11.45 Having overdosed overnight on writing, correcting and communicating I did not anticipate waking early enough to make use of what was forecast as a good weather day to embark on my first free anywhere bus ride in England. Do Americans have such a thing as free bus travel for those over 60 or 65? Are there across state and inter state services which are not classified as coaches? First random thought of the day.
12.00 In fact I was awake and up before 9 and although feeling tired would have gone out if there had not been rain, and peaking outside the door it was also not warm, not cold as such, but not warm. I would take the car for the Daily Mail and British War film DVD and treat myself to a coffee and toast at a nearby café. Oh no you won't the Gods thundered, as I could not find the car keys which was absurd because I had last used the car on Monday after the bin men had taken away the household rubbish and the recycling box so at least they had not been thrown away by accident. It brightened up so I went awalking with umbrella a la Rihana umbrella umbrella just in case the rain returned got the Daily Mail and DVD, enjoyed a sugarless strong coffee and two toasts for £2.05 and walked back. I first watered the house plants and then recommenced the searching and discovered the keys in between the fourteen working work volumes behind my chair.
12.10 I had set about photographing the completed work volumes on Monday or Tuesday when in the viewer the code C 30. 21 appeared and would not go away. I had opened the filing cabinet for the instruction manual which against C.30 40 explained that the problem required professional attention and was not something that I could fix. Oh no just my luck bet the insurance has run out but joy of joys, it does not expire till July. Once before it needed to be sent away and what happens is the special packaging is sent, one has then to phone to arrange collection. Last time it came back in an instant.
12.20 It has been a week of monster Blogs with the Princess Diana and Dodi Inquest summing up so it is back to usual from now on. It looks good outside and there is regret that I did not make the trip especially as I await the post with some trepidation
14.00 There is no post and the falsity of feelings without a definable substance is exposed.
16.00 I watch the 1944 Oscar nominated film Laura with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. Gene plays an ambitious and talented and for her day, forward looking, young woman seeking to make her way in the advertising business and who successfully persuades a nationally recognised radio columnist to endorse a pen product being promoted by her employers. This is an exceptional feat because the older bachelor and loner, with a sharp tongue, was previously considered unapproachable. The price of his endorsement and introduction to others is to become the regular companion of the radio star, played by Clifton Webb.
Clifton was 55 years old at the time with a long career in vaudeville and a wide range of theatrical productions and for a period as a recognised professional dancer. Among 23 Broadway musical and dramatic shows where he became the male lead were Easter Parade (Berlin), Oscar Wilde's The Importance of being Ernest and Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. His cinema break came when Otto Preminger selected Webb for the role as the surprising baddie in Laura playing alongside Vincent Price who was the viewer's expectation for the who dun it. He was Oscar nominated for the supporting role and three years later gained the award as best supporting male actor in The Razor's Edge. However I came to know and love Clifton for his comic roles in three Mr Belvedere films, and for Its Cheaper by the Dozen, but I also remember films such as the 1953 Titanic, Stars, and Stripes Forever, Three Coins in a Fountain where I can still sing my fashion the tune line, and where I went looking for the Trevi Fountain in 1965 and 2002, Boy on a Dolphin, Dreamboat and the Man who never was, were other films seen.
What made Laura become an important film in American film development was the dream creating black and white photography which also received an Oscar nomination but set aside this creative aspect it is a conventional detective story where the corpse is not the corpse and the motive if I cannot have you then no one can. I am sure I have seen it before, possible more than once, but it had left little memory and there is nothing from the film which I wish to store except that it triggered my memory of Clifton Webb and warns all young women of the dangers of taking up with older men, especially those who live alone, and where interestingly Clifton himself is reported to have been a bachelor recluse.
18.00 The rest of the afternoon and early evening remained something of a stupor although I did some work and reorganisation of completed work and are on target as the month reaches midway.
21.00 There was nothing to engage and this included the British War movies acquired so far through the Daily Mail but then I spotted a re-showing of Roy Schama's history of England which covered the Norman Conquest and the creation of the Domesday book. It is said 25000 men subjugated 2 million Saxons and the residue of Norsemen. I realise that I only possess the vaguest notion of pre Roman Britannica and only fleeting concepts of medieval England, large derived from Shakespeare. Over the past decade my historical interest has been on the five hundred recorded years of my mother's English family history in West Country of England and something of the five hundred years of my father's family in Malta, together with something of the histories of Spain, Italy and Gibraltar. I feel I need to know more if my book about the family is to have depth and perspective, but first there are some pressing Household matters to give attention but my pile of books reading has made way for John Bowles The English Experience and the Falkus and Gillingham Edited Historical Atlas of Britain which has something like 40 contributors I will do a crash course on British, English and Wiltshire history over the rest of April subject to there being no progress in the Ombudsman Inquiry.
