Random Jottings

Saturday Ramblings

Sunny this morning and all blue sky so nip put with just a jumper on and think O great spring is here, well remember the old saying 'never cast a clout till May is out' and I am now sitting here with woolly jumper on and feeling distinctly chilly.

Busy week this week, and the Wagner the other night, though wonderful, tiring.  Not the evening but the fact that I came straight from work, having been up since 6.30 pm and then a fraught day at the office and straight to the House.  I grabbed something to eat before hand and then tried to balance out the fact that I probably should have a strong coffee to keep me awake as I knew I would slump halfway through the evening, against the other fact that coffee is a diuretic and that I was sitting for two and a half hours straight through and the lack of interval.  That tipped the balance and I just hoped I could stay awake.  This sleepiness nothing to do with what I was watching, it is just a dip that always hits me mid-evening.

Well, if you have read my review of the Dutchman you will know it was a great evening and I had a five minute moment half way through (fortunately through the spinning scene which I find the least interesting of the entire opera) and was then alert till the end.  Did not meet up with daughter afterwards to hear her verdict, though she sent me a text later saying it was super, as I decided to hurl myself into the path of a unoccupied taxi and managed to get to the station and on the 11 pm train instead of the 11.30 which is known as the Vomit Comet, no further explanation is needed.  Glad to get home at a reasonable hour.

This is a very rambling post as doing very little today apart from reading and lolling and watching House with the comforting feeling that I have three series in hand.  I am also shifting things and moving furniture around as the Men are coming to Do the Windows on Monday.  Delighted to hear that all of them are safely back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro as mentioned in an earlier post, in one piece and will be here at 8.30 am (ye gods) all raring to go and to start bashing out my windows. I have warned the neighbours.

So, off to see my mum tomorrow and to take her to Tesco. Yesterday I took another friend to Sainsburys and on Monday am visiting again and taking another old friend.  I feel by mid-day on Monday I will have had enough of supermarkets but at least I will be away from the noise and dust.

Must remember when in Tesco tomorrow to get in extra tea bags, sugar and chocolate biscuits to keep The Men going.

   

Well, that's it.  Told you it was boring so here is another tulip picture to lighten up the post a bit. Back to sofa and a Miss Silver book.  My good friend Jan who loaned me the first ten, has now given me the next ten, should keep me going for a week....

The Flying Dutchman - the mighty Bryn

Some eighteen months ago, Bryn Terfel pulled out of his contracted performances of the Ring Cycle citing his son's injury, fractured, crushed fingers and decided he wanted to be with his family.  A certain Rupert Christian, amongst others, berated him for his actions but while most critics were angry, they pulled back from saying what the Telegraph arts writers said.  This is one sentence from the whole article which truly appalled me with its narrow minded, old fashioned attitude.

"The show goes on though the bombs are falling; the enterprise is bigger than you are. There is no room for sentimentality: you have to be ruthless and put your personal life second. We don't know the details of your son's accident, but the boy has a mother and it's her job to be at the bedside." (My emphasis - Elaine)

He went on to say that if the injury had been more serious then Bryn's absence would have been understandable and acceptable but this was only 'minor'.  So, if his son was seriously ill, that would have been all right then....

Bryn defended his decision vigorously, he was supported by some (including me but I am honest enough to admit that as I had decided not to buy tickets for this Ring as I loathed the production, I was probably more understanding than I might have been if I had shelled out several hundred pounds), not by others and during an interview this article was quoted to him.  He looked the interviewer in the eye and made a reply along the lines of 'yes, I know who he is' and I thought at the time that if I was Mr Christian I would not go down a dark alley at night all alone.

So, what has Mr Christian got to say about Bryn the the Flying Dutchman after telling the Opera House that perhaps they should show him the door?  See link below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/rupertchristiansen/4799000/Der-fliegende-Hollander-at-the-Royal-Opera-House-review.html

One can only assume that Mr C did meet Mr B down a dark alley.....the words 'humble pie' come into mine, or perhaps 'grovel' or perhaps one should just view Mr Christian as a clear eyed critic who is viewing this from a purely artistic viewpoint, which bearing in mind the strictures of his first excoriation of Bryn, might very well be true.

