I seem to have lost several notes on matters which were to be part of Birthday weekend 2012 which is irritating. This has happened partly because I am so far behind the original plan which had included writing once or twice about important Leveson developments and finishing the Le Carré novel, The Russia House. It is was three thirty in the afternoon on Tuesday before I commenced and now in the evening of Wednesday as I finish up.
I begin with the latest episode of Inspector Montalbano which I have seen twice having partly slept through the original showing on Saturday. It was the best yet but required close attention and a second viewing to fully appreciate. I have considered how best to present what is also the most complex and intriguing plot full of clever side issues which I shall now spoil by explaining the story from start to finish.
As with a previous episode the story also concerns an invitation for Montalbano to meet with the boss of a Sicilian Crime Family and as on that occasion there is an issue between the old order and their sense of honour and the new who have none. The man in question is ninety years old who has served a prison sentence for 20 years for the killing of 30 people members of his own or other crime families. The conversation is difficult to understand and he appears to be asking Montalbano to arrest his grandson so that he will live, albeit in prison rather than be killed by forces in the new order. He uses a priest to advise one of Montalbano’s closest associates to advise of location where the son can be arrested but when they find the location where he is been hiding, he is dead, his throat has been cut. Later it is established that in fact it is the Mafia family head who has arranged the killing of his grandson before the grandson killed him.
Why this is also the explanation for other mysteries of the episode will be revealed.
The story also involves the death of a young man who has left home and lives in an expensive apartment block. He has been killed by someone he knows having turned to face the person who called out to him as he was about to enter the apartment building where he lived. In the apartment he had the latest computer, camera and audio equipment, including a wide range of pornographic films. He also had half a dozen home made videos which are of sex with individual women.
Montalbano sends the station front office man and general factotum and something of bungling clown but who came top of the computer course to investigate the contents of the computer and he finds that there is only a large number of letters of a sexy nature written to one woman without identifying details and a novel. The man stays all night going through all the large quantity of CD and DVD Roms but is told to leave the videos.
Montalbano is also approached in the office by the son of a couple who have disappeared and at first he passes the case to a colleague until he is told the couple live in the same building as the murdered young man. There appears to be no immediate connection between the two events or with his meeting with the aging Mafia boss.
While these events occur his deputy is away and later the man calls at the home of Montalbano requesting whisky and advising that he is going to marry, the girl is a police Inspector, they both drink a bottle of whisky in celebration. What the deputy has not said is that they have decided that he will seek a transfer rather than the other way round. Their policed chief boss was delighted with the news saying it would break the mafia type band Montalbano leads.
The Inspector arranges with a friendly newsman to announce the disappearance of the couple and the concern of their son. This leads to the information that the couple had taken a coach trip which had stopped twice but also for a third time on the way back at the request of the couple who had stayed in the coach on the previous stops. They had sat at the back.
The coach driver operates two money making schemes. He bans the travellers from using their camera and then takes pictures which he sells to them. This includes a photo of the couple who appear to be looking at what appears to be a following car. It is arranged for the section to be blown up to enable the number plate of the following car to read. It proves to be that of the young man murdered outside their apartment block. Later the couple are found murdered, also shot in the head, at close range and holding hands as if they knew what we to happen to them.
Montalbano is also able to establish that the couple had dramatically increased their savings although the bank book had disappeared. According to the son they had visited an estranged sister shortly before her death but this did not appear to explain the sudden increase in their wealth. Montalbano calls on the former tenant of the sister who inherited the home in the Will and a copy of this reveals that the couple had been left a piece of scrub land and former stable and derelict building of no worth.
The other source of income for the coach driver is from a university student who tries to sell kitchen pans and ware from which he takes a cut. Montalbano arranges to meet the student in a restaurant and when his deputy arrives with information the Inspector senses their an immediate connection between the two so he suggests that the young woman repeats what she has said to his deputy while he has a meal and then make a formal report back at the station thus building on a possible relationship and taking him away from the attachment to the police Inspector who when she rings to contact the deputy Montalbano makes no effort to advise where he or get a message to him.
The sexy love letters appear to be written to a married woman hence the secrecy of the relationship, letters which were not posted but handed on meetings to spice up their relationship. The Inspector works out that because of the secrecy, any video of their relationship will have taped on an overprinted commercial tape but after the first ten minutes. This proves the right theory but still there is need to identify the woman. One of his colleagues suggests that that Montalbano should approach the former Nordic wife and swinger he encountered in a previous episode. She who offered herself but the Inspector resisted, with difficulty. The idea is she will know where a woman would go to have pubic hair professional removed. His colleagues arrange for them to have dinner but Montalbano is late back.
He has visited the former stables, isolated on the coast and locked up as a fortress. He has great difficulty in breaking in which includes trying to shoot the look out. The one lack of credibility in the episode is that he carries in his car the implements for breaking and entering including hacksaw, hammer and chisel. Given his behaviour in general perhaps this is not surprising. He notes that although isolated the place has a strong telephone and electricity connection and inside he finds a large disconnected power box with the inside otherwise seeming to have been cleared.
