2086 Five talented Operara singers

The Cardiff Singer of the World competition final was held on Sunday evening with a surprising result

Meeta Raval opened the evening programme withTimor di me? ... D'amor sull'ali rosee (Il trovatore) - Verdi;
Sola, perduta, abbandonata (Manon Lescaut) - Puccini and Beim Schlafengehen (Vier letzte Lieder No 3) - R Strauss

She attended Wells Cathedral School and was the first Head Girl Chorister in the country. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a first class honours degree and was awarded a Diploma of Distinction by Royal Academy Opera. Meeta won the Dame Eva Turner Prize and the Royal Academy of Music Pavarotti Prize. She has participated in master classes with Dame Ann Murray and Mirella Freni, and completed her studies at the National Opera Studio in 2010.

Operatic roles include Contessa Le nozze di Figaro, Donna Anna Don Giovanni, Micaela Carmen, Magda La rondine, Mimì La bohème, Liù Turandot, The Witch Hänsel und Gretel and the title role Suor Angelica. Meeta's operatic debut at English National Opera was as First Flower Maiden Parsifal. On the concert stage, Meeta has sung the Bach Mass in B Minor and Johannes Passion; Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem; Bruckner's Te Deum; Dvořák's Stabat Mater; Strauss's Vier letzte Lieder and Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder. Broadcasts include Contessa in Discovering Figaro and Soprano in Janáček's Diary of One who Disappeared, both for BBC Radio 3, and Teresa Das Wundertheater by Henze for RAI. Future plans include Cio-Cio San Madam Butterfly for Mid Wales Opera in September. Meeta enjoys shopping, travel, cinema, dancing and all kinds of music. I rated her performance 4th of the 5 competitors on the night.


Previously she had sung
· Signore, ascolta! (Turandot) - Puccini
· La mamma morta (Andrea Chénier) - Giordano
· How can I sleep ... At the haunted end of the day (Troilus and Cressida) - Walton
· Mercè, dilette amiche (I vespri siciliani) - Verdi

I placed 5th Hye Jung Lee from South Korea who had impressed everyone in the semi final which she won by singing· I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung (Nixon in China) - John Adams but had to contribute other songs for the final.

· Tornami a vagheggiar (Alcina) - Handel
· A vos jeux, mes amis ... Partagez-vous mes fleurs! (Hamlet) - Thomas

Born in 1983 she graduated from Seoul National University in 2006, with teacher Hyun Ju Yun. She continued her studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Dresden with Ilse Hahn and Mannes College of Music, New York with Beth Roberts. She was the recipient of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Scholarship 2006-2008 and winner of Metropolitan Opera Council in Indiana District in 2010. Hye Jung won second prize at the 2008 Shizuoka International Opera Competition, third prize at the 58th ARD International Music Competition in 2009 and won the Career Bridges grant award in 2010. Hye Jung joined the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera in 2010 and performed Giannetta L'elisir d'amore and scenes from Ariadne auf Naxos Zerbinetta and A Midsummer Night's Dream Tytania there the same year. Her repertoire includes Adele Die Fledermaus, Lauretta Gianni Schicchi, Ilia Idomeneo, Marie La fille du régiment, Zdenka Arabella, Nannetta Falstaff and Frasquita Carmen. She has also taken part in many concerts, including Mozart's C minor Mass, Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorium at Carnegie Hall and a UBS gala concert at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. In July 2012, Hye Jung will perform Madame Mao Nixon in China with San Francisco Opera. I had wondered how China would react to this Opera so it is interesting that she is participating in this visit. In her spare time, she enjoys movies and yoga.

Of the three others I had expected Andrei Bonarenko, the Baritone from Ukraine and the only male singer in the final to win as he had the vote of the expert commentators for the BBC and had won the song competition final the night before. Born in 1987 he trained at the National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music in Kiev and the Kiev Conservatory. Since 2007 he has been a soloist in the Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers in St Petersburg. Awards include third prize at the 2006 International Rimsky-Korsakov vocal competition in St Petersburg, third prize at the International Maniuszko Competition and finalist in the 2010 Operalia competition. In 2009 he took part in the Salzburg Festival Young Singers' Project, working with Michael Schade and taking master classes with Christa Ludwig, Marjana Lipovšek and Thomas Quasthoff. In 2010 he sang Grigorio Roméo et Juliette with Yannik Nezet-Seguin and this year The Emperor Le Rossignol with Ivor Bolton. Andrei's current roles at the Mariinsky include Gugliemo Così fan tutte and Conte Il nozze di Figaro. Other repertoire includes Onegin Eugene Onegin, Silvio Pagliacci, Marullo Rigoletto, Robert Iolanta, Aeneas Dido and Aeneas, Papageno Die Zauberflöte and Belcore L'elisir d`amore. This year, in Vienna, Germany, Moscow, St Petersburg and at the Sydney Festival, he takes part in a new Michael Sturminger project, The Giacomo Variations, alongside John Malkovich. Future engagements include his Glyndebourne Touring Opera debut as Malatesta Don Pasquale in 2011 and Marcello La bohème at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 2012. Andrei enjoys playing jazz saxophone.

· Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo (Così fan tutte) - Mozart
· O Carlo, ascolta ... Io morrò - (Don Carlo) - Verdi
· Fin ch'han del vino - (Don Giovanni) - Mozart
· Ya vas lyublyu (The Queen of Spades) - Tchaikovsky

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Song Prize Final repertoire

· In der Fremde (Op 39 No 1) - Schumann
· Intermezzo (Op 39 No 2) - Schumann
· Waldesgespräch (Op 39 No 3) - Schumann
· Die Stille (Op 39 No 4) - Schumann
· Autumn (Russia cast adrift No 1) - Georgy Sviridov
· Russia cast adrift (Russia cast adrift No 5) - Georgy Sviridov
· Simon, Peter ... Where are you? (Russia cast adrift No 6) - Georgy Sviridov
· O my homeland, o happy and eternal hour (Russia cast adrift No 12) - Georgy Sviridov

I wanted Mezzo-Soprano Olesya Petrova Mess to win because I enjoyed her voice and performances the most overall. Born 1982 in St Petersburg, she graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatoire in 2008 where she had studied with Professor Irina Bogacheva. She has been a soloist with the St Petersburg Conservatoire Opera Theatre since 2007. Olesya won second prize at the first International Galina Vishnevskaya competition in Moscow in 2006 and second prize in the XI11 International Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow in 2007. She has performed Lyubasha The Tsar's Bride for Perm Opera and Novosibirsk Opera and Amneris Aida in Bangkok. Oleysa's repertoire also includes Marfa Khovanshchina; Lel The Snow Maiden; Carmen Carmen; Olga Eugene Onegin; Countess Polina The Queen of Spades; Maddalena Rigoletto; Joan The Maid of Orleans and Ulrica Un ballo in maschera. Olesya's concert repertoire includes works by Bach, Pergolesi, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler and Prokofiev. Artists Olesya has performed with include Valery Gergiev, Leo Kremer, Fabio Mastrangelo and Vladimir Fedoseev. She has given solo recitals in St Petersburg, Moscow and Ekaterinburg and has toured in Europe, the USA, South America, Korea, China and Japan. Future plans include Konchakovna Prince Igor in Zurich in 2012. In her spare time, Olesya enjoys the gym, cinema, reading and driving.

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2011: Final repertoire
· Nyet, bit' ne mozhet! (The Tsar's Bride) - Rimsky-Korsakov
· Re dell'abisso, affrettati (Un ballo in maschera) - Verdi
· Voi lo sapete, o mamma (Cavalleria rusticana) - Mascagni
· Habañera (Carmen) - Bizet

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2011: concert one repertoire
· Adieu, forêts (The Maid of Orleans) - Tchaikovsky
· Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix (Samson et Dalila) - Saint-Saëns
· Acerba voluttà (Adriana Lecouvreur) - Cilea

I was not surprised that the Joan Sutherland audience prize was awarded to the Moldovian singer Valentina Naforniţă
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Valentina Naforniţă was born in Glodeni, Republic of Moldova. She graduated from the Stefan Neaga Music College in Kishinev in 2006 and continued her training in Romania, at the voice department of the National University of Music in Bucharest, where she studied with sopranos Maria Slatinaru-Nistor and Eleonora Enăchescu. The latter is teaching her on the MA programme at present. In addition, she has taken master classes with soprano Mariana Nicolesco and conductor Christian Badea.Valentina has participated in numerous competitions. Recent prizes include the Orange Prize for Young Musicians, Romania in 2009 and the second prize in the Hariclea Darclée Voice Competition in 2010. She has appeared in concerts and recitals on the great music stages in Romania, including the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, and has also collaborated with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra. Roles performed at the Opera Studio of the university include Norina Don Pasquale, Adina L'elisir d'amore, Mimì La bohème and Lauretta Gianni Schicchi. In 2008 she performed in the chorus of the Romanian National Opera and later this year she will sing Norina Don Pasquale with them at the Bucharest National Opera House. Valentina enjoys reading, travelling, ballet dancing and swimming.

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Final repertoire
· Regnava nel silenzio (Lucia di Lammermoor) - Donizetti
· Song to the Moon (Rusalka) - Dvořák
· Je veux vivre (Roméo et Juliette) - Gounod

Earlier she had sung

· Egli non riede ancora ... Non so le tetre immagini (Il corsaro) - Verdi
· Glück das mir verlieb (Die tote Stadt) - Korngold
· Amour, ranime mon courage (Roméo et Juliette) - Gounod

A strong hint that there was to be a surprise came result came when Dame Kire Te Kenawa, the new Patron of the competition following the death of Dame Joan Sutherland said in interview with the Chairman of the Jury Panel that they would have to consider hard who to award the trophy and prize money after hearing all the performances. Valentina had been awarded the fifth place in the final although the semi final had gone to the Ukrainian. In addition to her technical ability and potential and her performance on the night the trump card is her looks, which one commentator described as Drop Dead Gorgeous, whatever that means. She can play riles such as Juliet and Carmen the seductive vamp with credibility.

2085 Three films about Honour, the Kennedy's and America's got Talent, Merlin and some sport

Unfortunately, as forecast, there was no cricket the Emirates Chester Le Street yesterday. I awoke in the morning to find the day damp and wet but it cleared around 9 am here on Tyneside and remained so until after lunch. Evidently there had been much water falling overnight at the Emirates and this had continued for longer as the only announcement on BBC Newcastle at 11 was to say there were no immediate prospects of play and this was followed by the new of no play before lunch time. It was only during the afternoon that the rain returned and persisted that the announcement was made of no play at all during the day. For the club and the local authority a blank day like this on a Saturday is a potential financial disaster. The staff will have arrived to prepare food and serve drinks as well host the entrances and sell tickets.

One of the best crowds of the season will have been anticipated for the game between the closest playing competitors and with a long history of Durham and Tyneside people visiting Headingly for International and some championship games before Durham became a top cricket playing side and some Yorkshire folk travelling to watch Durham when their county is playing away. Because of the City location in the area of the Metropolitan University which brings in students to add to the regular membership and because of its fine history, the County is able to command a greater on going crowd of supporters than the middle of no where location of counties such as Durham and Hampshire. Although clubs take out expensive insurance a rained off match in this way can be a disaster for those already struggling to meet the costs of redevelopment to achieve better facilities for players and supporters to International stadium levels.

