07.00 April 7th 2008. It was not a good night with several wakings, getting back to sleep troublesome and poor mood dreams. The sky was blue but quickly changes with large snow flakes which did not settle, as there are also shining breaks through the clouds, but elsewhere there are a few inches. I could not settle down to one activity, yet I need to work intensely to break the mood. I have absolute control over my life and no control. I rebel against my own dictatorship. I could have a long soak in the bath would help but I am too lazy, I will make a second cup of coffee to try and revive.
12.40 The relaxed casual approach continues after a good bath, where a give attention to my feet where the skin had become very dry. It is another sporting day via the television with the Bahrain Grand Prix. A spacious luxury track in the desert with no parking problems, for 4 x 4s, private jets and helicopters. There is the red carpet style interview which stupid as I look personalities, who presumably had paid for the privilege or are a hanger on and posed inane question. The classic for a long time was the interview with a terrified looking singer Macie Gray, Macie what brings you here, response, Racing I guess? You mean there could be other reasons! After the race there is Boro at United and then Barnsley V Cardiff at Wembley.
15.15 I played the computer game Hearts in between working my project to continue the average of four completed sets a day.
The Grand Prix was hot, windy and noisy but the first surprise of the day was the Boro managing 2 : 2 draw against Man U through their Brazilian new signing who scored twice in one game, his first goals for the club having taking time to settle in since his January arrival. However the event that I have look forward to is Barnsley versus Cardiff, where I have a little history with both, having attended football games at both clubs, Barnsley several times. I was once also was interviewed for the post of deputy Children’s officer of Glamorgan at Cardiff, although it was evident from the preliminary interview that I was not in the running. The interview was my first before the whole Council which was an experience in itself. As Assistant County Children’s Officer West Riding of Yorkshire, my area included the town of Barnsley where the local authority had an area office. Alas at the football the Cardiff connection won which is ironic as for greater part of this decade the Cup Final has been played in Cardiff as have the semi finals and now a Welsh Team comes to the new Wembley for the second final. The early on winning goal was spectacular, but Barnsley then dominated for long period with several scoring opportunities and one open goal.
17.00 I decide to watch again an inspiring war time film about the resistance and sacrifice of ordinary French Men and women as they are executed as hostages. This was a 1942 British made film We live tomorrow or similar designed me thinks to prepare UK citizens for the possibility of occupation and how our country needed us to act, and to support those Frenchman who were working from the UK, and to understand what was likely to be happening across the Channel. I am unconvinced that had Hitler crossed the channel that the behaviour of the British people would have been any different from the French, some embracing, some collaborating, some neutral, the majority trying to survive, but a good proportion resisting and willing to surrender their lives in the hope the rest of the Empire would prevail, What would the USA have done in such a circumstance?
19.00 I need something lighter to experience and the choice was between a humorous Almodovar and a Pirates of the Caribbean. I elected for the Almodovar which I have seen before. The star of the film is Carmen Maura who comes from the most well known aristocratic political dynasty in Spain. One Great Uncle was Prime Minister five times and three others were Cabinet Ministers. Among relatives are the Duke of Maura, the Duchesses of Medinasidonia, and of Fernandina together with the writer Jorge Semprun. The actress studied philosophy and Literature at the Ecole de Beaux Arts and is married to a lawyer. She has performed if some forty mainly Spanish directed films although she is part of John Irvin’s Garden of Eden and Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro in post production or being filmed this year. Her best known recent role is part of the Volver where the female cast were collectively given the Cannes Prix. Volver means return and is reputedly titled to mark the return of the Maura Almodovar collaboration after a break down with the 1988 Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios. I have also seen The Law of Desire, What have I done to deserve this, Dark Habits, Pepe Luci and Bom, and Matador. Maura is billed as staring with Antonio Banderas but he only has a minor role which is of no consequence to the story. Antonio has become one of Hollywood’s box office successes although he too became known through the films of Almodovar but since for his roles in the Mask of Zorro, Evita. Frida, Spy Kids, Once upon a time in Mexico, Interview with a Vampire and Philadelphia. And the Film? As with most of Almodovar, the storyline is usually implausible, surreal, visual and relies on timing, facial expression, body movement and clever scripts. Sometime they do not come off, especially with his obsession debunking the Catholic Church after years of Franco repression and censorship and sometimes his humour is that of adolescent school boy, but there are always magic and memorable moments. In this film it is the entrepreneurial taxi driver who has music, magazines, toiletries and cigarettes all for hire or sale to help with the journey, hankering for a more exciting life until he is shot at because of his passengers.