Injured from his efforts he struggles home to find the woman of his dinner date waiting for him. She administers pain relief lotion. She immediately recognises the woman in her video. It is a friend. The woman like her was a national from another country. She is married to an internally recognised transplant surgeon with an exceptionally valuable picture collection. Two weeks ago, that is before the murders she had suddenly returned to native land.
They sleep in the same bed clothed but there is innocent cuddle but nothing more. Later they have lunch after she has spoken to the woman in the video who has explained that has happened. She said that she taken her lover back to their home believing that the husband was away at his clinic and not returning home but he had and found them together in bed. She had been surprised by her husband’s reaction in that he had said nothing to her and she and the impression he was already familiar with her lover who he had driven home, He had then said she must go away and not return unless he said it was OK for her to do so. It is established that he has closed down the transplant critic who was heavily secure before and now there are armed guards. The man himself appeared to have become a recluse in his home.
The Inspector is then contact by the Mafia boss and this is the penultimate piece in the jigsaw he says he is in urgent needs of a liver transplant because his own is failing and that with the closure of the clinic of the famous transplant surgeon his life is doomed because there is a waiting list of 10000.
Montalbano also reads the novel which appears to be about Robots but when it ends he is sickened by the implications of what he understands to be the story.
This is what is worked out. The new Mafia order looking for new ways to make money had recruited the transplant surgeon with his liking for the expensive pictures to undertake transplants for the rich and famous in the circumstances of security and confidentiality. This would have been legitimate if was not for the use of captured able bodied men, women and children whose bodies are then buried or dumped in the ocean. The murdered young man had been a computer specialist and he had rented the use of the property owned by the couple living in the same block as a communication centre for the enterprise.
I did not understand how the young man had come to met the wife of the surgeon or why he was successful in persuading a number of attractive women not just to have sexual relations with him but to be filmed in such and open way given the lengths to which the criminal undertaking was being kept secret and the way it operated. I also did not understand why the operation had been brought to a sudden end because the surgeon discovered that his wife was having an affair with the young man. However the consequence was that it led to the closure of the operation and the elimination of everyone who could provide a lead to the providers and to past customers.
Montalbano assumed that any attempt to take action would be sat on because of the level and power of those involved as customers as much as providers and he works out a way of achieving the objective. He breaks into the home of surgeon late a night in an attempt to threaten the man into confessing, although there is also the suggestion that he was driven to kill the man because of what his greed had led to. He was being followed by his closest colleagues who intervene in whatever he was doing and takes the man into custody and is sufficiently scared to reveal all that he has been involved with.
The Inspector the wakes up his TV news contact and gives him the story of the arrest of the surgeon and also the connection with the death of the grandson of the Mafia Family boss, and which under his instruction he had kept out of the news until then. His only requirement was that the announcement should be made on the main lunchtime bulletin of the day in order to ensure that there was world wide reporting and therefore it was impossible for the authorities to attempt to cover up the connection with the illegal transplants and the Mafia.
The episode closes as his deputy announces his engagement to the university student the Inspector had introduced him to. They have had a whirlwind romance which the Inspector has encouraged at every opportunity. He was also most affected by the case where the organs of able bodied children had been used for the rich and the powerful. He had called his mistress and she had sensed she was needed. She suggested they could also get married at the same time as the deputy. He agrees. They are at a romantic location but one wonders if this will in fact happen.
Because of the time I am taking to write the weekend I am including TV show which took place last night and technically outside the weekend.
This is the latest in the Blue Bloods series and which concerned miracles in the Catholic use of the concept. The episodes consider the issue in two ways. The Commissioner is approached by a leading City Catholic companied by a priest from Rome and advise that they are investigating whether a priest known to the police chief should be put forward for the process of Sainthood. As it happens I know something about the process and the instance proposed in the episode is most unlikely. An individual is not considered just because of the good works undertaken during their lifetime and that investigation has shown an unblemished record of conduct. There has to evidence that the individual was involved in more than one miracle and then the process can take years if not decades of investigation and consideration.
It is not clear why the support of the Commissioner is needed but he refuses despite pleas to him as a good Catholic rather than as a policeman. His refusal is because of knowledge of the man who he believes assisted someone who was a terrorist associated with the peace movement to escape to Canada. This kind of deplorable right wing conservative extrapolation associated to non violent peace movement to which the singer Joan Byez participated for example and which included a visit to North Vietnam with terrorists acts involving loss of life and serious injury is a feature of some USA films and series and needs to be highlighted and condemned whenever it is encountered.
I mention Joan Byez because of an excellent 90 mins documentary on her life which she narrates. I will view again and do a special piece which her life and her music deserve. I am listening to the Farewell Angelina album where I have a copy of the original LP followed by the House of the Rising Sun Album plus another of highlights.
In fact in this instance the Commissioner flies to Canada to make contact with the man who escape and had confirmed that the priest had aided him, after consulting a woman parishioner with whom the priest had a relationship, but a relationship which had remained within the boundaries permitted by the church. Again there were aspects which I did not understand and seemed to add to the lack of credibility. The commissioner surprises the representatives of the Church by saying as a consequence his investigation he will endorse the proposition which the Church had said it was pursing because it came to light that the priest had been involved in a second miracle, a situation where a parishioner had been cured of the same disease which the priest had contracted and died soon after.
