07.00 26th September 2012. For the first time in a long while my mouth did not dry or become sticky dry overnight. This may be a one off although I hope it is not and due to using the machine for the higher level of hours per night now at 7.1. The setting was also low at only 3 which I shall keep for tomorrow night. I rose not feeling like going to sleep although the total hours in bed were seven and half compared to eight to nine over the past few days.
07.05 I watched the news on the rain easing along with the rivers but the threat of flooding remains with further showers, possibly heavy during the day but easing as the week progresses further. There was only a little more water than that when going to bed. The second item of the news was the disclosure that the police had interviewed the Maths Teacher and the girl several days before they left and that they had taken their mobile phones for checking. The sense that a lot of people are now attempting to cover their back and that the whole things has a nasty smell continues.
07.40 It is TV Digital switch over day for the North East and a full re tune was required which has been completed. There is a difference in the number of stations available between the two sets which is odd and suggests two aerials. The sun is out. I will complete yesterdays writing and publish with a bowl of mushrooms and tomatoes and then get myself up, go out for milk and grapes, and then tackle the back and contact the insurers as well as other practical activities.
11.50 I have achieved a lot so far with much more to do. Checked, published and printed the memory of the weekend watching Ellie Simmonds and the Paralympic Closing ceremony. I had a brainwave and checked out a separate battery charger for the Sony Camera and appeared to have which covers the batteries in questions for £12 postage from Amazon
I have got hold of a number Hitachi service and will get for Argos in moment and try and find out the likely cost of repairing the starter before deciding whether to junk and get another set with a Wii games console so that I can do exercises and play energetic game helping to keep me fit during the winter. Hit on he idea of bring down the old Coffee table as a stand with shelf for the time being. It is large and spoils the present perspective of the room but will do for the moment given the lack of use to-date and the practical use planned.
Went to shops with car and waste disposal to get rid of the remains of the desk chair and other bits and piece, sorted out the back again leaving the car out and. Prepared lunch southern fried chicken beans and tinned tomatoes. Went primarily for milk and £1 grapes which they still have in stock and they are doing a special on instant porridge at less than half price purchased four packs and will go for six more later. Changed new credit card pin number. Got four packs of the grapes but had to settle half milk.
16.30. Watched a major chunk of the speech of the Deputy Prime Minister to his party. His message we are now in government moderating the Tories and getting some of our key policies and programmes out into effect. Labour who caused the problem has nothing to offer. All talk of what happens after the 2015 election is a waste of time because the voting public will then decide. His only criticism of the Tory partners was on the issue of the environment. The loudest cheer was that he was bringing back Paddy Ashdown to chair the 2015 General election committee. His speech will not offend the Tories partners so help keep the Coalition going not will it be regarded as greatly offensive by Labour who he will more likely do a deal next time. However he will need to stop the depletion of votes and Parliamentary colleagues and this needs a significant improvement in the economy with substantial reductions in employment and real increases in wages to offer some compensation for the real cuts in services. I agree with the commentator who said he looked a leader who wished he could cancel this year’s conference and possibly next.
17.30 I have been able to catch up on episode three of Romanzo Criminale second series but to appreciate the significant developments I need to recap and revise what was written before. The fictitious crime drama series does follow actual events in Rome
’s crime history and the role of corrupt politicians, officials including the Security Services and secret bodies. The Crime gang whose history is featured in the two series was in fact a combination of two gangs of young men who dreamed of becoming big time and eventually controlled drug distribution throughout Rome, leading the high life of fast cars and gambling but also attempt to establish themselves through financial investments.
The first series ended with the leader of the combined group known as Lebanese who was rejected by his mother because of his criminality and is gunned down and suspicion falls on two brothers, why I cannot remember or if it was disclosed who killed him.
The first two episodes of the second and final series deals with the aftermath of the killing. Towards the end of series one Lebanese had become wild and unstable and with the second in command attempting to go straight because of a serious relationship with a young woman who had previously been the girl friend of his brother who he had worked hard to keep in college and out of trouble. The impact of the girl turning to Freddo led the brother to dropping out of higher education and taking drugs.
