Advent

 Today is Advent Sunday, the beginning of the season for preparation of Christmas.  We can sing O Come O Come Emmanuel now.  I have never had an Advent Calendar and they did not feature in my life at a Catholic Convent and were unheard of as far as I am aware.  It was only later in my life that Advent Calendars appeared and I  understood them to have been of German origin and the German way of celebrating the four weeks leading up to the coming of Jesus Christ.  The Advent calendar has now been totally taken over as a commercial entity in Britain.   

At my school we had Advent prayers and candle lighting each week and the emphasis was on preparing the crib and the feeling of hope for mankind.  On the last day before school broke up we would have the Christmas Party laid on by the nuns which was a special afternoon tea before we were collected from school.  I remember jellies and always at least one child would be sick.  

I will prepare my crib on the table in preparation for hope, peace, joy and love, one for each week of Advent.    Each Sunday I will add a further part of the crib.

I bought my crib figures when I was travelling in the Azores, a Catholic country part of Portugal.  The making of the figures is a tradition on the islands.   I have also added other figures and animals although would like to have all of them from the Azores as they are very special.  However, I will not be making another visit to those islands so must make up the crib with what I have here. 

There is no more special time than the joy of Christmas is coming in the Church.  

Pillion

 I went to see Pillion.  It was released yesterday and the only day I could find an early showing so I went.  (I normally like to avoid Friday afternoons at the cinema because it is a busier day than the rest of the week with people wanting to see first day releases). 

It is a bondage and submission movie with 18 rating and warning about sex and nudity.   I knew from the trailer that I had seen that it was about a strong handsome looking biker who is attracted to a puny male mummy's kind of boy.  It is certainly that and full on with the bondage and submission, male bikers and bare bottoms but I was unaware of most of this from the trailer.  The sex is pretty explicit.

It is good thanks to the acting skills of the two leads.  The strong handsome guy, Alexander Skarsgard, plays Ray,  and Harry Melling is Colin, the mummy's boy.   Both terrific in their roles.   It could have been an embarrassing  failure as a film but it wasn't.  It is both poignant and uncomfortable at the same time when  on the surface it looks and leans towards being cruel but Colin is in full agreement with his submissive role and being dominated by Ray and learning as he went along in a kind of sweet, naive way of discovery and tells his mum to shut up when she questioned it.  Colin's mum didn't think so and made it perfectly clear to Ray over dinner one evening, the only time when Ray was persuaded to go to dinner.  It was one of the best lines in the movie and I think I may have said out loud, yes,  when she expressed herself to Ray in no uncertain terms as to what she thought of Ray's treatment of her son.   (Colin  had some very good lines when he was alone with Ray so it wasn't really the best line in the film but it was at that point).  

I didn't find myself leaning towards either Colin or Ray, Colin was free to walk away at any time,  and the film led me in that it was non-judgmental in all respects although at times excrutiatingly painful both literally (I imagine) and metaphorically.    Throw into it unexotic British folk and locations and you get a bit of comedy in the pot.  

I imagine there will be quite a lot said about it and mixed reactions. 

Fifth Step

 I went to see the National Theatre's Fifth Step yesterday which was showing on stage via the cinema link throughout the country.  A great way for people in the sticks to see live National Theatre productions from London.  Of course I wasn't seeing it on the day live because I don't go out in the evenings but I was seeing it in the daytime.  

The Fifth Step is a two man production starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman.  There are no props apart from a couple of chairs and the audience sit round the stage almost on stage.  At first I found this a little off-putting but that was probably mainly because I wasn't expecting it when the curtain went up shall we say.  It soon became perfectly ok and I became one of the close-to-stage audience myself. 

It is raw stuff and the Fifth Step refers to an Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step programme.   Martin Freeman (James) plays the sponsor to new member Luca (Jack Lowden).    The plot was crystal clear to me from almost the start and the crucial fifth step was going to be no surprise as the two swapped stories and came closer and closer to an awkward coincidence at the fifth step.

There were three of us in the cinema to enjoy this production.  I had an almost two hour writing session in the café beforehand having caught an early train in the morning so all in all a good and productive day out and home before 5pm.  

Labour continues its destruction of Britain (with edit)

 From Attlee's Britain, 80% Death Duties on family businesses like Rootes Group, they didn't sell half their stock to Chrysler just for the hell of it, oh no,  through to Wilson, 85% Death Duties, over to  Blair, giving the immigration miscalculation, and the  human rights Britain we live in over to Starmer and Reeves, set to make the destruction complete.  The total destruction of work, work ethic, workers, employment and industry.

Edit. Small business rate rises hidden in the small print. Rateable values to go up for some by 200% come April. 

Remember the Channel Tunnel operator thought of expansion in preparation for Virgin entering the market? The operator changed mind and left Britain because of business rate rise and that was before the Budget?  Businesses will and are being destroyed.

Another nail in coffin for pubs.  More promises broken.  No help given. 

PM, we are told, defends the Budget. No mention of any of this.

Britain under Labour

 1947 Labour Govt.  Chancellor of Exchequer resigns before Attlee sacked him for leaking some of his Budget.  Hugh Dalton.  Now at every turn leaks come out.  The leaks are allowed out and they put fear amongst the people.   Budget purdah is a period when this does not happen, or rather,  should not happen.   The purdah period is a period in which you do not speak to press, if you are an employee in a company about to give its results you are not allowed to trade in those shares is another example.  A purdah period prevails.   Huge rumours and newspaper headlines have been putting fear into the population and people do things to their savings based on this fear that they should do something and then it maybe isn't right.  It has become disgusting.  The civil servants are deliberately doing this with the population via the press who lap it up. 

