12.00 The Bach Saint John Passion is being sung in German. The first receipt is for 20 copies of Guardian Newspaper which had printed my article explaining the general reasons why I had prematurely retired from my work, that the creation of generic social workers within social service department had been a major error as well as original way the departments became organised. This arose because so many unqualified men without any experience or ability to manage the child care services had been put in charge and I blame this for much of the criminal violence, physical and sexual which befell children in care between 1971 and 1991. These men did not understand the nature of public child care or the threats to the children within public care as well as within the community and the need for carefully selected dedicated and skilled officers, in practice, staff supervision and management.
It was over a decade before a subsequent a government adopted my recommendation for the recreation of child care departments but under the umbrella of Education Departments and for the social services concerned with adults to be brought under the health services or more closely allied to them.
14.00 Benianimo Gigli was the classical tenor of my childhood adored by my birth and care mothers and whose records were among the first she ever purchased when she was able to afford a wind up gramophone. It is one my regrets that it was sold along with the gramophone when I was a teenager. I managed to find a version of Schubert’s Ave Maria sung by a young chorister for the creation service of my mother, with a few bars for arrival and then a full rendition at the conclusion. I thought of that and of her and my childhood when listening to Gigli version this morning along with Caterine and Torna a Sorrento, where I was to visit and attend the Film Festival in 1965 along with other adventures as part of a tour through Belgium, Germany Austria, the Italy, Switzerland France and home within three weeks in my second car, a Morris Mini estate, the first was the Ford Prefect bought new for my 18th birthday by my care mother from the money she had received from the Industrial Injuries Tribunal, for the loss of an eye at the factory where she worked. There is also the Angus Dei and many other favourites on disk one, I decided on the Brendel before disk 2 as he plays Mozart’s Rondo in A the Sonata in major, in B Flat major and in C Major
14.15. I have completed a seven set first volume of the self employment receipts for 1992 and 1993 after I registered for self employment 9798 9803 and after a coffee commence work on the second.
15.00 A period of silence
17.00 The second volume of self employment records 1992 1993 had been completed 7804-7809 and I place an order for more blue lever arch files at the price of 69 pence plus VAT. There will now be deliveries on Tuesday and Wednesday so I will not be able to go out on either day until the orders have been delivered. I watch a WW2 1951 made film about the use of Frogmen which centres on the relationship between a special operations group who lose their commander officer and the man appointed to replace him, Richard Widmark, and the Chief, played by Dana Andrews, A young Richard Wagner also has a role in the film It is a conventionally told story of the time in which the new leader proves himself and justifies his disciplined and cool approach which puts their mission first but does not ignore the welfare of everyone involved. Afterwards I watch episode 15 of a series on the last six months of World War 2. In this hour long episode Lord Haw Haw is executed by hanging after capture, the battle for Okinawa continues to take it toll on both sides and the Japanese refuse to surrender despite the bombing of cities with the loss of over a quarter million lives of non combatants. The build up towards using the A bomb is also covered, My complaint has always been on the decision to use the bomb on cities and not on unpopulated area first. Before I had studied history, the events which led to First and second World wars and the nature of the regimes in Germany and Russia, I considered the decision to develop the Atomic and then Nuclear weaponry a disaster for humankind, until and then I understood that wanting to know, curiosity, experimentation, testing, problem solving were all inherent parts of the human experience, and that individually and collectively we had to first understand and then learn how to use the forces within the universe constructively and creatively, or perish prematurely by them. There is always no turning back to a different time, but we can and should study past times with the same objectivity and scientific method as we approach the future. Back in 1945 there was an inevitability about what happened, however awful the immediate and long tern consequences. There was no way the Japanese would voluntarily surrender. It was not within their psyche, and it is understandable the Generals and the Politicians feared that to break the Japanese spirit they would have to repeat Iwo Jima and Okinawa inch by inch over its Empire. I now accept that a warning explosion may not have worked, but it should have been tried. That remains my complaint. In its way it was an appropriate film to watch on this day.
19.00. The second meal of the day comprised two Salmon fishcakes of the quality where you can see large flakes of salmon as well as taste with baked beans and a banana.