Running parallel with this story is a suicide murder investigation in which the daughter of the woman rushes it the scene to accuse the step father of a crime hen the evidence is of a heart attack. The woman claims that she was out on the Hudson River promenade when she looked up to a tree and God spoke to her, she is a Jewess. Understandably hard nosed Danny is sceptical but later he pays attention when the young woman mentions that the man’s first wife also died in suicide and that he had inherited her wealth as a consequence, just as he was now doing.
His inquiries of the first suicide leads nowhere although there is the suggestion of lack of investigation because the man had donated heavily to police charities and his efforts to gain a search warrant through his sister fail. He accompanies the daughter on a visit to the site when the voice spoke to her and he suggests she uses the opportunity to think hard about anything which might help him to pursue inquiries and she says Berlin after looking up at the tree.
He finds that two weeks before the suicide a patient called Berlin died prior to being operated on and when he visits the hospital he finds that the medical officer involved is having a relationship with the husband. He talks his way into a check of the drug records and finds that a drug which can cause heart failure if injected in too big a dose had been take before the operation and not returned although the operation has not taken place. The man and the woman previously interviewed have been hostile threatening lawyers and obstructing inquiries. When Danny and his partner present the evidence the doctor states that she had used the drug as a pain killer to help the man because of his condition and that she had said he had to be careful because to great a dose could lead to heart failure.
By this time he is telling her shut up and not say any more but she knows she is fighting for her life even if her career has gone bust. Danny looks up at tree when he next passes.
A very different form of talking to God was mentioned in a moving programme about the reality of Falklands War where the 30th anniversary is being marked, the programme revealed how close the task Force were to failure. This was a political decision based on the view of one Admiral who by passed the system to get to the Prime Minister. It took three weeks for any craft to arrive and those on the scene were not prepared in terms of armour, defence systems or disciplined attitude for the conditions and the ability of the Argentinean Airforce who used British supplied weapons. Had eight of the thousand pound British provided bombs exploded instead of being defused it is likely the action would have been halted. The second error was to put all the four large helicopters designed to shift men and gear quickly onto to one supply ship which was then successfully bombed. The consequence was that the men had to take monster packs which they could barely lift on a route march of 60 miles before confronting the heavily guarded peaks before the Port Stanley in the depths of winter and without food. The night before the action commenced a commanding officer had advised the men to speak with their God, I must write up the full story one day.
I now turn to what was a mixed sporting weekend. The Highlight was the radio commentary followed by extended highlights in the evening of Sunderland’s hard fought 1-0 win against Liverpool at home. Liverpool aware they had an important derby with Everton midweek kept Gerrard and Carroll on the bench. There was not much good football in the first half and the goal had a strong element of good fortune. Frazer Campbell hit the post and the ball rebounded off the keeper to Nicklas Bentner who side footed into the net. His reaction was excellent and skilful. Liverpool then through their kitchen sink but Sunderland held out. Sunderland whose impressive recent run had made them the form had halted with a draw and two defeats from the previous three games are not firmly in the top third of the table and rivalling Newcastle for the top team in the North East although there remains a gap of 7 points to make up. They are now joined by Everton who they meet in the FA Cup on Saturday. Newcastle could have widened the gap on their visit to the Gunners on Monday night which was shown live on Monday and in 3D.
Hatem Ben Arthur bought for five million is a talented midfield player but with tendencies to be caught in possession as he tries to make that extra touch. He has an amazing left foot which enables him to shoot with force at tight angles and it was such a run which achieved the first goal at the Emirates to stun the home crowd in the fourteenth minute. It was only sixty seconds later that Van Persee took a pass from Theo Walcott and the score was 1.1.
Newcastle then fought a rearguard battle for the greater part of the rest of the game although they also had opportunities, although significantly less than the home side. It looked as if there was to be a point from the draw as goalkeeper Tom Krul performed great athleticism to push a looping ball which looked as if was about to slip under the bar into the net away and out of danger. However a super fast move saw Vermaelen get the winner in extra time. The three points mean that Arsenal is now jockeying with North London Rivals Spurs for the third position in the table when not long ago the gap was 12 points and three points clear of Chelsea outside the top four for the first time in yonks with the consequence Chelsea has have parted company with yet another manager and for whom the reputed to have paid £15 million to prize him way from his previous club.
Sky also showed the visit of Warrington to Leeds last Friday and the game lived up to the billing as the clash of the season so far despite a slippery ball in the wet. It was Warrington who made the greater number of mistakes especially at the end. Leeds looked as if they were going to take the game with a 12.0 lead before Warrington respond to take the score to 12.12 at the interval. They lost 26.18.
I missed England’s 24 22 win in the International Rugby Union against France in Paris which reported to have been an excellent and exciting win which augurs well for the future after a mixed fortunes start with the loss to a rampant Wales at Twickenham. Having lived close to the ground in the sixties before it was developed it is one of my regrets not have ever visited. England could still finish alongside Wales in terms of total points if they win against Ireland on Saturday but I anticipate Wales will win against France in Cardiff to rightly take the honours with five wins from five matches. They are some 38 points better than England whatever happens this weekend.