The death of Leban and the instinctive need for revenge results in Freddo abandoning plans to leave Rome with Roberta and to become unofficial leader. The gang are not members of the Mafia but have an arrangement as they have had with others including contact with the security services. What I am not sure is the extent to which Dandi the third of the most familiar of gang members was involved with a Mafia take over of Rome drug distribution. As his nickname suggests he is a young man with a liking for fine things especially Patrizia originally a high class beautiful whore but now runs a whore house for him with the help of her male gay companion so he can have her all to himself.
The complication is that the police detective Commissario Scialoja has a grand passion for her and she had shown interest in him. His hands are not clean and is regarded as a Communist sympathizer because his sister was part of a communist action group and who arranged to leave Italy when she was about to be arrested.
The Commissario picks up Freddo’s brother and holds him in jail knowing that there will be an attempt to get to him by enemies of Freddo and that Freddo will be forced into action. Freddo’s attempts to protect his brother in jail while he gets his lawyer to seek the release fails and the young man is beaten up and susceptible to pressure from the Commissario and agrees to wear a wire and attempt to trap his brother. This does not work and Freddo sends his brother packing.
Freddo is also at sixes and sevens with Roberta infuriating her when he abandons the trip away but she then gives him an alibi for the killing of one of the brothers thought responsible for Libanese‘s death. Later when she appears to waiver he sends her away knowing what he has to do and the likely implications, especially with the Commissario hot on his trail.
The second series opened with a flash back to how Libanese and two other formed the nucleus of their gang as boys. There is anger when they discovers that Libanese’s cars have gone and when they discover they have been taken by his father he is given the opportunity to save himself not by getting back the expensive ones but the Mini which they used in the early days. This is then pushed down a mountainside so that no one else can use the vehicle.
They also insist on the immediate liquidation of his assets in order to provide a funeral fit for a king but his mother rejects the money and one of his closest friends steals the coffin which he places in the best available so he and the other have a wake. They do this with special food and drink before returning the coffin to the mother and attending the formal funeral where the Commissioner also attends.
The police take the other brother to stop him being killed by the group and to test for evidence of his guilt but the secret power group delay returning the findings but let Freddo see a copy in order to enable the group to get their revenge and settle things. Freddo then agrees that Dandi as the driver and two other should undertake the assassination of the other brother once he is released from custody. When this starts to go wrong Dandi freezes from putting himself in the firing line to pick up the under fire other two who are wounded with one taken into custody. Dandi returns to Patrizia to lick his wounds having been approached to take over the gang by other interests. However he may not have bargained that one of the two others getting, an original friend and associate of Lebanese, getting away.
Freddo also tracks down to person who sold the brother the drugs and finds that she is a feisty female who points out the brother was an established addict in need and that she is best local distributor than all the others. Freddo’s makes enquiries and puts her in charge of the area previously managed by the Libanese much to the anger of another of the gang with whom the Roman group had previous problems.
In the third episode which moves the story significantly forward, the wounded Bufalo gets help and swears revenge of Dandi who abandoned them. This is backed up by the other member who is in police custody. Freddo refuses to sanction action against Dandi but instead orders him to kill the remaining brother in hospital. When the heavily guarded villain regains consciousness and looks as if he will survive the Police Commissario cuts a deal to save his life if he will provide evidence against Freddo and the rest of the Roman Gang, Her agrees but insists that neither he or his brother killed Lebanese. Freddo orders Dandi to take out the brother as his punishment and the price of protecting him against Bufalo. Dandi asks for help form I assume the Mafia (possibly his secret services) and they agree on the understanding that he will do a favour when next asked.
A fire at the hospital puts everyone including the police off guard and the murder suspect appears to have committed suicide jump out of the ward balcony. The Inspector had also failed to get direct help with the allocation of more men to watch the gang members in order to track down Bufalo. The Commissario presses the head of the anti drug squad to provide the men but they fail to provide anything of value except for a photo of the girl to Freddo and promoted within the crime organisation. They also provide a photo which shows a link between the Secret Services who stopped previous actions in communication with the gang. It is the Secret service who showed Freddo a file of a forensic test which appears to prove that the brother killed Leban. The episode ends with the admission that the forensic test was negative and they made up the report implicating the man who has now officially committed suicide.