I write this on Sunday morning 6.15 when for the second day in succession there has been rain overnight, the skies are grey and heavy and air feels damp. I quickly lose all enthusiasm and energy on such days and there was no inclination to go to the leisure and yesterday little enthusiasm for project work or new writings. I therefore watch a lot of television and eat more than was good for me with a mini cooked breakfast, a Mex Tex or Tex Mex, which ever way round one prefers, platter for lunch, soup, olive salad with become and cheese quiche for tea, a helping of a chocolate chip whip for lunch and the excellent inexpensive black grapes from Morrisons plus not one but two pecan twirls.

15.30 Around 10.30 with the skies clear hear and having organised food and drink I set off for the cricket stopping at Shield’s Morrisons for some soft rolls. There was some 90 minutes of play before the skies darkened and the players went off for bad light and knowing that heavy rains was not far away. Durham and won the toss and asked Yorkshire to bat playing Onions and Steve Harmison for the first time this season together with Collingwood, Borthwick and Blackwell, potentially the strongest of sides with exception young Ben Stokes out for another month having broken a finger. As the rain was heaving and comprehensive I was not optimistic about any play following the taking of an early lunch and decided to return home listening to the lunchtime chat during the Test Match. The opportunity was being taken to give publicity for a new type of cricket called Cage cricket ideal for urban areas, unused tennis courts, indoor centres, in fact anywhere which can offer the space and boundaries required for what is intended to be a 6 player one hour game of around 30 overs. I will leave to another writing what I have learned so far about this development launched earlier in the month at Hampshire with Sir Ian Botham.

I caught up with America has Got Talent where four may have been five programmes were shown in succession yesterday. These programmes are filled with advertising and breaks and for at least half each hour of broadcasting with Piers Morgan taking over the role of Simon Cowell as the judge telling the truth. There was some good talent and some potential season competition winners. I struggle hard to remember even these acts. There was a large black Metro Train worker with a powerful jazzy blues rocking big mama of a voice; an illusionist who switched himself into the position of his assistant contained in a raised transparent box in a seamless move which no one can still work out how the trick is accomplished. It will be interesting to see if he can achieve better in the semi finals and finals of the competition. There were also several dance groups whose precision and novelty entertained but the majority of those selected to go to Vegas will not be selected to perform again for the audience unless they adopt the British approach this season where some acts were asked to perform again in two or three act competition for places, although in some instances the outcome was evident but at least it provided the opportunity for also rans to bring themselves to the attention of the public in their state and local communities.

There was also the second episode of the new series of Camelot, King Arthur, Merlin and all that. The character of Merlin is very different from all those previously portrayed on screen who like to perform tricks and heroic deeds on behalf of the King and concept which they served. Although young Merlin and Young Arthur changed the image from the traditional fatherly figure, the character has always been understanding and likeable. In this series of ten episodes he is played by Joseph Fiennes the younger brother of Ralph, as a cunning bossy man with his own agenda and determined to mould King Arthur into the kind of leader he is determined to have. He is in not likeable and therefore attracts no sympathy. Arthur has his limitations and comes across as an ordinary young man ill equipped for the role that has been thrust upon him. The two characters one wants to see progress are both female. The half sister Morgan has a clear idea of herself and what she wants and has transformed her father’s castle into a seductive feminine home masking steel eyed ambition with the technical wizard skills to achieve what she wants. She is willing to offer her body to achieve goals as long as the male in question remains her subject whatever the official public presentation. She is placed as her champion young black woman former slave inherited from her father’s household and given her the authority to employ only those from his service who can be trusted to serve them, dismissing the others. It is evident she will represent the dark side of womanhood, when in fact she is just performing as well and better than men of her time.

The other character is Guinevere who it is evident will represent the loyal, thoughtful, high minded and romantic female kind. She has already appeared to Arthur in a dream observed by Merlin and introduced to the King at his Coronation Party where attracted because of the dream he is disappointed to find that she is engaged to his right hand knight alongside his brother. In the second episode they go off together to find a warrior Knight to join the King’s Party and attracts other good fighting Knights to strengthen their fighting force potential. They take the action after the family of Guinevere is forced to leave their home because of an attack by marauders/brigands and seek the King’s sanctuary. At first Merlin advises the King against offering hospitality but when he learns that the girl was shortly to be married to the betrothed and that in the circumstances the marriage will be postponed he immediately changes his position and announces that the marriage will take place at Camelot within the week. He warns Merlin that the girl is not for him.

She is uncertain that this is the right thing to do after meeting the King and the Coronation and seeing that he is attracted to her, Her betrothal was arranged by her mother and the fiancée is regarded as a good man, of social position and wealth who will protect her and her family. Her maid servant advises that she may fall in love in time or find that he gives her children who she will love and fulfil her life. She knows this will not be enough but will do her duty in the circumstances.

Merlin accepts an invitation to a feat in his honour at his father’s former Castle. Morgan sends her new personal assistant, dressed in finery but apparently unaccompanied with the invitation which Merlin wants to refuse but is over ruled. They have an enjoyable meal after which Arthur has another dream in which he and Guinevere become lovers before she carries out her obligations as a betrothed. Merlin also appears to have met his match with Morgan who appears to imprison in his bed but he emphasises that he has the superior power and is giving her the opportunity to accept and play her part in creating the new era world of her half brother. The series has already been aired in the USA achieving an audience of one million viewers or thereabouts.

I watched two films which are also above loyalty, duty and honour. The first is PT 109, the fictionalised account of the role of President John F Kennedy in World War II. He is played by Cliff Robertson an actor then 40 playing a young man of 24. The true story is that Kennedy was declared unfit for military service but used his father’s influence to gain a naval commission with the help of the Director of Naval Intelligence who had served his father as an attaché. He was given a desk job at Naval headquarters but after the attack on Pearl Harbour used that same influence to get himself into active service and into a dangerous front line role becoming a lieutenant in charge of a PT (Patrol Torpedo) boat which is a comparatively small craft with about a dozen men.

In August 1943, along with two other similar vessels, with whom direct contact was lost, he was undertaking night time patrols near New Georgia in the Solomon Island when in full darkness he was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and sunk. He is reputed to have held a meeting with the survivors, some wounded and two lost, to decide whether to surrender or seek escape. They decided to swim to the nearest island where unable to find food and water they went onto another. From where they were rescued Kennedy towed the most injured member of the crew by a sling device around his head after swimming for several hours to get himself and the other crew members out of the sea and ashore.

In the film several members of crew commenced to have doubts they would be rescued and but Kennedy was able to send a message cut out in the skin of a coconut to one of the Australian radio operators based on the islands via sympathetic islanders who relayed the information to the naval command HQ who sent out a rescue vessel and all the men survived.

In the film this incident occurs after one which in fact takes place after his subsequent appointment to a PT vessel converted into a gun boat when in October of 43 he participated in the rescue of men who had been airborne and trapped on an island. In the film they had sufficient fuel to reach the island and rescue the men but then had to be towed home just before the tide swept them back in range of enemy heavy gunfire. He continued to skipper this vessel until discharge in 1945. For his rescue efforts he was given a citation and Purple Heart and three bronze stars. This was a young man who suffered from back problems which continued throughout his adult life.

In the film he is joined by another skipper, Robert Culp who had his boat sunk and on one mission by a desk bound career naval officer who had never seen action and who shoots down an enemy plane. It was also customary for those surviving a sinking or other major battle experience to be given a brief period of home shore leave before being reassigned. One of the reasons Kennedy considered surrendering and then decided against taken home leave was because he was then a single man where as several of his crew were married with families. Whatever was the reality of political and personal later life it is evident that he possessed a sense of responsible reality, leadership understanding and concern for others which shone brightly throughout his life and irrespective of his family wealth, status and influence.

While PT 109 can be described as a standard wartime that is good and engaging but not exceptional film, Only The Brave falls under the exceptional category. However before giving my account of this film I watched the well trodden story of the Kennedy family in a new series on BBC 2, following on as it does from another new series on the History Channel. I watched waiting to see if anything new emerged and which had with it veracity. The series was to have been shown on the History Channel in he USA and Canada and was then dropped. It was then rejected by other channels in the USA until taken up by channels in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia.

I suspect I know the reason why the series is not being shown in the USA based on the first two episodes. The programme attempts to ,provide a rounded picture of the principal characters and most of all Joseph P Kennedy who advises his sons that it does not matter who you are but what the public think you are. He tells Jack on his wedding day the golden rule is to keep his infidelities out of the media and ensure the women keep their mouths shut. He offers to create a fund of $1 for Jackie if she does not divorce Jack and becomes the first Lady after he has got Jack the Presidency in 1960. She refuses the offer but agrees to stay.

The first two episodes switches between election day 1960 and the events beforehand from when the family lived in London where Joseph was the Ambassador planning to run for the Presidency against Roosevelt. His approach was to argue that Hitler could be trusted to keep his word about not attacking other countries once he had united the German peoples of Europe and that the USA should in effect mind its own business. Given the extent of his funding of the Party and standing he did not anticipate he would be sacked bringing his dream to an end. When Roosevelt required him to resign he switched his attention and money to making his eldest son the President. Joseph Junior is presented as being fully in favour of his prospective political career to the extent that he expressed resentment when John returns home a hero after his efforts to rescue and help the crew of his PT 109 to survive. The reason for the resentment is that he sees John’s public standing as affecting his candidacy for Congress after the war en route to the Presidency. Dad was more cynical saying that he had never met anyone that could not be bought.

Unscrupulous, vindictive, ruthless, uncompromising are all descriptions which accurately describe the man but he was never a hypocrite seeing himself and human behaviour as what it is in reality rather than what we would like it to be.

When John was missing after his ship had been rammed by the enemy the visit the local clergy who knowing of his agnosticism are puzzled by his visit, He wants them to pray for the safe return of his son adding that he has sinned so much in the past God will not listen to his prayers. When the news is given that Joseph junior has been killed in action he refuses to pray for the soul of his son even to console his suffering wife.

The programme states that John wanted to teach history at Harvard and chase girls but once father decided that he had achieve what he and the elder brother had not, there was no turning away despite his lack of interest and initial ability. The programme suggests that the turning point was addressing a meeting of mothers who had all lost sons in World War 11 and cast aside the prepared speech and spoke of the loss he and his family felt with the death of the eldest son. However because of the strength of the Italian vote and loyalty to a Congressional candidate of Italian background, Joseph has the master stroke of finding another Italian in the district with the same surname and meeting the costs of putting his name on ballot so to divide the voting through mistakes.