I also missed on the Olympic swimming Trials which were held at the new stadium and were open to public with some 2000 present of the 17000 who will be present for the Games. It was amazing to see the out best ever twice Gold Medal Winner Rebecca Ardlington ultra nervous as she stormed to win the 400 and 800 freestyle events and therefore has the prospect of another two wins which if she achieved would make the greatest of the great British swimmers. As a result of the trials 38 swimmers have been named for the team with a second opportunity for others to join them later. Reports suggests that a number of the established swimmers were given a close run by a the next generations, some of whom may be given the opportunity to experience what for everyone concerned will be the opportunity of their lifetime.
Sky had added a new sports channel dedicated to Formula 1 racing and which in advance of the new season is showing wall to wall programmes on the shirt of the sport, covering seasons, famous races and drivers and the cars. It was therefore fitting that to mark the event Sky is also showing the midsummer 2011 documentary film on the life of Ayrton Senna the Brazilian racing driver who was killed on track in May 1994 aged 34 years. This is a film which merits being seen by all sports fans and indeed by those who may not be interested in motor racing or professional sports.
Senna was open about the fact that he came from a privileged background with his Italian background parents owning land and factories and resulted in establishing a genuine concern for the less fortunate, especially the education of children which continues to this day through his sister.
At the age of 21 he came to England to race in Go Karts which had been his love from an early age and has become the standards way for young drivers to learn their art. His stay was short lived because of pressure to work in the family business. Before returning home he was offered a contract to race Formula 3 cars and won the Formula Ford Championships in 1982 and then won the Formula championships in 1983. In 1984 he tested for a Formula 1 drive with a number of teams and commenced with a comparatively new team of Toleman and he amazed everyone coming second in the Monte Carol Grand Prix because of his skill in wet weather conditions having commenced 13th on the grid. He achieved two podium finishes and came 13th in the driving table at the end of the season. It was a performance bringing him to attention of major teams.
It is important that this is in the era before the use of technical wizardry both in the preparation and running of cars and in communication between the driver and the team regarding vehicle performance, race positioning and tactics. It was the skill of the driver in learning and driving the car which won races.
He moved to Lotus for the 1985 season and again in wet conditions he won his first race in The Portuguese Grand Prix, the second race of the season. He won again in Belgium also in the wet and this was followed by finishing 4th in the table a position is also held the following season with 55 points improving to third with 57 points the following season. He had become a recognised top rank driver but not yet in the frame for the world championship.
With the approval of World Champion Alain Prost he moved to the second car for McLaren Team but the good relationship was short lived and quickly developed into one of the fiercest rivalries there has been in motor sport. They won between them all but one of the sixteen races in 1988 with Ayrton winning his first World Championship, just. The rivalry commenced when Prost accused Senna of forcing him out of the lead as they approached the first corner at the start of a race.
Relations became strained to breaking point the following season when Senna needed to win a race for the championship and the cars touched and Prost crashed. Senna was forced into an escape lane but was able to continue and win the race. However Prost immediately complained to the Race Stewards after the incident and this led to the disqualification of Senna. There was a bad odour about the decision because was known to have a close relationship with the then head of Formula 1 Race who was also a Frenchman. Prost joined Ferrari for the following season.
There was a further confrontation towards the end of the following season also at the Japanese Grand Prix which was the location of the first clash. What happened is that Senna arranged with the race official that should he finish in pole position they would change the pole position because the nature of the track gave advantage to the second vehicle. The president intervened reversing the decision so Senna had charged holding the preferred line with Prost refusing to give way again crashing and was so incensed that he considered giving up racing. The outcome is that Senna won and took the championship and then again the following year, the year in which he also won the Brazilian race this turning him into the famous Brazilian of the decade and a legend since his premature death.
The problems commenced in 1992 because his car was outclassed by the new electronics used by the Williams Team result in a fourth position in the championship. Because of the reactions to the growing use of electronics the governing body made changes in 1994 after the cars had been redesigned. The impact was that they became unstable and Senna was one of several drivers who forecast there would be disasters.
His team mate Barrichello suffered a broken nose and arm after crashing in to the barrier. The Austrian driver Roland Rozenberger in his first season was killed outright after crashing into a concrete wall at maximum speed. It was then Senna turn to be involved in a major accident and there was devastating bad luck because he was uninjured except that the right suspension frame was sent stabbing back into the cockpit with a piece penetrating his helmet and causing fatal skull fracture.
Given the acclaim he had received in Brazil the death shocked the nation who saw in their young hero hope that the country would rise from its political problems and the poverty. There was three days of national morning. Some three million people descended on his home town for the funeral the largest recorded group of assembled mourners in recent times. Among the pall bearers were Alain Prost and Britain’s Damon Hill. For the next race the first two positions were empty painted with the Brazilian and Austrian Flag. Legal preceding followed the accident for years with McLaren investigated re possible manslaughter the more positive impact is that major changes were made to the cars and to the tracks to reduce the possibility of further fatalities.
Sienna was a devout catholic reading the Bible and able to quote from it and his beliefs led to development an extraordinary concern for the welfare of children in his homeland and to devoting the greater part of his personal fortune to their education and general help. When he first became famous is donated to those requested his help and personal appearance but he decided something more substantial was required any by the time of his death he had established what became the Instituto Ayrton Senna and managed by his sister with the advice of Bernie Eccleston Frank William Alain Prost and Gerhard Berger investing some $80 million in various ventures and which has led to the education over 100000 children. His spirit and endeavour therefore lives on in his homeland.
