If You Want Classic Fast Food Literature Ask The Erle

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It's funny how it's just over a year since I was in Essex exile looking after my mother, visiting her in hospital and then nursing her back to health. People ask me how I managed it and in truth you just do. What I did and experienced was just a fraction of what carers have to do for family members 24/7.

But if you discover things that relax you through this process then it's a help. I've already chatted about becoming unexpectedly a fan of the TV series Bones and the latest book I've read reminded me of someone else who helped as well.

Perry Mason Is Back

It is literary fast food. More enjoyable than Lee Child but still fast food. Easy to digest. A formula you already know (someone's in trouble for murder - Only Perry can deal with it) which you like and indeed trust.

It's not like fast food immune to criticism under examination. Perry Mason is too calm and perfect. How he worked the solution to the crime here is not really something the reader could have even guessed. The court scenes are also annoyingly short in relation to the rest of the book. However like fast food you don't look at the detail you allow everything to overwhelm you. And again as entertainment this really works.

Gardner's treatment of women is interesting. Whilst some including Perry Mason's assistant/secretary Della Street are described as having a good figure there is no one who could be called a bimbo. Neither is a female (or in this day and age male) character there so seduced by his charms she's ready to jump into bed with Mason either.

Also in these times of  #Metoo there was a moment when a secretary was asked by Perry whether her boss tried to make a pass at her. The answer was yes but he respected the "no trespass signs". Perhaps that's the tenplate for office rules in the future.

Ultimately like fast food you will forget this book months in the future. But you will also remember the experience. And like all good fast food, you'll remember it was fun.

Until the next time.

The Insomniac Manderings Post: Late Summer Nearly Bank Holiday Edition

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

At time of writing it's 3:26am in this Saturday morning. It's dark. And it won't be light for a while. The weather has turned. Autumn is coming and unofficially seems to be already here.

It is weird this year. Seemingly that having spent the first two months of it looking after my mother in Essex when she was unwell that my timeclock feels that it's June not August. As if time in a way stood still for two months. I get it now how carers of loved ones for a much longer period must feel. As if time has passed them by.

A quick further word about my time in Essex exile. One of the small comforts I had there was the discovery of the TV series Bones on the Your TV channel where along with Castle it seemed to be on perpetual loop for months. Well not anymore. Not only has it finished but it's being replaced by The Mentalist. A show I remember from years back....and hated.

So another programme then to add to my "download or buy the DVD list". Actually I've two DVDs already. Series two and twelve....as you do.

And as we're talking TV it's not looking good for my pick of husband Hywel in the "who killed Sheryl?" storyline in Pobol Y Cwm as we as a family caught up with the Sunday omnibus yesterday. I say this given that the police arrested and charged him with the murder weapon ( a doorstop!) being found in his garden. Since he's the one whose focus is being put on now you know that it's likely to be one of the other suspects.

Unless the writers are playing a double bluff of course. Then I can start to gloat.

And since this has turned out to be the TV post let me put a word for The Big Bang Theory whose next season will be it's last. Unlike most TV shows nowadays (eg Bones) this is a programme that I've watched and been a fan of since the beginning. I'll be sad to see it's passing. Mind you I suspect it'll be shown on [insert channel here] until the end of time.

What do people do having woken up too early in the morning? Some have an hangover . Some turn and regret the person they've just had sex with. Well me I've just joined Myspace on a whim. Why did I do it and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it (which is probably one of the reasons other than being owned - since sold - by Rupert Murdoch- why it lost the battle with Facebook)? I blame the liqueur of the internet. Mind you perhaps I sobered up after I had a look at Reddit and I definitely didn't want to bother to join that!

5:17am. Still dark out there. Yes summer has nearly gone. Indeed yesterday there were torrential downpours. It was good to see the return of Welsh weather.

Today I'm going to have my hair cut. At long last after fifty four years on this planet I know exactly what to ask with confidence.

1 I want a trim
2 I want the sideburns and the hairs on my neck cut.
3 I definitely don't want US Marine.

Simple, straightforward and I wish it didn't take me this long to have worked it out.

Anyway sun's bright now at 6:35am. Going to have a quick nap and then time to move properly.

Until the next time.

This Is The Year I Understood TV Series Can Be Discovered Like Books....Years Later...By Accident....in A Flash

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I should have of course realised this earlier in the year. When on returning from hospital in Essex when my mother was unwell I would ping a microwave meal as was too bothered to watch anything else. Slump in front of the TV and surf any channel until the moment I discovered Bones. Slowly I was hooked even though it was a twelve year old series that had finished the year before. There I was though watching repeats on a remote channel and very late to the party. But in the party I was.

