Spain and El Cid: a Hero for Heroic Times

El Cid (OK, strictly Charlton Heston, but you know what I mean!)

What a hero for Spain, for Europe.

Just imagine if El Cid had not sacrificed so much no recapture Spain:

• The Hispanisation of the Americas would never have happened (leaving those peoples to human sacrifice and evil paganism).
• The Hapsburgs (via Don Juan of Austria) would not have led the Papal, and especially the feuding Genoese and Venetian forces at the Battle of Lepanto to save Europe from Turkish piracy and (literal) slavery.
• The Spaniards would not have led the Counter Reformation at the Council of Trent (which codified the Tridentine/Latin Mass of All Time) and through their example and zeal for the Truth, winning back whole nations such as Poland and Hungary.

Some people seem to think of the Spanish as a lazy people, with their siestas and warm climes. Yet without them Europe would be by far the poorer, and Catholicism especially would have very many fewer souls under its care and protection.

So Hurrah for El Cid!

And OK... hurrah for Charlton Heston too.

And Bilbo's Off Across the Seas to Pastures New...

Sad news this week really.

I finally dug out my old LOTR poster of Bilbo's last Song (you know... at the end of the book when he, Gandalf, Frodo and the elves all go to the Grey Havens and set off for the West?).

I bought it in the early 80s as a young, handsome and devilishly rakish whippersnapper with the world at my feet (OK, let me dream...) and for many years it bedecked the wall of my bachelor pad (er... teenage bedroom).

Well this week I finally got it down from the loft and sold it. It went to a gent (of great taste and distinction) in Sweden.

I like to think that I have spread the 'good news' of Tolkien rather than sold an heirloom, but it was creased, a little ripped and what with re-roofing etc. etc. was in danger of getting further damaged.

So goodbye Bilbo! Like dear old Sam returning home to his Rose afterwards I am not ashamed to say I shed a manly tear for my old friend as it set off on new adventures without me...

Now I shall go and listen to the song on my ipod in the last episode of LOTR and shed another manly tear (dear Lord! - it's getting a bit too "Elton John" round here!).

Goodbye dear Bilbo!

Now where did I leave my Lembas Bread?...


P.S. Can't wait for the film to come out!!!! Take that Smaug the Oppressor.

Chernobyl Diaries: OK but Disappointing

Went to see CD last night with Mrs H. To get the important matters settled, we took in our goodies. I refuse to pay £20 for a fizzy pop and a bucket o' popcorn.

I even won a cup of coffee (for Mrs H) in a £1 for charity lucky dip (coffee cost £2.49rrp) in the Coffee Emporium across the street. We were off to a good start!

Anyhow onto the film. Quite good. Not really scary (though Mrs H hid in her jumper a few times in a 70s Dr Who stylee saying "tell me what happens") and too short. It ended just when you hope it would get going, spin off into an X Files style govt cover-up plot or final big fight scene etc.

It wasn't boring like Transformers or Avengers Assemble, but was definitely missing something. Too formulaic in parts (stay in the van and turn the flipping lights off!) but moreover just not enough plot/back story etc.

Mrs H gave it 9/10 but she is easily pleased (she married me!) - I'm sticking to 6.5/10.

I wonder if a docu-film about the background to Chernobyl, Fukushima, Bhopal etc., cover ups and mistreatment of locals, and the UK government plans to bury tons and tons of nuclear waste in the Lake District, the tax-payers' bank-rolling of nuclear big business, and associated cover-ups and 'green-washing' of nuclear power for dubious ends might be more worrying/scary.

The Avengers Assemble? Spend Your Money on a Bottle of Highland Park!

After a week in which everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong, Mrs H suggested that we (her and I, the grown ups if you like) should take some time out and go to the cinema.

So we did. The only film that seemed suitable, half decent and not a cartoon or similar was Avengers Assemble.

I'm a mug for a nostalgic film

So we bought our tickets then went for a bite to eat and a drink. I had a beer with my vittles. The drink cost £2.70. If Old Pa Hurley is reading this he might well have fallen off his seat. No, not from imbibing too much Brains Dark, but from such a cost. To the rest of us it seems quite a normal price.

