Viburnum tinus

 

I published a post about this Viburnum on 10th March 2021 when I wrote about the "Viburnum Revived". This was after it was attacked by Viburnum beetle that in 2010 was rated the number one pest by the RHS. It was two years ago that I had asked our tree man to take it away. This was how it looked then.

Fortunately his advice about using pyrethrum did the trick and saved this lovely shrub. This year the Viburnum has flowered better than ever as the photo at the top and below shows. At this time of year it makes such a great picture.

 

Freya Ridings on the Graham Norton Show

 

This was the first time I had seen one of my favourite singer songwriters on UK tv. Freya Ridings performed Weekends from her upcoming second album Blood Orange. She was accompanied by an eight piece band which promises well for the new songs. She then talked to Graham Norton and the other guests. I had seen her on YouTube where she appeared at Glastonbury in 2019. I have to wait until May when the new album is released.

Tring Book Club - The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

 

Full of 17th century atmosphere, the story had good pace and was always interesting. It alternates between 1643 and 1703 by which time Thomas Treadwater has nearly reached the ripe old age of eighty despite a nasty wound from the civil war and burns we hear about later in the book. There is a lot about witches early on. Thomas forms a relationship with Chrissa Moore, originally suspected as one.

Thomas has a sister called Esther and it is her background that forms a big part of a surreal story of shipwrecks and a monster. Strangely, the poet John Milton features heavily later on as the last fifty pages turn into a tense thriller. I preferred the earlier parts where the prose was much better.

Songs from Call The Midwife - Series 12

 

We are in 1968 for the twelfth series of  Call the Midwife, so the choice of music will be interesting. I almost forgot that I still list the songs and add some information. I am using both Tunefind and now Soundtracki for the first time.

Episode 1

Come on Now by The Kinks. This little know track is from The Kinks' second UK  album Kinda Kinks released in 1965, just after their tour of Asia. In the USA it appears on the album Kinks-Size.  Probably written by Ray Davies. 

Love Is All Around by The Troggs. Released as a single in October 1967, it reached No 4 in the UK charts. Written by lead singer Reg Presley, it became a big hit for Wet Wet Wet when their cover version was used in 1994 for the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. (See songfacts for more).

Episode 2

I'm a Believer by The Monkees. Written by Neil Diamond with Micky Dolenz as lead singer, it was released in November 1966 and was at the top of the UK charts for four weeks in January and February 1967.

All My Love by Cliff Richard (Solo Tu). A single released in November 1967, it was an English translation from the Italian hit by Federico Monti Arduini that was translated by Peter Callender. Cliff's version reached No 6 in the UK charts.

Episode 3

Just one song and that was Captain of Your Ship by Reparata and the Delrons. The US girls released this single in 1968 and it made No 13 in the UK charts, unlike in America where it sunk without trace. It was written by Kenny Young (famous for his big hit Under the Boardwalk by The Drifters and other artists) and Bob Yardley. It must be over fifty years since I heard this song and thought it was new to me until I heard it again.

Episode 4

Good Morning New Day by Spiral Staircase. But I didn't know this song. Just the one again (unlike those early series where I was searching for a good few every episode). Well, we know it was written by singer/lead guitarist Pat Upton but that's about it. It does not appear on their only album released in 1969 and nowhere is there  a mention of it being a single. But it does appear on More Today Than Yesterday: The Complete Columbia Recordings released in 2003 and on The Essential Spiral Staircase for mobile users. Spiral Staircase joined Columbia Records in 1968 and finished in 1969, so this must be when this track was recorded. It can be heard on YouTube.

Episode 5

Something's Coming Along by The Sceptres. We continue with the most obscure songs from the late 1960's. We know from the picture on YouTube that it was written by Keen, Carter, Duncan, McKenna and Shaw. It was released in January 1968 by the band who came from Montreal. No sign of a UK release. Everything about the group can be found at www.thesceptres.ca. 

Episode 6

All I See is You by Dusty Springfield. At last, a song I recognise. A single released in 1966 that reached No 9 in the UK charts that was written by Ben Weisman and Clive Westlake.

Come Into My Arms Again by Barbara Ruskin. Written by the singer, it was released in 1967. One of the very few British female singer/songwriters of the time. Although her own recordings were overlooked, other artists had more success with her music.

Episode 7

Bend Me, Shape Me by Amen Corner. Written by Scott English and Larry Weiss, it was originally recorded by The Outsiders on their album In in 1966. Amen Corner's cover version in 1968 altered some of the lyrics, and made it to No 3 in the UK singles chart.

