Casablanca

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I can’t believe I’ve come this far without mentioning Casablanca.

Casablanca. There I’ve done it.

Casablanca really captured my imagination in my teens. I don’t know why, after all it was made in 1942, in black and white, and Humphrey Bogart died (January 14th, 1957) a couple of months before I was born. But it totally captivated me.

At thirteen I’d seen it maybe a dozen times, by the time I was eighteen I was Rick Blaine. I attended my college interview wearing a fedora hat and trench coat – well at least they remembered me, and I got in. There was no video back then but I had a frame by frame book of the film with full dialogue - at one point I could almost ‘do’ the whole movie line by line… and of course there was that attitude thing, Rick Blaine’s attitude thing.

I was the most world-weary, cynical, nothing much matters, ‘I never drink with the customers’ teenager you could ever wish not to meet. And to this day I still blame my ever-so-slightly cynical nature on Rick Blaine and Casablanca – although these days I think I have more in common with the Sidney Greenstreet character, Signor Ferrari.

My favourite line in the films is when Rick says to Ugarte ‘I don’t mind a parasite. I object to a cut rate one.’ Now that cuts, but the film is full of one-liners like that and I’ve spent quite a bit of my life insulting family and friends by using them on them.

Here's another favourite that I've used at every opportunity in lots of circumstances and variations...

Ugarte - 'You despise me, don't you?'
Rick - 'If I gave you any thought I probably would. '

Ouch!

Don’t worry, I won’t quote them all to you (if you are interested here’s the complete SCRIPT but Rick never did say ‘Play it again Sam.’ He did say ‘Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By."’ Nor did he say ‘Of all the bars, in all the towns, in all the world.’ But he did say ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’

Sometimes I use Casablanca as a way to fall asleep when I’m having a bad night. I play the film in my head starting with the opening credits and running through the movie scene by scene. I think the furthest I’ve ever got before falling asleep is Rick at the train station in Paris – all misty edged frames, steam, and rain, rain, and more rain... and she never showed - poor Bogey.

Sometimes when I do this I cast people I know in the roles of characters in Casablanca. I used to imagine myself as Rick – well why not – but I found that I could no longer fit into my white tuxedo and had to move on.

How about this for a cast?

Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) – Rick Shore (It's in the stare)

Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) – Nicki Cupman (Flutter those eyelashes)

Victor Laslo (Paul Heinreid) – Steve Wilson (Smile)

Signor Ferrari (Sidney Greenstreet) – Me (Yes, I’ve finally hung up my Bogart hat)

Ugarte (Peter Lorre) – Chris Southall (All nervous energy)

Yvonne (Madeleine Lebeau) – Vicky Holder (You do sultry so well)

Sam (Dooley Wilson) – Glynne Kirkham (It’s the grin that does it)

Captain Renault (Claude Rains) – Phil Heslehurst (Well, who else?)

Major Strausser (Conrad Veidt) – Scott Mitchell (Blonde hair, blue eyes)

Carl (S.Z. Sakall) – Malcolm Chorley – (You are the right age - more or less)

So you still don’t have a clue what I’m going on about eh?

Give yourself a treat. Buy a bottle of wine, close the curtains, get a big box of tissues – and watch the movie.

Get a taste for it HERE. Start with the Casablanca Movie Trailer - it sets the scene.

You’ll see what I mean.

And… Sorry if you are reading this and don’t know who the people in my cast list are. They are my old team and they will live forever in the Casablanca that plays nightly in my mind. If you do know them though – have fun fitting them into character.

Here's looking at you kids.

It's all about me...

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Tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Time to celebrate. This is my hundredth posting.

It seems a long time since I started this journey. Were you in at the start? Do you remember how it all began?

‘Gosh!I'm in e-space! Here I am with my very own blog and the future opens up in front of me in ways that I could only have dreamt of just seconds ago. So many questions flood my head. What do I write? Is my spelling up to it? Will I be able to entertain? Will anyone read me? And how on earth does this all work?Questions, questions, questions. Maybe over the next few weeks I'll get the answers.’

That was me as a young blogger, how simple and full of hope I made it all sound. It seems a very long time ago, a lot has happened, lots of changes.