20.00 The delight of the day was a programme which reminded of the life of Hannah Hauxwell and her present day life in a village in her eighties and with restricted walking ability. I was one of the millions who was first introduced into this simple but remarkable woman who managed a Dales hill farm after her parents died and who at 46 looked much older. In 1972 she was the subject of a documentary Too Long a Winter was designed to show the live of those who worked in the High Pennines. She lived in the house built by her grandfather, without electricity or running water. The impact of the programme was such that the phones of Yorkshire TV were jammed for several days with people making offers of help. A local factory put up the money so that electricity could be brought to the home and she received thousands of letters, from all over the world as the programme was shown. Then twenty years later the original producer Barry Cockcroft and camera man went back for A Winter too many, as she decided it was time to sell up and move into a cottage, but beforehand she was the guest of honour at the Women of the Year Gala. Books about her life were also produced and she was then taken by Cockcroft to Paris, Venice and Sorrento and on holiday to New York. This evening she was shown in her cottage which had become jammed packed with possessions which she admits she is unable to discard. What was evident is that the person who conquered the nation’s hearts several decades before had not changed, and hopefully would enjoy the renewed attention in her life.
21.00 There is a new USA glossy import, a kind of updated Dallas, set in New York. which merit’s no attention, the suicidal daughter who wants to be an actress but cannot act, the son full of angst who is into drugs and gambling, the state attorney general who has national political ambitions but is into his seventh different relationship with a transvestite, the preacher son who won’t recognise in public his illegitimate son, the wife who has tried hide a forty year relationship with the family’s legal adviser and fixer who has recently died in questionable circumstances, and the head of the family, the wealthy influential Man of America who brings in the son of the family Counsellor, now working as a lawyer for the poor and disenfranchised, after the death of his father, (the body is missing from the helicopter whose mechanism appears to have been tampered with). He is married and seduced by the offer of $10 million dollars a year to do his good works, keeping on his practice and staff while he attends to the needs of the family 24/7, and this possibly includes the needs of the daughter, not previously mentioned, who has a torch for the hero, but manages a succession of disastrous relationships with men only after her money and influence of her father. My thought was the he is the son of the family head in this incestuous mish mash designed to appeal to the jaded palettes of the Dallas and Dynasty soap. The hero is an idiot by the way. He seriously proposed that in exchange for becoming the best paid family counsellor fixer in the land he could work office hours, and remain his own master. If it was not Easter I would be inclined to summon a Biblical plague on them. Then at 22,00, the second brilliant find of the evening, a dramatization of the on stage relationship between Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett and of their private lives. Steptoe and Son proved to be an extraordinary successful situation comedy about a Rag and Bone man and his son, watched by 22 million viewers in the UK alone written by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton of Hancock’s Half Hour, What made the programme essential viewing for a third of the nation was the relationship between the two men, touching the fundamentals of all love hate relationships where people have become interdependent but wish they were not. There were eight series of five to eight programmes between 1962 and 1974 plus a final Christmas special making 57 shows, and unusually a radio series followed from the television success, and also two feature films. The on screen relationship reflected something of the lives of the two men, Harry Corbett was born to a military father in Burma, old enough to serve at the end of World War 2, his mother died when he was three and he was raised by an aunt in Manchester. In one telling moment in tonight’s drama documentary the Curse of Steptoe, his first wife, the talented actress Sheila Steafel declares that for a marriage to work at least one of the couple has to be an adult, as their relationship came to an end when he commenced an affair with an actress met in a film which he hoped would enable him to return to serious acting, but where he was pressed into playing someone who had made it from the working class and still retained his roots, a la Michael Caine. From the second marriage he had two children one of whom became an actress. Harry H died of a major heart attack when only 57, 12 years younger than me, frustrated that he was never able to achieve the acting success forecast for him as the British Marlon Brando. While Harry started life with a void, Wilfred Brambell spent the greater part of his life hiding his homosexuality, and finding it difficult to come to terms with this aspect of his life, becoming an alcoholic with the latter affecting his ability to learn lines and keep to schedules. He was in fact only 13 years older than Corbett, but was able to play an older man several decades than his true age appearing in the Quatermass series on 1953 and 1955 and 1984 in between. He was married but separated after his wife had a son by their lodger, Roger,. Even though homosexuality between consenting adults became legalised he avoided the attention and publicity in the UK by becoming an early sex tourist holidaying in Far East, but established a long term relationship to whom he left a substantial sum when he also died within a couple of years of Corbet aged 73. He was given other opportunities including a Broadway Musical which closed after one night. The drama documentary was followed by an episode from the series, the holiday which emphasised the depth of the two acting performances, something which the two actors in the drama documentary did exceptionally well to match but also underlined the exceptional abilities and special interaction of the originals.
01.30 I go to bed concluding it had been a better Good Friday than anticipated, a day which I had become more focussed on the 101.75 work in translating the 200 boxes of material in cupboard store into sets and volumes before the cost of doing so becomes out of my reach.
09.30 For once I have no recollection of getting up during the night but of prolonged dreaming. I know I resisted getting up with light and went back to sleep again, but did I really pass a whole night without needing to rise? If so I will have to examine the ingredients of the day beforehand.