A Thousand Ages from the Sun by Electric Banana from the album Electric Banana. This was the name of a band created by The Pretty Things to hide their identity. The album was released in 1967 but I have no idea who wrote the songs. At the time, The Pretty Things were led by Phil May and Dick Taylor, the only two who remained constant all through the decades. Dick Taylor was originally in a band called Little Boy Blue and The Blue Boys that included Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. All three joined Brian Jones and Ian Stewart when they formed The Rollin' Stones in 1962. Taylor left fives months later and set up a new band with Phil May called The Pretty Things. 

Episode 8

The Wreck of the Antoinette by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. Released as a single in 1968, it reached No 14 in the UK. Written by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, it was never released in the USA. I had never heard of it but YouTube has a live version.

These days I am indebted to soundtracki.com who identify more songs than tunefind.com. I find it interesting to listen to some of the more unusual choices on Call the Midwife.

The Wedding Group, The Magician and The Gardener

 

A typically light domestic drama first published in 1968 but set unequivocally in the early sixties. (Later there is a cafe with a jukebox). A large extended family live in claustrophobic isolation in Quane, a place not far from London and surrounded by beech woods. Cressy (short for Cressida) is a naive nineteen year old who is looking to break away. Somehow she manages to get a job in an antiques shop run by the wonderful brother and sister Toby and Alexia. We do not hear enough about them. Both very good looking but happy in their own company.

On the scene is the more mature David, another local still living with his mother Midge, who turns out to be the best of all the characters in the book. Nell Stapleforth "had given up the idea of David as a husband, but liked her dog to get our into the country". It is the relationship between David and Cressy that turns out to be the main thrust of the story. Midge thinks Cressy "too simple, too lazy" and we could add a lot more derogatory comments, particularly about her lack of culinary skills.

David's elderly father hardly appears but his worry about money rings true: "You know what old people are like about touching capital". Elizabeth Taylor's vocabulary and phrasing is truly remarkable, often witty, always interesting. Her prose seems so modern for her time. Words I didn't know included "caryatid", "proselyte", "accidie", "inimical" and "etiolated". The Wedding Group of the title is actually a piece of Wedgwood.

I don't think I have ever read a book like this. Almost a biography, but written as a story. This is a work of enormous dedication and intelligence, or as one critic says "an enormously ambitious book one in which the intimate and momentous are exquisitely balanced" or " a biography in everything but classification and reliability". I knew the name of Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize winning German writer, but that was all. So this was very much new to me. The book lets us into his life in a way that a biography cannot do.

It starts in his teenage years in a prosperous family in Northern Germany ten years before the beginning of the twentieth century. When his father dies, his will proves what a horrible person he had been. The overwhelming legal rights of a husband and how he must have hated his family. In his late teenage years, Thomas is reading and writing poetry and starting to write stories. He puts his family into a novel; "Buddenbrooks" is published when he is 23.

Huge portions of this long book is made up of family life that involves his brother and sister and then when Thomas marries Katia and three children soon arrive. Even Katia's grandmother overcomes her objections to Thomas and that "he represented the new Germany, the one she had been hoping for all her life".

There is one part in this early part of the book that rang a bell. Thomas meets Gustav Mahler and after he dies thinks about him when visiting Venice. I had seen the film "Death in Venice" but never read the book. There is little about how the family managed during the first world war, only that the children are growing disruptive and call their father "The Magician". Erica and Klaus are terribly spoilt and the most awful children you can imagine. The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 follows a series of successful books, but at the same time this co-incides with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

From exile in Switzerland (the family have Jewish roots even if they do not practice their religion) then on to the South of France. A doctorate from Harvard sees Thomas and Katia cross the Atlantic. From the safety of America, he condemns Nazi Germany. There is one superb passage when Thomas meets immigration officials. From the California, the second world war passes them by. Lecture tours are very successful. But relations with their six children are not. His brother is just as bad. They are spiteful in every way, their language derogatory and critical. For me, this is what I will always remember from the book.

I thought the latest book from Salley Vickers was the least successful of all the other five I have read. I came across the author when book club chose "The Cleaner of Chartres". I don't think I was the only one who was disappointed. Two argumentative sisters take on an old mansion in a small village. Like the sisters, the locals are all pretty boring people. Nothing much happens. A nice enough story, undemanding after Colm Toibin's "The Magician". A mention of Rosemary Sutcliffe's "Eagle of the Ninth", the only prize I ever won at school. Elderly Phyllis explains " love is a flexible matter at best". But I did find that my asters are called Michaelmas Daisies.

