for meritorious service.
Her closest colleagues had advised that she would not want a big fuss to be made, so just a few past and present compadres were asked along to an informal presentation and I was chuffed to be one of them.
The oration (albeit written and not spoken)
Although, formally, the medal is awarded for meritorious service, the reverse side of the medal is inscribed For Faithful Service, (so that’s what FFS stands for in text talk😉) but, as well as the inscription, the reverse bears the image of a bloke ‘in the altogether’, which begs the question as to exactly what service was rendered? I suspect that, as always, what happens in the library will stay in the library!
So, in honour of Jacqueline IMS, I give you…
There once was a woman, quite headstrong, Whose work in a library was lifelong, But she did it so well That on her farewell She received the Imperial gong!”.
Before The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a novel, film or video game, it was an original radio series and, to my mind, it was better than any of the subsequent adaptations. No-one ever came close to surpassing Peter Jones’ radio narration as The Book or to Stephen Moore’s depressive voicing of Marvin the paranoid android.
The HHGTTG original book cover
Stephen Moore died earlier this month. As someone who remembers the original series and its phenomenal impact, I think his Marvin was the most quotable of characters. I’ve often used the robot’s phrase “Why stop now just when I’m hating it” and occasionally wished I’d had the courage to tell someone “It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level” or “I wish you’d just tell me instead of trying to engage my enthusiasm”.
Stephen Moore and the TV series’ realisation of Marvin.
(For those that don’t know the Hitchhiker storyline, a human, Arthur Dent, is saved by Ford Prefect, an alien researcher for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, just before the earth is demolished to make way for an intergalactic highway. In escaping, they become stowaways aboard a Vogon spacecraft. When they are found they are subjected to a recital of Vogon poetry, a form of torture, before being cast into the void, which is where their adventures really start.)
Anyway, to misquote Marvin: “Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to write a limerick. Call that job satisfaction, ’cause I don’t”.
Farewell to the paranoid android And the actor that firstly deployed A robotically aesthetic Depressed cybernetic, Now they’re cast to a dark cosmic void!
We have a huge secure field in Aberdeen at Hazlehead Park, known locally as the dog field. Dogs whose recall is a bit iffy can safely be let of their leads to run and play with other dogs without the risk of them running onto roads or towards non-dog-loving people.
Usually the dogs all get along and enjoy play fights and just socialising generally. Occasionally, though, one or two get a bit uppity,
One, a huge goldendoodle called Dudley, is just a bit too boistrous for my pooch, Callie, who tries to hide from him. Yesterday, Dudley nearly got his come-uppance from a grumpy labrador called Ollie – Dudley had gone a bit too far. Fortunately it was all bark and not much bite, if any.
Here’s the result…
A goldendoodle called Dudley Turned out to be not quite so cuddly He was so full of pep That the slightest misstep And it all could have ended quite bloodily.
My four-month-old border collie pup (@calliebordeaux) has started teething. In fact she has just lost her first tooth in a puppy play fight with a five-month-old spaniel called Molly.
Her lower right canine has since gone missing in action!
The two pups meet regularly on their morning walks and seem to take it as read that they’ll have yet another scrap until they finally settle which of them is the higher ranked. I suspect Callie will prevail as, to quote Molly’s owner, “She’s a feisty one, isn’t she?”.
There once was a young border collie Who thought it would be rather jolly To battle it out In a no-holds-barred bout With a spaniel puppy called Molly
… and there it was, gone!
(All fights were play fights and no pups were hurt in the writing of this limerick!)
The Third Man, Britain’s finest film noir, celebrated its 70th anniversary this year and a restored version of it was recently screened by the British Film Institute in UK cinemas.
The viewing was preceded by an introduction to the zither and the soundtrack for which the film is renowned (by Cornelia Mayer) and was followed by a Q&A with Angela Allen, the only surviving member of the film crew, and Hossein Amini, a modern-day screenwriter. (You can read about ‘behind the scenes’ here.)
Mayer and Allen were amusing, informative and entertaining. Amini was less so, often commenting on the basis of assumptions rather than fact, only to be shot down by Allen (or, in the words of Max Boyce, “I know ‘cos I was there”). Amini unintionally irritated me by referring to film noirs instead of films noir; in my view an unforgiveable mistake from a man of the movies!
The film showcases the blackmarket and air of gloom in post-war Vienna and, unlike earlier DVD releases or TV showings, the restored version of the film is pin-sharp and the narrative can be heard clearly above the background music; in fact the audio is superb.
Allen clearly held one of the principal actors, Orson Welles, in contempt. His late appearance meant that distant shots were often of a stand-in rather than Welles. His refusal to venture into the city’s sewers more than once also meant that a stand-in had to be used (not so much a third man as a turd man😂) and any close-ups from the sewer scenes were shot in a reconstructed stage set in London. (Actually, the sewers at the point of filming were not foul-water sewers, so there was no stench; it was more like an underground river).
Allen gave us snippets – the famous scene from street level of the mortally wounded Harry Lime’s fingers reaching up through a grate to escape the sewer was of the director, Carol Reed’s, digits and not those of Welles – and was authoritative in saying that Welles was not there for most of the filming, let alone effectively directing much of it as he once claimed.