I begin with the latest episode of Inspector Montalbano which I have seen twice having partly slept through the original showing on Saturday. It was the best yet but required close attention and a second viewing to fully appreciate. I have considered how best to present what is also the most complex and intriguing plot full of clever side issues which I shall now spoil by explaining the story from start to finish.
As with a previous episode the story also concerns an invitation for Montalbano to meet with the boss of a Sicilian Crime Family and as on that occasion there is an issue between the old order and their sense of honour and the new who have none. The man in question is ninety years old who has served a prison sentence for 20 years for the killing of 30 people members of his own or other crime families. The conversation is difficult to understand and he appears to be asking Montalbano to arrest his grandson so that he will live, albeit in prison rather than be killed by forces in the new order. He uses a priest to advise one of Montalbano’s closest associates to advise of location where the son can be arrested but when they find the location where he is been hiding, he is dead, his throat has been cut. Later it is established that in fact it is the Mafia family head who has arranged the killing of his grandson before the grandson killed him.
Why this is also the explanation for other mysteries of the episode will be revealed.
The story also involves the death of a young man who has left home and lives in an expensive apartment block. He has been killed by someone he knows having turned to face the person who called out to him as he was about to enter the apartment building where he lived. In the apartment he had the latest computer, camera and audio equipment, including a wide range of pornographic films. He also had half a dozen home made videos which are of sex with individual women.
Montalbano sends the station front office man and general factotum and something of bungling clown but who came top of the computer course to investigate the contents of the computer and he finds that there is only a large number of letters of a sexy nature written to one woman without identifying details and a novel. The man stays all night going through all the large quantity of CD and DVD Roms but is told to leave the videos.
Montalbano is also approached in the office by the son of a couple who have disappeared and at first he passes the case to a colleague until he is told the couple live in the same building as the murdered young man. There appears to be no immediate connection between the two events or with his meeting with the aging Mafia boss.
While these events occur his deputy is away and later the man calls at the home of Montalbano requesting whisky and advising that he is going to marry, the girl is a police Inspector, they both drink a bottle of whisky in celebration. What the deputy has not said is that they have decided that he will seek a transfer rather than the other way round. Their policed chief boss was delighted with the news saying it would break the mafia type band Montalbano leads.
The Inspector arranges with a friendly newsman to announce the disappearance of the couple and the concern of their son. This leads to the information that the couple had taken a coach trip which had stopped twice but also for a third time on the way back at the request of the couple who had stayed in the coach on the previous stops. They had sat at the back.
The coach driver operates two money making schemes. He bans the travellers from using their camera and then takes pictures which he sells to them. This includes a photo of the couple who appear to be looking at what appears to be a following car. It is arranged for the section to be blown up to enable the number plate of the following car to read. It proves to be that of the young man murdered outside their apartment block. Later the couple are found murdered, also shot in the head, at close range and holding hands as if they knew what we to happen to them.
Montalbano is also able to establish that the couple had dramatically increased their savings although the bank book had disappeared. According to the son they had visited an estranged sister shortly before her death but this did not appear to explain the sudden increase in their wealth. Montalbano calls on the former tenant of the sister who inherited the home in the Will and a copy of this reveals that the couple had been left a piece of scrub land and former stable and derelict building of no worth.
The other source of income for the coach driver is from a university student who tries to sell kitchen pans and ware from which he takes a cut. Montalbano arranges to meet the student in a restaurant and when his deputy arrives with information the Inspector senses their an immediate connection between the two so he suggests that the young woman repeats what she has said to his deputy while he has a meal and then make a formal report back at the station thus building on a possible relationship and taking him away from the attachment to the police Inspector who when she rings to contact the deputy Montalbano makes no effort to advise where he or get a message to him.
The sexy love letters appear to be written to a married woman hence the secrecy of the relationship, letters which were not posted but handed on meetings to spice up their relationship. The Inspector works out that because of the secrecy, any video of their relationship will have taped on an overprinted commercial tape but after the first ten minutes. This proves the right theory but still there is need to identify the woman. One of his colleagues suggests that that Montalbano should approach the former Nordic wife and swinger he encountered in a previous episode. She who offered herself but the Inspector resisted, with difficulty. The idea is she will know where a woman would go to have pubic hair professional removed. His colleagues arrange for them to have dinner but Montalbano is late back.
He has visited the former stables, isolated on the coast and locked up as a fortress. He has great difficulty in breaking in which includes trying to shoot the look out. The one lack of credibility in the episode is that he carries in his car the implements for breaking and entering including hacksaw, hammer and chisel. Given his behaviour in general perhaps this is not surprising. He notes that although isolated the place has a strong telephone and electricity connection and inside he finds a large disconnected power box with the inside otherwise seeming to have been cleared.
Injured from his efforts he struggles home to find the woman of his dinner date waiting for him. She administers pain relief lotion. She immediately recognises the woman in her video. It is a friend. The woman like her was a national from another country. She is married to an internally recognised transplant surgeon with an exceptionally valuable picture collection. Two weeks ago, that is before the murders she had suddenly returned to native land.