But here I am four months and a hundred posts later, a little blog older, a lot blog wiser, and those questions still pop into my head each time I start a post. The spelling thing is easy, I write my blog in word and spell-check, and then I read, and re-read, read, change. I’m fanatical about getting it just right.

Do I entertain? I entertain myself, I can’t speak for anybody else - but I love reading my own blog, how self obsessed is that?

And you are reading me – so that is good.

How does it all work? Well, technically I have the hang of it and I know that Google recognises the blog – I have a lot of search hits for ‘Sally Forth’, ‘Ty Coch’ and ‘Simon Le Bon’ (eclectic is my middle name - actually it isn't, it’s Kevin) but I still struggle to know what to write about most times. Sometimes it just comes, dropping out of my head and down into my fingers, appearing on my electronic page without any involvement from me, but at other times it can be a real struggle. Blogging is not for the faint-hearted.

Increasingly I stop at motorway service stations to get things down when the ideas flow; sometimes I’m still there an hour later – once two hours later and I’d have been there longer but my battery died. My blog is the first thing I ‘do’ when I get home in the evening. No wonder Gaynor gets cross. I am a blog addict. It works best when I have one of my movies running – the ones that run in my head. When I have a movie running it’s easy. As I say to Ju-Ju “I don’t have a choice. The film starts running in my head and I’m here again.”

Despite the label it’s been given at home – ‘that bloody blog’ - I think that to date it’s been an interesting journey, if not for you then at least for me – and, as I’ve always made very clear, it is ‘all about me’. What would be the point of creating it if it wasn’t? It’s a place for me to go to and to get to know myself.

And I am getting to know myself after forgetting who I was for a while.

‘That bloody blog’ has taken me down a few dead end streets, along some very dark roads, up dusty trails where nothing is quite what it seems and everything is slightly out of focus, real places, revisited places, funny places, remembered places, imaginary places, down-right-lied about places, surreal places, uncomfortable places, silly places, embarrassing places, liberating places, sad serious places… but all and most importantly - my places.

And I've discovered that I like photography after years of hating it and that in my heart I am a surrealist - so maybe I should stop trying not to be.

I want the journey to continue, although I often ask myself 'why am I doing this, what is the point?' And then I get an idea for one of my sculptures, or a poem, or Misty does something worth the telling of, or I remember someone and want to make sure that they are remembered - and that is that - I stop asking pointless questions and start to write.

So the journey will continue a while yet. Who knows where I may end up?

I hope that you continue to come along with me, I appreciate and need your comments and support.

Pipefish.

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I seem to spend an awful lot of time on the road.

I drove back from Wales last night and the route I usually take was closed with no warning. I had to backtrack and take a thirty mile detour, so it was really late when I eventually got in.

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This morning I got up at six so that I could be in Scarborough by nine. I don't mind early starts and was so happy when I avoided the usual crush of jammed traffic around Leeds. It didn't last though - the AI was closed and I lost over an hour trying to get onto the A64.

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The traffic wasn't too bad on the way home, but I got thinking about stuff and missed my exit. It didn't take me to far out of my way but by the time I was back on track the traffic had built up and... well, we all know how that song goes.

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So why am I telling you this? I'm not really, I'm really talking to myself. Sometimes I wonder why I spend so much time rushing from one place to another in what can sometimes seem like such a pointless meander.

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Pipefish are wanderers. They meander here, change direction and swim off there. They're related to seahorses (as you can probably see from the shape of their heads) and they rarely stay in one place for very long - continually moving from one place to another looking for food or a mate.

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As you must know by now I love beach combing. There is something about finding something washed up by the sea that makes it precious - even if 'intrinsically' it isn't. I have a collection of very precious fishing net floats - all sizes, all colours; red, orange, yellow, blue, grey, white, black - an old wooden oar, pebbles (of course), and my Pipefish.

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In ten years of hardcore beach combing I have only managed to find about one a year - and I look for them all the time. You usually find them in the flotsam at the head of the beach mixed in with the weed and sticks. Because they have an external skeleton they have usually dried hard, like fingernails. They don't take very long to dry out and they don't smell, there really isn't any flesh to rot.