   

And what did this critic think of it?  Well, I am biased of course as I simply adore Bryn and have done for over 20 years when I saw him in Cardiff Singer of the World and heard him sing the act one entrance aria from Dutchman and he brought the house down.  Since then I have seen him in Wagner, Verdi and Puccini and my admiration knows no bounds for this simply wonderful voice.  The Flying Dutchman is one of Wagner's earlier operas and if I say it is full of stonking great tunes, don't misunderstand me, the Ring Cycle has all these as well, but they are just so much grander and mind blowing, Dutchman is more your 'ordinary' opera if you can understand what I mean.  Well, I know what I mean.... There are also duets and a trio or two, not something abounding in the Ring, and it is all great stuff.

What I like about Bryn is the beauty of his soft singing, the warmth and shape of his tone, it sounds easy and expressive, his German is spot on and, well, he was simply wonderful.  He did not overpower the other singers, he was not the star of the show, he was part of an ensemble and I felt this was a very unselfish portrayal.  Yes, he got a huge round of applause at the end of the evening but I really felt that the audience appreciated this whole company approach and reacted accordingly. The new production was in a modern setting, not to my taste but then I am very old fashioned when it comes to opera productions, but very well done and the lighting and atmosphere almost converted me by the end of the evening.  Never fails to amaze me and fill me with admiration, the sheer imagination and inventiveness of designers and producers and how they set everything and move the singers around to achieve the maximum effect. 

Senta, the woman obsessed with the Flying Dutchman, is one of Wagner's annoying creations, well as far as I am concerned anyway, neurotic and, to me, a bit boring as heaven knows she does go on.   Does have some great music though and the soprano, Anja Kampe, was pretty powerful and certainly made an impression.  Her outpouring at the very end of the final scene made me tingle.

The main star of the evening though, was not the soloists, but the chorus. They were simply stunning, with a sound that knocked your socks off.  Extra chorus employed for the ghostly crew of the Dutchman's ship and when the two were going it pinned you to your seat (do forgive all these cliches).  Took a bow on their own at the end with the chorus master and rightly so.  I have never heard the Covent Garden chorus sing so well.

When I have seen Dutchman in the past there has been an interval and two acts.  Tonight it was billed as Romantische Oper in one act and that is how Wagner wrote it and that is how it was done at the Royal Opera House.  In other words, straight through, two and a half hours, no break. Despite this being made clear in the programme, during the booking period, and also subscribers reminded by email, there were still some dozy people there who did not realise this and got very ancy, and nipped in and out, presumably to go to the loo or whatever, much to the annoyance of others. If one such had been sitting next to me, rest assured he/she would have been pinned to the ground and not allowed past me.

Glad I was that I had shelled out for a decent seat as not sure I would have made it up in the Amphi or in the slips.  When I met Daughter No 2 before the start she had not realised this and blinked a tad, but then I pointed out to her that she had sat through and loved Gotterdamerung and the first act of this final opera in the Ring was the same length as the entire performance of Dutchman, and 'oh that's alright then'.

And so it was, a glorious evening.  Next booking period has Bryn back as Scarpia in Tosca, so that is on my hit list, and I am looking forward to 2010 when he sings Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger with the Welsh National Opera.  If ever a man was born to sing a part, it is Bryn and Hans Sachs and I have become a friend of WNO purely so I can get my mitts on tickets which I am already assured are going to be the hottest in town.

Cardiff here I come.

