Saturday 9 January 2010

The Lives Saints

14.00 Ella Fitzgerald sings Stairway to the Stars on AOL Radio. I have an LP which I am too lazy to go upstairs to note its contents but it is 50 years of age, and I saw her sing live at the David Theatre Croydon in the late fifties. The next record is Billie Holiday Easy to Love. I also have at least one LP again fifty years of age and a 3 CD set with sixty records plus tracks on other compilations. I have just recovered from an after lunch nap and getting the camcorder ready for collection. As reported yesterday the fault C31. 40 came up on the view screen and according the manual I needed to contact the maintenance contractors Master Care policy who over the past four years have become the Tec Guys. They gave me a reference number and said a collection package would be sent through the post and this arrived lunch time waking me up from the nap as I was watching the last stages of Bargain Hunt, but I remember nowt. The packaging comprises two boxes and a bright outer plastic bag in the yellow livery of the carriers. It is a clever system involving inserting the camera under a transparent plastic film with flaps turned back to hold firm and sides which then slot into place. The next task is to create the holding box and insert the camera container and. I sign the pre-typed External Repairs Service Report, printing the name below. The is Job number form to sign, and note accessories if these have been requested. I have removed battery, recording tape and the stills short film writer/recorder. I also add my telephone number as requested. I take photo copies. I do not seal bag and telephone the carriers having to press any digit to get the first message but then press for the contract service. I give the contract number, some details of me, and confirm collection tomorrow and also give the address where the package is to be delivered, I then give the 16 digit individual package reference and I have a transport job number. I ask about the package, should I seal. The other person did not see the packaging but guess there was be instructions, There were not but two silver strips to be pealed away. It was ready.

Stevie Wonder and Ella sing You are the Sunshine of my life. Shirley Horn ( any relation to Lena?) sings Baby Please Come Home with a great sax solo. I like the sax and have at least on LP of who, not remembering bugs me. I stop writing to listen to what has developed into a great track. Louis Armstrong Sweet Lorraine. I have three Hot Five and Seven LP's, a three CD collection and numerous other tracks in compilation. Chris Connor who I have heard before sings Moon Ray. One upon time a regular on Sunday Family Favourites was Nat King Cole This will make you love me. I would go to Mass on Sundays, and then go for a walk with other relatives who were first cousins. We would usually go to one of the Parks, Beddington, Mellows, Carshalton with the Pond and Carshalton with large sunken area which was idea for playing cricket when there was only two of you because the ball would always run back down the backs unless you hit really hard and high. There was also the park Up Woodmanston Way past the Small holdings, or we would continue towards Purley to look at the large houses some had their own tennis courts.. There were also trips along the nearest edge to Croydon Airport which was London, Airport until Heathrow took over. Once a year we took a bus to Bluebell wood which was the other side of Cheam. Family Favourites was always playing when we got back. After we moved and KI was able to out on my own I would go in the summer afternoons to watch Wallington or Beddington. play cricket. Carmen McRae Three Little words is a well known song from adolescence. Another Billie Holiday, Baby I don't Cry over you. Chet Baker singing !!! Time after Time, he is a horn player and I did not know he sang. Nat King Cole I realise Now

14.45 The are two kinds of Freedom. Freedom from persecution, false imprisonment, poverty, violence and such like. These should never been taken for granted, but in the UK the majority tend to do so, because they also enjoy Freedom to, freedom develop their innate and acquired physical, spiritual, psychological, creative abilities to their maximum potential, to smoke and drink to excess, to gamble. This comes to mind because last night was full of enthusiasm for giving myself an updated review of British History since human beings inhabited the land, I am still enthusiastic but the day has taken a gentle stroll. Coffee and Toast, a few games of Heart and Chess. Correcting and publishing the Blog of the day, going out to Smiths for the British War Film Above us the Waves, buying some bread and milk on the way back. An early salad lunch with a little cheese and salami, olive tomato cucumber lettuce, followed by banana.

Le DeLaria Cool, Don't know her, not, my scene although she is good. Sounds if it comes from West Side Story. Stacey Kent, heard before inviting her special one to come with her under the Blanket of Blue. Great I will be seeing you in all the old familiar places George Shearing, I have a LP 30-40 years of age. I always think of you that way gee I know all the words I will be looking at the moon and seeing you.

