Roger Whittaker – possibly The Last Farewell

It feels so final. I don’t want this to have been the last Roger Whittaker tour, or the last concert, but if it was, then we’ve had a good many years, tours, concerts, not to mention songs. People think it’s perfectly normal for a 77-year-old to retire (to already be retired) so it goes without saying that one day Roger will retire too. For real.

But maybe he will start to itch one day, when the resting gets too much. I favour individual concerts, somewhere easy to get to for a lot of us.

Not having been able to travel to Germany this time, I am hoping my fellow fans had a great time. I’ve taken the liberty of borrowing this photo of Roger and his drum from Rocco Meier who went to the last concert in Vienna.

Roger on tour

Tomorrow Roger Whittaker starts off on his latest (or will this one really be the last?) tour. It is much shorter than before, and it sounds like they hand-picked the towns and cities he will be appearing in. The first concert is in Halle/Saale.

Then it’s on to Rostock, Cottbus, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Berlin, Dresden, Erfurt, Magdeburg, Hamburg and finishing in Wien on the 10th of May.

I’m not going this time. It would have been nice, but it’s an awkward time of year, while hopefully being clear of the flu season for Roger and his band. And the dates and the venues didn’t match well for travelling from where I’d be travelling from.

Maybe next last tour??

Learning a bit of crazy

I’ve got so used to feeling crazy – off my own bat – that I was surprised to remember something the other week. You can learn crazy behaviour, too.

It was thinking back to when I took a Commonwealth literature course at university, which in turn I remembered because I was blogging about the death of Chinua Achebe. And starting to write about the influence of my then tutor – Britta Olinder – at the English department at Gothenburg, I recalled how she set off some new craziness in me.

Actually, I probably tempted her. I was wanting to take four weeks out of term to go to London. I always went to London in those days. It was my crazy. The thing is, you don’t expect a teacher type person to encourage you to skip four weeks of classes, and then to tell you all that you must do when you’re gone.

So, Britta got all enthusiastic and mentioned all the plays I’d want to see in London, including the one I sort of used to justify my absence with, Under Milk Wood. I was writing my essay that term about Under Milk Wood, at her recommendation.

The others in my group got all excited, too, and some of them asked me to get them various stuff in London. So, all was well, and I went to plays, including UMW.

Once back, I found Britta making plans. She wanted to go on a theatre trip to London. She thought that we should all go. Not necessarily in term time, but anyway. She looked through the Observer for inspiration, and she picked a week in February (this was 1979) and phoned round all the theatres and made group bookings for tickets.

Then she set about getting funding. I’m such an idiot I’d have happily paid myself. But with various gifts and group dicounts and with it being off season, we got our week for the princely sum of around £45. That’s hotel, flight, eight plays and two tours. Even in the stone ages that was good value. And off we went.

I mean, the thought would never have occurred to me that you could see two plays in a day, and that you could go to the theatre every day. We did, and on matiné days we got two performances. In he mornings we gathered in the breakfast room and talked drama. Britta told people how to get to the theatres, and I corrected her and suggested a better way. We were all happy.

We saw so much and such varied stuff. Plays I’d never have thought of picking if I’d done it on my own. We saw ‘real’ actors off television. John Thaw. Did the tour behind the scenes at the National. It was great.

And once the seed of madness had been sown, I knew I could do this alone, and I did. Obviously not with funding from any bodies of any kind, but it was a good hobby to have discovered. And all because I was keen on truanting from my education.

Q&A with Alfonso, Alberto and Àlvaro

Hardly surprising that Carmen who chaired the post-screening Q&A session at Cornerhouse last night got the three men mixed up. So many Als to keep track of!

This is the kind of thing Cornerhouse does best; great entertainment, followed by talking to the people involved, usually actors or directors to do with the film. Last night’s talk about El mundo es nuestro was no exception. We’d seen Alfonso Sánchez and Alberto López in the bar earlier, and it was fascinating to see them go from being two perfectly normal and charming men, to the crazy small time crooks they play in the film. Producer Álvaro Alonso joined them for the onstage chat in cinema 1.

El mundo es nuestro is a small budget film with big results, that Alfonso started to write back in 2009, before Spain had a financial crisis. Which just goes to prove how far-sighted he was. (I doubt we can blame Alfonso.) He was pleased that the Manchester audience seemed to ‘get’ his film.