They sleep in the same bed clothed but there is innocent cuddle but nothing more. Later they have lunch after she has spoken to the woman in the video who has explained that has happened. She said that she taken her lover back to their home believing that the husband was away at his clinic and not returning home but he had and found them together in bed. She had been surprised by her husband’s reaction in that he had said nothing to her and she and the impression he was already familiar with her lover who he had driven home, He had then said she must go away and not return unless he said it was OK for her to do so. It is established that he has closed down the transplant critic who was heavily secure before and now there are armed guards. The man himself appeared to have become a recluse in his home.
The Inspector is then contact by the Mafia boss and this is the penultimate piece in the jigsaw he says he is in urgent needs of a liver transplant because his own is failing and that with the closure of the clinic of the famous transplant surgeon his life is doomed because there is a waiting list of 10000.
Montalbano also reads the novel which appears to be about Robots but when it ends he is sickened by the implications of what he understands to be the story.
This is what is worked out. The new Mafia order looking for new ways to make money had recruited the transplant surgeon with his liking for the expensive pictures to undertake transplants for the rich and famous in the circumstances of security and confidentiality. This would have been legitimate if was not for the use of captured able bodied men, women and children whose bodies are then buried or dumped in the ocean. The murdered young man had been a computer specialist and he had rented the use of the property owned by the couple living in the same block as a communication centre for the enterprise.
I did not understand how the young man had come to met the wife of the surgeon or why he was successful in persuading a number of attractive women not just to have sexual relations with him but to be filmed in such and open way given the lengths to which the criminal undertaking was being kept secret and the way it operated. I also did not understand why the operation had been brought to a sudden end because the surgeon discovered that his wife was having an affair with the young man. However the consequence was that it led to the closure of the operation and the elimination of everyone who could provide a lead to the providers and to past customers.
Montalbano assumed that any attempt to take action would be sat on because of the level and power of those involved as customers as much as providers and he works out a way of achieving the objective. He breaks into the home of surgeon late a night in an attempt to threaten the man into confessing, although there is also the suggestion that he was driven to kill the man because of what his greed had led to. He was being followed by his closest colleagues who intervene in whatever he was doing and takes the man into custody and is sufficiently scared to reveal all that he has been involved with.
The Inspector the wakes up his TV news contact and gives him the story of the arrest of the surgeon and also the connection with the death of the grandson of the Mafia Family boss, and which under his instruction he had kept out of the news until then. His only requirement was that the announcement should be made on the main lunchtime bulletin of the day in order to ensure that there was world wide reporting and therefore it was impossible for the authorities to attempt to cover up the connection with the illegal transplants and the Mafia.
The episode closes as his deputy announces his engagement to the university student the Inspector had introduced him to. They have had a whirlwind romance which the Inspector has encouraged at every opportunity. He was also most affected by the case where the organs of able bodied children had been used for the rich and the powerful. He had called his mistress and she had sensed she was needed. She suggested they could also get married at the same time as the deputy. He agrees. They are at a romantic location but one wonders if this will in fact happen.
Because of the time I am taking to write the weekend I am including TV show which took place last night and technically outside the weekend.
This is the latest in the Blue Bloods series and which concerned miracles in the Catholic use of the concept. The episodes consider the issue in two ways. The Commissioner is approached by a leading City Catholic companied by a priest from Rome and advise that they are investigating whether a priest known to the police chief should be put forward for the process of Sainthood. As it happens I know something about the process and the instance proposed in the episode is most unlikely. An individual is not considered just because of the good works undertaken during their lifetime and that investigation has shown an unblemished record of conduct. There has to evidence that the individual was involved in more than one miracle and then the process can take years if not decades of investigation and consideration.
It is not clear why the support of the Commissioner is needed but he refuses despite pleas to him as a good Catholic rather than as a policeman. His refusal is because of knowledge of the man who he believes assisted someone who was a terrorist associated with the peace movement to escape to Canada. This kind of deplorable right wing conservative extrapolation associated to non violent peace movement to which the singer Joan Byez participated for example and which included a visit to North Vietnam with terrorists acts involving loss of life and serious injury is a feature of some USA films and series and needs to be highlighted and condemned whenever it is encountered.
I mention Joan Byez because of an excellent 90 mins documentary on her life which she narrates. I will view again and do a special piece which her life and her music deserve. I am listening to the Farewell Angelina album where I have a copy of the original LP followed by the House of the Rising Sun Album plus another of highlights.
In fact in this instance the Commissioner flies to Canada to make contact with the man who escape and had confirmed that the priest had aided him, after consulting a woman parishioner with whom the priest had a relationship, but a relationship which had remained within the boundaries permitted by the church. Again there were aspects which I did not understand and seemed to add to the lack of credibility. The commissioner surprises the representatives of the Church by saying as a consequence his investigation he will endorse the proposition which the Church had said it was pursing because it came to light that the priest had been involved in a second miracle, a situation where a parishioner had been cured of the same disease which the priest had contracted and died soon after.