John’s philandering was so well known that when Jackie told her mother she was to marry, she did everything she could to persuade her against doing so forecasting the kind of marriage she would have. Jackie was determined that therefore must have cursed her poor judgement when after the marriage her husband appeared to take up every offer made to him and she wryly comments that she had hoped he would have thrown some back. The programme suggests that he even accepted an offer from a campaign intern on Election night and that Jackie became aware of the relationship as did Bobby. There is also the inference that Joseph’s wife was aware of her husband philandering including that with his personal assistant. There were two other indications of the reality of this family and their quest for power. Bobby felt that his job was well done in being his brother’s campaign organiser under the direction of their father and wanted to move is already large family to Boston to practice law. He explains his intentions to his father after the victory and it appears his father understands, will give full support and then embraces his son to show his appreciation. He later gives John the list of names for his first cabinet of state and this includes Bobby as the Attorney General because he is needed to watch John’s back. Similarly Jackie pregnant with her second child is excused a media interview on election day at John’s insistence and Bobby arranges for his wife to undertake the task, something she is very willing to do. Joseph disagrees and orders Jackie through Bobby and John because of the better image for the future President. I have to say that it can be said that history paid Joseph back in full for his ambition. I shall watch the remaining programmes to see what other truths are presented. It is noteworthy that from the scheduling that the series ends with the assassination of Bobby. Teddy appears to escape.

I now come to the to the third film about honour and integrity and which again illumines the rotten core of the USA in the past.

Only the Brave is a little known film about the 100th Infantry Battalion of 442 Regiment of the United States Army made up of 1000 second generation Japanese Americans, many of whose families were interned and some imprisoned following the attack by Japan on the Pacific Island base of Pearl Harbour. As with the Battalions of all black Americans they were often used by their all white masters to take on the most dangerous and bloody of assignments. The film concentrates on one of their last actions when heavily depleted through deaths and injuries on the campaign through Italy and into Germany they were called upon to break through superior German forces to rescue a small all white unit of less than 300 men. This they succeeded with continuing huge losses to themselves. The film is a fictionalised account of some of he lives of these men. It overlooks the increased prejudice and persecution which the survivors faced after the war despite the unit battalion receiving more honours than any other.

The facts are that 110000 individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were removed from their homes and work and placed in guarded camps. However back in Hawaii although martial law and curfew was imposed the 150000 of the 400000 population continued to live in their home and to work for the USA a decision which was governed by economics than security.

It is therefore not surprising that when the decision came to create a Regiment from Japanese Americans there were 10000 volunteers from the Islands and only 1500 from the mainland and of these some 3000 from the islands and 800 from the mainland were drafted. Because of the length of the campaign and level of casualties the initial force was replaced three and a half times

It was towards the end of the war in Europe that after only two days of resting the survivors of the campaign to date were selected to attempt the rescue of 275 white men cut off for more than a week surrounded by the enemy. 230 were rescued by the special combat and out 346 men who broke through the lines to open a corridor by which the white men could leave only 25 came back with them unhurt. Because of their service 21 Medal of honour were awarded, 560 Silver stars, 4000 Bronze starts and 9486 Purple Hearts. Only in 2010 was the Congressional medal of Honour awarded to the 442 Regimental Combat team and 100th Infantry Battalion. The reception of the survivors was typical of a country that had done its best tom exterminate the Native American and hen treated the black citizens with slave owning mentality until the 1960 and 70’s. There was resistance when Hawaii attempted to become a State of the union because recognition meant having a state where whiles were in the minority. It was the role of the Japanese Hawaiians in World War II which swayed opinion in favour, eventully.

2084 Three films, Cardiff Singer of the World, Chicago Code and Blue Bloods, in rain

12.40 18th June 2011. Aide Memoir. I dislike the tendency of sport’s blogists to commence their reporting on events by adding comments on top of the previous note so that in order to commence with a description of an event you have to go the end of the print out and work backwards. My bank introduced the same approach with statements about a year ago with the latest position at the top. There is logic about this in relation to financial statement events but not sporting.

Having said this at least there is a formality and consistency about the approach whereas for this writing it is all over the time span of recent days of experience. The main cause is the effort put into transporting heavy completed project Development sets from the first floor Display room to the second floor storage room .I will have completed the move by this evening and the transfer of partially completed work, all Event volumes from the First floor work room into the vacant shelves in the Display room. I also have several completed Event volumes to move to the top but this may take place towards the middle to end of next week after the championship cricket game between Durham and Yorkshire which commences on Saturday. I wrote this before studying the detailed weather forecast.

In the past I noted that when I concentrated on physical activity I placed the brain and its motivating will power in sleep mode and vice versa. Having failed to create a better balance over the past 72 year I am almost reconciled to accepting the situation. I have recently concentrated on mind control and emotional stability.

I break off to watch the last part of Bargain Hunt in which both teams lose whereas yesterday there were two good winners. I used to think the programme editors would encourage the experts to recommends bargains according to the extent to which contestants entered into the spirit of the programme, their personalities and if they indicated a knowledge or attempted to give the impression of being knowledgeable. As will be noted I remain a determinist rather than a supporter of chaos and random theories.

Much later than planned I commence the next writing. It was 17.22 on June 15th. The past couple of days have been a mixtures of good experiences, frustrations, near disasters and one of those events where you hope the situation will work out differently, but hope of this happening fades and by the morning will headed all together.

Have been motivated by watching the film Fragments and enjoyed the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I was present on a warm and part sunny evening at the Emirates Riverside when Durham had an excellent and important win against 20 20 leaders of the Northern Championship, Nottinghamshire, who they will played again in Nottingham on Thursday evening. There is another 20 20 games against Leicestershire on Friday and then Durham host Yorkshire over the weekend. A week later there is a 20 20 game at the Emirates on the Sunday afternoon after which I will motor on to Liverpool for the game which starts on the Monday. We are also playing Lancashire in the 20 20 on the Friday beforehand. So there is potentially 10 days of live cricket watching between now and the end of the month plus two radio commentaries, The European Under 21 Football Championship; the third Test against Sri Lanka at the Rosebowl and Rugby League. I have no interest in Ascot.

I came across a bottle of Mateus like Rose from Spain at half the price and went back and they had sold out. I then discovered a remaining bottle of another Spanish rose with fizz for £2.99. I am enjoying a couple of glasses after a roll with spread and a salad in which I combined defrosted prawns in shell with half the self selected Morrison salad. At lunch I had a mixture of scampi with prawns in bread combs with a sauce of baked beans and chopped tomatoes. Breakfast was a microven heat of mini sausages mini bacon pieces, a little scrambled egg, baked beans and chopped tomato.

I have been working hard during the day on reorganising and storing completed work files stacking Development sets in the second floor storeroom after recording the numbers and locations. I have so far freed five shelves with putting boxes in three tiers on the top two shelves on assembled metal units in the first floor storage display room and filling the three cleared shelves with sets in the making previously located on the floor of the first floor work room. After the initial effort on Monday and going for a sauna and swim on Tuesday I needed a go slow but today I had three sessions of going up and down stairs fully loaded. I grow tired after the meal and wine so will revert to the settee and hope to revive to write more lately this evening.

I have recovered sufficiently to attempt some more writing while keeping one eye on the 20 20 game between Derbyshire who beat Durham and then and the no result game on Sunday who are playing Worcester. This afternoon while recovering from lunch and the morning efforts I watched the 2009 film Fragments which is also known as Winged Creatures which is the name of he novel.

A man enters a diner and starts to shoot people and hen himself. The film deal with the families of victims and the survivors. Anne known as Annie is a teenage school age daughter at the diner with her father and her best friend Jimmy who communicate on a regular basis by email. When the gunman starts to shoot the two young people hide under the table while holding the hand the father. After the event the girl appears calm and refers to the courage of her father in a Christian context. She is able to speak at the funeral and after returning almost immediate to school she shares her faith with other pupils. Her mother can barely cope and is worried by the behaviour of her daughter who after a brief interest in religion had not shown any since. Her best friend on the other hand has become silent something which his father understands. The father and Annie discourage Jimmy from having contact with the Hospital trauma psychotherapist.

It is Jimmy who breaks first attempting to take his own life by planning to fall off a high level working and then gets hold of a gun from his father and goes to the Diner, but in both instances he contacts Annie and at the first she persuades him to get safe but in the second the reason for his silence comes to the fore as he demands that she speak the truth of what happened. Her father had not shown great courage but froze out of panic and then wet himself which the daughter had tried to disguise with her soft drink telling the boy to swear not to say a word about what happened. The killer had brought the gun below the table pointing at the boy’s head but had been distracted by another customer who had decided to have a go at the killer. The girl is able to tell the truth and find emotional release and join her mother in grief and in anger. She is also fascinated by birds and their freedom hence the title of the book and we also see her father’s pigeon made free which in the book she destroy their cages. Jimmy and his father are already affected by the death of his brother who the father blames on a psychologist and with his son is therefore hostile the hospital psychologist who tries to help the survivors and their families.

Charlie Archenault is in the Diner having got a lucky ticket with gives him a free breakfast, but he is far from feeling lucky as clutching booklets about coping with cancer as if he has just had his worst fears confirmed. Having escaped with only a grazed neck he quickly goes out of the hospital and cashing whatever money he has books himself into a top notch hotel and sets about gambling at a Casino where at first his luck continues winning $100000 but then it changes and loses much of what he has won and going to the bathroom he passes blood. Meanwhile back home his single parent daughter, (I understand his wife in the book) tells people to whom he owes money that she does not know where he is. In the film the daughter learns of the cancer condition and he returns home to that fate.

A surgeon married to a woman who suffers from migraines leaves the diner before the killing commences. In the book it is 20 mins beforehand while in the film he holds the door open for the killer. Without knowing what then happens until told he is needed to operate on casualties from the incident and he accidentally cuts into the victim’s heart that then dies as he was most likely to have done in any event. The man is tormented by this and starts to experiment in the treatment of his wife’s condition in such a way that she becomes very ill but he then cures her although on the last occasion she recovers, only just.

The serving girl at the counter who although was not shot is traumatised and rejects her son turns to alcohol and men and fantasises about a relationship with the Doctor. It is my understanding that the book suggests that the event brings out issues which were always there such as the waitress resentful of being left with a demanding child, was rejecting of the infant beforehand, while Jimmy was as much affected by his aggressive father who was physically violent towards his mother as the incident itself. The waitress is played by Kate Beckinsale and Charlie’s daughter by Jennifer Hudson. The individual performances were convincing and formed a whole which I found thoughtful and moving.

Friday 17th June 13.55. It is the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition week, the most influential singing competition in the world for those who wish to perform at the great Opera Houses of the World. I saw the preliminary programme on Saturday and then forgot that the four semi finals, each with 5 competitors commenced on Tuesday. I am catching up with programmes to day and the first singer a Soprano from New Zealand, 30 year old Anna Leese with a powerful deep voice and whose figure already suggest she is on her way joining those who fill out through their singing development. Her performance included Mimi’s farewell song from La Boheme. I liked her voice and first two compositions. The final piece was for a coloratura which I have never appreciated. I give her 8 plus. The programme critics put her about 7 plus plus to 8.