The three Als explained how they got the funding (you can’t make a film with €30,000). People wanted to support them because they were famous, but they reckon that kind of thing only works once. Their feeling is we need more humorous films about the bad economy.

Spanish television didn’t want to screen El mundo es nuestro, and didn’t advertise it at all. It’s forbidden to forbid this kind of thing, so they didn’t. You’d think that the current crisis would encourage more films on the subject, but the Als said they are the only ones.

There have been no nominations for awards for the actors. ‘Strange country, Spain.’ To them it’s important that the film gets distributed internationally, and at home they have offered cheap cinema tickets for various groups, at a variety of venues, including – I think – prisons. The prisoners related well to crooks Cabesa and Culebra; they were just like them.

Their reasons for making the characters stereotypes was to have a small community inside the bank in the film; one that audiences could recognise and identify with. Alfonso said he listened to the actors and let them decide how they wanted to portray their characters. And to save money – I think – he used his own father for the role of the man his own character hits in the film. A bit Freudian, he reckons.

Alfonso didn’t mention this, so Alberto did it for him. He has been given an award for his writing. Well deserved, especially for someone who feels he is no writer, because waking up every morning, getting the coffee, staring out of the window, etc, is so hard.

They love British actors, and the fact that they are respected. In Spain all actors are supposedly ‘reds’ and receive no respect. They aspire to be an Olivier, or a Pacino.

Well, those of us who stayed after the screening loved you. We loved that you tried to speak English to us, and we loved the t-shirts. Please come again, and meanwhile we will tell all our friends (not that we have many) to illegally* download El mundo es nuestro. Or even pay for it, so you can afford to make more films.

(*I only say this because they jokingly said we could. We are very law-abiding here. We have no friends, anyway. And hopefully our money is safe in that Spanish bank we have an account with…)

Shetland

I suppose Shetland is about as Nordic as you get while staying in Britain. If the Shetlanders do feel British? The dramatisation of the Shetland Quartet crime novels by Ann Cleeves was quite enjoyable. Could have been better, but I am not saying there’s anything the matter with Ann’s novels. I’ve not read them, but have heard good things about them.

We’ve been spoilt with gritty and dark Nordic crime series. This wasn’t dark enough, and I’m talking daylight hours. If it was set in January, I have to say it was jolly light outside at most times, but especially so after nine at night. But they needed Up Helly Aa for the plot, so could hardly move it to June.

But then, it’s only me being picky.

While I’m picking, subtitles would have been more than welcome. I had trouble understanding people when I visited Shetland, many years ago. I got no better at understanding them this weekend. Had trouble with the plot, as well, but then this kind of thing might suffer when you only have two hours at your disposal. Twenty hours, or even ten, leaves room for all that lovely Danish grit.

He had the jumper for it, though, did Jimmy Perez. Not the looks for a Perez, however, according to someone who knows. I found it refreshing to see so many unknown actors at work. Sometimes too many stars can be a mistake.

Here the landscape was the star. They’d be inundated with tourists after this, were it not for the fact that you either get seasick expensively, or fly tiny planes equally expensively.

Puzzled by Berglund. Was he supposed to be Swedish? The Swedes were amply represented by Tosh’s Fjällräven jacket.

I wonder if there will be more? Shetland, I mean. Not so much the jackets, or even the jumpers.

Not so fast

Isn’t it funny how they work in those fast food outlets?

While some people (those who sensibly ask for the ‘normal’ food off the menu) get served immediately, some of us with weird tastes are kept standing there, and standing there, and then standing some more.

That’s the veggie option in burger places. I just don’t understand how one burger can be faster than another. (Unless horse runs that much faster than beans/quorn/soya?)

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get onto that topic here. It’s the chilli cheese bites I’m on about. I ‘never’ buy food from burger places, except sometimes when catching a train, I like the idea of something hot and small and tasty to eat. Chilli cheese bites are good for that. They are also rather slow.

You want them hot, or at least warm, so you don’t want to buy them too soon. On the other hand, it’s not much fun standing there, watching the burger eaters walk away with their food, while I’m wondering if I’ll miss my train.

I would obviously opt to miss the food, if it came to the crunch, but why are they so SLOW?

A long Trek

In August 1970 I visited England for two weeks, and fell in love with Star Trek. I have been a fan ever since.