Harbinger of Spring

 

The Great Roxhythe

This is the book that, along with Simon the Coldheart, Georgette Heyer suppressed and would not let be reprinted.  She was at home with the Regency world though she would yearn to break out of this and write in different historical times, but try as she might she could never manage it and achieve the same level of success.  Every time she tried, she came to grief.  Powder and Patch, one of her very early books was slight with stilted language, set in the French court; Simon the Coldheart was set in the reign of Henry IV, full of 'thees' and 'thous' and not reading at all well, My Lord John another such.  The Great Roxhythe is placed in the reign of Charles I, he is the King's favourite, modelled on the Duke of Buckingham.  Under the mask of the man about town he is secretly acting as Charles's agent in his clandestine dealings with France.

In The Private World of Georgette Heyer, Jane Aiken Hodge describes this as 'probably the worst book Georgette Heyer ever wrote. Ths history comes akwardly in self conscious gobbets, the language is stilted and the plot minimal'.  I have checked out Amazon and read the reviews written there about this title and they fall into two camps - loved it or hated it.  I remember reading this particular story light years ago and have never seen it since, it is still out of print and though you can find copies you have to have a hunt for them.  I was delighted, therefore,  when popping into my local second hand bookshop to discover a copy which I immediately whipped off the shelf and found it was selling for the princely sum of £3.  I have checked out this edition and the date of publication etc and it seems to appear on some websites such as Alibris and Abe Books, priced at around £90 so either I have the bargain of the year or else I am getting it wrong, but have double checked and as there are only a couple of publishers who have tackled this book, I think I might have struck lucky.

I am going to save this up and read it, not just yet, but when I am in the mood. Good to know it is on my shelf and this acquisition now completes my Heyer collection and that makes me feel pretty darn happy.  Doesn't take much you know....

Off to the opera tomorrow night so will be back and posting on Friday.

House

'You know what mum' said Daughter No 2 a few weeks ago 'I think you would enjoy House'.  I pondered on this.  I had never seen it though I had heard great things and read a lot about Hugh Laurie and how he has turned into a sex symbol in the US, but when the first series came out, I had a pretty crap tv and it was on Channel 5 and I had a lousy picture and what with one thing and another it passed me by.  Then of course, got a super duper TV, digital channels the lot but by then we were onto Series four so decided once more to let it go.

'Mum, I am sure you will love it'   Well as Daughter No 2 and I are as one in our adoration of West Wing and 24, I felt that she might well be right so when we met after work one night for a pizza she produced Series One and admitted that, yes, she had all of them on DVD. So I took it home, thought ok give it a whirl, slotted in the first DVD and ......and .... and.... five hours later I staggered to bed with square eyes, but totally and completely besotted with this simply terrific programme.

   

The only Hugh Laurie I knew up to now was the one who had a comic series on TV about 20 years ago with Stephen Fry which I found just a tad too much to take.  Then he pops up in Jeeves and Wooster playing a silly twit.  Then he pops up in Blackadder playing, er..a silly twit.  The only time I saw him play serious was in the film Peter's Friends (which was called Ken's Luvvies in our house) a truly sick making film directed by and starring the then ubiquitous Ken Branagh with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and Emma T and Emma T's mum and the whole Ken and Em Rep Company, a film that you should only watch with a bowl handy for the moment when it all becomes to much to take and nausea overtakes the viewer.  However ghastly this film, Hugh Laurie played a serious part and very good he was too.

The idea of him playing an American doctor was one that I could not get hold of but after an hour I realised he was, quite simply, terrific.  His accent is excellent and believable and, of course, he has the most lovely baritonal deep voice which I had never heard before.  If you are playing a silly upper class twit such as Jeeves et al then high pitch is the order of the day. In fact with his stunning blue eyes, Hugh is rather sexy.

   

This weekend just gone Daughter No 2 came down to see me and wanted to have a practice drive in my car, I told her fine but only if she brought the other three series of House down with her to lend me.  She did and I have just watched the first four episodes of Series two and have now put them away otherwise I shall be up till the wee small hours of the morning.