I break off to create a lunch platter of one salmon fish cake, some scampi, some prawns in bread crumbs and some Indian starters to fill the space. I enjoyed a bacon roll around 10.30 and at 9 a cereal bowl.

The second contestant is a young base singer from Armenia who felt it is a privilege just to participate. The full base voice is a rarity and he will have long professional career but I agreed with the programme critics that lacked a commanding presence and give him 7 plus plus to 8. We them experience a young Russian, with the surname Olesya Petrova, a Mezzo Soprano the best of the female voices for me and her is amazingly powerful and she the ability to put herself into whatever mood and part projecting herself directly to everyone individually. I gave her 9 plus without hesitation and the audience responded in similar fashion as did the critics. The fourth performer was also a Soprano from Bulgaria, an attractive young woman and a mother. I thought she was the weakest of the four to date in terms of voice and choice of programme. The final singer was a baritone from Romania whose voice I also enjoyed but not his programme choice. There was one outstanding competitor on the night and the judges agreed

Earlier today tired from the morning exercise and first project work I watch a great fun piece after seeing that the cast included the great Bill Nighy and called Wild Target. As wicked black comedies go this is the wickedest and blackest.

The film brings together four great characters and I begin with Emily Blunt as a self confident amoral young woman kleptomaniac who persuades a restorer at the national gallery to create a copy of a Rembrandt which is being sold abroad because the Gallery has been unable to raise the fund to keep the picture in the UK. She then arranges to sell copy to a Billionaire collector on the basis he gets the original and the overseas buyer the copy. In order to achieve the deal she takes both in a double sided picture carrying case and allows the original to be inspected and authenticated by a an expert. She then raises the asking price giving the opportunity to pretend to take the picture with her as the opportunity to reverse sides and take out the fake. It is not until she has left the hotel suite that the switch is recognised that the Billionaire hires the best known hit man to kill the girl in revenge.

They man he hires has been trained from birth by his father and mother to become the most respected assassin. He follows on from his father and grandfather having been given a gun for his first birthday present and had a mobile above his cot of toy guns. He visits his mother, played by the excellent Eileen Atkins in a home because of her increasing frailty who gives for his forthcoming birthday a bound volume of press cuttings about his most famous hits. She chides him over the fact that he has remained unmarried and mentions it was at his same age his father married her. Perhaps it with this thought in mind that he is not as clinical as previously when stalking Emily and preparing an education, following her to a hotel where she makes passionate love which he observes and found a vacant position in the building opposite. He decides not to kill her when the opportunity next arises. His mother is incandescent with rage when she learns what happened fearing the family reputation has been sullied for ever! She advises that he must immediately redeem himself by killing the girl and giving the fee back in recompense. He follows her to a multi-storey car park and is about to execute when he sees another attempting to do so, so he kills him and then enters into a gun fight with a second assassin. Just when Bill and he girl are about to be killed by the second man, a young man who has been using the car park as a home from home, grabs the gun of the other first killer and shoot the other man wounding him. The three beat a quick retreat in the mini car. Nighy claims to be a detective on a stake out in the car park and agrees to protect the girl for a fee of £30000 a week. The young man is played by Rupert Grint the friend of Harry Potter is the series.

Bill takes them to a West End Hotel where he and the girl are in constant disagreement about everything. They do not realise that the Billionaire is in a suite nearby, cursing the fact that he has lost one bodyguard and that the other is injured. He has resorted to hiring the next best hitman in the world who is something of a sadist. He has an equally obnoxious assistant but they have in common admiration for the Master who they have never met.

Still at loggerheads Nighy and Blunt are at breakfast in the hotel dining room while Rupert is enjoying bath. Blunt has left her boots out to be cleaned and these are spotted by the bumbling bodyguard who enters the suite and bathroom but shoots the ear off the man somehow and then rushes out with their belonging collection the duo who are the reception desk settling the bill. There is then the usual car chase through London before the billionaire and assistant crash and end up in traction in hospital. The new hitman and assistant visit and vow to carry out the commission.

Nighy takes the girl and the adopted young man who he has offered to train to the family home in the midst of the countryside. The house is spotless with everything covered in plastic which leads to one quip that he will have no problem using a condom! Eventually the girl succumbs to Bill’s understated charm when he tenderly massages her feet among his many skills. Just when it looks as if all is going well for the trio, Eileen Atkins arrives to express her opposition to developments. Then Emily discovers the truth about Bill which she imparts to Rupert before departing as quickly as she can,

Meanwhile to two new hired assassins have been go through a list of possible forgers which leads them to the actual forger and to Emily on her return to London. They make their way with the girl back to the hideout where Bill is teaching Rupert to shoot, He suddenly appears to get three bulls eyes which he denies as they have been achieved by one of the gunmen with Emily in two. Out of admiration for the Master, the young turk offers to let Rupert live if Bill kills Emily and allows the young man to kill him. Bill’s mother has returned home and from the first floor shoots the assistant about to kill the three. The young turk then seizes the original gun given to Bill by his father and attempts to shoot him only for the gun go explode and the man killed by the recoil. They then bury the two in the garden. The film ends three years later when a young boy appears to have buried something in the grounds while Bill and Emil are eating out proudly watching. Young Rupert arrives to say he is missing the household cat which evidently has been killed and buried by the offspring obviously following in the family tradition. The film is great fun.

6 pm Listening to Yorkshire playing in a near full house against Lancashire, the only one of tonight’s 8 games in play although there were five overs in the Durham game before the rain came again. I have completed the move of Development files to the top but am yet to complete the registration of the locations I have also watched the second episode of the Cardiff singers of the world competition where none of the five lived up to the standard of the first night. I was impressed by the only individual representing England born in Birmingham of Indian parents, Meeta Raval. she has a great stage presence and communicates her enjoyment of singing and life in general. She was the Judges winner for the evening. Someone else who impressed was a mezzo soprano now living in Switzerland and who came in for the original individuals elected who missed out through illness. An attractive girl from Chile lacked technical ability for selected programme and another soprano from Canada also had problems. The only male on the evening came from China and while still a young man with promise he also had limitations which were exposed through the selected programme.

20.00 18th June Email from Olympics promising ticket information before 24th and also info on how to apply for remaining tickets. Had good and bad news from Energy Company with raising one monthly and lowering the other so overall a small gain to me. Durham game another no result and forecast tomorrow is torrential rain throughout the day throughout North East. OK tonight for Kings of Leon at Sunderland that the Hoppings on Town Moor Newcastle with 300 attractions and stalls. It always pours with rain. Newcastle is at Sunderland in second match of the season mid August as fixtures announced this morning.

I enjoyed Blue Bloods this week. A young couple spend a break in New York with the wife insisting that they visit a restaurant where she has been with a female friend in the past. He tops the waitress and she advises where he can go outside to smoke a cigar, he is shot and dies in hospital. The good citizens of the home state, the family and the Mayor are all horrified at the blow to tourism and there is early suggestion that a hooded black man seen running along the street about the time of the killing is the culprit. The Police Commissioners is cautious and resists joining the band wagon with apologies and giving the killing more attention than any of the others occurring in the city over the previous few days. The first lead is the waitress who is found with the boyfriend high on drugs but is eliminated when the boyfriend is found to have a good alibi. The next lead is the hooded runner who alleges he was out jogging. A former ex policeman who criticised corruption within the force in his home country he came to USA for a new start, It is Danny for once who has doubts which his sister the prosecuting DS thinks it is an open and shut case although she is wanting to get a good conviction quickly having messed a case when led to the culprit walking free and although he has recently been shot by an off licence owner, he had shot dead another customer beforehand.

Danny and his assistant start to check out the murdered man’s wife and the family friend who comes to New York to take the body back to the home state. They find that the pair have been spending weekends together and that the husband and in effect made a dummy rum to New York to rehearse the killing of the husband. When he is in custody he confirms that the instigator of the crime was the wife. Everyone is required to eat humble pie except Danny. The young hooded black man was a coincidental jogger.

I have been trying hard to remember the Chicago Code episode which now comes back to me. There are two stories. The first is the practice of black gangs to sue a family member or friend to rent a house in a new district. They move out and the gang moves in organising a drug extortion terror racket. When they have exhausted the local situation or the police start to move in they move out, starting elsewhere again. In this instance the Superintendent’s supporting Detective and his university FBI promised assistant (he found out the background by breaking into the personal records) have to hand over the case because of being ordered to deal with a situation of greater political significance, His former enemy and still rival slips up when one of the hand pulls a gun and nearly kills the rookie niece cop and her senior partner. She takes responsibility for the failure to do a proper body check but later it emerges that she was covering for the boss so to have a hold of him in the future.

The education and wealthy son of a leading figure is in a drug induced coma. Later his girl friend is found drowned in side his car which is brought out of the river. The investigation takes the pair to an upmarket night club where dugs and sex are organised by the female manager/owner. The duo spot the house share friend of the dead girl who first refuses to cooperate, then volunteers but with a story which is an obvious attempt to present a cover version of he truth. It emerges that the obnoxious bully father of the young man in a coma had a sexual relationship with the girl before she met his son and the two became serious about each other with the father trying to warn the girl off and then advising the son. The mayor as usual takes the side of the wealthy and influential and orders the Superintendent to call off her dogs. She is a trying to get the Mayor to honour a commitment to replace the limited battery time radio‘s with the latest models. She does a trade while at the same time her man ignores the hands off warning and gets a friendly magistrate/judge to authorise a search warrant. This is successful on in helping to resolve the immediate situation and providing a treasure of records about the involvement of the rich and powerful which can be used in the future. The underlying theme is about trust between partners and also realistic loyalty which can work both ways.

I have also watched The Sorcerers Apprentice which has Nicolas Cage as one of Merlin’s three apprentices attempting to find the one person who defeat the evil Morgana le Fay who wants to destroy the whole of human kind by raising the undead. She has been imprisoned for over one thousand years (since AD 704) together with the love of his life and fellow apprentice Veronica. Veronica has embraced Morgana as the means of enabling Cage (Balthazar) to contain the creature in a kind of Russian doll, which grows in size as other nasty individuals have also been imprisoned as overlays over the decades by Balthazar, including Alfred Molina as Maxim Horvath.

In present day America (AD2000) a 10 year old geeky boy is attracted to a female pupil who reciprocates interest by responding to a note he gives her. However before he can read the note it is taken by the wind, a cycle, a dog and eventually into the doorway of a home filled with things ancient and extraordinary, the latest home of Balthazar who has grown weary of his quest to find Merlin’s heir.

Balthazar senses the boy has not entered his domain by accident and gives him the ring entrusted by Merlin to find a successor. The ring will come alive when the right person is found as it does with Dave. Having been told not to touch anything Dave full of curiosity releases Horvath from the container, the Grimhold, and the two Sorcerers do battle but fortunately they become imprisoned in another Hold for ten years but the container ejects water on to Dave giving the impression that he has wet himself from being lost until found by the school group and great amusement and his humiliation especially as they ridicule his account of the events unfolding within the building.