11.00 Just a coffee has helped me to this point. My mobile phone is being difficult and I will get myself up properly, have a brunch and try and find a new replacement phone. My priority of today. And so it was to be and not as I expected.
It was over a decade before a subsequent a government adopted my recommendation for the recreation of child care departments but under the umbrella of Education Departments and for the social services concerned with adults to be brought under the health services or more closely allied to them.
14.00 Benianimo Gigli was the classical tenor of my childhood adored by my birth and care mothers and whose records were among the first she ever purchased when she was able to afford a wind up gramophone. It is one my regrets that it was sold along with the gramophone when I was a teenager. I managed to find a version of Schubert’s Ave Maria sung by a young chorister for the creation service of my mother, with a few bars for arrival and then a full rendition at the conclusion. I thought of that and of her and my childhood when listening to Gigli version this morning along with Caterine and Torna a Sorrento, where I was to visit and attend the Film Festival in 1965 along with other adventures as part of a tour through Belgium, Germany Austria, the Italy, Switzerland France and home within three weeks in my second car, a Morris Mini estate, the first was the Ford Prefect bought new for my 18th birthday by my care mother from the money she had received from the Industrial Injuries Tribunal, for the loss of an eye at the factory where she worked. There is also the Angus Dei and many other favourites on disk one, I decided on the Brendel before disk 2 as he plays Mozart’s Rondo in A the Sonata in major, in B Flat major and in C Major
14.15. I have completed a seven set first volume of the self employment receipts for 1992 and 1993 after I registered for self employment 9798 9803 and after a coffee commence work on the second.
15.00 A period of silence
17.00 The second volume of self employment records 1992 1993 had been completed 7804-7809 and I place an order for more blue lever arch files at the price of 69 pence plus VAT. There will now be deliveries on Tuesday and Wednesday so I will not be able to go out on either day until the orders have been delivered. I watch a WW2 1951 made film about the use of Frogmen which centres on the relationship between a special operations group who lose their commander officer and the man appointed to replace him, Richard Widmark, and the Chief, played by Dana Andrews, A young Richard Wagner also has a role in the film It is a conventionally told story of the time in which the new leader proves himself and justifies his disciplined and cool approach which puts their mission first but does not ignore the welfare of everyone involved. Afterwards I watch episode 15 of a series on the last six months of World War 2. In this hour long episode Lord Haw Haw is executed by hanging after capture, the battle for Okinawa continues to take it toll on both sides and the Japanese refuse to surrender despite the bombing of cities with the loss of over a quarter million lives of non combatants. The build up towards using the A bomb is also covered, My complaint has always been on the decision to use the bomb on cities and not on unpopulated area first. Before I had studied history, the events which led to First and second World wars and the nature of the regimes in Germany and Russia, I considered the decision to develop the Atomic and then Nuclear weaponry a disaster for humankind, until and then I understood that wanting to know, curiosity, experimentation, testing, problem solving were all inherent parts of the human experience, and that individually and collectively we had to first understand and then learn how to use the forces within the universe constructively and creatively, or perish prematurely by them. There is always no turning back to a different time, but we can and should study past times with the same objectivity and scientific method as we approach the future. Back in 1945 there was an inevitability about what happened, however awful the immediate and long tern consequences. There was no way the Japanese would voluntarily surrender. It was not within their psyche, and it is understandable the Generals and the Politicians feared that to break the Japanese spirit they would have to repeat Iwo Jima and Okinawa inch by inch over its Empire. I now accept that a warning explosion may not have worked, but it should have been tried. That remains my complaint. In its way it was an appropriate film to watch on this day.
19.00. The second meal of the day comprised two Salmon fishcakes of the quality where you can see large flakes of salmon as well as taste with baked beans and a banana.
20.00 The delight of the day was a programme which reminded of the life of Hannah Hauxwell and her present day life in a village in her eighties and with restricted walking ability. I was one of the millions who was first introduced into this simple but remarkable woman who managed a Dales hill farm after her parents died and who at 46 looked much older. In 1972 she was the subject of a documentary Too Long a Winter was designed to show the live of those who worked in the High Pennines. She lived in the house built by her grandfather, without electricity or running water. The impact of the programme was such that the phones of Yorkshire TV were jammed for several days with people making offers of help. A local factory put up the money so that electricity could be brought to the home and she received thousands of letters, from all over the world as the programme was shown. Then twenty years later the original producer Barry Cockcroft and camera man went back for A Winter too many, as she decided it was time to sell up and move into a cottage, but beforehand she was the guest of honour at the Women of the Year Gala. Books about her life were also produced and she was then taken by Cockcroft to Paris, Venice and Sorrento and on holiday to New York. This evening she was shown in her cottage which had become jammed packed with possessions which she admits she is unable to discard. What was evident is that the person who conquered the nation’s hearts several decades before had not changed, and hopefully would enjoy the renewed attention in her life.