Hugh Laurie is excellent as the sarcastic rude brilliant diagnostician who has a small select band on his team who he seems to treat like dirt, but they take it.  At times he is very very funny, the script just crackles off the screen, but we are also given a vulnerable glimpse every now and then which balances this out and lets us know he is human deep down.  We do get the obligatory soft moments when the violins play or the piano, and soft focus close ups that all US series go in for with the actors looking pensive and sad, but such is the sharpness and acerbity of each episode that these descents into sentimentality are bearable.

So I have another addiction to keep me going until 24 Series Seven comes out on DVD in October.  I have already pre-ordered it and now have to bide my time in patience.   Mark you, I reckon I will watch all of the House series within a month, so I still have a problem.   OK any other suggestions?  I have tried the Sopranos but not for me, CSI, Law and Order - no.

I do, however, have the first series of Damages on DVD, special offer only £15, with Glenn Close which seems to have cleared up at the Emmys so perhaps I will have a go at that one.

Then what do I do?  Oh, dear it is all too much to bear...

A Song at Twilight

We have a very good theatre in Colchester, The Mercury.  I have been to many events here, some dire, some brilliant.  I remember well a simply magnificent rep performance of The Browning Version which, in my opinion, was even better than that of Sir Michael Redgrave in the film version; a performance in a now defunct studio theatre of Duet for One which reduced the audience to stunned silence and tears and have seen musicals and Shakespeare in this venue.  It has had its ups and downs and different managers but over the last few years seems to have settled down to a steady stream of good productions.  Last week I went to see Coward's last play for the stage, A Song at Twilight.  Noel Coward played the role of Hugo Latymer himself and goodness me, wish I could have seen it.

     

Forgive this somewhat grainy photo - had to scan it in the end

Hugo is said to be based on the character of Somerset Maugham who, it is clear when reading Coward's diaries and letters, he disliked very much.  It would appear mainly for the fact that he went to extraordinary lengths to hide his homosexuality.  Maugham married, Syrie, and had a child and was terrified that his repressed sexuality would harm his reputation as a Great Writer.  While we must bear in mind that Maugham lived at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence, it does not excuse his cruelty to his wife, who he treated appallingly and then later, he tried to disown his child and adopt his young lover instead and leave his estate to him.  Coward himself, as we all know, was homosexual but he made no secret of it and one feels it is the cowardice of Maugham that offended him so much. In this play Hugo Latymer is visited by an old mistress, Carlotta, who it appears has letters that he wrote to 'the love of his life' who was not her, but a man.  Like Maugham, Latymer is terrified that this will get out and ruin his reputation and while Carlotta appears to have a high minded mission in mind, to get him to acknowledge his true self and show real feeling for once in his life, by the end of the evening we realise that she is not as altruistic as she appears and she is deeply hurt and bitter at the fact that he used her as a cover.

My sympathies were, on the whole, with Hugo Latymer.  He was in anguish and he could not make Carlotto, who I found rather annoying,  understand that despite the fact that this was post-Wolfenden and being homosexual was no longer a crime, the scandal and stigma would not yet go away and would not for years.  Great prescience from Coward here as, for example, it is only in the lifetime of this government that MPs are not afraid to be openly gay.  Before that, it was political suicide to be discovered.  Carlotta seemed to lack all understanding of this, but then his wife returns and it is clear that yes, she too had known all along and she defends her husband.

This play falls very much into two halves:  first act when setting the scene is Coward at his wittiest and best, throw away lines, little bits of business, sharp dialogue and pure enjoyment.  But then come the second act and all change.  We get to the nitty gritty, Carlotta reveals what she is really there for and the layers are peeled away one by one.  The house was nearly full, good turnout for a Monday, and I have a sneaky feeling that most of the audience did not know what this play was about, but it was a 'Coward' and that was what they had come for.  I sensed a slight uneasiness at times and, in act one when Hugo made a comment about a handsome waiter, a slight shift was felt in the watchers.  However, by the end of the play when I glanced round, everyone was totally engrossed and the proverbial pin could have been heard drop.