Ten years later Dave is a college student and a creative genius working on a conductive electro sound project which sets up a triangular interaction of electric flash currents and musical sounds, Unbeknown to him the hold has opened releasing Balthazar and Horvath who makes track for Dave to find out the location of the Grimhold. What happened is that as Dave left the building the Grimhold slipped from his grasp and been found by a Chinese woman and has been in China Town for the previous decade, its secret unknown.

Hovarth creates a pack of hounds to locate and capture Dave but Balthazar retaliates with a steel eagle with become alive. Balthazar attempts to explain to Dave that he is a great Sorcerer in the making and to teach him how to develop and make use of his powers. The complication is that he had encountered the former pupil, now also a university student who does a stint at a small radio station. Balthazar warns that any relationship before he has reached maturity will be a great risk to both of them. The Grimhold found the two Sorcerers do battle for its control, releasing some of the baddies who have been overlaid before Morgana and Veronica are reached. Hovarth enlists the assistance of a well known illusionist with actual supernatural powers.

Eventually both Sorcerers have periods in control of Grimhold and do battle with creatures released until the amalgam of the two former apprentices is released and Morgana gains her independence and sets about creating the end of human kind by creating a mechanism to release the undead. Dave and his girl friend each come to the rescue with the girlfriend preventing the conclusion of the undead rising from occurring and Dave finding a way to destroy Morgana with the Hovarth return to eternal imprisonment. Dave also finds a way of saving Balthazar who was willing to give up his life to save Veronica after she sacrificed herself to save him. The couples are to live happy ever after? Hmm. I see a sequel!

After a disappointing second semi final in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition won by the British singer with an Indian background Meeta Raval there were two outstanding contributions in the third concert competition. The BBC critics went for the beautiful, slim 24 year old Valentina Nafomita from Moldovia who has great power despite her frame and has high notes of great beauty and perfection. The evening went however to another young attractive looking Baritone Andrei Bondarenko from the Ukraine. He has also won a special prize from the judges, but my money is still on Valentina. Last night the evening went to another slim young woman from South Korea Jung Lee who gave an extraordinary performance as the wife of Chairman Mao in the contemporary Opera Nixon in China. The part requires the singer to communicate a powerful and authoritarian woman which she did in such a convincing way that she was transformed which reminded to the recent performance of Carmen in the 3D production for Royal Opera House. I am looking forward to the final on Sunday early evening which I may watch live unless there is a reasonable chance of some good cricket.

2083 Present from a wife, Case Histories, Spartacus and Merlin, Sport success and failure and around the World in the World

Back to my daily diary, working on the art work project and participating in activities outside the home. I wrote this on Sunday morning 12th June 2011 but by early evening I had made a major decision to reorganise the four display units at the top of the stairs to the first floor and in the alcove outside the bathroom and toilet. This in turn led to the decision to move completed project Development sets from one of the four units as a prelude to removing more from the first floor display and storage room. I want to clear at least two of the units in the display room in order to return the partially completed sets now in the upstairs work room and also as space for new completed project Development lever arch files and for other work completed lever arch files.

The activity commenced yesterday evening on returning from a rain abandoned game of cricket at the Emirates Riverside Durham as seeing that The World was still moored across from South Shields at the North Tyneside Cruise line mooring. I wanted to take a phone and found that my digi cam had flat batteries and the recharge failed to work. This led to checking out a sort of free camcorder via Staples gifts which needs batteries as does the other Staples free digi camera and this in turn led to sorting out other digi items including MP3 and MP4 players which I am still to get to work and this then led to the decision to check the electronic stuff shelves outside the bathroom on he first floor half landing, and to set in motion the great sort out, clean reorganise and inventory making. WoW.

The private floating home yacht The World is also WoW territory The Ship is 50 year leased owned by those buying one the 165 units -106 apartment, 19 studio apartments and 40 studios and on most journeys there are between 100 and 400 residents and guests plus 250 crew, including a doctor and nurse. The Top suite has a private veranda with space for tables and a party half a dozen ensuite double rooms, a couple of kitchens as well a loungers for $13.5 or so while a more modest residence at $.6m still provides 2 ensuite double bed rooms. In addition there are significant monthly charges to cover the running costs as the vessel is permanently visiting around the world staying in or off ports for 2 to 5 days at a time said to begin at $5000 a week.

Given that the residents have their own kitchens and like to eat out on visits ashore they are also expected to pay for meals at the in house restaurants. There are facilities to keep active including full size tennis court, a gym, golf simulator, putting Green and jogging track, a casino which is rarely used, boutique, small grocery and delicatessen and I assume cinema. However each suite is Internet and Sat TV organised and the suite are sound proofed to enable 23 hour music and TV watching if that way inclined.

The boat is design so that in warm climates it is possible to swim directly into the sea from a deck at the stern.

This year the vessel has been to Antarctica and South America reaching Panama early March before the West Indies and the USA East Coast in April. In May they reach Europe and Portugal and Spain and the briefly in France before two weeks in the UK. Next they go to the Nordic countries reaching Russia late July back along the European Coast to Spain and Portugal late August and September, then Italy and the Adriatic followed by Greece and Turkey October November the Seychelles and South Africa Christmas into New Year there are then two long sea trips first of 3 days to Mauritius before 8 days cruising to reach Australia in February 2012 and New Zealand in March. April sees expeditions to Melanesia and May Polynesia and a host of islands before Honolulu, Mexico and San Francisco late June. It is Canada time in July Russia and Alaska August, Greenland and Canada September through to October before Boston and New York as the month ends, The Bahamas. Miami and New Orleans in November, Mexico, Central America and the Virgin Islands December 2012 and around the world again. Can’t wait to join in but must will the Euro Lottery big prize of over £50 million to indulge!

On Saturday June 11th 2011 was able to acquire a free copy of the Pavarotti commencing with a poor live recording of Nessun Dorma but contained an excellent example of his work ranging from Verdi to Mozart to Massenet and Donizetti, 20 pieces lasting 75 mins. This contrasted with another free disk acquired several years ago titled Women with work from the Three degrees When will I see you again, Aretha Franklin Walk on by and the Bangles Eternal Flame and three of my favourites Bonnie Tyler Total Eclipse of the Heart and two outstanding singers, Nina Simone Everything Must Change and Billie Holliday, The Man I love. I was lucky to acquire several Long Play records of Nina Simone in a Woolworth sale several decades ago for 20 to 30 pence a record and I have several collections of Billie Holiday including an inexpensive 3 CD anthology. Also on the free disk are Deniece Williams Gladys Knight and 8 unknown artists and their songs.

I do not yet know what to make fo the new Camelot series on Channel Four which struck me as a cross between Spartacus Blood and sand with several scenes of nudity love making and sex, and vicious human slaughtering, matched with some of the epic quality of Game of Thrones. The subject is the same as Game of Thrones, the intrigue and battle for power, questions of legitimacy and ancestry added to which supernatural powers.

Because King Arthur, The Round Table, Merlin, Excalibur has little or no historical reference new writers feel able to play fast and loose with the legend. However I suspect this production will fall far short of the BBC1 series on young Merlin.

I liked the portrayal of the lifestyle of the ordinary people and the impressive setting of Camelot as a derelict building partially completed by the Romans on a rocky coast peninsular. The story is that of King Arthur who is brought up by surrogate parents chosen by Merlin unaware of his birthright because Merlin had enabled the Kind to spend a night with the wife of his enemy before marrying her after bearing the enemy King.

He never gets to see his son but signs a document declaring the legitimacy of the young man to the title shortly before he dies of poisoning by his daughter and Arthur’s half sister. She having killed her father and banished her step mother beds the former King’s main enemy as a means of securing her father’s Kingdom. Arthur takes persuading to leave his loving foster parents and half brother Kay but accepts the challenge taking his brother with him. Understandably the half sister, Morgan and her betrothed are not best pleased when they are summoned to Camelot to accept the new King and the old enemy is further enraged when he finds that Arthur has killed the son sent to do likewise. In retaliation the enemy kills the step mother and then turns on the half sister and would be Queen when she starts to give him orders. He tries various ways to subjugate her with the outcome that she warns Arthur of the form of attack her de facto husband will make. In the battle Arthur’s step father gives his life in killing the rival King and Arthur meet Guinevere who he learns is betrothed to one of his new champions. Arthur has also established himself by removing the Excalibur from its placement in a rock at the top of a waterfall.

I am writings separately on this week’s episode of Game of Thrones but Sparta us continued hopefully to the point of his historical famed rebellion. In the meantime his sly, cunning, ambitious and murderous slave school master has recovered the Thracian’s wife sold into slavery but then has her killed on the advice of his more cunning, sly, ambitious and murderous wife. This is designed to get Spartacus into a more single minded mood to continue as the lead Gladiator working to achieve his freedom. Spartacus attempts to make his own way to find the find the killers and is reluctantly persuaded to participate in the re-enactment in the arena when a famed Roman General killed half a dozen Thracian leaders to establish Roman rule over their country. Understandably the proud Thacian Spartacus baulks at representing the Roman general and killing fellow citizens for the gratification of the son of the hero and the Roman masses and as the episode closes it looks as if he has decided to mess up the occasion by letting himself be killed by his fellow countrymen.

Meanwhile the Gladiator Trainer is beginning to doubt the authenticity of the story that one of his star men was able to purchase his freedom from the money previously saved and recently won by betting on Spartacus to defeat the previous undefeated arena champion. What happened is that the school owner had found out who was behind the attempt on his life and sent the Gladiator to kill the man and his family including his son. This had been carried out and the assassin had returned to gain his master’s pleasure, his winnings and to gain freedom for himself and his young male soft hearted companion for whom he had purchased a number of tame doves. He had told the young he had let the child live. Meanwhile the Gladiator bookmaker, anxious not to have to pay out his winnings had arranged for someone to tell the School Master that the boy had survived and been seen. The Slave Master had become so angry that that despite being told the truth he had the assassin killed, having got the young lover to admit he had been told the boy survived. The young man is then taken over by another ruthless gladiator already an enemy and rival of Spartacus who in one moment of rage after the young man commits suicide hurtle the rival off the walls down to his death on the rocks below. Meanwhile the former School Champion Crixus is slowly recovering from his wounds with the administrations of his mistress personal slave who he is having a secret affair. The Mistress in turn has a vested interest in bringing back to full energy her slave lover.

The other ongoing story is the friendship between Spartacus and the free man Roman who voluntary joined the Gladiator school in order to earn sufficiently to clear his debts. Full of guilt at the way his gambling and poor investments had reduced the circumstances of his wife and son he had told her no direct contact, or letters until he had fought successfully or died in the attempt. However the death of the wife of Spartacus’s wife had affected him to the extent that he had written and his wife then pays a personal visit with his son to advise that she has become pregnant after being raped by the man who had offered her financial security during the absence of her husband. Her husband turns away from his wife in the circumstances.