15.00 Remember to keep a tally of coffees from new packet, four to-date to work comparative costs of home brew and outside purchase ready made. Time for a cup of tea and some prawns from shell.I love you for sentimental Reasons Nat King Cole. Tenderly know but not Johnny Hartman. Great a trad jazz Billy Holiday Travelling All Alone. The contrast with Sarah Vaughan and a big band, Just friends. And now just when I was to switch off and watch a film it is Begin the Beguine with Ella, I am with you under the stars and those swaying palms. A good way to end this session. There is eight hours of work to accomplish. 15.20

17.20 There are those of us and I am one who believe that if you enable people to heave Freedom to they will use it well, for the betterment of themselves and of others, A very different view of Freedom to was created by Chris Cottam and Rankin in The Lives of the Saints. They live in an atheist world without humanity and without soul where the scum of life hold sway. There are likeable beings in their film, the pregnant girl whom comes to the UK but the child is still born and is buried and who now spends her days cooking whatever and for who ever. She is full of guilt and sadness. The young tart who adores the young no mark waste of space son of the north London village terrorist, you know the kind the one who the police and politicians ignore because their victims are other lowlife no marks and no hopers, she is also the realist who gives her boyfriend's father an occasional helping hand, and she see the young urchin who suddenly comes into their world for what he is, a displaced urchin, needing good mothering, a dad, and some security.

The child is discovered by the film's token black whose role in life is that of an errand boy, the runner, placing bets, collecting drugs in a world where the mobile phone, the internet, the motor bike and scooter has long replaced two conspicuously legs. He is the first to treat the encounter the child and see him as an epiphany prepared to be tortured and killed rather than continue his former life., but unlike the first Christians he survives and becomes more laid back although as everyone is like sticks of rock in this film he can escape the lettering inside him. For some perverse reason he dumps the child on his employer's son and this gives the son the ability to forecast winners at the horses and dog track and workout which machine will payout when, something which I would have expected his dad to have told him actually depends on how the machine is set up, so its owners or leaseholder can take the pot once they know the regularity of its use, sorry if you did not know the machines are fixed. The financial success gives the son a sense of independence from his father who seeing his authority undermined wants the child. The son also decides he no longer needs a lower level of low life side kick and tells him to grow up and get a life. The combination of disgruntled parent and rejected sidekick is for the child to be kidnapped and for the sidekick to first beat most but not all living day lights out of the father, he loves it, I tell you he loves it, and then tricked into taking the child out of where he has secure, he panics and first shoots he child and then shoots himself. The young single woman who lost her child believes that her son has come to life again in the form of an alcoholic hobo which she takes her wing until he find her obsessive care too much and breaks for the open road. And the Catholic priest, well in the story of the return of the Messiah, a maker of miracles there has to be a Catholic priest who is going through the motions and passes his day by quietly dressing up as a woman. However when he meets the child he is inspired to give a performance or two at a local club until spotted for who he is and severely beaten up.

The point which the film wants to make is that people see what they wish to see and believe what they need to believe and for a time they might be inspired as they are by a piece of music, a book, or a film, but then they carry on as before. This is intended to communicate the belief that this means there is no human form interventionist God. The implications that you ahd better wake up and become realist and pragmatist and makes the most of whatever situation you rein rather than praying for a personal miracle./ I thought, until seeing the film about the film that the intention was to communicate that any second coming would be similar to the first, in that more attention would be given to the poor the poor of human condition and experience than the righteous and the trumpet showing worthy, that the presence would not be recognised and there would be a crucifixion in a contemporary manner, with some of those closest thinking first how to save their skins and distance themselves from the troublesome priest. Sadly I was mistaken and the message is that much darker and pessimistic. Most of the individuals in this film are already in hell. It was a fitting reminder that we have to continuously on our guard on the day that a number of young men were charged with the murder of a young boy in the Toxteth area of Liverpool and several other members of their families and local community have been interviewed on suspicion of being involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

20.00. It been a few hours coming but I needed to digest what I had read last. I had no previous knowledge that many of those who settled in the Wiltshire countryside had travelled from Mediterranean lands. According to John Bowle Stonehenge was developed to enable the religious expression of new people, migrants, bronze bearing warriors, originally from the Iberian Peninsular and that an axe created on the Greek Island of Naxos around 1500 BC was found at Calne the home town of my mother's family for over 400 years

22.00 Between 1500 and 150 BC my impression is of two phases of development. The first was one of economic development as communities produced more than they needed in order to trade with others, especially for metals, and commenced to create the hill fort as a place to defend their community. In the second phase there was less trading and more local community development, caused by the change from bronze to iron which was more readily available in most areas of the Britain. Thus from the time regarded as prehistory it was trade and economic development, the availability and control of raw materials, and the acquisition of land, and the use of surpluses not just to improve living condition but to indicate wealth and power. However whatever the progress made Britain remained a primitive peoples compared to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Phoenicians and that given the abundance of metals in the Iberian peninsular it is not surprising that the first city port of Europe was established in Andalusia at Cadiz. Along the Spanish coast from Gibraltar and the Spanish homeland of my maternal great grandmother. There are records of the Phoenicians and the Greeks, the Iberians living in Gibraltar, My father's name is Grech, of the Greeks, because the Island of Malta is sixty miles from Sicily this was the main route by which the Greeks came to this small rocky series of islands, think Isle of Wight and where the resident population is three hundred thousand to-day. And then came the Romans. See also Malta An Island Republic Editions Delroisee and Gibraltar Maurice Harvey

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