The idea - as passed into law in Scotland - that there should be a minimum price on beer would hit people like me, who enjoy the occasional beer or a wee tipple at home a couple of times a week. Even moreso those who do likewise who are struggling on limited incomes, a small pension etc.

I know binge drinking and problem drinking is a problem, but as with speed bumps placed through towns, this all seems to hit the many and the law-abiding just because a tiny minority can't behave themselves.

Anyway, we went off to watch the film. Hmmm. Don't even get me started on why oh why we have to sit through almost 30 mins of adverts (including some films I now know virtually the entire plotlines of, and a series of local authority adverts - tax money well spent???)

A couple sitting in the same row left after 60 mins. We left after90 mins. It was painful. Like Power Rangers pretending to be for grown ups. X hits Y who then fights Z who starts to argue with A, who doesn't want B to lose his temper, who then fights C, who's taken out by X.... and so on  ad infinitum.

All the special effects etc. just made it a mind-numbingly annoying boredom.

Why is it when I want a break from the woes of daily life, the trials and tribulations of the week, I never get to see a thoughtful, inspiring film?

The last film I saw that made me think, was nostalgic, had real characters and was equally happy and sad, was the Iron Lady. She certainly beats the Avengers into a cocked hat! I'll drink to that.

Call the Midwife, St Raymond Nonnatus & God is the Bigger Elvis

The Hobnail Nun - no tambourines please

We've been fans of the Call the Midwife series on the BBC. That's Mrs H and I of course.

For me the character played by Pam Ferris, Sister Evangelina, is the best. You can't beat the kind of nun who should wear hobnail boots, that's what I say!

I know they're not Catholics (though bizarrely their order is named after a Catholic Saint), well we can't have everything, but with the plainchant, prayers and habits, they are possibly closer to the real thing than many modern 'M&S nuns' busy strumming kum-by-ya on guitars.

We (yes, Mrs H and I) used to like the series Lilies set in Liverpool based on a Catholic working class family in the 1920s. Despite loving it in the Hurley home, the BBC did not commission a second series - the swine!

What I like about such series is that they do not hide away the hard lives people had, but they do convey the sense of community, and the reality that there was much good alongside the poverty.

Out of Hollywood for a Happier (& Longer?) Life

Given its popularity let's hope the Beeb isn't as remiss with this new series.

On the subject of nuns-on-film there was a piece in the Sunday Telegraph today about Sister Delores Hart who gave up the life of a Hollywood super-star (who was in quite a few big Hollywood films) to enter the cloistered life 50 years ago, at the age of 24. A documentary about her life, God is the Bigger Elvis, is up for an Oscar.

Perhaps it will paint a better picture of Catholicism than the usual Hollywood fare.

In the week in which the pop star Whitney Houston died, perhaps these nuns can - if only for a fleeting moment - provide more of a role model for daughters everywhere than the "stars" who live in a drug-addled mess.


Right: St Raymond Nonnatus - the Spanish Cardinal after whom the 'Call the Midwife' Anglican nuns' order was named.

The Iron Lady, a Life, Bereavement and Dementia

Your humble wordsmith was very excited today - excited enough to refer to himself in the third person!

Yes, for the first time in many moons yours truly and Mrs H went off on our own to the cinema. We left the eldest in charge of "babysitting"  and headed off to see The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep.

I had heard the review of Mark Kermode on his 'wittertainment' podcast, and the opinions of many others, and I have to say I enjoyed the film a great deal. Dr Kermode (old Trotskyist that he is) made some political comments of this not being right, and that being skipped over, but I think he misses the point. The film isn't so much about the history of politics, but rather the history of a person who just happens to have been political.

It is a personal story of fighting to achieve, family versus work, climbing the social ladder and finally "betrayal," bereavement, loneliness and dementia. Love or hate Maggie Thatcher (the Marmite politician), you cannot help but feel some empathy for her as an individual by the end of the film. Of course she is a person who polarises opinions, whether on the Unions, the Falklands, the Poll Tax, the Miners' Strike, Northern Ireland (all of which is touched on in the film); but to my mind we are the poorer without figures like that (and I do not agree with all she did by any stretch of the imagination).