Having discovered that Morrisons and Asda are selling the packs of platters I have been trying out the available selections except the huge selection of sweets, puddings or afters. Each pack costs £5. Over the weekend I enjoyed 15 King Prawns wrapped in filo pastry wrapped in crisp tempura batter; 15 in Breadcrumbs and 15 in Coconut breadcrumb. I can these providing a regular fish experience with providing three portions over two weeks unless mixed with others which is my present inclination. I also finished the first Tex Mex platter and started the second today which has 20 Breaded Onion Rings, 15 Breaded Garlic Mushrooms and 15 Spicy Potato Wedges plus 10 hot and spicy buffalo chicken wings. The Chinese Platter has 20 Chicken Wontons, 20 Prawn Toasts and 20 Vegetable Parcels, The Indian Platter 9 Chicken Tikka Samosas, 17 Bombay potato fritters, 17 onion bhaji and 17 sag aloo bites.

These beat tinned carrots, peas and corn which I grown tired of recently as I did of the simple salads of lettuce, tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumber and beetroot slice, but not olives or coleslaw which are included in the self select salads. The prawn pasta lettuce and the alternative chicken and bacon also need to purchase now and again. I still enjoy a mixture of baked beans and whole or chopped tomatoes with a chop or fish cooked in batter.

After losing to bottom of the table Derby on Friday in the cricket 20 20 competition, Durham looked for revenge yesterday. It was sunny when I sent off but there was strong evidence of the rain sweeping up and across from the West. I therefore headed for an end of row seat on the Balcony of the Member’s Lounge, had outer coat and inner jacket and a full size umbrella. I was not wrong as the rain commenced midway during the Derby Innings and although Durham‘s bowlers kept going it was evident that the surface water was building up to make bowling and fielding dangerous. I was not surprised when at the interval the wicket was first covered and then the outfield. No other game in the country had started so every match ended in a 1 point each no result tie.

I had to have a large strong coffee to keep going having purchased pastries at Lidl’s who have opened a fresh bakery. I had gone for four packs of the breakfast cereal. Enjoying the second pastry now with my second cup of coffee of the day.

The unexpected sporting event of the weekend was a win for Jenson Button in the Canadian Brand Prix in what many consider the drive of his life in a rain affected event which led to the safety car being used four times and a long delay which meant that all 70 laps of the shortened race from 75 were fitted in with less than a minute to spare. It was only on the last lap that leader from the start, Vettel, made a mistake although there are those who will argue that Button would have taken him in any event use slip stream and the latest technology as he had been lapping as the fastest car in the conditions. He had survived several unexpected pit stops which saw him in last position at least once, after his team mate had attempted to overtake on the inside and they had collided leading to the retirement of Lewis Hamilton who some claim is attempting more and more dangerous manoeuvres to get back on equal terms with Vettel who has stormed into a 60 point lead ahead of Button in the championship.

On Friday I watched what many regard as the most convincing win by Andy Murray in a major round of an important competition when he defeated Andy Roddick in a semi final match at the pre Wimbledon Grass competition at the Queens Club in Hammersmith, West London, a private club recently sold to its Members by the Lawn Tennis Association for £35 million. Fortunately in terms of being able to watch the final live, play was washed out on Sunday and played to day just before 1 pm. The opponent was Jo-Wilfred Tsonga from France known as someone who throws himself fearlessly around the court and with a powerful serve but presently only 20th in the world compared to Murray 4th

First blood went to Tsonga as he broke the Murray serve in game six to go on to win the first set 6.3. The second set went with service to 6.6 but wining the tie break game gave Murray the momentum. He takes the sixth game to go 4.2 up in the third and then in the 8th game and 40 love ahead he does a trick shot through his advancing legs with an angle volley across the net. The crowd erupt, the commentators speculate whether this will wind up his opponent and from this the match ends with each winning their service games. This is the first time a British man has won the champion twice since 1925. Murray was delighted but realistic about the significance. The media will now whip up expectation for Wimbledon.

The Rugby League championship went against expectation with the two leading clubs Warrington and Huddersfield losing, the latter to bottom of table Wakefield. Wigan and St Helens also drew so everyone stayed in the same positions at the top.

And now to the cricket as I should record the scores with Derby 183 for 3 at home with opener Guptill 60 and Madsen not out 53. Breese was the only Durham bowler with good figures of 2 for 27 from his four overs. Durham although they put on 88 for the first wicket did not score quick enough and at the end needed 70 runs from 30 balls. They put up a good fight which omens well for subsequent games reaching 178 for 5. Gordon Muchall did well with 62 and new man Miller was 26 at the close not out Durham losing by 5 runs. Yesterday Guptill continued when he left off and scored 44 and Madsen 54. The team reached 169 runs for 5 at the 20 overs and Collingswood 2 for 24 from 3 was the best with Onions 1 for 18 also doing well. Rushworth was hit for 4 fours in his first over and 17 runs from the 6 balls. Then it rained and rained.

I have been keeping one eye on the Chicago Code which covers the usual range of official corruption and tribalism. This time the corrupt Alderman had bought the unofficial Mayor of Chinatown and allowed him free reign as long as the qualified electors continued to show their appreciation by voting for him and those he nominated for other offices.

As previously explained the head of the division is a woman, more over a let’s clean up our act, woman, who fights a lone battle with the Alderman her number one target. She has one supporter, a senior detective. He cannot forgive the Chinatown Mayor as a few years back a member of the community found his wife and children murdered and the evidence was that the Chinatown Mayor had warned the murderer to leave the country. Now a young member of the black community has his hand chopped off and killed because locals believed he was responsible or part of a gang committing burglaries in the area of the community. In fact he was a devout Christian on a mission to bring the word to others.

The police chief blackmails the Alderman into getting the support of the Chinatown Mayor by threatening to reveal a lack of cooperation to the black community who are significantly more influential that the Chinese. It is revealed that the Mayor had been responsible for ordering the killing, a mistake, after the police capture those responsible. In order to gain a reduction in his sentence the Mayor reveals what happened to the previous murderer to the still grieving widower and father. The man had not been allowed to escape but had been killed and his body dismembered. The Alderman finds someone else to be appointed Mayor of Chinatown on the understanding that this time the man will consult on everything before acting.

As is customary in this type of programme there are sub stories. The police chief finds herself faced with a moral dilemma when she finds her brother in law has been selling access to her for substantial sums. She forces the man to own up what he has done in exchange for promising to keep him out of jail. Her sister finds this unacceptable and deprives of her access to the nephew and niece.

The detectives maintains contact with the young officer who has gone underground with the task of infiltrating a major crime gang and this involves a level of participation; in this instance creating a technical fault resulting in a property burning down so an insurance claim can be made to the benefit of those organising the crime and the property owner. However a dead body is removed from the premises that was alive when the property was set on fire according to the subsequent findings. The young officer wants out and the detective explains he has come up against the realities the job.

I also enjoyed this week’s two episodes of Case Histories which is the 3rd and 4th episode of 6 of what I believe could be the first of several series. Each double episode is self contained with the various separate stories coming together but there are also several ongoing themes. The main one is the relationship between the Detective and his daughter about to go for a year with her mother to New Zealand. His ex wife has acted rashly accepting the job, renting out her home and booking tickets before getting the required parental consent to take his daughter out of the UK. Understandably he is reluctant to sever contact and the daughter is also unhappy at potentially not seeing him for a year. She goes to his home and waits outside while he is dealing with his work but when she goes missing he works out where she is likely to be and she says she is not going because she knows he has become sad. This has the positive effect of helping him to understand he must let her go, as perhaps the only way of re-establishing a relationship with his ex wife if she returns as promised. There does not appear to be anyone else in her life although if the reason for the divorce was given in the first two episodes, I missed it.

He remains fixated, full of guilt over the death of his sister when a child and also the death of someone else, I am not sure who, someone he finds who has committed suicide in what I assume is the family home.

There is also the relationship with the actress from the first double episode. Their relationship was established as a physical one without the expectation that it would last or develop into something more substantial. However she yearns for an all consuming single minded lover so when his work prevents their relationship developing she spends the night with a one man show Comedian appearing at a neighbouring Theatre and who has a more significant role in the main storyline. The Detective and the Actress appear to part company at the end of the two parter, while the relationship with his former colleague and now senior policed contact, divorced mother with young son has several twists and opportunities but his determination to solve the cases he is working on prevents their relationship from developing, for now! In any event I believe he is working out that the way to gain back the love of his ex wife and bring up his daughter directly is not to engage in serial promiscuity.

In order to cope with the stress of the past and the pressures of the present he goes jogging early morning or late at night, possibly both and spots a body floating off the shoreline. He swims out but is unable to bring the body ashore which disappears from view. He was sufficiently close to see a Russian Cross around the girl’s neck and may have seen a similar cross Tattoo on the underside of her arm close to a hand. The senior police officer he calls in unwilling to seek authorization for a team to go immediately in search of the body which is put down as just another suicide rather than a murder which his instincts tell him is the situation. He is determined to try out more about the young woman, especially when he sees someone who looks similar in the distance in the city.
When out on the beach close to where he believes the girl may have entered or been placed in the water he finds a card which with the help a personal assistant appears to be that of a Cleaning company and he locates one of the young women workers who is also Russian and has on her under arm close to a hand a cross Tattoo similar to that he had seen on the girl in the water. This girl is evidently too afraid to speak to him and is found dead after a drug overdose shortly afterwards and while he knows she has been murdered the police remain unconvinced in true stupid copper tradition. He also locates the office used by the company but within a few hours of everyone have left and key appears taken except for a coded book.

It at this point I need to introduce the second storyline. The Detective is about to leave a town centre multi storey car park when he observes a situation where two vehicles collide and one of the men takes a baseball type bat and starts to beat the other man senseless. The scene is observed by two others. A writer of airport and train station bookshop crime novels and the teenage son of the female police chief. The crime novelist throws his lap top at the man using the baseball bat and this drives him away while the boy picks up a wallet and a USB data carrier which contains the latest novel before publication. The boy disappears. The Detective calls in the police but leaves the scene as is wont, telling the crime writer to give the police the car registration of the departing villain writing this on his business card. He tells the man to get himself checked out at hospital as he is evidently in shock. For some reason the crime writer does not give the information immediately to the police.

He has with him a friend of his brother who is an obnoxious sponging bullying type of individual who steals his watch and uses his clothes without asking. He is also the one man show Comedian who hits of the actress lover of the Detective and with whom she has sex when the Detective fails to arrive for a meeting. Meanwhile the crime writer is persuaded by the hospital to accompany the injured and concussed man who insists on discharging himself to his hotel. The hospital is concerned about a delay reaction occurring during the next 24 hours. The victim consents to this because he had been saved by the action of the writer throwing his lap top at the assassin. In the hotel the writer accepts a drink if pure whisky and stays awake while the other man goes to sleep. He had carried the man’s overnight bad from the hospital which was exceptionally heavy. We know he examines the bag and find’s an assassin’s gun in a case. We are not immediately shown that he takes out and keep the gun replacing it with a similar weigh object from the hotel room. He then wakes up the following morning having been drugged and the victim has departed, presumably without checking his overnight bag for the gun.

From the outset he had asked the Detective to protect him until what appeared to be more than road rage or more accurately multi-storey car park rage was sorted. Now after the incident in the hotel room he insists that the detective protects him and our hero agrees on the understanding that he waits in cars or at the office while he investigates further. The crime writer has no actual experience of what he writes about and has gone along with the situation despite his cowardly nature in order to gain first hand experience.