Thing is. When I was child there was just three channels (Yes I'm that old). So you had a good chance of seeing all of the latest series for a couple of episodes and making a decision on whether you wanted to continue. Nowadays however with the gazillion and one channels available even if you have every pay TV channel available plus Netflix and Amazon Prime most people still do not have the time to look at every available series.

So what that means is that rather like books there is now a greater chance that TV series can be discovered by accident.....which leads me to The Flash.

Daughter had series one on DVD and asked whether I wanted to watch it. As it was raining outside (the British summer at last!) and as I'd nothing better to do I said yes, though grudgingly. I was aware of the show though I'd avoided it given that this first series started in 2014 and I was then forty nine.

The other reason why I was so reluctant was that I remembered the reading the comic (now called graphic novels....please) as a child and I was at best neutral. I mean he could run fast. So what?Hardly Spiderman now is it?

Well...I loved it.

The plot is simple. Barry Allen is struck by lightening and with the help of others becomes The Flash in which he fights various super villains. Obviously more complicated than that but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Part of the reason I think why I liked it was that it television form it seemed to capture what the best American DC and Marvel comics could do which was to mix the realistic with the fantastic. You believe in the world you're seeing.

It is basically a comic book on screen. And (though this is the varifocal lens of my memory) it's better than the original comic.

It's also helped by some familiar screen faces. Jesse L Martin as the police detective and surrogate father to Barry was part of the Law team when Law and Order was in it's prime when he partnered with Jerry Orbach. Tom Cavanagh was also in Ed. A favourite of mine in the quiet humorous hometown style of Gilmore Girls.

If it was a choice between Bones and the Flash Bones would always win. But for a few moments escapism in the mad place called Britain right now you could do a lot worse.

Until the next time.

So The Thing I Can't Do In Bed......And Other Things To Do With Reading Including A Bit Of Gore

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

This morning I woke up early (again) around four o'clock but for reasons I can't say today I was unable to go into the living room and either watch the TV or go on the laptop. So what could I do? I decided to try again what I haven't done in a while.

Read in bed.

No point in going online. I saw the news yesterday. This country seems to be run by a government and a Prime Minister in the form of a nervous breakdown.

Unfortunately I couldn't do it. I've never understand those scenes where somebody is engrossed in a book propped up in bed. I can't do it. My back starts to go into knots. I get uncomfortable.

I just can't do it.

Must admit it doesn't help that one of the books I'm reading, 1876 by Gore Vidal is something I'm not enthused about so far. I've reached almost halfway and I can't say I've read a more dull book in a long while. When I say dull, I don't mean that intellectually it's beyond me (and regular readers will know I'm not afraid to say when that's the case) but that very little actually seems to happen. I hope that it's not going to be one of those novels where everything including the kitchen sink is thrown.

Went to the library today. This was the book I got.

Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

Now this seems to have an interesting link. It's set in Essex where I was in exile earlier in the month to look after my mother. And the covering blurb says that Mr Beckett (who I've never read before) has "forensic detail to rival Kathy Reichs" whose life was the basis for the TV series Bones which I became a fan of when I returned from hospital after seeing my mother.

Connections eh? Never watched it in bed though.

Until the next time.

Introducing The Near Midnight Meanderings Of A Movie With A Microwave Meal Series

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I have in this blog explained my return to work routine before. I'd come home at around 10:40pm and after doing the bits and pieces you need to do am ready to ping whatever microwave meal comes my way.

The meal itself would not be anything too exotic. The lateness of time and my belly would exclude that. Mainly I go for microwave Italian. Spaghetti, Lasagne you know the drill.

Anyway at about eleven I have a tray with the meal, a cup of tea and my backside is plonked onto the sofa and I watch the TV before my body says "That's it. Time for sleep. Record this now or else you'll be missing this as you nod off"

But the question now is what do I watch? Previously at this time have been happy to watch episodes of Castle or Bones but I've watched them all now so what next? Which is where I remembered this....

Radio Times Film Guide 2013

I bought it Jan/Feb this year in Harlow whilst I was wandering the town centre before visiting my mother in hospital. I don't know why I bought it. Well actually I do. As the picture shows it cost me £2.50. The original price was £25.

So here's the plan I'm going to watch films on the TV taking this book as the guide. There are two simple rules.

1) The film must be mentioned in the guide.

2) The film is shown on a free to air channel. That way everyone has the chance to watch it.

So for most movies we're talking about two sittings,two microwave meals and more than two cups of tea.

And then I'll chat about it.