Running parallel with this story is a suicide murder investigation in which the daughter of the woman rushes it the scene to accuse the step father of a crime hen the evidence is of a heart attack. The woman claims that she was out on the Hudson River promenade when she looked up to a tree and God spoke to her, she is a Jewess. Understandably hard nosed Danny is sceptical but later he pays attention when the young woman mentions that the man’s first wife also died in suicide and that he had inherited her wealth as a consequence, just as he was now doing.
His inquiries of the first suicide leads nowhere although there is the suggestion of lack of investigation because the man had donated heavily to police charities and his efforts to gain a search warrant through his sister fail. He accompanies the daughter on a visit to the site when the voice spoke to her and he suggests she uses the opportunity to think hard about anything which might help him to pursue inquiries and she says Berlin after looking up at the tree.
He finds that two weeks before the suicide a patient called Berlin died prior to being operated on and when he visits the hospital he finds that the medical officer involved is having a relationship with the husband. He talks his way into a check of the drug records and finds that a drug which can cause heart failure if injected in too big a dose had been take before the operation and not returned although the operation has not taken place. The man and the woman previously interviewed have been hostile threatening lawyers and obstructing inquiries. When Danny and his partner present the evidence the doctor states that she had used the drug as a pain killer to help the man because of his condition and that she had said he had to be careful because to great a dose could lead to heart failure.
By this time he is telling her shut up and not say any more but she knows she is fighting for her life even if her career has gone bust. Danny looks up at tree when he next passes.
A very different form of talking to God was mentioned in a moving programme about the reality of Falklands War where the 30th anniversary is being marked, the programme revealed how close the task Force were to failure. This was a political decision based on the view of one Admiral who by passed the system to get to the Prime Minister. It took three weeks for any craft to arrive and those on the scene were not prepared in terms of armour, defence systems or disciplined attitude for the conditions and the ability of the Argentinean Airforce who used British supplied weapons. Had eight of the thousand pound British provided bombs exploded instead of being defused it is likely the action would have been halted. The second error was to put all the four large helicopters designed to shift men and gear quickly onto to one supply ship which was then successfully bombed. The consequence was that the men had to take monster packs which they could barely lift on a route march of 60 miles before confronting the heavily guarded peaks before the Port Stanley in the depths of winter and without food. The night before the action commenced a commanding officer had advised the men to speak with their God, I must write up the full story one day.
I now turn to what was a mixed sporting weekend. The Highlight was the radio commentary followed by extended highlights in the evening of Sunderland’s hard fought 1-0 win against Liverpool at home. Liverpool aware they had an important derby with Everton midweek kept Gerrard and Carroll on the bench. There was not much good football in the first half and the goal had a strong element of good fortune. Frazer Campbell hit the post and the ball rebounded off the keeper to Nicklas Bentner who side footed into the net. His reaction was excellent and skilful. Liverpool then through their kitchen sink but Sunderland held out. Sunderland whose impressive recent run had made them the form had halted with a draw and two defeats from the previous three games are not firmly in the top third of the table and rivalling Newcastle for the top team in the North East although there remains a gap of 7 points to make up. They are now joined by Everton who they meet in the FA Cup on Saturday. Newcastle could have widened the gap on their visit to the Gunners on Monday night which was shown live on Monday and in 3D.
Hatem Ben Arthur bought for five million is a talented midfield player but with tendencies to be caught in possession as he tries to make that extra touch. He has an amazing left foot which enables him to shoot with force at tight angles and it was such a run which achieved the first goal at the Emirates to stun the home crowd in the fourteenth minute. It was only sixty seconds later that Van Persee took a pass from Theo Walcott and the score was 1.1.
Newcastle then fought a rearguard battle for the greater part of the rest of the game although they also had opportunities, although significantly less than the home side. It looked as if there was to be a point from the draw as goalkeeper Tom Krul performed great athleticism to push a looping ball which looked as if was about to slip under the bar into the net away and out of danger. However a super fast move saw Vermaelen get the winner in extra time. The three points mean that Arsenal is now jockeying with North London Rivals Spurs for the third position in the table when not long ago the gap was 12 points and three points clear of Chelsea outside the top four for the first time in yonks with the consequence Chelsea has have parted company with yet another manager and for whom the reputed to have paid £15 million to prize him way from his previous club.
Sky also showed the visit of Warrington to Leeds last Friday and the game lived up to the billing as the clash of the season so far despite a slippery ball in the wet. It was Warrington who made the greater number of mistakes especially at the end. Leeds looked as if they were going to take the game with a 12.0 lead before Warrington respond to take the score to 12.12 at the interval. They lost 26.18.
I missed England’s 24 22 win in the International Rugby Union against France in Paris which reported to have been an excellent and exciting win which augurs well for the future after a mixed fortunes start with the loss to a rampant Wales at Twickenham. Having lived close to the ground in the sixties before it was developed it is one of my regrets not have ever visited. England could still finish alongside Wales in terms of total points if they win against Ireland on Saturday but I anticipate Wales will win against France in Cardiff to rightly take the honours with five wins from five matches. They are some 38 points better than England whatever happens this weekend.
I also missed on the Olympic swimming Trials which were held at the new stadium and were open to public with some 2000 present of the 17000 who will be present for the Games. It was amazing to see the out best ever twice Gold Medal Winner Rebecca Ardlington ultra nervous as she stormed to win the 400 and 800 freestyle events and therefore has the prospect of another two wins which if she achieved would make the greatest of the great British swimmers. As a result of the trials 38 swimmers have been named for the team with a second opportunity for others to join them later. Reports suggests that a number of the established swimmers were given a close run by a the next generations, some of whom may be given the opportunity to experience what for everyone concerned will be the opportunity of their lifetime.