David Thomson and Locke

 

There are a couple of pages in David Thomson's How to Watch a Movie that discussed one of my all time favourite films: Locke. The fact that he devotes so much space to such a small film is unprecedented. In the chapter "Alone Together" he says " How can there be a movie with only a single character on screen who never gets out of his car". He goes on to describe the film and, about Ivan Locke played  by Tom Hardy he says "He is inventive, brilliant, sympathetic without being ingratiating". He goes on "Locke is written and directed by Steven Knight, and I give him great credit" and finally "No film I've seen in recent years is more eloquent on where we are now, and on how alone we feel". 

I found it hard to imagine that such a respected film critic and historian would have the same feelings about this film as I do. So I have to say this has been quite emotional. This is what I said back in 2014.

I always post my film reviews in threes. So it takes something special to deserve it's own listing. And Locke was indeed very special. Not only is it an excellent movie in it's own right, but I cannot remember a film that portrays so well it's theme of construction. And I cannot recall a movie that has the industry that was my career as a dominant part of the story.

We only see one actor on screen, and it reminded me of Ryan Reynolds in Buried. But this time the lead is in the confines of a car instead of a coffin underground. Tom Hardy as Ivan (the Slavic equivalent of John will mean something to a few people) Locke is absolutely brilliant. On his journey south, he communicates by phone to a number of characters. But it is his conversations with Donal, his assistant very well played by Andrew Scott, that had me enthralled. Locke is the Construction Director on a huge 55 story building where the next day there is the biggest concrete pour in Europe (apart from nuclear or military projects) involving 218 truckloads of concrete from a number of plants.

So what is he doing driving away? Donal is in a panic, Locke's boss is apoplectic and his family cannot understand why he is missing a big football game on TV. The development of the story makes for an intriguing drama. All the other actors are superb even though we only hear their voices. I'm sure Ruth Wilson was doing an impression of Olivia Coleman and vice versa.

The critics cannot make up their mind what is Locke's job. Site Manager, Site Foreman, Construction Foreman, Construction Manager, Construction Engineer the list goes on. If they had listened, he is the Construction Director which would be quite normal running a project of this size. Locke is the Construction Director from heaven. Softly spoken and calm but highly authoritative and knowledgeable, he would be a dream to work for. This is the good modern face of construction and what credit he does the industry. Every budding foreman, engineer or manager should watch, learn and copy.

SPOILER ALERT. Locke tells Donal (and his boss) he can manage everything by phone. Poor Donal has to cope with checking concrete mixes at the plants, confirming road closures and checking rebar and shuttering. All have their complications (no different to most jobs). The boss has to cope with head office in Chicago and his family have to cope with his not coming home.

There are a couple of things I missed from this review. One was that the cast, as well as Andrew Scott, included Ruth Wilson and Olivia Colman. Amazing being in the same film. This is my fourth book by David Thomson and it wont be my last.

Knock at the Cabin, Plane and M3gan

 

A typically thought provoking screenplay from M. Night Shyamalan. Are we meant to question everything we are being told by these intruders? Are they mad or is there some truth behind their "end of the world" prophesy. Of the two gay men in the cabin, I found myself sympathising with Eric who didn't believe a word. But the director keeps us guessing all the way. I'm not sure if we ever get an answer to the big question: "why here"? So there are some holes in the plot, but these did not detract from a well written, acted and directed film set almost entirely within the confines of the cabin. Almost theatrical in it's presentation.

Yes, here is Gerard Butler once again playing the hero. Not saving the President this time, just a plane load of passengers. So much was predictable but this is an enjoyable ride (maybe for a theme park later?), a well made big budget thriller and a great location. Butler is aided and abetted by another tough guy this time Mike Colter in handcuffs. Those who are familiar with the controls of a passenger jet will relish some of the technical details. I liked how the crash in the first part of the film is never rushed and is therefore highly dramatic. The downside is that the baddies are all totally pathetic. Where did they get them from? It did look good on the big screen although The Independent said "it needed to be more stupid". But it was stupid enough for me.

Normally I would avoid a film about a killer robot, but this had some strangely excellent reviews. Wendy Ide in The Guardian gave it four stars. I think it was created to be silly, dramatic and stupidly funny at the same time and mostly that worked. You have to leave your brain outside (the advanced technical workings of M3gan are literally unbelievable) but the script is actually passable. There were only a couple of jump scares, thank goodness, so not really a horror movie given it's 15 certificate. The limited violence is not gratuitous and more staged and creative. Yes, we have seen the ending many times before but how else could it be.