Songs from Call the Midwife Christmas Special 2017

Four songs from the Christmas Special:

A Marshmallow World by Bing Crosby. Written in 1949 by Carl Sigman (lyrics) and Peter DeRose (music), it was a hit for Bing at Christmas 1950.

C'est Magnifique by Peggy Lee from her 1960 album Latin ala Lee! Written by Cole Porter for his 1953 musical Can-Can.

Wipeout by The Sarfaris. Written by Bob Berryhill, Pat Connolly, Jim Fuller and Ron Wilson.  A Hit for The Surfaris in January 1962.

Sealed with a Kiss by Brian Hyland. Written by Peter Udell and Gary Geld, it reached no 3 in the UK singles chart in 1962.

The episode is set in the winter of early 1963 when it started to snow just after Christmas 1962. It then froze and the country was in the grip of icy conditions for over two months. One of the coldest winters on record. I had just turned 18 and did a paper round six mornings a week. I never missed a day. Amazing what you could do at that age.

Shuttlecock, Quarantine and Only Human

Shuttlecock is a very clever story that interweaves a family drama with a memoir written by the father of our narrator, Prentis. The father was a spy in WW2 but was captured near the end of the war. But was this all true or not? The author writes about how truth is sometimes elusive, especially when someone has the power to distort it or hide it away. Again, I loved the conversational structure ("The small mammal house at Regent's Park Zoo. I can recommend it") as Prentis tries to make sense of his relationship with his family and the mystery that is his father. 

Sometimes you read a book where the story is great but the writing is ordinary. And sometimes it's the other way round. Quarantine definitely belongs to the latter. The seven characters who meet in the wilderness above Jericho are all superbly described. I particularly liked how Musa, the conman, was so excruciatingly bad. I liked how the story was told alternating between the main protagonists. But the plot itself is pretty boring, there are some interminable sections where a character tells a particularly dull story. "Five go on a Fast" as Enid Blyton would say, and that's it. 

I enjoyed this very readable and well written book. Only Human is not quite up to the five stars I gave to Susie Boyt's The Small Hours but still very good. Marjorie is a sympathetic character, but does not always seem suitable for her role as a marriage counsellor, for reasons that gradually become apparent. We are drawn into her struggles to keep the relationship with her daughter that has been key to her life for many years. A short book in length but one that will resonate for a long time. 

Detectorists - The Final Episode

What will we do now Detectorists has come to an end. The greatest comedy on television for years saved it's best episode for last. Mackenzie Crook has written and directed the three short series of what will become a classic. The bitter sweet humour has an emotional tug very few dramas can match. Mark Braxton in the Radio Times online is also a big fan. Amongst his extolling the virtues of the programme comes:

Modern comedies are often predicated on cruelty: laughs are hard, clanging or sharp as barbed wire. In its quiet, undemonstrative way, Detectorists has ploughed its own furrow. Buried in its field of fun are evergreen truths about life, and the things we don’t say but should. So if kindness and companionship are unfashionable, I know which side of the hedge I’d rather stand.

My favourite of the marvellous tiny clips in the concluding scene is when Lance's girlfriend and Andy's wife  meet in the field and share a glass of wine. I cannot remember seeing them before in the same shot. Brilliant.

The Battle of the Sexes, Wonder and The Man Who Invented Christmas

An uneven movie in my opinion, Battle of the Sexes is entertaining enough but I found the central character, Bobby Riggs, to be pathetic rather than funny. Steve Carell does a decent enough job, probably too decent that we resent Bobby so much. Emma Stone is again OK as a boring Billie Jean King, but for me, the star was Andrea Riseborough's manipulative Marilyn Barnett. She just gets better and better. There was a splendid cameo from Alan Cumming as the designer Teddy Tinling ( I cannot remember anything he has done since Goldeneye). And Sarah Silverman was aslo very good as Gladys Heldman. A good screenplay (as always) from Simon Beaufoy let down by some dull directing by Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris.

Wonder is a sensitively made movie that is both interesting and, in it's own way, quite powerful. The cast are all very good. The critics are almost unanimous in calling the story of a boy with facial disfigurement inspiring and heartwarming. And it is. Just a little bit too predictable.