There’s just one thing. I kept this fandom going on the strength of two episodes. (Don’t ask me which ones.) Two week visit = two episodes. This was the olden days. No videos, box sets or iPlayer.

Living in a television hinterland, I still returned home full of hope that Star Trek would soon make it to Swedish screens. It never did. Well, I suppose it did eventually, but not during my long period of hope. I did an awful lot of dreaming.

And that was it.

My first years in England were also pretty strange. We didn’t have a television. I think it was money, because one of the first things I did when the Resident IT Consultant did a long spell of non-resident IT consulting, keeping him away from home, but being paid extra for it, was to go out and buy a set.

Perhaps Star Trek was available back then. I don’t know. My immediate urgency had gone away, and the years passed. Then there were all these new ‘fakes’ and I didn’t have an interest in something not featuring my Mr Spock.

And then last year, I suddenly thought that with just about everything being available in some form or other, maybe now was the time to catch up. I got hold of the original series, but still held back. Wasn’t sure what the Resident IT Consultant would say to dinner with Spock.

But one day he started going on about wanting more science fiction in his life, and I picked up the courage to ask if that meant we could watch Star Trek. It did.

So here we are, 45 years late.

The Dance of Death

It was good. Or it wasn’t. It all depends on which review you read. This one is pretty good. I mean, it is a positive review, but it is also good, because it actually mentions someone who put in a lot of work on The Dance of Death by August Strindberg; the literal translator, aka Son. Mine, not Strindberg’s.

He was invited to the press night earlier this week, and I gather he was surprised to find quite a few of his words were still in the play. He had half hoped the artistic interpretation by Conor McPherson would place it on a spaceship or something.

Because of the circumstances I had been very tempted to go and see it myself (it’s on at the Donmar at the Trafalgar Studios until January 5th), but decided that even Son’s translation would not make me want to travel to London the week before Christmas in order to sit through a couple of hours of Strindberg. I have no reason to believe The Dance of Death will ever count as cheerful.

It just goes to show I was not totally misguided in persevering with that foreign language for all those years. Admittedly, I did not have Strindberg translations in mind back then, but someone has to do them.

(I had half angled for a review of the play, but not only is he busy translating other stuff, but he might be too close. So this is all you get.)

Tom and Billy at Cornerhouse

Thank you, Northern! If you hadn’t locked your passengers in that train at Stockport on Wednesday night, I could have been sitting there in the audience at Cornerhouse with all the others. I might even have enjoyed myself.

It was the Bafta preview screening followed by Q&A with Billy Connolly and Tom Courtenay. It sounded like it could be fun.

As it was, I have no idea what’s being asked here. Hopefully something suitably impertinent for Wilf/Billy. I will just have to treat is as though it was a silent Q&A session. Unlike the film, which is part friendly argument and part music.

Looking on the bright side; these photos are a lot better than mine would have been. I almost feel as though I was there, after all. (Northern – I am not letting you off the hook!)

It’s good of Cornerhouse to arrange these kinds of events. Next time I’ll travel in the day before, just to make sure.

(Photos by Paul Greenwood)

The genius tea blend

I admit it. I’m very hard to please when it comes to tea. (Other things too, but that’s beside the point.)

I would love for the family to make tea (the drink) for me. But what if it is too strong, too weak, wrong flavour, too cold or too milky? It doesn’t help that I used to drink very weak and milky tea in the olden days. Witches are allowed to change at any time.

So I generally slave over the hot kettle myself, warming pots and measuring (the right kind of) tea and timing it. Occasionally I give in, and decide that the convenience of remaining sitting down or lying in bed and getting someone else’s tea is a good trade-off. Even if they forget the teacosy.

(I know. I sound like a right cow.)

Then one day this summer Daughter said she’d make the tea for me and our visitors, and I accepted her offer. We sat down – under the apple tree, in case it rained – and she brought the tea tray out. The tea tasted fantastic!

I was so surprised that I had to ask what she’d done. It was neither builder’s teabags, nor any of my leaf tea blends. Turns out Daughter had thrown in both builder’s teabags and one vanilla teabag.

This has since become my reliable teabag tea, which even the Resident IT Consultant can make and get right. I make it myself when I can’t be bothered fiddling with leaf tea and filters and stuff.

To be on the safe side I filled my suitcase with vanilla teabags when returning home. On the off-chance the vanilla tea here isn’t as good.