Bruce Horsby and the Range

I don't know why this is a recurring thought for me.
But when I landed at Schifol Airport Amsterdam a while ago en-route back from visiting Hester
in Hong Kong, Yes, before she went to Singapore......I was jet-lagged and walking around the huge complex of shopping sites and long avenues of travelators taking pedestrians out to their take-off gates...but there was one area of refuge for weary travellers with armchairs and in the middle of which was a white grand piano. When I saw it there I thought of the famous white grand piano at Abbey Road, the one that John did "Imagine" on...anyway I plonked my backpack down and sat on an armchair and in no time........4 o'clock in the morning remember....this non-descript bloke in a boring black suit and boring black shoes with a boring black suitcase and a boring hair-cut went up to the piano. It had a small wooden message board on top which said "Please feel free to play this piano but please also appreciate the needs of your fellow travellers" I cant remeber the exact wording......
This guy sat down, lifted the lid and then started playing the Bruce Hornsby arrangement of "That's Just the Way it is" the airport accoustics were just wonderful for it. He did a couple of rounds of it and I didn't want him to stop.......He sensed that the accoustics were sublime so he couldn't help but do another round and I will never forget it. When he stopped the last chord just rang out through the concourse. No one seemed to notice. That's fine. No one needed to notice. Magical moments are just that, and who cares if no one notices them!!!!!!!

Django Unchained the Movie

Last night I went to see Django Unchained. The new movie by Quentin Tarantino and of course, in hindsight, I should have been more prepared for the fare on offer. I've heard of Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction but I'm sorry to admit that I've never seen them. Funnily enough I have recently watched the Sergio Leone series of movies with the monosyllabic Clint Eastwood and his babbling idiotic side-kick (Joke; why does the word monosyllabic have just so many syllables). There are so many references in DU to the Spaghetti Western genre. A genre that I would have thought has had it's day. Ridiculously impossible and implausable feats of sharp-shooting and marksmanship and large scale death tolls. Huge, dramatic, romantic and beautiful American landscape scenes (or Spanish or Italian) in which the players strut their two and a half hours upon the stage. And to stay with Shakespeare .....Shakespeare this is not! In spite of some gouging out of eyes as in King Lear. (scene where two black slaves or Mandingoes fight to the death for the entertainment of plantation owner Leonardo di Caprio). I spent my childhood being hypnotised by cowboy films and because of Hollywood I was hoodwinked along with my peers to think that this portrayal was accurate. Now maybe I'm just not getting the joke here. OK it's a movie and we can all say "Oh that's not possible, that could never happen" Just enjoy the entertainment. Most of modern day CGI would of course be impossible to achieve in real life and obviously Quentin isn't trying to portray real life. So what is he doing? Yeah he's a movie buff; so we get Spaghetti Western whistle music, I'm no expert but some Kung Fu Eastern shit thrown in. Maybe the whole thing is a pastiche that I just don't get.
I won't spoil the plot for you but safe to say Django (abused, beaten, whipped, starved) but with perfect Hollywood teeth, ends the film with the usual preposterous shoot-out with all the bad guys in the mansion of the plantation owner. Of course the genre decrees that he gets access to enough six-shooters (remember this is 1858 so weoponry pretty basic) each loaded with six shots to keep firing at over twenty (in fact probably more) adversaries without himself being scratched. So what do we have here. Purile entertainment watching a killing spree where blood gore and guts fills the screen...and to what effect.
I just sat there watching it as a load of Hollywood nonsense. Is this art or entertainment. Am I learning anything here. Is this informing me in any way of my human condition. Or am I watching one man's appreciation of film genre; fantasy and non-fiction! Why is he using all these impossible and implausable devices? We can all see the trick. Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. So why should we sit there and go along with it.
BUT
and I have a big BUT here. It is pretty often that I see news of shoot-outs, not dissimilar to what I witnessed last night, in schools across America and the occasional one in Norway. Modern day individuals have semi-automatics and scopes.
I have huge misgivings about this film. Yet I spent my childhood watching hundreds of Native American "Indians" being mercilessly shot by brave American cowboys in countless films and TV series......anyway just one last thought. I don't know if you can guess what is the most repeated phrase or sentence spoken in Hollywood films. It is, in fact, the sentence used by Django at the very end of the film. He says........."Let's get outta here!!!"
Methinks "Yeah.....lets all of us do just that!"

Vegetarian Soup

I'm doing this repetitive vegetarian soup recipe where there isn't a recipe. You cook a load of stuff. parsnip. turnip, swede, sprouts, carrots, butternut squash, potato.....just chop it up and add boiling water. Simmer and add veg stock cubes. Then sprinkle parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Maybe do some salt and pepper. Then add some green lentils and just keep cooking.Then whatever you have available, just chop it up and add it. As you ladle it into your soup bowl it's different every time. Because as you run out of carrot you add sweet potato or just keep putting in what you have and you can keep the same pot bubbling for weeks as you just keep adding and adding.

Margot amd Moo-Moo

Margot and Moo-Moo watching TV in their new apartment in Singapore.A long way away from their granddad. Love You Girls XX

My Granddaughter

I was visiting some people recently and I had to listen to this bloke going on about his daughter and granddaughter. And to be brutally honest....I was pissed off. His daughter is manager of not one, but two factories. He's told me this before. They export most of what they make. He's told me that before. One granddaughter is seventeen and a half. (and a half!!) and is going to be a doctor. A six year course. Not sure if she's going to choose Bristol, Sheffield or Leeds. She's expected to do very well in her A Levels. She wanted to do work experience but British hospitals won't take seventeen year olds, or seventeen and a half year olds for that matter. So she's managed to get a place in a hospital in Tanzania.And he went on and on and on and I'm thinking .....my daughter did rather well in her A Levels too, but I'm not going to tell you about it. She went to Oxford University mate!!! He never thought for a moment to ask me about my daughter and granddaughters. It so happens that he does know but he didn't think to ask about them.
All this reminds me of the dinner parties when people talk about themselves when you are deperately wanting to talk about yourself.
I am monumentally proud of my daughter and granddaughters and OK it might have been Patsy's genes that got Hester her starred A's and place at Oxford while my genes maybe got her the Netball Cup at Hotwells Primary School. But I am immensely proud of all of her many qualities and especially her bravery. To take on challenges like Hong-Kong and now Singapore!! Especially the latter with two such young children!!
Talking of which I had a wide-ranging and articulate conversation with Elodie today. She's two years and three months old and we discussed her nursery school, peppa pig, her daddy, her doing a poo in her pants and Margot.
But getting back to Hester.....
I trust that Chris realises and appreciates just what an amazingly stunning and beautiful creature he has managed to capture as his life partner. He is one Lucky sod!!!
Anyway I don't boast about my progeny. No of course not. I might Blog once in a while. But that's OK

Let it snow Let it snow Let it snow

Oh the weather outside is frightful. We got back from Cambridge just in time. I took this photo a couple of hours ago. It's still snowing and much deeper now.

Peppa Pig Addict

Spooky or What??

When Margot was born she had all of her granddad's facial characteristics. Everyone said what an uncanny resemblance she had to her granddad. His ears, his chin, his hair even. Then, over Christmas, this photo was taken and when I received it ......I had to admit to myself that the likeness is almost Spooky. The little darling just looks so wonderful........doesn't she???? Cute as hell and she's gonna grow up to be intellectual and insightful, like her granddad......with the Wayman genes......high cheek-bones.....strong jaw....never boastful...always self-deprecating...I've given her the perfect start in life. Bless her cotton socks!!

Mug Shot