This was the seventh British move in a row that I thought was outstanding. The Man Who Invented Christmas is part drama and part fantasy as Charles Dickens struggles with writer's block. The way the two are superbly merged is all down to the director Bharat Nalluri (I thought his Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day to be equally good) and writers Susan Coyne and Les Standiford who wrote the book. The British cast again rise to the occasion. Dan Stevens and Christopher Plummer revel in their leading roles but some of the minor characters are superb. Morfydd Clark as Mrs Dickens, Donald Sumpter as Jacob Marley and newcomer Anna Murphy are all excellent. A Christmas treat shown early on Silver Screen at £3.45 was a gift.

P.S. On another level, this could be considered as a course in creative writing, as Dickens gains inspiration from events happening around him. Stumbling on a graveyard at night, he meets a grumpy old man burying his business partner.

Tring Book Club - The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon

A collection of pretty dark stories. I can watch a horror movie, but the written word has much more of an effect on my brain. Fortunately, the shattering nature of each piece seems to melt over time, and I was just left with a sense of wonder at their construction. Haddon is such a great writer; has anyone described an appendectomy in such vivid detail? And I loved it when one of the characters in danger recalls his wife's warnings as "my greatest fault was to give insufficient weight to her misgivings". Superb.

This was my choice for book club, and I was a little concerned how the ladies might view such an intense batch of stories. I need not have worried as the majority thought, like me, that they were brilliant.

Another visit to Oxford

Alison's sister and her husband were visiting and wanted to look round Oxford. So I dug up my map (see bottom of the page) from the last time and off we were. We took the park and ride from Thornhill which dropped us off at the High Street. We cut through the covered market (which I had not seen before). Arriving at Cornmarket, we decided to go up The Saxon Tower at the church of St. Michael at the North Gate.

I had been up the Carfax Tower but not this far older and superior structure. The photo at the top is a view over the city. The bells are visible on the way up.

We also liked the mechanism of the old church clock. A small old wooden door that is propped against a wall is that through which passed the Oxford Martyrs, Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, on their way to the stake on Broadgate. The plaque below describes what happened.

We then followed the route I had previously planned. Broad Street, Sheldonian Theatre, Bodlein Library and Radcliffe Camera before passing under the Bridge of Sighs and making our way past the colleges to High Street and Magdalen College. Then over the road, past the Botanic Gardens and Christ Church, up St Aldates to Pembroke College and Queen Street.

Here we diverted to the new Queensgate shopping centre and a great lunch at Comptoir Libanais, a smart Lebanese restaurant. From there we made our way to the Ashmolean Museum which was our last port of call. A long day, but the weather was dry though cloudy and not too cold.

Touch, Still Here and Birdcage Walk

"Touch " is an ingenious, twisted fantasy that runs out of steam too early. At times, the complications of the plot gets in the way of any literary merit, unlike Claire North's first novel which I enjoyed. The first half is entertaining and fascinating, but the story then becomes too repetitive and I became bored with the one trick pony that is at the heart of the novel. The chapters are short, mostly between two and six pages long. But I needed something deeper to keep me interested. 

Linda Grant is one of favourite authors, so I was catching up on an earlier novel from 2002. "Still Here" was one of her best, tracing the brand new friendship of Alix and Joseph whilst exploring the backstory of their lives and that of their families. But they are both approaching fifty, one single, the other trying to make his marriage work.

Alix is one of the best female characters I have ever read, prickly, fiercely intelligent, outspoken (she calls it mouthy), a product of a Jewish family from Liverpool. You wont understand until you read the book when she says "Be gone with you Issie, a new phantasm will come to me tonight". Joseph is an architect from Chicago building a hotel near the docks. His story alternates with that of Alix.

Grant writes with a sharp point to her pen, describing Alix's grandparents escaping from Dresden and making a new life in Liverpool. As Alix says "I have to admit that my generation, born after the war, has had the easiest ride in the whole of history. ". Haven't we just. 

Another outstanding novel from Helen Dunmore. A great pity that this is her last. Our narrator, Lizzie, is a young woman ahead of her time for 1792. Her older husband is building a fancy terrace on the edge of the Avon Gorge at Clifton. But he is not all he seems. When her mother dies, Lizzie has lost her rock. Full of gorgeous descriptive prose, the relationships between all the main characters are beautifully drawn. I loved it.