I am a huge admirer of Noel Coward, always have been, and I have his diaries, autobiography and letters on my shelves.  I looked up what he had to say about A Song at Twilight: "Here my darlings is my new play.  I think and hope you will like it.  I think it's quite a rouser"

Well, he was right - a rouser it was.  In the original run in 1966 Noel Coward played Hugo Latymer and Lilli Palmer played Carlotta.  Apparently he found Lilli 'tiresome' but the original actress who he had in mind was Margaret Leighton and she mucked him about so much and would not make up her mind whether to take it or not and then wanted changes, that he wrote her a classic Noel tick off letter "I knew with a sinking heart that our professional values are sadly at a variance. If you had troubled to read the script you might have noticed that my part, out of the three is the least sympathetic....in fact, my dear Maggie having discussed the situation exhaustively with Glen and Binkie, we three decided that all things considered, we should really be better off without you"

Oo-er is all one can say to that!

An excellent evening in the theatre.  Peter Egan who played Sir Hugo is a well known TV actor, I cannot recall seeing him in anything other than sitcoms or many moons ago, he played the Prince Regent in a TV drama.   One forgets that these actors have a life outside the box and I was interested to see him 'live' as it were.   Carlotta was played by Belinda Lang, another actor who I am only familiar with from TV, in this case as Troy in The Alleyn Mysteries made some years ago.  The characterisation in this particularly ill judged adaptation was totally wrong, but this did not detract from her acting.  One assumes you deal with the script you are given.   So both good but my quibble about their performances was the fact that Peter Egan fluffed his lines and he and Belinda Lang frequently came in across one another's lines when it was clear that neither had quite finished.  For two actors of this standard, this was slightly odd. However, as this play is going on tour and I gather Colchester was early on in the run, one hopes that in another week or two, they will get this right.

I came out feeling once again that Noel Coward was definitely The Master.

Happy birthday a moi

Yes, I am now two years into my sixtieth decade, not something I always want to admit to when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning and think I look like a hag, but then when the day arrives when the skin is clear, the eyes are bright and I have a good hair day, I think Oh well you don't look toooo bad.  Of course, 60+ is now the new 50+ I gather, we are being lured by advertisers and travel agents who want our money, we now have disposable income (well, we did have until perhaps this year and the dreaded credit crunch), we are computer literate, we are Silver Surfers, we are Skiers (Spending Kid's Income), we go on exotic holidays, white water rafting in Iceland, pony trekking in the Andes (not me I hasten to add) and instead of being called Old Age Pensioners we are now Senior Citizens and we have Grey Power.  All sounds pretty good doesn't it? 

However, when I went to Cambridge today with my good friend Jan and we went to a book fair, and I got down to look at some books and then had to be hauled to my feet by the bookseller,  I began to feel perhaps it is not so good after all....

 

But a lovely day - sun shining, positively spring like and blue skies and it is always a pleasure to stroll around Cambridge.  Found a few out of print Josephine Tey at the fair, but really it was one of those fairs where you look and stroke but don't buy because the prices are really a bit high.  I came across some of the Adventure books by Enid Blyton with dust covers etc which were going for £150+ so had a look at mine when I got in.  I have one first edition so will have to put that in the bank vault with the family silver (egg spoon and cake knife) but the others are second editions so plummet in value immediately.  Still, to have one is not bad - add my two first edition signed JK Rowlings and all my original Beatle LPs I may yet be able to afford my trip to Australia.

Bought myself a couple of pressies of course, I mean you have to don't you?  The book of the series, The Victorians all about Victorian paintings and how they reflected the age, introduced by Jeremy Paxman in erudite mode, last week he was wandering around Manchester and its fantastic galleries and Town Hall, great stuff but I do wish the BBC would not load every single scene with the racing clouds and the London Symphony Orchestra going like the clappers.  Restraint is a word that seems anathema to the producers at the Beeb these days.