Alida Valli as the lovelorn Anna, once touted as the new Ingrid Bergman, shows in her performance just why that claim was made. Wikipedia tells us that she gave up that epithet by rejecting Holywood and focusing her career in her native Italy. (BTW her full name was Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenberger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg!) Joseph Cotten as Holly “I haven’t got a sensible name” Martins and Trevor Howard as Major “it’s Calloway-not-Callaghan” are perfect for their rôles and Welles as Harry Lime clearly performed better than he behaved.
Here’s the limerick (based on one of the most famous final scenes in all of filmdom)
Anna’s grief raced hither and thither Now Harry was no longer with her So she made Holly gawk At her funereal walk To the sad parting notes of a zither.
… and in case you want an alternative ending, here’s the one that I originally penned that inspired this post’s header, but later rejected:
As her heartstrings were plucked like a zither.
I referenced The Third Man in an earlier post, and make no excuse for once more including a still from the final scene and my comment that accompanied it:
A long, slow walk to the accompaniment of the haunting refrains of Anton Karas’ zither as Anna decides that a happy ending is far too bourgeois for one of the 20th century’s most pivotal films noir …
… or watch here as Anna walks out of Holly’s life:
Postscript: The Third Man completes a trilogy of classic films noir that I’ve seen on the big screen thus year: a special Valentine’s Day screening of Casablanca, Gilda at Aberdeen’s Granite Noir festival and now The Third Man. A good year for the classics!
Yup, that’s three whole years without missing a single ALAW. Some have been good, some not so good and some, a few, memorable, but as those who remember the TV show of yesteryear will remember, ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’!
There’s no highfalutin mystique To the ‘artless-but-enticing’ technique And occasionally sublime Meter and rhyme That brings you A Limerick A Week
A couple of years ago the The Poke‘s website referenced the Eddie Mair interviews that skewered Boris Johnson (the UK’s Foreign Secretary at the time). As The Poke then commented, “Mair once called him ‘a nasty piece of work’. Now he’s an ill-informed one”. You can read here what I thought at the time.
And now it seems that David Cameron, the UK’s former Prime Minister, has also shared a few home truths about Johnson. Cameron has written both that “Boris Johnson is a liar who only backed the Leave campaign to help his career” and that he “didn’t believe in [Brexit]”.
So now we have one failed Prime Minister whose right-wing neoliberal policies fertilised the Brexit movement attacking another, a charlatan whose blind ambition has taken sophistry and dissembly about the European Union to a new peak. You couldn’t make it up, could you?
Johnson talks tripe
Johnson, whose previous utterance was that Brexit would be a ‘Titanic success’ (which, given the fate of the Titanic seems prescient in terms of the current unfolding disaster) has now styled himself as The Hulk.
I strongly suspect that Marvel Comics would argue that The Hulk would not have left by the back door, like Johnson did recently, to avoid protesters after meeting Scotland’s First Minister. Neither would The Hulk have cancelled a press conference this week when faced with a handful of middle-aged, middle-class expatriate protesters in Luxembourg. A coward and a sulk.
There once was a stereotype Of a ‘chancer’ whose words were just hype And whose selfish ambition Has brought to fruition The fact that his bullsh*t is tripe!
It’s been an unedifying week for political debate in the UK as Boris Johnson’s attempt to ape the populism of Donald Trump took centre stage. However, his supporting act of Jacob Rees-Mogg took it to a new low, with puerile insults aimed at those who disagreed with him, so much so that, seemingly, one member of his own political party considered him to be an able recruiting sergeant for the opposition. (True and, no doubt, that helped the opposition win the day).
Perhaps that was also due, in part, to his subsequent rather louche display of contempt for proceedings in the House of Common when he lay down across the green benches with, at times, a smug grin on his face whilst listening to a crucial debate on the issue of Brexit.
Rees-Mogg lying down on the job.
Quite rightly that brought fierce criticism from parliamentarians (of all sides) and the public alike. It also inspired this…
A politically right-wing upstart Showed the world that he’s not all that smart, ‘Cos that posh demagogue, Alt-Jacob Rees-Mogg, Had to lie as his plan fell apart!
Firstborn tells me that following an ice skating session, she discovered that unbeknownst to her something had ripped both her leggings and her, ahem, undergarments – torn in a fall, perhaps?
Fortunately, her modesty and dignity were preserved in equal measure by the skirt she was wearing as a top layer. Just as well, really…
She was struck by the ice skaters’ curse And fell, but things soon got worse (Or so she alleges) When the razor sharp edges Of her skates took a slice ‘oot her erse’.
Postscript: Wholly unrelated to this week’s theme, but my puppy, Bordeaux Callie (@calliebordeaux), has been off-colour with ‘the runs’ this week. Still, it inspired this bonus ALAW:
I’ve a wee collie pup who is grand But her bowels just got out of hand. So as decreed by my spouse, She’s now barred from the house ‘Cos my bonzer dog’s doo-da is banned!
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