22.45 I became concerned earlier as it looked as if the TV was on the blink, not because I would miss the programme I wanted to view which could be viewed on one of the two other aerial connected TVs at my home, but the thought of the hassle involved in getting the problem sorted. The programme was the first of the South Bank Show Lord Melvyn Bragg programmes touring four areas of the UK with the theme "writing is memory" covering the historical literary writings and those of local people in local dialect. He commenced as featured my Rivera project of last year at St Bede’s in Jarrow, with a piece read by the Bishop of Durham, and later went along the Wall to the Roman Fort of Vindolanda where he focussed on the discovered earliest writings by Romans about their everyday life in the UK and the only discovered writing in Western Europe from a Roman woman of these times, and he then continued following the Wall to Carlisle, the city of the Border Reevers and to his and the believed Lakelands of Wordsworth and Wainwright. he second theme was commenced with the development of the industrial revolution, Stephen’s rocket, the life of women and children in the pits and the great shipyards with footage of the launch of the Mauritania from Tyneside, emphasising the national perspective gained from the middle class viewpoints of writers such as Kipling J B Priestly, and Jules Verne, and then there was Catherine Cookson from Jarrow and South Shields who has written 100 books selling an average of 1 million each and the most popular borrowed from the lending libraries, romantic fiction but where she also chronicles the great divide seen through the eyes of women and the their families, whose partners were the subject of wage slavery and violent deaths and whose dependency on drink created domestic violence and family distress. There was also film of inside the South Shields museum which I pass by several times a week, and sometimes visit. And references to the various ballads and writings of other folk.
00.00 The death was announced earlier of Charlton Heston who epitomised the Hollywood historical epic, The Chariot race in Ben Hur and Moses seeking the parting of the sea to let my people go. Later he alienated many of the right in his country by his work against racism and then he alienated the left by his support of the right to carry a licensed weapon. His final action was to make public that he was suffering from severe memory deteriorating into psychosis and I have speculated about what became his daily reality switch not just between vague memories from his past made reality as present but also the impact of all those film roles, especially the historical ones. I went to bed around 2.30 am thinking that the day was not to be regretted.
12.40 The relaxed casual approach continues after a good bath, where a give attention to my feet where the skin had become very dry. It is another sporting day via the television with the Bahrain Grand Prix. A spacious luxury track in the desert with no parking problems, for 4 x 4s, private jets and helicopters. There is the red carpet style interview which stupid as I look personalities, who presumably had paid for the privilege or are a hanger on and posed inane question. The classic for a long time was the interview with a terrified looking singer Macie Gray, Macie what brings you here, response, Racing I guess? You mean there could be other reasons! After the race there is Boro at United and then Barnsley V Cardiff at Wembley.
15.15 I played the computer game Hearts in between working my project to continue the average of four completed sets a day.
The Grand Prix was hot, windy and noisy but the first surprise of the day was the Boro managing 2 : 2 draw against Man U through their Brazilian new signing who scored twice in one game, his first goals for the club having taking time to settle in since his January arrival. However the event that I have look forward to is Barnsley versus Cardiff, where I have a little history with both, having attended football games at both clubs, Barnsley several times. I was once also was interviewed for the post of deputy Children’s officer of Glamorgan at Cardiff, although it was evident from the preliminary interview that I was not in the running. The interview was my first before the whole Council which was an experience in itself. As Assistant County Children’s Officer West Riding of Yorkshire, my area included the town of Barnsley where the local authority had an area office. Alas at the football the Cardiff connection won which is ironic as for greater part of this decade the Cup Final has been played in Cardiff as have the semi finals and now a Welsh Team comes to the new Wembley for the second final. The early on winning goal was spectacular, but Barnsley then dominated for long period with several scoring opportunities and one open goal.