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I caught a live one last year in a pool at Criccieth. We were shrimping. I'll tell you about shrimping another time, it's almost the season. I held it in my hand, it was like holding one of those jointed wiggly wooden snake toys that you can buy - only much, much thinner. I thought about keeping it, killing it, adding it to my collection. But no - so I put in back into the sea and let it meander away.

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Traffic and Pipefish, is there a connection? Probably - I was certainly thinking about Pipefish when I missed my turning.

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Anyway, this is a picture of my Pipefish 'found things' sculpture. I think Eileen Agar would have liked it.

What...no Giraffe?

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We went to Penlech Beach today.

The weather was beautiful and I had it in my head to build one of my beach sculptures - I wanted to build a Giraffe, a la Dali, and maybe even set fire to it.

Thing is you have to build with what you find and the pickings on Penlech were pretty sparse, so all I could manage was this Flamingo/Stork bird.

After saying that it is a miracle of balance, it only has a single leg and it was a pretty windy afternoon, I think it blew over at least six times before I managed to get the leg anchored properly. It wasn't quite windy enough to fly a kite properly though - Holly and I tried with no real success - which is unusual.

Anyway, it was probably a good job that I couldn't build my Giraffe - I left the matches at home.

By the way we did use the barbecue and it worked pretty well, I may tell you about it later in the week.
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Take cover.....

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So we’ve had a couple of sunny days and it’s been quite warm at times. Yes, Summer is just around the corner and… wait a minute! What is that awful smell? Where has the sun gone and where’s that thick… cough… black… cough, cough… smoke coming… cough… from?

It can’t be… not already... Oh my God, yes it is!

WARNING – WARNING – Barbecue alert, barbecue alert! Take cover!

Yes the barbecue season is almost upon us and we are getting ready with real anticipation for the… wait for it… (Drum roll)…we are getting ready for… (Build drums)

‘The First Barbecue of the Year.’ (Start trumpet oratory - fade drums – cut.)

How grand that sounds – the phrase not the music, the music isn't real, it's in your head, suggested by the words you've just read.

I quite enjoy the occasional barbecue – a homemade burger, some grilled fresh mackerel, a steak, a kebab, even the odd langoustine - BURP! - Pardon me. How delicious barbecued food can taste on those light, warm summer evenings with a glass or two of wine. Yes, I think that it would be fair to say that I enjoy the occasional barbecue – however, there is a certain person in our household who would eat barbecued food three-six-five days a year, for lunch, dinner, and even breakfast - and it isn’t me.

My wife Gaynor absolutely loves barbecued food – in fact she loves all things barbecue; the barbecue, the tongs, the thermometer, the barbecue fork, the coals, the smoke - she has just about every barbecue gadget you can imagine, and then some. She spends hours preparing huge amounts of food for the barbecue, sometimes we have up to a dozen or so individual courses just so can cook for four or five hours at a time over the naked coals. I think she enjoys the preparation and the cooking more than the food – we have dozens of barbecue tables, tons of barbecue briquettes, and box after box of firelighters in our barbecue shed in Wales.

Yes, we really do have a barbecue shed and it would be fair to say that Gaynor is a barbecue freak - but obviously not to her face.

Over the years we have barbecued in the rain (under an umbrella), in our front garden, in our porch, in the dark, on the beach, up a mountain, in a gale, in a field, even in the snow – and now – thanks to our latest barbecue purchase – we will be able to barbecue indoors (allegedly).

We have bought a Cobb.

"A what?" I hear you ask...here's the blurb... ‘The Cobb is a revolution in home and outdoor barbecue cooking. You can use the Cobb for baking, barbecues, frying, roasting and smoking - whatever your ...’ Shall I go on?

Not that we needed another barbecue… we have a lot of barbeques already – big ones, small ones, some still in boxes, some that fold away flat, others that are built into chiminieres. Goodness knows how our other poor barbeques are going to feel about this new admission to their ranks, I’m sure that they will be very concerned about their futures.

