Classic Brit Comedy 1

Classic Brit comedy inspired by a post by spikesgirl58.

Are You Being Served Season 3 Episode 9 Christmas Crackers

A clip from Fawlty Towers -
I Want My Sausages!

Yes Minister S02E02 Doing the Honours

So, A Quiet Sunday

Looks quite a fine day out there bu still cooler than it has been. I guess we are having winds from the north bringing the cold air.

I did a marathon show watch on the laptop last night. Quite a few episodes of Stargate Universe watched and a few Charmed (again) before i hit the point of dropping off to sleep.

Had a lie-in as cousin had his girlfriend stay overnight again.

Will be reading chapters from a couple of books, writing a review for another, and then watching TV shows again.

Well, that is the plan anyway.

Going Dutch

Just going Dutch for awhile - from the lowlands that is the Netherlands -

Earth & Fire - Wild and Exciting

( More Dutch stuff )

Cat Fun

Book 32 - George Orwell "Down and Out in Paris and London"

George Orwell "Down and Out in Paris and London" (Penguin Modern Classics)





George Orwell writes an autobiographical yet fictionalized account of living in poverty in two great European cities. One gets the sense that Orwell is looking at the situation as an outsider, someone who knows he will not always live in poverty, yet its not false in that he really is living in poverty at the time. Much of the book describes survival techniques trying to scrape together a life on a low rung of Paris’ hotel caste system and later tramping about London’s suburbs to keep a step ahead of the ridiculous vagrancy laws. Through all this his keen mind works making discoveries and proposing solutions to the problems that plague millions throughout their lives.

“It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty – it is the thing you feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen sooner or later; and it is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.” (p. 17)

“It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good – for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. I believe that the instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.” (p. 119)

“Why are beggars despised? – for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thin demanded is that it shall be profitable … Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test, beggars fail, and for this they are despised … A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a business man, getting his living, like other business men, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.” (p. 174)

“Of its very nature swearing is irrational as magic – indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound, which we do by mentioning something that should be kept secret … But the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to list its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing.” (p. 177)

“It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.” (p. 181).


For eaxmple, we in London we learn about the life of tramps (homeless people who must stay on the move if they don’t want to end up in jail). We see great misery and depression of people barely able to find enough food to keep themselves alive but we also see people who are trying to make the best life for themselves that the circumstances allow. Even more important we see them as individual people with the same kind of attributes of goodness and evil that we all have. I will never view a homeless person the same way again—they are each individuals as we all are. Orwell developed a fondness for many of them which he transfers to us and although he had a “safety net” as much as possible he tried to experience the same experiences of the truly down and out.

A fascinating read.

Book 33 - R. Crumb "R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country"

R. Crumb "R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country" (Harry N. Abrams)



This is one of those books that you just have to dip into occasionally for its interesting history of music of a certain period.

R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country is an illustrated compendium of America's early 20th musicians. R. Crumb started to draw and paint the musicians and bands for trading cards that would be included with LP recordings reissued (from pre-WWII 78s) by Yazoo Records. Eventually they were boxed into a set sold by record stores. This book reproduces the paintings along with biographical sketches of the artists and bands. While I appreciate the music of this era, I am certainly not an expert, or even a student, of the music. That said, I found the text fascinating (especially the highly descriptive information on Country String bands of which I knew little about except for the articles in the excellent Wire magazine), and Crumb's illustrations evoke the period and whets your appetite for more. The text is by Stephen Calt, David Jasen and Richard Nevins.

While flipping through the pictures you may be surprised at how many of the bands had women guitarists. Read the entry on Fiddlin' Powers and Family to learn that the guitar was originally "scorned by most rural performers" and "stigmatized in its early days as a polite parlor instrument" that was fit for young girls to play. Now that's a cool little bit of cultural history that I didn't expect to learn from a book of drawings of musicians--and it's emblematic of what you get with this book, and why I loved it.


The book is accompanied by a 21 song CD with recordings from 1927-1931, which has an excellent selection of music from the period. Well Recommended.

Old Time Music Selection

Old time jazz, blues and country -

Frankie Franko & His Louisianians - Somebody Stole My Gal

( More music here )