Do I think I'll complete the book? Of course not. It's just a bit of fun.

So if you were thinking that what the world needed most of all was a fifty something man rambling about films over a microwave meal...then I've got it covered.

Until the next time.

When A TV Show Is An Unexpected Comfort (Bones)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So still in Essex exile at the moment. Hopefully just over a week to go before I can return to Wales. In the meantime Wales seems to appear in different ways. For example the discovery that I can watch Welsh club rugby on the TV in Essex via the red button was a pleasant surprise though the match itself, between the Ospreys and a South African team wasn't.

But as my mother is thankfully on the road to recovery it did occur to me about the things that pulled me through when things did not seem so bright. Coming back to the house from the hospital on a late evening, uncertain about the future, grabbing a microwave meal, a meal that someone in the family kindly made for me or a buying a bag of chips from the local Chinese around the corner (I tend to go Belgian with chips. Mayonnaise is my thing) and then propping myself in front of the TV.

I've mentioned before about the programmes I've been watching, either straight from the TV or as a DVD box set, during these two months, but during those specific moments of uncertainty one of these shows seemed more important than others. I think because this was the show I grew to like during this period when things were at it's most darkest.

And that programme (as you can tell by the title) of this post is Bones. What makes this even more unusual is that when I saw the odd episode before I didn't like it. Thought it was too glossy.

It does happen like this. Unexpectedly a programme creeps up on you unawares and before you know it you're a fan. It becomes a sort of comfort blanket when times are not good.

Bones is I know an odd choice. Loosely based on the life and novels of Kathy Reichs. Essentially episodes consist of a gruesome murder where you would see the victim in various stages of decomposition however as they would mainly be in a skeletonal state. This is convenient as the FBI in the form of Special Agent Seeley Booth is onto the case with his partner Doctor Temperence Brennan, a forensic anthropologist from the Jeffersonian Institute. Not just her though. There are other "squints" (scientific experts in their field) from the same institute.

I think the reason why it resonated was that it showed a group of good people facing a dark situation and being able, both with humour and intelligence to resolve it.

I have a few box sets now of this twelve season show. My mother's moaning that I'm watching too much of a programme that she doesn't really understand. She'd rather watch Murder She Wrote (Am happy to help my mother during these past few months...but there are limits).

Until the next time.

Should I Not Read John Le Carre ......For My Mother's Health?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Whilst she is making a remarkable recovery my mother does at this moment need a professional carer to come in every morning for reasons I won't go into.

The point though is that nothing can be done in the morning until the carer comes in. And the company uses the extremely wide timescale of 7-11. For the past two days she has come in between 8-9. Today however she came in at ten.

Thing is until the carer comes in there is nothing apart from making my mother breakfast in bed that I can do. So I find myself every morning now watching one of the DVD sets I bought from Amazon to help pass the time. Have been going through Series 2 of Bones, a show I didn't like at the time but am warming towards now (on a weekday evening am watching on the channel Your TV Bones, Body of Proof and Castle shows which are perfect entertainment).

The other box sets I bought were Perception Series 1, a show I liked but didn't see all of hence the purchase and The Net (the TV series of the film) which I bought because it was cheap and now know why.

Anyway because she came late I wasn't able to have a quick trip to my mother's local GP to get her full medication until around eleven. And whilst her prescription was being made, I was able to read the latest book from my Kindle. Which turned out to be Single and Single by John Le Carre.

The thing is this. The last book I read of his was Absolute Friends. Which was at the time my mother had her first cataract operation (I wrote about this at the time). And (though the hospital where she stayed for the past few weeks advised was purely coincidental) her troubles seemed to begin from the moment she had the operation.

Can a book cause bad luck? I actually believe yes and no. It is after all a state of mind. If you believe that a book has caused problems then stopping reading relieves you from that worry, whether it was justified or not.

A few years ago I started reading Next Man Up by John Feinstein. A book where the writer follows the American football Team the Baltimore Ravens. From the moment I started to read the book my daughter tripped and grazed her knee.

Ok....

Then my wife cuts herself whilst trying to open a can of peaches. A cut so bad it required stitches from Accident and Emergency.

When they found out that everything seemed to happen from when I started reading the book. Wife and daughter pleaded with me, alright they nagged me to stop reading. Fearing that as what happened to them seemed to increase in severity the fate that would have awaited me if I continued would have been much worse. So I stopped.

And I thought being a Chicago Bears fan would be the limit to my dangers following American Football.

Best then I postpone reading the Le Carre...not superstitious you understand...just thinking about my mother's health.

Until the next time.