Anyway, Gaynor is determined to give our new barbecue a go over the weekend, and nothing - and I really do mean nothing - is going to stand in her way.

I’ll let you know how we get on. Wish me luck.

Sat Nav Shoes...

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April 2nd… phew! Safe for another year.

For those of you that read and swallowed my post about the origins of April Fool’s day yesterday I have tell you… APRIL FOOL!

It was all made up from beginning to end. There never was an ‘Aypril Foel’, nor did he carry a pig’s bladder filled with lunatic’s urine, and there’s no such thing as ‘Shrugging the Mark’… and yes BMD, well done, I did write the ‘Noah Trueworthy’ (No AH True Worthy) piece – I wrote it all - it was all invention!

HA!

… and don’t worry it was written before Midday so I won’t reflect bad luck on myself.

I know that my friend Mr Kirkham read it. He rang me to tell me.

Yesterday, April Fool’s day, was his first day away from my evil clutches – how very apt.

Apparently he got up around eleven, wandered downstairs (in his off-white towelling bathrobe), and switched on the TV to watch Tricia – it would seem that his life is rapidly expanding to become one long, frantic, social whirl of daytime television and pot noodles. Tricia was talking about how some family or other had almost been destroyed by a disagreement over a £12.99 anorak, he couldn’t quite follow it because he was only half awake (no real change there then), nor did he fully understand the interview that followed where some chap or other wanted to marry his blow up doll.

He told me that he’d almost choked on the packet of Doritos that he was munching when he heard this – well, not the packet – he wasn’t actually eating the packet… he hasn’t degenerated that far yet – but it came as quite a surprise to him… he’d always thought that he was the only one.

Anyway, after taking a swig of his lager to calm himself, he decided to check his mails… He had adverts! “Wow!” As you probably know Glynne loves buying stuff - particularly when the stuff to be bought is really cool, guy thing, gizmo, gottahave, techno habit type stuff!

“Double wow!” He couldn’t believe his eyes… this had to be his lucky day – “Sat Nav Shoes – wow, wow, wow, wo, wow!” Just what he’d always wanted - shoes with sat nav technology built in! “How cool is that? Gottahave, gottahave!” He’d blubbered from the other end of the phone – he was on his i-phone… well, isn’t he always?

You can check out Glynne’s Sat Nav shoes here.

“But that isn’t all!” He went on to tell me about another fantastic piece of gizmology that could actually record dreams! It was a little hard to make out exactly what he was saying because he was really excited and talking way too fast - like an auctioneer on speed - but it was something about what a great time he could have playing back this fantastic recurring dream that he’s been having lately where he noshes away at a huge pork chop mountain… “Yum, yum – I just bear them Pork ting tings!” - His words, not mine.

Here’s where you can find poor Glynne’s Dream Recorder.

By this time I was getting worried. How could this have happened so fast? He seemed fine when I last saw him – but now… He was off again… “Oh, my God! It just gets better… a powder that turns water into beer… that even beats my ‘Spy Watch’, the one with the built in photo display and the MP3 player… remember how I used to gaze at the Spice Girls’ as I danced around the office to the sound of ‘Wannabe’.. a zigazig, zigazig ha!”

What a shame, totally deranged… Here’s the poor deluded fellow’s Beer Powder.

As I said - what a shame - he must have just too much time on his hands and that, coupled with the Dorito jag and possibly beer hallucinations… well, let’s just say he’s been ‘Touched by the Fool’ shall we?

He seemed a little crestfallen when I reminded him about April 1st and that all the gadgets he was planning on buying, even Tricia’s interviews, were simply April Fool’s jokes and not really available to purchase at all.

“Not even on-line?” He asked.

“Not even on-line, old chum.” I replied.

“Not available…even on-line...” He mumbled and I’m sure that I heard a disappointed sob as he said it. “Not available… not - even – on - line.” He repeated - and with that he seemed to perk up a little. “Oh well… At least I can rely on you and your blog – no tricks there. You’d never try to make a fool of me, would you? You’re my friend. I’m off to read it now, cheer myself up a bit, no use worrying is there? That’s it… chin up old me… chin up…Bye.”