17.00 I decide to watch again an inspiring war time film about the resistance and sacrifice of ordinary French Men and women as they are executed as hostages. This was a 1942 British made film We live tomorrow or similar designed me thinks to prepare UK citizens for the possibility of occupation and how our country needed us to act, and to support those Frenchman who were working from the UK, and to understand what was likely to be happening across the Channel. I am unconvinced that had Hitler crossed the channel that the behaviour of the British people would have been any different from the French, some embracing, some collaborating, some neutral, the majority trying to survive, but a good proportion resisting and willing to surrender their lives in the hope the rest of the Empire would prevail, What would the USA have done in such a circumstance?
19.00 I need something lighter to experience and the choice was between a humorous Almodovar and a Pirates of the Caribbean. I elected for the Almodovar which I have seen before. The star of the film is Carmen Maura who comes from the most well known aristocratic political dynasty in Spain. One Great Uncle was Prime Minister five times and three others were Cabinet Ministers. Among relatives are the Duke of Maura, the Duchesses of Medinasidonia, and of Fernandina together with the writer Jorge Semprun. The actress studied philosophy and Literature at the Ecole de Beaux Arts and is married to a lawyer. She has performed if some forty mainly Spanish directed films although she is part of John Irvin’s Garden of Eden and Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro in post production or being filmed this year. Her best known recent role is part of the Volver where the female cast were collectively given the Cannes Prix. Volver means return and is reputedly titled to mark the return of the Maura Almodovar collaboration after a break down with the 1988 Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios. I have also seen The Law of Desire, What have I done to deserve this, Dark Habits, Pepe Luci and Bom, and Matador. Maura is billed as staring with Antonio Banderas but he only has a minor role which is of no consequence to the story. Antonio has become one of Hollywood’s box office successes although he too became known through the films of Almodovar but since for his roles in the Mask of Zorro, Evita. Frida, Spy Kids, Once upon a time in Mexico, Interview with a Vampire and Philadelphia. And the Film? As with most of Almodovar, the storyline is usually implausible, surreal, visual and relies on timing, facial expression, body movement and clever scripts. Sometime they do not come off, especially with his obsession debunking the Catholic Church after years of Franco repression and censorship and sometimes his humour is that of adolescent school boy, but there are always magic and memorable moments. In this film it is the entrepreneurial taxi driver who has music, magazines, toiletries and cigarettes all for hire or sale to help with the journey, hankering for a more exciting life until he is shot at because of his passengers.
22.45 I became concerned earlier as it looked as if the TV was on the blink, not because I would miss the programme I wanted to view which could be viewed on one of the two other aerial connected TVs at my home, but the thought of the hassle involved in getting the problem sorted. The programme was the first of the South Bank Show Lord Melvyn Bragg programmes touring four areas of the UK with the theme "writing is memory" covering the historical literary writings and those of local people in local dialect. He commenced as featured my Rivera project of last year at St Bede’s in Jarrow, with a piece read by the Bishop of Durham, and later went along the Wall to the Roman Fort of Vindolanda where he focussed on the discovered earliest writings by Romans about their everyday life in the UK and the only discovered writing in Western Europe from a Roman woman of these times, and he then continued following the Wall to Carlisle, the city of the Border Reevers and to his and the believed Lakelands of Wordsworth and Wainwright. he second theme was commenced with the development of the industrial revolution, Stephen’s rocket, the life of women and children in the pits and the great shipyards with footage of the launch of the Mauritania from Tyneside, emphasising the national perspective gained from the middle class viewpoints of writers such as Kipling J B Priestly, and Jules Verne, and then there was Catherine Cookson from Jarrow and South Shields who has written 100 books selling an average of 1 million each and the most popular borrowed from the lending libraries, romantic fiction but where she also chronicles the great divide seen through the eyes of women and the their families, whose partners were the subject of wage slavery and violent deaths and whose dependency on drink created domestic violence and family distress. There was also film of inside the South Shields museum which I pass by several times a week, and sometimes visit. And references to the various ballads and writings of other folk.
00.00 The death was announced earlier of Charlton Heston who epitomised the Hollywood historical epic, The Chariot race in Ben Hur and Moses seeking the parting of the sea to let my people go. Later he alienated many of the right in his country by his work against racism and then he alienated the left by his support of the right to carry a licensed weapon. His final action was to make public that he was suffering from severe memory deteriorating into psychosis and I have speculated about what became his daily reality switch not just between vague memories from his past made reality as present but also the impact of all those film roles, especially the historical ones. I went to bed around 2.30 am thinking that the day was not to be regretted.
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