Sky had added a new sports channel dedicated to Formula 1 racing and which in advance of the new season is showing wall to wall programmes on the shirt of the sport, covering seasons, famous races and drivers and the cars. It was therefore fitting that to mark the event Sky is also showing the midsummer 2011 documentary film on the life of Ayrton Senna the Brazilian racing driver who was killed on track in May 1994 aged 34 years. This is a film which merits being seen by all sports fans and indeed by those who may not be interested in motor racing or professional sports.
Senna was open about the fact that he came from a privileged background with his Italian background parents owning land and factories and resulted in establishing a genuine concern for the less fortunate, especially the education of children which continues to this day through his sister.
At the age of 21 he came to England to race in Go Karts which had been his love from an early age and has become the standards way for young drivers to learn their art. His stay was short lived because of pressure to work in the family business. Before returning home he was offered a contract to race Formula 3 cars and won the Formula Ford Championships in 1982 and then won the Formula championships in 1983. In 1984 he tested for a Formula 1 drive with a number of teams and commenced with a comparatively new team of Toleman and he amazed everyone coming second in the Monte Carol Grand Prix because of his skill in wet weather conditions having commenced 13th on the grid. He achieved two podium finishes and came 13th in the driving table at the end of the season. It was a performance bringing him to attention of major teams.
It is important that this is in the era before the use of technical wizardry both in the preparation and running of cars and in communication between the driver and the team regarding vehicle performance, race positioning and tactics. It was the skill of the driver in learning and driving the car which won races.
He moved to Lotus for the 1985 season and again in wet conditions he won his first race in The Portuguese Grand Prix, the second race of the season. He won again in Belgium also in the wet and this was followed by finishing 4th in the table a position is also held the following season with 55 points improving to third with 57 points the following season. He had become a recognised top rank driver but not yet in the frame for the world championship.
With the approval of World Champion Alain Prost he moved to the second car for McLaren Team but the good relationship was short lived and quickly developed into one of the fiercest rivalries there has been in motor sport. They won between them all but one of the sixteen races in 1988 with Ayrton winning his first World Championship, just. The rivalry commenced when Prost accused Senna of forcing him out of the lead as they approached the first corner at the start of a race.
Relations became strained to breaking point the following season when Senna needed to win a race for the championship and the cars touched and Prost crashed. Senna was forced into an escape lane but was able to continue and win the race. However Prost immediately complained to the Race Stewards after the incident and this led to the disqualification of Senna. There was a bad odour about the decision because was known to have a close relationship with the then head of Formula 1 Race who was also a Frenchman. Prost joined Ferrari for the following season.
There was a further confrontation towards the end of the following season also at the Japanese Grand Prix which was the location of the first clash. What happened is that Senna arranged with the race official that should he finish in pole position they would change the pole position because the nature of the track gave advantage to the second vehicle. The president intervened reversing the decision so Senna had charged holding the preferred line with Prost refusing to give way again crashing and was so incensed that he considered giving up racing. The outcome is that Senna won and took the championship and then again the following year, the year in which he also won the Brazilian race this turning him into the famous Brazilian of the decade and a legend since his premature death.
The problems commenced in 1992 because his car was outclassed by the new electronics used by the Williams Team result in a fourth position in the championship. Because of the reactions to the growing use of electronics the governing body made changes in 1994 after the cars had been redesigned. The impact was that they became unstable and Senna was one of several drivers who forecast there would be disasters.
His team mate Barrichello suffered a broken nose and arm after crashing in to the barrier. The Austrian driver Roland Rozenberger in his first season was killed outright after crashing into a concrete wall at maximum speed. It was then Senna turn to be involved in a major accident and there was devastating bad luck because he was uninjured except that the right suspension frame was sent stabbing back into the cockpit with a piece penetrating his helmet and causing fatal skull fracture.
Given the acclaim he had received in Brazil the death shocked the nation who saw in their young hero hope that the country would rise from its political problems and the poverty. There was three days of national morning. Some three million people descended on his home town for the funeral the largest recorded group of assembled mourners in recent times. Among the pall bearers were Alain Prost and Britain’s Damon Hill. For the next race the first two positions were empty painted with the Brazilian and Austrian Flag. Legal preceding followed the accident for years with McLaren investigated re possible manslaughter the more positive impact is that major changes were made to the cars and to the tracks to reduce the possibility of further fatalities.
Sienna was a devout catholic reading the Bible and able to quote from it and his beliefs led to development an extraordinary concern for the welfare of children in his homeland and to devoting the greater part of his personal fortune to their education and general help. When he first became famous is donated to those requested his help and personal appearance but he decided something more substantial was required any by the time of his death he had established what became the Instituto Ayrton Senna and managed by his sister with the advice of Bernie Eccleston Frank William Alain Prost and Gerhard Berger investing some $80 million in various ventures and which has led to the education over 100000 children. His spirit and endeavour therefore lives on in his homeland.
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