2009 Random Stuff .............................................


It's Friday, February 20th 2009.

Yesterday we had what was, I think, our ninth snowstorm of this winter.
Yesterday America's new president, their 44th, visited Ottawa for what was, I think, an insultingly short time. Seven hours was it?

Last night Vivian read to us aloud in bed as she does every night. She reads until I fall asleep or until tiredness sneaks up on her. The former is the more frequent by far. I slip away after just a paragraph sometimes, but occasionally, I hang on for a whole chapter.

For a long time now she's been reading from Patrick O'Brian's books. He wrote a series of books, twenty in all, set in the days of sail. The Royal Navy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The main figures are Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin. Recently a movie appeared, "Master and Commander," not bad - an odd mix of two of the books.

Vivian is now nearing the end of the 20th, the last, of the series. The last, because O'Brian died before he finished the next.

Seems an odd mix of mortality and imortality somehow. O'Brian's pen is stilled forever yet Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin are frozen in time now. They'll sail no more together, yet the stories will live forever.

When she closes the book on this last tale I know I'll be unreasonably sad.

I just Googled 'Patrick O'Brian' to get the spelling right. Splendid article in 'Wickipedia.' There's a wonderful map project mentioned there too which shows all his voyages with an amazing collection of notes and 'stuff'. Ah the "web"!!!

1958 & 1961 & 1963 & 197? Memorable Movies Four ......







In 1958 I saw "Boy on a Dolphin."
Sophie Loren climbing into a boat in a wet dress was, is and ever shall be, memorable.
But it was also my first date with my wife to be.
I was suffering with a terrible cold and half my clothes were borrowed from fellow airmen. Amazingly other dates were to follow!
The place: the Odeon cinema in Blackpool.
I was on my fitter's course at RAF Weeton and had met my first woman.



In 1961. I was newly arrived in Singapore.
With numerous other newly arrived male 'moonies' I was herded into RAF Seletar's 'Astra' cinema. We were shown a succession of films about venereal desease. The films were in black and white and probably made during world war two. They were very graphic. This was pre AIDS of course but the horrors of VD were emphasised, perhaps in the hopes of deterring us from the hungers of the flesh.
The emergency doors kept opening as faint-hearted airmen were helped outside.
I hope Singapore's brothels' trade wasn't harmed too much.



1963. We went to see the newly released "Mutiny on the Bounty" at a very new cinema in Singapore. The seats reclined and I assume there was air conditioning. Amazingly, the latter was a rarity in Singapore in those days. The hula-dancing girls of Tahiti were particularly memorable.



197? "2001, A Space Odyssey" A an open air cinema in February in Montreal! I've watched "2001" several times here and there but ................... the enterprising (and unduly optimistic) proprieters of this 'drive-in' decided to stay open through the winter in one of the world's coldest cities.
The four of us sat huddled in the Datsun 510 with TWO heaters hung inside the car. We and others in the audience statred our engines from time to time to try and keep the cold at bay. After a time there'd be a tap on the window as a staff member explained that the exhaust was obscuring the view of those behind.
It took a couple of days before all the ice inside the car's back window melted away.
The cinema didn't open next winter!
But "2001" is still a magic film even if the predictions didn't come true .... it's 2009 now