  

And then a few CDs as well, went into Heffers and had a wallow in all the wonderful music available.  I am finding that as I get older, I am appreciating chamber music more and more and so bought some Schubert and Beethoven and then treated myself also to some Chopin.  All will be downloaded onto my new super duper 16gb iPod for the commute.

And then on the way home, popped into The Food Company, a great food shop in Marks Tey which I don't go into very often as it has the most sumptuous deli counters, wonderful cheeses, bread, local produce and it is a bit pricey but today I came out with some olive bread, a smelly brie practically crawling off the counter and some good coffee.  So, that is what I am doing tonight - eating this and watching Wives and Daughters which BBC4 are repeating in huge sections and am enjoying it all over again.  One of the best drama serialisation the Beeb has ever done in my humble opinion and Michael Gambon, sublime.

More tomorrow ...if I survive.  My daughter, Helen, who is taking driving lessons is coming to see me tomorrow and I have purchased some L plates and am allowing her to have a practice drive in my car.

Mother love has no boundaries...

The Outlander - Gil Adamson

If I start this review by saying that when I was reading this book I thought of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I don't want you to get the wrong idea.  I'm not being flippant or trying to say that this is a fun buddy book, but those of you who remember this film will recall that the two heroes are being tracked and chased by a band of men who are following their trail with an expert scout.  Butch and Sundance have been fairly dismissive and casual about it all and have no worries about their ability to fool them and to get away.  Then there comes a moment when a trick to lose them fails and they turn to each other 'Hey, who arethose guys?'   From this moment on the tone of the film changes as they realise that their pursuers are not going to give up, they will never be free of them.  And then the film continues until the meet their inevitable fate, one of the great all time movie endings as far as I am concerned.

So, what is the connection?

Mary Boulton is a widow she is nineteen years old and has shot her husband. She runs alone through the Canadian wilderness, fleeing from her two brothers in law who are tracking her down to avenge their dead brother, John. 

"It was night and dogs came through the trees unleashed and howling. They burst from the cover of the woods and their shadows swam across a moonlight filed......the men appeared. They were wordless, exhausted from running with the dogs, huffling in the dark....the girls scrambled through ditch water and bulrushes, desperate to erase her scent...in the moonlight her beautiful face was as hollow as a mask..."

She runs to keep ahead of them in the snow and the icy cold and as she struggles alone she is forced to dig deep within herself to survive.  Nothing in her upbringing or her sheltered existence has given her the strength of will or purpose to enable her to deal with the tragic and awful situation in which she finds herself, but somehow as the days and weeks pass, Mary finds something buried deep down in her character that enables her to carry on each dreadful suffering day. She meets a recluse living alone in the mountains, The Ridgerunner, who has turned his back on society and exists in his own quiet world.  Like her, he is solitary and damaged. They meet, and form a short sharp sexual relationship but he cannot cope with another person and he abandons her.  Mary continues on, through immense hardship and suffering and finally finds herself living in a mining town in the wilderness, where she becomes the housekeeper of the Reverend Bonnycastle, another person hiding from himself and his demons.

Mary faces up to her own insecurities and lack of self belief and gradually begins to form a meaningful life for herself when tragedy strikes and the inevitable happens - the two brothers finally track her down.  By this time I was quite breathless with wanting to know what was going to happen, how would it end, really I knew deep down that we could not have a standard happy ever after finish, and I found the way the story came to a close, totally satisfactory.  Strange, as it is slightly ambiguous and we are left uncertain.  I felt a certain sympathy for the relentless pursuit by the brothers and their grief and desire for vengeance but at the same time I wanted Mary to have her chance of a life. So, will she? and will the brothers finally realise that their quest is eating them up and decide to abandon it?  We don't know, we can only surmise.

The scenes unfold:  the bleak white cold wilderness, the rough and ready squalor and dirt of the mining camp, the scene rolling in your mind's eye as the brothers and the tracker hunt their way through the backwoods and the rivers - it is all quite beautiful and incredibly filmic.  This book just cries out to be filmed and I found myself visualizing the settings and the shots as I read, I also did my usual trick which can on occasions really annoy me as it distracts, of casting the parts and one name and face came into my mind for the role of Mary from page one and could not be shifted.  I am not going to mention who it is, as I do not want this image to possibly intrude into another mind's eye and spoil The Outlander for anybody else.