“Glynne… One last thing, before you go…” But he’d already put the phone down.

What a really nice chap he is – totally bonkers - and he really couldn’t organise the proverbial in a brewery these days.... but… well - if not him - then me… I needed to ‘Shrug the Mark'. After all, I don’t want to be ‘Marked by the Fool’ do I?

Glynne… Check the Proverbial out. It may help, and remember ‘All Hallows’ is on the 31st of October. All you have to do is hang on until then.

Good luck Glynne… good luck old chap.

April fool

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Ha, ha, ha… April first again, which explains why I’ve just taken a sip of coffee that tastes like seawater and bitten into a sandwich with a ham and toothpaste filling.

Oh how I love my teenage daughter’s sense of humour. Last year she removed the battery from my mobile phone – ha ha - and the year before she hid my car keys (for two hours) - and it seems she’s getting more inventive as she gets older.

All fools day – what fun!

In the early sixteenth century there was a belief that the ‘April Fool’, or ‘Aypril Foel’ as they called him, was a spirit who would visit the unwary and foolhardy on the first day of April. He was a little like the ‘Easter Bunny’ or the ‘Tooth Fairy’, a magical being who only appeared for a single day on April the first. He was something of a shady character and there was a belief that he was responsible for all manner of mischief, some light-hearted and some deeply dark.

Lunatics were often described as having been ‘Touched by the Fool’ - as were simpletons, unmarried mothers, bastards, single women, cuckolded men, hermits… in fact just about anybody who was slightly different to Mister Jack Normal.

The tradition of playing tricks on others came about wholly as a way to ward off the attention of the ‘April Fool’. This was called ‘Shrugging the Mark’. The idea was to trick your neighbour with some wilful prank, thus deflecting the attention of the Fool away from yourself and ‘Shrugging the Mark of the Fool’.

As the morning of ‘All Fools’ went by people became desperate to deflect the evil away from themselves and towards somebody else, preferably someone they didn’t like. But soon, as the clock ticked on towards midday, anyone would do – friend, cousin, father, wife, child – anybody and with any trick that could ‘Shrug the Fool’.

For those unfortunates who didn’t manage to trick someone before midday then the ‘Mark of the Fool’ would be bestowed upon them and at some time between ‘All Fools’ and ‘All Hallows’ in October, the ‘Fool’ would leave his ‘Mark’ on them.

For some living with the threat of the ‘Mark’ for seven long months was too much - many lost their minds, others drowned or hanged themselves, most turned to drink , whilst others simply ran away and were never seen again.

For the few that managed to get past ‘All Hallows’ without going mad, getting pregnant, being cuckolded, developing Alzheimer’s, or simply needing to be alone, then they would be safe until the next April first – when the ritual began again.

How very lucky for them? Maybe not - often those that survived three ‘marks’ without harm would be branded a witch and shunned or hounded from the village.

This belief continued well into the late eighteenth century and the ‘April Fool’ was a major character in the roving ‘Mummers’ players that toured the countryside from All Fools Day to May Day each year. The April Fool was instantly recognisable by his grey tailcoat, long pointed hat and the large pigs bladder - filled with lunatic’s urine - that he carried, splashing anyone who got in his way… thus marking them.

In 1787 one Noah Trueworthy of Devizes wrote thus:

‘On the stroke of twelfth did the Foole leapth into the croud crying and wailing hif heade and began a’poking and a’grabbing at the breafths and bootocks of the toun wenches and a’kickin in the cods of the knaves. With a greate cry did he a’start to fling around the piff of the lunatice overe bothe young and olde alike making them all frenzied and a'feared. And as foretold did many in the croud become afflicteth with the ague of the brain afore All Hallowf Eve.’

So - salty coffee and a toothpaste sandwich, perhaps I got off lightly. But I did have to pay by credit card at the services for a coffee because the two tenners that were in my wallet last night seemed to have magically turned into newspaper.

Perhaps it was the ‘Aypril Foel’.

I wonder what my daughter will say to her music teacher this afternoon when she opens her guitar case and finds that her instrument has no strings?

Don’t worry – she’ll get me back double next year.