Make no mistake, this country is led by a Chancellor and staff who know nothing about economics.  They have no knowledge of economics: they are flying kites to see how public opinion reacts.  Business leaders are not investing, nothing is being expanded in this country at the moment.  It is the ruin of Britain led by Labour.  

This is Britain, still a bit of a force in the world, an economy of some significance, is being led by a government of ignorant idiots and all investment has been killed.  Investors turn away and go somewhere else, not Britain, to expand their business.  

And do not forget that less than a third of us voted Labour. 

Nobody in the Labour Party has experience of trade, running companies, the market nor of  investment and investors. 

And no, you cannot separate yourself as a government from the bond market, you have to pay off your debts.  Come on Labour.  Learn at least a little about economics and what borrowing money means, i.e. that you have a debt to pay off.  You cannot escape that.

Business rates are tripling.  Investment is stopping.   Britain is a no-go land for expansion of trade.  

Today's budget will not alter any of this.  

Add into the mix the Rayner (un)employment rights bill, unfair dismissal from day one, employers will not take a risk on employing people.  You employ someone who is a disaster and you cannot get out of it, you cannot have a probationary period with new employees.  Back to the 1970s.  

You may hate entrepreneurs but this country is nothing without them.   And businesses are going to stop and eventually this country will be finished.  

9.35 am Wednesday 26th November 2025

Observation observation observation

Yesterday morning when I got up I was thinking about Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell.  This is a very good read and Orwell' writing illustrates the minute observational skills of good writers.   The crumbs on the table that never got wiped away and moved their place each morning.  

When I go out I am always watching and listening.  Sometimes I write things down but this is not always necessary.  I have a good memory.  I am a good observer.  We were taught to develop skills of observation by our English teacher and we kept what was called our Observation book.  She would task us with such things as writing about the ketchup bottle on the table at home.  She was not popular with some parents for these homework assignments and I suspect I am probably the only one who remembers them.  I think she was way ahead of her time in the teaching of English and creative writing.  She was eventually removed and replaced by a more traditional English teacher when we were in our 5th year, our O level year. 

George Orwell looked and listened and had a good take on the society he lived in.  I realised yesterday morning when thinking aboutt Keep the Aspidistra Flying that all the world of everyday life is contained in the four or five blogs that I read by UK writers and is there in front of me - the modern day equivalent of Orwell's novel.   I don't need to go out everyday to a café or go on a train ride, it is all here.  Your lives are spread before me.

One of my poem's for my final collection at the university was about Mrs Herring, a woman I once came across in a place of work in London in 1970. The office was in Tavistock Square, number 12.   She came back to me, unexplained and suddenly, and I could recall everything she told me and I could see  her clothes, her build, her looks and the minutiae of her life that she told me about.  I put it in a poem.  Now at this moment I can remember more about Mrs Herring than I can about the poem that I wrote only three months ago!

Yesterday I sat in the Queen of Iceni pub for an hour and a bit.  I watched the people and I listened a bit.  I read two newspapers.  A man told me I looked like Margaret Rutherford and then proceeded to tell me a story about saying that to a woman on the Isle of Wight.  I doubt that either of us look like Margaret Rutherford and it was his stock story to start a conversation.  He was reading a library book and I gathered from some snippets of conversation between him and other men who passed his table that it was about horse racing.  I spoke to the manager and suggested he move the coffee cups so that his staff did not have to keep disappearing to the kitchen to fetch a cup when 90% of customers at that time of day were drinking coffee and requesting a cup.  It would make ergonomic sense for his staff and the efficiency of taking orders.   He said he was new and would address the subject.  I doubt he will.  It has been like that in the Queen of Iceni in all the time I have been going in there. Pubs don't run as pubs anymore.  Bar staff are absent.  Old people during the day like to see bar staff to take their orders even if night time customers are happier at the table via the App.  Study of the age demographics of customers need to be made as well and adjustments to staffing and levels adjusted accordingly.   I suspect the cost of the staff prohibits employment of numbers really needed.  I then went to see The Running Man.  The same studies need to be made by Odeon as well, old people need help with their orders and don't like non-human apparatus for ordering a coffee and popcorn so they go without.  On arrival home late afternoon I thought that's another day over and drew the curtains and put a match to the fire. 

Incidentally, The Running Man is a great Edgar Wright film.  The book was written by Stephen King many years ago and it is a dystopian tale and we are bordering on living it right now.   It is a must see for those who like dystopian action movies.  Glen Powell is the Running Man 

TV to watch

If you are looking for something to watch on tv I highly recommend Malice currently showing on Prime.  A psychological thriller.  Some of it filmed in London and some on the island of Paros in Greece.  

And then The Beast in Me on Netflix.  Another psychological thriller.  I could only take one or one and half episodes per night before having to turn over to something else but I did not let this stop me from tuning in the next evening to see the gruesome bit I couldn't stomach the night before.  It is very good. 

I watched After the Hunt again, now streaming on Prime, and enjoyed it the second time more than I did the first time a few weeks back at the cinema.  Starring Julia Roberts.  Seeing a movie more than once is a definite yes yes;  the second time you see things you didn't see the first time and so on.  The soundtrack still irritated me but seemed less intrusive at home than it did in the cinema.  Recommended.  

Yesterday I spent the day alone.  Nothing unusual in that for me.  I haven't spoken to anybody since meeting my two poet friends on Monday.  But I have been to the cinema twice so had contact with people there and I have had positive news re. my health so not a bad week.  The two films I went to see were Nuremberg, as already reviewed a few days ago and in case it was not clear from my first review, I did enjoy it, and Christmas Karma which I went to on Friday and the least said about that the better.  One of the worst Christmas films I have ever seen.  (A modern day take on Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, highly political. I kept expecting Starmer and Sadiq Khan to  appear.  Maybe they did, I left before the end.  The songs are awful, the acting bad, and the Bollywood take did not work).