It was the endless dogged pursuit of Mary and the awful feeling of panic at the knowledge that this pursuit was never going to end that made me think of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  This feeling, that they could never get away, that they would never spend a day without looking over their shoulder to see if their pursuers were there, which made this film into something more than it appeared on the surface, gave a feeling of permanent dread, that no matter how long you might spend being happy, you know it will never last and then..........

Uncomfortable pricking between the shoulders.

I know very little of the author, Gil Adamson, but I gather she has written poetry and short stories. This is her first novel and I most sincerely hope it will not be her last.  I was totally taken by this wonderful book and just sat entranced and read it straight through, neglecting all sorts of chores and tasks I had to do, in order to finish as I could not tear myself away.

Stunning.  I loved it.

My Word is my Bond

Nipped over to see my ma this morning and after a rather hair raising drive along the A12 and a run in with an extremely rude lorry driver, came home feeling I needed a sit down.  I had been given the above book to read by a friend of mine who loves reading 'celeb' autobiographies.  I usually avoid them like the plague but the last two she has given me have been great reads.  One was the Michael Parkinson book which I read with huge enjoyment as sitting down on a Saturday to watch 'Parky' on TV in the 1970s was what one did then and I have seen him interview the most amazing people, including Fred Astaire and James Stewart. Enjoyed reading this very much and, by all accounts, this was actually written by Mike P himself and handed in ahead of schedule, causing his publisher to suffer a heart attack...

So then I was given this one and, with a title like that, this has to be Roger Moore's autobiography.  I simply adore RM, always have done.  I fell in love with him years ago, back in 1961, when he starred as The Saint and became a huge heart throb.  I would never miss an episode, filmed in black and white to start with, and the halo appearing above his head as Roger would look up and raise that quizzical eyebrow.  So dashing and so incredibly handsome.

He seems to have had the most incredibly lucky acting life more or less falling into it by accident and though he spent time touring and in rep, he seems to have graduated to the big time pretty easily, probably helped by being married to Dorothy Squires, a huge star of the 50s who whisked him off to Hollywood where he soon found himself rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cary Grant, James Stewart and all the big names.

Won't give a blow by blow account as each chapter is witty and amusing full of very very funny anecdotes and stories about filming James Bond which made me roll about laughing.  Obviously written from his point of view, he skates over his marriages and the furore when he left his wife of 35 years to be with his current, and by the sound of the way he talks of her, very lovingly, his last.  He admits he was a coward and probably not a very nice person in the way he treated two of his four wives, but it is glossed over.  This is defo not a warts and all telling, how could it be when he is doing it himself? (well, with the help of a ghost writer anyway...).

I thoroughly enjoyed it and while I now look at some of his Bonds and wince, at the time they were huge fun and greatly admired.  Roger himself says he knows that critics think he played it too much for laughs, but as he  points out you have to laugh at the idea of a spy, yes a spy, walking into any bar in  the world, the barman saying Ah Good Evening Mr Bond and serving him the perfect martini shaken not stirred, it is a prepostrous one and you cannot take it seriously.  He has a point.

He is now a very respected ambassador for UNICEF and does a huge amount of work for them, while keeping his hand in at voice overs, ads etc.  He says that being a 'name' and keeping his profile high means he can raise a lot of money for this charity and says that wherever he goes in the world, there is somebody who is still watching the reruns of The Saint or the Persuaders or is watching his James Bond movies on DVD.

Filled with lots of super photos of him as The Saint, Bond, Ivanhoe, Maverick and I had forgotten how gorgeous he was in a simply dire film, the Miracle, picture reminded me, this book is great fun and a very pleasant way of wiling away an hour or two.  What I love about Roger is that he is self-deprecating and really knows, deep down, that he is not a very good actor, but he says if people are happy to pay him for not acting very well, who is he to argue?