It is now necessary to introduce the third aspect of the main story line. An over sixties corpulent business man type is brought into hospital by an attractive young Russian woman after the man has a heart attack. She encounters what appears to be the nice long suffering wife who finds out that the young Russian is a call girl who has been catering for her husband’s needs to be tired up, gagged and beaten. She insists they did not have sex. She tells the woman that from her experience the man will not survive. This appears to release the wife from her bondage and she burns some of the man’s clothing and their bedding, changes pictures around and gets together a considerable amount of cash. This is the image she projects when the Detective visits her after discovering that the husband owned the cleaning company/ call girl racket as well as being involved in various other companies including dodgy housing development building. At this point the Detective does not know that that the look alike girl he sees in the street to the one in the water worked for the hospitalised owner and had met his wife. Things then develop apace.

The Detective is assaulted in the street and nearly killed by the man with the baseball bat in the multi story car park. The Comedian is found with his face smashed unrecognisable at the home of the crime writer who at first the Detective and the Police think is the crime writer. The man also arrives at the home of the man in hospital and demands to know where her husband is as he is owed money. We earn that the wife knew the man as an employee of her husband. She has been telling everyone that he husband is away on business. To get the man off her back she says her husband will meet him at a club he uses and she then contacts the Detective to ask for his help. He goes to the club but meets up with the Russian girl also on her way there. The Detective, the Crime Writer in tow and the Russia girl go to the home of the wife and join forces with the writer having decoded the dairy book to reveal names of girl passport payments and such like. The girl has also USB data device from taken from the husband after his heart attack and the decision is taken for the girl and the wife to take off having transferred money from his various accounts to a new account which they can both draw on; The girl having, of course, worked in banking at one time and knows how to do this once they have worked out the password entry into the husbands existing accounts. They are nearly thwarted in this with the arrival of the Baseball bat man who nearly gets the better of them until the Crime writer shoots the baseball man dead. He then waits until to two women complete their work and flee and calls the police while the Detective goes off again to say goodbye to his wife and child as they take a taxi to the airport.

Before this the police chief has discovered that her geeky and neglected son had kept and not mentioned to anyone that he found the USB data transfer and the wallet to the writer. She then turns to the Detective to talk about the lack of reaction on the part of the son to witnessing the baseball bat attack. When she returns home after being refused the offer to get drunk etc with the Detective she finds her so surrounded with little lighted floating candle (which she of course had a supply of or had been able to go out and buy several dozen having an emotional breakdown from his recent experience). The Russian girl in water? Her body was found and she turns out to be the kid sister of the other surviving Russian girl. So we have two dead Russian girls killed by the baseball bat man who is himself killed in self defence and a fourth body that of the unfunny and sleazy one man show comedian. There is one further twist in that the victim of the baseball bat man in the multi storey car park was a paid assassin and we see him turning off the life support equipment for the husband in hospital and as he does so he says- “ Present from your wife.

Meanwhile the Detective does more jogging.

2082 Of Justice, injustice and retribution, Argentinean film and ITV drama series.

At 9 pm over the past five nights I have enjoyed watching a new ITV serial drama called Injustice and yesterday afternoon I watched the Oscar best foreign language award winning Argentinean film, Esecreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their eyes) based on the novel by Eduardo Sacheri’s - Le pregunto de sus Ojos (The Question in Their eyes) but which could just as comfortably have been called Justice.

Fifty years ago while studying Criminology as part of a Diploma and Public Administration course at Oxford University I read an essay by John Rawls then professor of Philosophy at Harvard University headed Justice as Fairness and this has governed my thinking about the subject since, although I accept that attempting to define what is fair and not fair is just as difficult as attempting to talk of Justice only in term of the Judicial and Legal system within a national State.

I had no awareness beforehand of just how good the film is and just as Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, one of nine of his novels I have in my library, is the benchmark literary work on the subject, I have elevated this film to the top of my film list because of its depth.

Benjamin Espósito is a retired Federal crime investigator in the capital of Argentina who on retirement decides to write in novel form a case that dominated and changed his life over 25 years previously and he calls at the office of his former boss and now a Judge, Irene Menéndez-Hastings, to tell of his intentions.

In 1974 Espósito was appointed to investigate the rape and murder of a beautiful young woman in her own bedroom and had to advise her husband who works at a Bank what has happened and who it needs to be stressed is never a suspect for the crime. Espósito is as much emotionally affected by the husband’s distress and ongoing love as he is by the rape and murder. Ricardo Morales is the husband is played by one of several actors in this film who can communicate without words.

Espósito works closely with a married alcoholic colleague, Pablo Sandoval, rescuing him from bar bawls, paying off his bar bills and smoothing things with the man’s long suffering wife. They have made little progress when a rival in the agency announces he has caught the perpetrators, two foreign workers on a building site in the immediate area of the crime. Espósito visits the accused and finds that a confession was beaten out of them with no other evidence. The men are released and he attacks the colleague for his behaviour in the court buildings. Having promised the husband that he would find the killer they have a discussion about justice, with the husband saying he is glad there is no death penalty and wants the man to serve a long prison sentence so he can contemplate what he has done and suffer. Espósito says the man will serve life. This is the crucial scene in the film in terms of the issue of justice as retribution.

Without evidence he studies the photos of the young woman taken from her home and notices that in several pictures there is a young man who is always looking longingly at the victim and after talk with the husband learns that this was a former school and college friend from the home town. Thus we have the significance of the film title that our eyes reveal what is inside of us including that we wish to keep secret.

The investigators find that the young man is not living at home and there is no record of his present whereabouts. Benjamin believes he will have kept in contact with his mother by letter and persuades his colleague, Pablo Sandoval, to accompany him to the home town of Chivilcoy where after waiting for the mother to leave her home he breaks into the property. He is spooked when his colleague who is supposed to keep look out comes in and they both are nearly caught as the woman returns and her dog bites him in the leg as they beat a quick retreat. Benjamin has mixed feelings when he learns that his colleague has not only removed the letters but entered a local store to buy a bottle of whisky after saying he had to go for a pee. The consequence is that their car is identified after the woman reports the crime and no doubt warns her son of the intrusion. The two men narrowly escape discipline but the judge overseeing the investigation and who closes the case.

A year after this Benjamin finds grieving widower, Morales, spending every evening after work at the bank keeping watch at the city railway stations in the hope of catching sight of the man he has been told is the likely killer of his wife. Benjamin is so moved by the man’s devotion that he persuades his boss Irene to re-open the case by losing the closure papers of her superior. The two have an attraction but because she comes from a wealthy family, was educated at Harvard as is engaged to a man of similar wealth and society to her family the feelings are restricted to how they look at year other.

Benjamin and Pablo go over the information available and it is Pablo with the help of a drinking companion who spots that the names in the letters refer to players for a particular football team. Pablo makes the point that most men have passions which do not change during their lifetime particularly the football club they support, They begin to attend home games of the club of the players mentioned in the letters and during their fourth visit just when Benjamin is deciding that finding someone in such a large gathering is impossible, the suspect is seen and after a chase is apprehended and taken for questioning. He is broken into an admission by Irene who suggests that his size and demeanour all indicate that he could not be the killer but when she suggests that he does not possess the manhood to have caused the internal injuries noted to the victim he reveals his appendage and hits the accuser. He is tried and convicted and sentenced to life. There is a moving scene when Benjamin tells Morales the news of the arrest at a railway station where he has continued to keep watch. Morales says he is indebted for the culprit being caught.

A year later the husband sees the killer on television as part of a Presidential security detail and Irene and Benjamin investigate what happened. They discover that their colleague with whom Benjamin clashed over the false confession belonged to a political protection security service that was using the killer for break-ins and other illegal work. They are told they can do nothing about the position.

After the meeting the killer comes into their lift and brandishes a weapon. A short time later Benjamin is called to a bar where his friend and colleague Sandoval has been involved in a brawl with the local police called. Espósito smoothes the way once more and take the man home to sober up and then goes for the man’s wife. When they return they find Pablo in a pool of blood having been machined gunned to death under the mistaken impression he was Benjamin. Benjamin notes at the scene that the photos of him in the room have been turned down, evidence that his friend realised the situation and gave his life to protect his friend, Benjamin is forced to leave the capital because once the mistake became known, and the killer Gomez would come after him again.

Twenty five years pass by and after a failed marriage and the formal end of his occupational working life he returns to the capital, still haunted by what happened and with continuing feelings of guilt about the sacrifice of his friend he decides to begin the writing of a novel. This is only half the story of the film, and in once sense as I shall reveal a third in terms of important subjects.

During those two years of the murder investigation and the decision to flee to the provinces he had developed a love for Irene, his boss but because of her engagement, her wealth and social status he made no move despite indications that she reciprocated his feelings and wanted him to take the initiative. That is until the day of the murder of their colleague when they had arranged to meet in secret. Such clashes of interests are true to life and it is a measure of the authenticity of the work and in life that such individuals will do what is right, fair, just in terms of their occupation and the welfare of others, sacrificing their own immediate happiness in doing so.

We witness the various attempts of Benjamin to start his novel, hand written in notebook, but each time he destroys the work and one recurring scene is the departure from the capital seen off by Irene, both broken hearted. Twenty five years later as she reads the first part of the novel she asks why did he not take her with him? They have both led full lives but lives where something was missing, the love that might have been which embraces sexual passion and the intimacy of both able to be their true selves and that depth of communication which needs no words. I once went out for an evening mean with three colleagues and one commented that a nearby table an obviously married couple had sat through the meal without speaking to each other. The colleague expressed sadness at this and indeed such silence can reveal there is nothing more to say to each other that has meaning to them or that a gulf has arisen which they do not know how to bridge or are unable to bridge because they have either matured different or just changed in different ways from each other. However as I commented it can also signal a depth of understanding and comfortableness in the relationship which does not need small talk and gossip to sustain.

As part of his need to exorcise the ghosts of the past he seeks out the whereabouts of Morales and finds that he has moved to the countryside in an isolated property commuting each day to a bank where he has gained promotion. He is unmarried and claims to have put the past behind him and recommends that Benjamin does the same. When Benjamin admits that he is haunted by the failure to put Gomez away and by the death of his colleague Gomez admits that after the death he had staked out Gomez knowing that one day he would make a further attempt on the life of the man who had done his best to achieve justice for the murdered wife. He had killed him and disposed of the body, He insists that Benjamin leaves and that the two have no further contact.
He had got on with his life and Benjamin should do the same.

Benjamin finds this difficult to accept as it undermines he belief in the uniqueness of the man’s love and devotion to his wife, although as will be noted in the TV series drama Injustice, the killing of someone can lead to begging an effective new chapter although the killing will haunt as much as the original cause, unless the killing is undertaken officially be the State or distance can be put between the means and the end. In this instance Benjamin is sufficiently unconvinced that he returns to the property and keeps watch after Morales has returned home from his work at the bank.