22.20 I feel better about my day as a consequence and feel better all round although I will try and avoid staying up for more than a couple of hours.
00.00. Still not tired for bed I could not resist challenging myself about what I knew and did not about England history and made a important discovery. Before 4000BC, that is over 6000 years ago the human being that existed in Britain were hunters and fishermen and the land was covered with much forest. The earliest remains of a human type form in Britain has been dated at 150000 BC and with forms more similar to our present day being around 40000 BC. The remains of Hunters from 20000 BC have been found in the Peak District, It is thought that by 6500 the land links between Eastern England from Yorkshire to Dover and Beachey Head and continental Europe had been eroded by the sea and therefore we have only been an island races of beings for under ten thousand years.
It is believed that around 4000 the cultivation of land commenced and gradually outnumbered those whose livelihoods depended on hunting and fishing. Those who did the farming were not indigenous coming from the Near East and the Balkans, moving through Spain, France and Germany to the Netherland, and the evidence is that the migrants came to outnumber the hunters and fishermen. When communities formed there was the development of the collective tombs as of burial mounds, similar to those also found elsewhere including Malta and Spain. Our knowledge of these people comes from the remains found and life was primitive raising sheep and cattle, some lean hogs and whippet like terriers and hoe and mattock land cultivation for wheat and barley but only for personal and family subsistence and it is known that there were occasions of cannibalism.
There were then two developments which have been identified through Britain, The first are Henge burial monuments of which Stonehenge around 2250 BC is the best known with its cluster of burial mounds within 2k of the ceremonial monument. The largest of the four connecting ceremonial centres at Avebury is that of Silbury Hill the largest artificial mound of prehistory Europe. In addition to their ceremonial and burial functions the mounds also provided defensive areas for the community. Maps showing the distribution of Henge monuments, stone circles and stone alignments cover all parts of the Britain indicating the spread of agriculture communities. I once stayed on a hillside farm cottage in the Tay Valley with a stone circle close by. Approximately 3000 year BC there is the development of mining for flints and quarrying to make stone axes. With the development of bronze making from around 2000 BC the increasingly separate burial places indicated with wealth and power of some beings, within the community.
I had already known that the family county of Wiltshire and neighbouring Somerset were locations for important excavated sites from prehistory. The extraordinary aspect of to night's reading is to find the link between my Iberian ancestors and Calne where the maternal family lived generation upon generation for over at least 400 years. I decided to go to bed and continue the work where I got my act together in the morning.
12.00 In fact I was awake and up before 9 and although feeling tired would have gone out if there had not been rain, and peaking outside the door it was also not warm, not cold as such, but not warm. I would take the car for the Daily Mail and British War film DVD and treat myself to a coffee and toast at a nearby café. Oh no you won't the Gods thundered, as I could not find the car keys which was absurd because I had last used the car on Monday after the bin men had taken away the household rubbish and the recycling box so at least they had not been thrown away by accident. It brightened up so I went awalking with umbrella a la Rihana umbrella umbrella just in case the rain returned got the Daily Mail and DVD, enjoyed a sugarless strong coffee and two toasts for £2.05 and walked back. I first watered the house plants and then recommenced the searching and discovered the keys in between the fourteen working work volumes behind my chair.
12.10 I had set about photographing the completed work volumes on Monday or Tuesday when in the viewer the code C 30. 21 appeared and would not go away. I had opened the filing cabinet for the instruction manual which against C.30 40 explained that the problem required professional attention and was not something that I could fix. Oh no just my luck bet the insurance has run out but joy of joys, it does not expire till July. Once before it needed to be sent away and what happens is the special packaging is sent, one has then to phone to arrange collection. Last time it came back in an instant.
12.20 It has been a week of monster Blogs with the Princess Diana and Dodi Inquest summing up so it is back to usual from now on. It looks good outside and there is regret that I did not make the trip especially as I await the post with some trepidation
14.00 There is no post and the falsity of feelings without a definable substance is exposed.
16.00 I watch the 1944 Oscar nominated film Laura with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. Gene plays an ambitious and talented and for her day, forward looking, young woman seeking to make her way in the advertising business and who successfully persuades a nationally recognised radio columnist to endorse a pen product being promoted by her employers. This is an exceptional feat because the older bachelor and loner, with a sharp tongue, was previously considered unapproachable. The price of his endorsement and introduction to others is to become the regular companion of the radio star, played by Clifton Webb.
