Posts
All Comments
Mark Brown, who appears to be an occasional theatre critic for the
Daily Telegraph, didn’t think much of Sir Alan Ayckbourn's new play, Constant
Companions, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough. Brown complains that the
play adopts the comic tone of a Carry On film and that the humour is “old hat.”
I took a different and
much more favourable view. OK there was the usual helping of slapstick but
this, particularly in the case of sex-starved Don, eager to assemble his mail
order sex robot, was pure pathos. More often the triple plot was uncomfortably
funny with some very good acting. The ending, typical of Ayckbourn, was a little
rushed for me but still provoking. My advice: judge for yourself. We had a
most enjoyable afternoon and, judging by the buzz from the audience as we left the
theatre, Mark Brown seems to be somewhat out of step with the paying customers.
A retired RAF Officer asked this
morning, with just a little irony, where Grant Shapps sat compared to a notorious
predecessor as Secretary of State for Defence, Gavin Williamson. Shapps is often described as having, a “safe
pair of hands,” or, translated, unlikely to embarrass No 10. After all, his appointment has received a
resounding endorsement from Boris Johnson.
Mushroom humbly sees the logic: so
long as he does not cause trouble over money, he will be howling success in
cabinet and will be able to continue managing the scandalous decline of our
military capability as well as the next (yes) man. But, as I have said before: Rishi and those
helping him lead the Conservative Party to oblivion may think that they can sweep defence and security under the carpet for
now but they will regret it at the next election. Nobody has a clear
idea of how the war in Ukraine will ever end and what state the belligerent
parties and their helpers will be in afterwards. The possibility of
Trump returning to Commander in Chief and insisting that Europeans actually pay
for their defence against a potentially triumphant Putin could concentrate
minds, even in Germany, let alone Whitehall.
It was soaking wet but well worth the effort. Thanks to all for organising and operating an excellent event. Hope I have better luck with the weather next year.
The BBC is currently excelling itself with the spoof wartime
drama, “World on Fire.” The plot is
obvious: bungling male white British colonialist
racists v Nazis (no Germans).
Fortunately, there are several feisty females to keep the war on track. It’s the sheer preposterousness that I find
addictive. For example, David, who I
think is Jewish, is a fighter pilot.
David has been successful flying the all-weather day/night Spitcane with
notable victories against Nazi bombers in cloud and at night. Last night he was sent on a dangerous mission
to fly through bad weather across the Channel and locate some troublesome Nazi
guns by breaking cloud cover and plotting the resulting fire. David, who maintains crystal clear radio
communications with his controller, who he meticulously addresses as “Sir (this
is very odd because elsewhere in the drama other ranks appear to address
Officers as anything but Sir),” breaks cloud with pin-point accuracy and
announces his position as over Northern France at coordinates 50 degrees North
and 30 degrees West. Some mistake
surely? Fifty North and 30 West is about
halfway between Canada and Ireland in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or at
least it was the last time I flew under Oceanic Air Traffic Control. No matter, David finds his way safely home
only to be sent on an even more dangerous mission. This time he is not so lucky but he deserves
his fate. We see David in the spacious
Spitcane cockpit wresting the cockpit canopy with both hands whilst trees appear
ever closer a few feet below (tip from an old flying instructor – whatever
else, always fly the aeroplane). Rather than
crash land, David appears to have parachuted to safety (perhaps he was influenced by a previous scrape in which he urged his colleague to, "eject, eject") – the canopy, apparently
miraculously opening at ground level, just in time to save him. Leaving his shredded silk festooned on a tree
so that he can be easily located, David staggers off into shallow undergrowth
and successfully evades capture by lots of incompetent Nazi soldiers. So far that is, and I cannot wait for next
week’s excitement. Whatever will the army of BBC Equality Diversity and Inclusion consultants, sensitivity readers, and fact checkers come up with next?
It doesn’t seem to be apparent in UK yet but across Europe tired
centrist governments are seeking the support of right wing (“far right” in BBC
definition) populists to shore up their declining support with their respective electorates. Friedrich
Merz of the German CDU recently talked about a possible accommodation with the
Alternative fur Deutschland (extreme right in BBC definition). I know it’s a
long shot but in the unlikely event that the Conservatives win a hung
parliament, there will probably have to be some accommodation by the
established parties towards inconvenient populist viewpoints if a new
government is to get off the drawing board. Expecting a crowded market place, all
eager to cash in on king-making rewards, Mushroom needs to set out his stall early. His radical offering contains just a handful
of simple principles. The manifesto rejects:
And stands for:
All that is needed is a catchily familiar identification. Alternative for United Kingdom or AFUK for
short sounds good. Meantime, I’ll sit back
and wait for the phone to ring and I’ll let you know how I get on opening a
bank account.
We have a by election in our constituency, Selby &
Ainsty, on Thursday 20 July. This wholly
unnecessary procedure is the result of the petulant resignation of the sitting
Conservative MP, Nigel Adams. Over the
last week, I have received 3 phone calls from anxious Conservative canvassers
asking my opinion, on a scale of 1 to 5 or 10, how I feel about various
policies. Presumably, the collective
tactile exercise will be used to direct the election messaging. Mushroom can save them the bother – here is
what he and, I dare say, many wavering Conservatives in Selby & Ainsty think:
Meantime, I have received a large volume of, largely,
uninformative literature from the plethora of other candidates. I have to say, however, that I was
particularly struck by ex Conservative, Sue Anderson Brown, who wails about the
plight of her hard-working daughters (two teachers and a nurse) who are struggling
to make ends meet. She thinks getting
rid of the Conservatives will solve their difficulty. Mushroom has a couple of more immediate practical
suggestions to alleviate their respective crises. Firstly, why not take a part time job on all
your sick days – nobody would ever know and you should be able to offer a
regular commitment. Secondly, why not
retire early on your unique defined benefit pension? I hope that is helpful Sue?
