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
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
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