Who indeed?

And a PS - his parents retired to Frinton and Roger used to visit them often and came down by train to Colchester where one day I nearly had a seizure when catching a train to London, spotted James Bond himself sitting on Platform 3 at Colchester station.  Everyone knew who he was, but nobody bothered him as they knew he was a regular and came down to see his mum when she was ill.  Sometimes the British public are rather sweet....

 

Winter Solstice - Rosamund Pilcher

Just had one of those weekends where you do nothing very much.  Bit of shopping, bit of cooking, very little bit of housework, drink coffee and generally adopt a slothful attitude.  Love it when this sort of time comes along.  Having spent most of my life working damn hard, running my own business, bringing up children, commuting, it is sheer joy to know that I can do what I like when I like and, hell, if I don't feel like doing it then I don't.

So Sunday saw me curled up on sofa, Sunday papers, coffee and toasted muffin just chillin'.  After lunch I wondered what to read.  I have a To be Read pile full of review books waiting my attention but somehow could not concentrate, I wanted something I could sink into and I then remembered a discussion that had taken place amongst members of an online reading group of which I am a member, a discussion about Rosamunde Pilcher and I realised that was what I wanted.  Pulled down Winter Solstice and I was off.

Three hours later I surfaced. I shut the book up with a deep sigh of satisfaction. I know this book well having read it several times, as I have her most popular The Shell Seekers, and each time I read either of these I am unable to put the book down as I want to find out the ending and what happens. Well, I know what happens and I know the ending and yet I read with a mounting sense of anticipation until it is done.

In Winter Solstice we have a disparate collection of people, all in some way unhappy or needful, who through coincidence and accident, all end up together in a house in a small Scottish town. Oscar Blundell, who has lost his wife and daughter in a car crash, Elfrida, a retired actress slightly raffish and eccentric who has also lost a great love, her cousin Carrie home from Austria after the end of a love affair bringing with her, Lucy, a neglected child caught between her warring divorced parents and Sam, from New York to restore a shattered wool mill and bring hope to the town, smarting from his wife's unfaithfulness They have all sought refuge from their unhappiness and by this coming together and their mutual support they emerge stronger and wiser and with new hope for the future.

Now, if you read that on a blurb you would think Yuk, not going to bother with that.  it is real blurb speak and yet it sums up what this book is about.  What it fails to do, and I daresay I am going to fail as well though I am going to try not to, is to give an idea of the warmth, humour and sheer down right common sense and charm this book has.  OK, the characters are good looking, witty and full of the milk of human kindness, you might almost say too good to be true, but they are so likeable, not an ounce of pretentiousness. 

As with all of Rosamunde Pilcher's books, the descriptions of the food, the wine, the bunch of tulips thrust casually into a pottery jug, the red silk shawl thrown over the bed, the eccentricity of it all and the serendipitous nature of an awful lot of the plot lines could, in another writer, make you reach for the sick back.  However, by the device of just damn good writing, this is avoided and the reader is beguiled by the somewhat wish fulfilment plot and ending.

The Shell Seekers is one of the most popular books ever published and always appears in My Favourite Top Ten of all time.  When the BBC did a crassly awful dramatised such list a few years ago, this was well up there (Lord of the Rings won if I remember rightly - probably because the films were doing the rounds at the time) and everyone I have spoke to who has read it just says Oh I LOVE that book whenever it is mentioned.

Well, I do too but Winter Solstice, though not as densely plotted, is my favourite.  A book redolent of warmth and optimism and the belief in the goodness of people, I love it and it made my Sunday re-reading this for the umpteenth time.

I gather Rosamund Pilcher has retired and is to write no more.  Oh I do wish she would change her mind....

PS - a simply dire TV dramatisation of this was done some years back.  Do not watch and avoid at all costs.  Just read the book.