Morales come outside the house with some bread and a drink and goes to an outhouse. Benjamin investigates further and finds that the man had indeed captured Gomez but has imprisoned him. When Gomez sees Benjamin he pleads that he should tell Morales to talk to him. Morales maintains his silence of twenty five years and Benjamin walks away but before leaving Morales says that he had said he owed Morales for capturing the man and he had kept their word that the killer would serve life in torment.
Benjamin is emotionally and psychologically freed and able to visit the grave of Pablo for the first time. He completes the novel and as at the beginning of the film we see him entering the office of Irene and they look into each other’s eyes. She says it will be complicated and he agrees. She tells him to close the door behind him. Previously she has always kept the door open. Justice as fairness had been served and rewarded. The film is in Spanish with sub titles but the acting is such that at times the understanding of the language is not necessary to appreciate the greatness of this film.

There are several similarities between the film and the five episodes drama Injustice which proved to be much better than expected and a good twist which I suspect few if anyone will have predicted. Both films could be titled Justice as retribution.

James Purefoy plays a barrister, Travers, who has moved to Tractor Boys country (East Anglia) with his wife and daughter, following a breakdown after discovering that a man who he defended admits that he did kill the teenage boy for which he has been acquitted. Travers always tells instructing solicitors before taking a case that he must believe in the innocence of his clients and that he will walk away from the case if at anytime he determines this is not so. He is approached by solicitor, against her better judgement, to represent her client accused of murder and to appear at the Central Criminal Court in London. Travers explains that he no longer takes murder cases for which he had previously had a national reputation. She explains who her client is and that he mentioned the barrister’s wife. Two and more decades before he and the accused played by former Inspector Lynley, Nathaniel Parker, were best friends at Oxford. Parker was going out with a fellow student played by the gorgeous Dervia Kirwan (Ballykissangel) who has married Purefoy and they have become estranged from Parker whose heart had been broken. He had married someone else, divorced and remarried and commenced an affair with a secretarial assistant at the International Oil firm for which Parker is a legal adviser. The assistant is half his age and they meet up for passionate sessions in central London Hotels.

On the occasion of the murder she requests that he goes out and gets her some chips with curry sauce and when he returns he finds her murdered in the hotel room. His DNA is on the stockings around her neck. Unbeknown to him the girl had a conviction for attempted blackmail and the police believe that she threatened to tell his wife and he had killed her in a moment of anger. The barrister undertakes inquiries normally carried out by the solicitor and a feature of both programmes is that key characters behave unconventionally and sometimes breaking the rules of their profession and even the law.

He seeks contact with the former boyfriend of the murdered girl and finds from the person house sharing that the man is an investigative journalist making a visit to Africa. He is unable to contact but on his return the young man gets in touch and reveals that he had employed the young woman to try and find out if the oil firm is the company which is dumping disguised oil waste in the African country causing many civilian death. The police had found a name and three dates on the mobile phone of the girl and at the trial it emerges the name is that of a ship and the dates is when it unloaded the dangerous oil waste in the unnamed African country. Before the trial there is a scene in which the accused is interviewed by senior members of the company who offer full support as long as he keeps their activities out of the court case and publicity.

A key part of the defence is that the accused had with him his lap top which contained confidential information about company business and this had disappeared during his absence from the room. When the journalist gives evidence the prosecution case falls apart because he had argued that there was no other possible explanation for the cause of the girl’s death.

During the weeks before the trial Travers and an assistant had studied all the available CCTV footage which included a man throwing something into the river Thames a short distance away from the hotel. It is only after the trial when the acquitted man is talking to his wife and the media about the fact he and the barrister were at Oxford together and played cricket, mentioning that he was a left handed bowler that the barrister remembers that the man on the CCTV was throwing something with his left arm. There is also the question of timing with a gap of 10 to 15 minutes between the time that the accused was seen on CCTV leaving the Take Away shop and asking a man in a lift for the time and he replies 8.40. The shop is only some five six minutes away from the Hotel a missing period of 10 to 15 minutes. The accused had suggested that the man in the lift had got the time wrong but this is shot down by the prosecution because the man was a salesman for a well known international watchmaker. The barrister confronts the former accused in a car park saying that he got the lap top after the area had been dredged and that on the computer there was child pornography. The girl had persuaded him to go out so she could check the lap top for information, having found out the password (we are not told how) and had found the photos and on his return she had said she proposed to inform his employers and police. He had planted the formation about the name of ship and the dates on her mobile phone to implicate his employers. He had then got rid of the lap top and made a point of drawing attention to his return at the desk and by asking the time of the man in the lift. The barrister had attempted to get the ex wife to give her reasons for divorcing but she had refused but made the comment that she had been unable to meet her husband’s needs.

The murderer does not deny the crime but argues that there are insufficient grounds to justify a retrial and while he could be reported for the child abuse images, he would argue that the images had been added to machine by someone else. The barrister then pulls a gun and kills his former friend. The admission of guilt and the “judicial” killing are a surprise given the rest of the story. We the audience know that this is not the first time the barrister has taken the law into his own hands out of retribution

Earlier in the series we are shown the barrister seeing the man whose admission of guilt led to his break down leaving the local railway station at the same time and getting onto a bus. Travers hires a taxi and follows the man to a bus stop close to a lane leading to an isolated farm building. The man was subsequently found shot and we know from other scenes that it is the barrister who executes the man despite pleas for mercy. We also know that barrister had been haunted by the teenage boy who had been murdered by the man who had been found not guilty because of the barrister‘s skill.

We had also witnessed the barrister destroying the prosecution case at a local crown court by being able to show that the police officer had manufactured evidence. The accused was a criminal who had several convictions as well as several unproven crimes. The detective senior partner of the two officers left his colleague to carry the can. The senior detective is assigned to solve the murder of the man in isolated farm dwelling. We learn that the man was given the ramshackle accommodation in return for doing jobs on the farm. He is identified as a former animal welfare rights activist who was acquitted for murder. The officer visits Travers, ostensibly to find out about he victim. However he has his suspicions which appear to be confirmed when he finds Travers owns a car of the type whose tracks have been found close in lane from the bus stop before the gated field to the home of the victim. The Detective waits one day until the barrister’s wife leaves the house to take an earth sample from the tyres but the analyst says that while it could have been in the lane contamination makes the sample inconclusive as evidence.

Another inquiry concerns the murder weapon which the analyst says had a particular mark similar to that in two other crimes which suggests the same gun maker. The detective follows up one the crimes visiting a convicted murderer in a young offender’s institution due to move to an adult prison shortly on his 18th birthday. The boy had been bullied at school and shot and killed the bully claiming to have found the gun in a skip. The detective demands to know the supplier of the weapon and when the boy refuses he warns that he will arrange for him to move to a hard prison and to be used by the men. The boy is terrified of what could happen if the detective carries out the threat but also of his fate if the source for the gun is revealed. The boy gives on the basis that the gun provider will not be told. The gun maker is arrested and turns out to be the boyfriend of the boy’s mother. He is forced to admit to making a gun available recently and in return for help at his trial gives the name. The purchaser however explain that it was a commission and that he never saw the individual as it was raining and dark and when he received the money at an agreed place he left the gun which was then taken by the person, he assumed, who had contacted him. The detective then visits this man at his home and persuades him to return to the police station and amend his statement identifying Travers as the purchaser.

The wife of the barrister has a successful career as a publisher but gave it up after her husband’s breakdown and his decision to work on non murder cases in the provinces. She has been conducting a class on English Literature at the young offender’s institution and the only individual attending who shows genuine interest and understanding is the young bullied murderer. He gives her the first part of a novel which impresses her greatly which she shows to her former employer who is also impressed but wants her to return to work for him. He wants to know the background of the boy and unable to get the information officially she works out where he lived and eventually makes contact with his mother. The mother is only interested in the potential of getting money. When the boy commits suicide the barrister’s wife blames herself and longs to get away back to her old life. In fact the detective had told his mother’s lover who tells the boy’s mother and who berates her son for the betrayal, and it is this that drives the boy to commit suicide out of fear of the worse to come his way.

The detective is prepared to say and do anything to gain the conviction of anyone he believes guilty. He had become aggressive, prone to explosive bursts of temper and abusive towards his wife and indifferent to her problems with a comparatively new baby. When she walks out of a store with an inexpensive trinket and as arrested her husbanded is more concerned about the impact on his reputation than the emotional state of mind of his wife. He hits her and walks out of the home admitting the following morning that he had spent the night with someone picked up. He is then contrite and returns home with flowers saying that all will be well as he will gain a prosecution. Which will establish him further in his career? They will go out and celebrate in the evening. When he returns later she is packed up ready to leave and in the resulting commotion he falls down stairs and dies.

Following the disgrace and suspension of his partner at the commencement of the series, The Detective is told to take on a young intelligent new detective who happens also to be black. The young detective is horrified by the behaviour of the senior man and reports him to his superior who first tells the recruit that he approves of the senior detective because he gets results and then only by learning from the man will be making up for having come behind his back and telling tales.

When the detectives dies the senior officer is concerned because the man had been about to solve the latest murder and he asks the assistant to give him the notes but there are none. He insists the detective goes through the files to see if there is any clue to what had been found. The only thing he discovers is the folded photo of the barrister used to guide the man who had arranged the gun purchaser to change his evidence.

Traver’s wife is concerned by his decision to take on the case of her former boyfriend fearing it will lead to another breakdown. He repeatedly says there is no going back. His sister comments that the change has come about because of the death of man who was guilty of the murder of teenage boy and that had she known it would have had such a good effect she would have killed the man herself. This leads his wife to speculate to herself about her husband‘s role in the death and visits where the man was found murdered. She then pleads with him to leave the area and go back to London, something he had already decided to do. At the conclusion of the final episode she says to her husband in a questioning way, we are going to be alright, and he reassures her.

There are four clues that this is only the first series of one or more. I have already mentioned the discovery of the folded photo and the admission of the new recruit that he had changed his mind about the dead detective and his methods.

The barrister and his wife have a daughter who begins studies at a university in London using the parental London home which they have retained. At one point the home is broken into and the assumption made that this was the oil firm trying to find out how much the barrister knew of their dealings. The barrister works out that the break was undertaken by his client in order to enhance the cover story that the girl has been murdered by someone on behalf of his employers. There is more to come regarding the daughter.

In the first case when the barrister gets the case dismissed because of the police fabrication of evidence, the prosecuting Counsel is a long term adversary who holds the barrister in contempt because of his alleged values. The same Counsel is the prosecutor in the trial of the friend from university days. There is newspaper reference to the disappearance of the released accused and other references which suggest this aspect of the story and the rivalry between the two legal men is not over

The final clue comes at the end when he is seen taking on another case and warning the client that he will only take cases he believes in and that he will walk away if he finds they are not innocent of the committed crime. There is something sinister and threatening in the statement suggesting more is to come

On Saturday night I watched the first episode of new mega series about King Arthur, Merlin Camelot and all that which can be said to be a cross between Spartacus Blood and Sand and the Game of Thrones. Mr Purefoy is also a member of the cast.