The theme of second series is the disintegration of the gang following the death of Lebanese and because it is known that Freddo was on his way out and therefore lacks authority. Worse is to come when one of the gang resents that Freddo has appointed the girl to collect the money required to fund the next drug shipment because she is not yet known to the authorities as a gang senior. She hands over the money and then the man claims it is associates of her who stopped and rob him taking his credit card and other cash on him as well as haul.
When a transvestite attempts to use the credit card the gang member admits that he had gone with the individual for sex and was then held up by two obvious associates of her and only afterwards realised the extent of their haul. The Trans is found and taken and she reveals her companions who are shot in her presence but she is allowed to go to ensure everyone else knows what happens.
Bufalo manages to confront Dandi returning with Patrizia celebrating who quickly disarms his attacker, beats him up and leaves him to die in the street while he has sex with Patrizia.
20.20 I switched from watching Newcastle losing at Man United 2.0 in the League and all in glorious 3D to experience the ancestors of William Roache, the longest serving actor in a dramatic and comic serial entertainment in the UK, in the latest edition of Who Do you think you are? If he continues to play Ken Barlow in Coronation Street for the next couple of years he will become the longest performing actor in the same role anywhere having started in 1960. He served the army for his National Service and suffers from tinnitus from a mortar explosion. The Wikipedia mentions that his paternal grandfather was a Freemason interested in spiritualism, theosophy, esotericism and homeopathy. There is no mention of his maternal grand mother and her husband and these were the subject of the programme. What was uncovered for him proved the most interesting of all the subjects to date and the way the programme was presented maintained interest from start to finish.
His grand mother had the Christian name of Zillah Waddicor and re remembered as a child visiting her at the restaurant and tea rooms she ran in part of Alton Towers in the 1930’s which she had commenced shortly after the large countryside home of the former Shrewsbury Family was sold. Revisiting the now derelict Country house he was able to remember the room where he placed on his tricycle. He discovered that in fact a quarter of a million people visited the gardens which local business had developed from the grounds of the estate and that his grand mother had owned and managed a business which could provide up to a thousand meals at a sitting with arrange of sixteen lunchtime menu meals from 2 to 4 shillings. She had then developed the Old Mill by the station into a second restaurant. She was of only a handful of women who owned and managed businesses of this size given that after World War 1 the emphasis was on finding “ bread winner” jobs for the men, something which was ingrained in working class politics until the later 1970‘s.
The second extraordinary story is that he then discovered that she and her husband had run a small shanty shop on the Golden mile at Blackpool selling ices and soft drinks. Somehow she made sufficient money from this business to open the business at Alton Towers although the programme failed to explore how she made the move, given that until then the business was in his her husband name. In fact it emerged that the great grandfather had also operated the shanty shop as a medical electrician using the new interest in electricity given that homes and street lights used gas to provide gentle shocks to the hands and arms which was believed to have a beneficial effect on nervous conditions. In addition he had practiced the cult of phonology reading the bumps of the head. He had done this until this kind of seaside business was banned by the local council. He had then moved into the purchase of properties now several used as hotels so that when he died he left an estate of over £4000 worth as much as half a million in today money and more in terms of property values.
The interesting aspect is that the Will left his estate to one of his three grand daughters and this was explained that she lived with him and not with her parents. William then was told that his own mother had gone to live with an aunt when she was only three months of age and this helped him to understand why he regarded her as a cold person unable to express feelings about and to him. The mystery of this appeared to be explained by family understanding that the grandfather who described himself as a gentleman in one census never participated in the subsequent business and was rarely spoken of within the family. The belief was that he drank alcohol excessively and the fact that two his children were almost immediately placed with relatives suggests that he was abusive/ violent or something which made his wife give up direct care of her children despite appearing to William as a kind and loving person as well as he now discovered an amazing business woman.
There were many more questions I would like to have answered but this remains the most interesting of the latest series so far. I can even forgive Roache for being a public supporter of the Tory Party!
And Newcastle? They got a goal back but lost 2.1 Manchester United comes to St James Park shortly in the premiership, Newcastle also go to Sunderland for the Derby as well as playing in the Euro League and they just do not have the strength in depth to cope with such a programme
23.15 Time to wrap up but I post one before then.
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