21.00 There is a new USA glossy import, a kind of updated Dallas, set in New York. which merit’s no attention, the suicidal daughter who wants to be an actress but cannot act, the son full of angst who is into drugs and gambling, the state attorney general who has national political ambitions but is into his seventh different relationship with a transvestite, the preacher son who won’t recognise in public his illegitimate son, the wife who has tried hide a forty year relationship with the family’s legal adviser and fixer who has recently died in questionable circumstances, and the head of the family, the wealthy influential Man of America who brings in the son of the family Counsellor, now working as a lawyer for the poor and disenfranchised, after the death of his father, (the body is missing from the helicopter whose mechanism appears to have been tampered with). He is married and seduced by the offer of $10 million dollars a year to do his good works, keeping on his practice and staff while he attends to the needs of the family 24/7, and this possibly includes the needs of the daughter, not previously mentioned, who has a torch for the hero, but manages a succession of disastrous relationships with men only after her money and influence of her father. My thought was the he is the son of the family head in this incestuous mish mash designed to appeal to the jaded palettes of the Dallas and Dynasty soap. The hero is an idiot by the way. He seriously proposed that in exchange for becoming the best paid family counsellor fixer in the land he could work office hours, and remain his own master. If it was not Easter I would be inclined to summon a Biblical plague on them. Then at 22,00, the second brilliant find of the evening, a dramatization of the on stage relationship between Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett and of their private lives. Steptoe and Son proved to be an extraordinary successful situation comedy about a Rag and Bone man and his son, watched by 22 million viewers in the UK alone written by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton of Hancock’s Half Hour, What made the programme essential viewing for a third of the nation was the relationship between the two men, touching the fundamentals of all love hate relationships where people have become interdependent but wish they were not. There were eight series of five to eight programmes between 1962 and 1974 plus a final Christmas special making 57 shows, and unusually a radio series followed from the television success, and also two feature films. The on screen relationship reflected something of the lives of the two men, Harry Corbett was born to a military father in Burma, old enough to serve at the end of World War 2, his mother died when he was three and he was raised by an aunt in Manchester. In one telling moment in tonight’s drama documentary the Curse of Steptoe, his first wife, the talented actress Sheila Steafel declares that for a marriage to work at least one of the couple has to be an adult, as their relationship came to an end when he commenced an affair with an actress met in a film which he hoped would enable him to return to serious acting, but where he was pressed into playing someone who had made it from the working class and still retained his roots, a la Michael Caine. From the second marriage he had two children one of whom became an actress. Harry H died of a major heart attack when only 57, 12 years younger than me, frustrated that he was never able to achieve the acting success forecast for him as the British Marlon Brando. While Harry started life with a void, Wilfred Brambell spent the greater part of his life hiding his homosexuality, and finding it difficult to come to terms with this aspect of his life, becoming an alcoholic with the latter affecting his ability to learn lines and keep to schedules. He was in fact only 13 years older than Corbett, but was able to play an older man several decades than his true age appearing in the Quatermass series on 1953 and 1955 and 1984 in between. He was married but separated after his wife had a son by their lodger, Roger,. Even though homosexuality between consenting adults became legalised he avoided the attention and publicity in the UK by becoming an early sex tourist holidaying in Far East, but established a long term relationship to whom he left a substantial sum when he also died within a couple of years of Corbet aged 73. He was given other opportunities including a Broadway Musical which closed after one night. The drama documentary was followed by an episode from the series, the holiday which emphasised the depth of the two acting performances, something which the two actors in the drama documentary did exceptionally well to match but also underlined the exceptional abilities and special interaction of the originals.
01.30 I go to bed concluding it had been a better Good Friday than anticipated, a day which I had become more focussed on the 101.75 work in translating the 200 boxes of material in cupboard store into sets and volumes before the cost of doing so becomes out of my reach.
09.30 For once I have no recollection of getting up during the night but of prolonged dreaming. I know I resisted getting up with light and went back to sleep again, but did I really pass a whole night without needing to rise? If so I will have to examine the ingredients of the day beforehand.
11.00 Just a coffee has helped me to this point. My mobile phone is being difficult and I will get myself up properly, have a brunch and try and find a new replacement phone. My priority of today. And so it was to be and not as I expected.
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