Clifton was 55 years old at the time with a long career in vaudeville and a wide range of theatrical productions and for a period as a recognised professional dancer. Among 23 Broadway musical and dramatic shows where he became the male lead were Easter Parade (Berlin), Oscar Wilde's The Importance of being Ernest and Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. His cinema break came when Otto Preminger selected Webb for the role as the surprising baddie in Laura playing alongside Vincent Price who was the viewer's expectation for the who dun it. He was Oscar nominated for the supporting role and three years later gained the award as best supporting male actor in The Razor's Edge. However I came to know and love Clifton for his comic roles in three Mr Belvedere films, and for Its Cheaper by the Dozen, but I also remember films such as the 1953 Titanic, Stars, and Stripes Forever, Three Coins in a Fountain where I can still sing my fashion the tune line, and where I went looking for the Trevi Fountain in 1965 and 2002, Boy on a Dolphin, Dreamboat and the Man who never was, were other films seen.
What made Laura become an important film in American film development was the dream creating black and white photography which also received an Oscar nomination but set aside this creative aspect it is a conventional detective story where the corpse is not the corpse and the motive if I cannot have you then no one can. I am sure I have seen it before, possible more than once, but it had left little memory and there is nothing from the film which I wish to store except that it triggered my memory of Clifton Webb and warns all young women of the dangers of taking up with older men, especially those who live alone, and where interestingly Clifton himself is reported to have been a bachelor recluse.
18.00 The rest of the afternoon and early evening remained something of a stupor although I did some work and reorganisation of completed work and are on target as the month reaches midway.
21.00 There was nothing to engage and this included the British War movies acquired so far through the Daily Mail but then I spotted a re-showing of Roy Schama's history of England which covered the Norman Conquest and the creation of the Domesday book. It is said 25000 men subjugated 2 million Saxons and the residue of Norsemen. I realise that I only possess the vaguest notion of pre Roman Britannica and only fleeting concepts of medieval England, large derived from Shakespeare. Over the past decade my historical interest has been on the five hundred recorded years of my mother's English family history in West Country of England and something of the five hundred years of my father's family in Malta, together with something of the histories of Spain, Italy and Gibraltar. I feel I need to know more if my book about the family is to have depth and perspective, but first there are some pressing Household matters to give attention but my pile of books reading has made way for John Bowles The English Experience and the Falkus and Gillingham Edited Historical Atlas of Britain which has something like 40 contributors I will do a crash course on British, English and Wiltshire history over the rest of April subject to there being no progress in the Ombudsman Inquiry.
22.20 I feel better about my day as a consequence and feel better all round although I will try and avoid staying up for more than a couple of hours.
00.00. Still not tired for bed I could not resist challenging myself about what I knew and did not about England history and made a important discovery. Before 4000BC, that is over 6000 years ago the human being that existed in Britain were hunters and fishermen and the land was covered with much forest. The earliest remains of a human type form in Britain has been dated at 150000 BC and with forms more similar to our present day being around 40000 BC. The remains of Hunters from 20000 BC have been found in the Peak District, It is thought that by 6500 the land links between Eastern England from Yorkshire to Dover and Beachey Head and continental Europe had been eroded by the sea and therefore we have only been an island races of beings for under ten thousand years.
It is believed that around 4000 the cultivation of land commenced and gradually outnumbered those whose livelihoods depended on hunting and fishing. Those who did the farming were not indigenous coming from the Near East and the Balkans, moving through Spain, France and Germany to the Netherland, and the evidence is that the migrants came to outnumber the hunters and fishermen. When communities formed there was the development of the collective tombs as of burial mounds, similar to those also found elsewhere including Malta and Spain. Our knowledge of these people comes from the remains found and life was primitive raising sheep and cattle, some lean hogs and whippet like terriers and hoe and mattock land cultivation for wheat and barley but only for personal and family subsistence and it is known that there were occasions of cannibalism.
There were then two developments which have been identified through Britain, The first are Henge burial monuments of which Stonehenge around 2250 BC is the best known with its cluster of burial mounds within 2k of the ceremonial monument. The largest of the four connecting ceremonial centres at Avebury is that of Silbury Hill the largest artificial mound of prehistory Europe. In addition to their ceremonial and burial functions the mounds also provided defensive areas for the community. Maps showing the distribution of Henge monuments, stone circles and stone alignments cover all parts of the Britain indicating the spread of agriculture communities. I once stayed on a hillside farm cottage in the Tay Valley with a stone circle close by. Approximately 3000 year BC there is the development of mining for flints and quarrying to make stone axes. With the development of bronze making from around 2000 BC the increasingly separate burial places indicated with wealth and power of some beings, within the community.
I had already known that the family county of Wiltshire and neighbouring Somerset were locations for important excavated sites from prehistory. The extraordinary aspect of to night's reading is to find the link between my Iberian ancestors and Calne where the maternal family lived generation upon generation for over at least 400 years. I decided to go to bed and continue the work where I got my act together in the morning.
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