As she says in the film, it is the difference between presentation or "feelings" and ideology or "thoughts" and since Tony Blair (though he too polarised opinions), and the advent of spin for spin's sake, the days of heavy ideology have taken a back seat to the flim-flam of the politics of focus groups.

So if you haven't had the chance to see this film you should do so. The nostalgia (if that's the right word!) of the Winter of Discontent, the Falklands, IRA bombs and Poll Tax riots are the backdrop to the personal story of a grocer's daughter who "climbed the greasy pole" with her husband, her constant companion, in the background - and even her constant companion after his death as she battles dementia.

No silly 3D glasses, no bimbos or six-packs, no sports cars or stuntmen, no cheesy plotlines or clunky dialogue-  just superb acting that encapsulated quite a chunk of British history, Westminster politics, and moreover the story of life, from working in a family business to coming to terms with the death of a husband and a life alone.

Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent and Olivia Colman deserve all the plaudits they should get for a thoughtful film that had me engrossed from start to finish. Bravo!


P.S. Just to let you know we stopped off for sausage and chips for the little ones on the way home.

P.P.S. Cardiff City even sneaked in a last minute goal to win 3-2 against Portsmouth. Little wonder I've been singing Lou Reed's Perfect Day...

Transformers 3D - Headbangingly Mindnumbingly Awful? Kermodian Rant Ahoy!

Looks like it will be a good review on Radio 5 this Friday...

Oh the anticipation!

The Kennedys is a Triumph for Tom Wilkinson

I am thoroughly enjoying 'The Kennedys' on BBC2, which has been slated by various lobbying groups in America.

Joe Kennedy

Now don't get me started on the politics of it all. What a fascinating period: America's first Catholic president, yet deeply flawed in his personal life; the Bay of Pigs; the Cuban Missile Crisis; Joe Kennedy; the mob; the Vietnam build-up, and eventually Lee Harvey Oswald and all the 'grassy knoll' palaver.

Aside from all that the series is yet another triumph for Tom Wilkinson who plays the Kennedy patriarch, the man who established a powerful political family which tried to be all-powerful but, even in my day, knew more than its fair share of tragedy.

A few years ago on hols in Boston we saw Ted Kennedy stood on the steps of the Massachusetts governor's house. Now he was the bete noir of my (in-law!) Uncle Maynard who is, I'm sure he won't mind me saying, a New England red-meat Republican.

But love him or loathe him (and I think the Kennedys, like the Clintons after them, inspire such polarised feelings) it was strange seeing him in the flesh (fully clothed of course!). Despite him being a living, breathing person, it was like taking a fleeting glimpse into an oligarchy, an establishment, an edifice. Perhaps he felt the same way on seeing the Hurleys go past in a large yellow tourist boat on wheels? Who knows!

Tom Wilkinson in the role.

Anyhoo - back to Tom Wilkinson. He grabs the character of Joe Kennedy by the lapels and conveys all the power lust, control, conflicting religious background and the way his veins seem to run icy cold when it came to attaining positions of power for those in his family.

Like few other actors, Wilkinson can really make a role his own, and even in some ropey films, he will generally carry the character to the extent that you still enjoy watching his performance. He stood out as the jailed priest in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a chilling film based on a true story.

With so much junk on TV, it's a joy to watch The Kennedys. If only so us 'limeys' get to know a little more about the American politics of the 60s.

"You Lift Me Up!" - Hmmm. Weight and See

Are Lifts Getting a Sense of Humour?

Many comedians will use the phrase "a funny thing happened the other day..."

Well, in my case this is a truism. There we were, in the "big smoke" celebrating one of the little monkey's birthdays, even though it wasn't strictly his birthday.

You see, oh faithful reader and itinerant of the blogosphere, my children are quite intelligent and very wily. So the latest thing is to have their birthday on the day itself -- more often than not a week-day, with school etc. -- on which they will get cards, presents, the adulation of their peers and the teaching staff, a tea-party, cake with candles and suchlike.

They have twigged that one day, especially a school day, just isn't enough for them to squeeze in all the celebrations, treats, trips out, shopping expeditions and other things they can wangle, cajole and otherwise obtain on the back of a birthday. So in order to get the maximum fun and celebration out of their birthdays a new custom has sprung up: the "birthday weekend."

Oh the eldest one started it, being a cunning character and keen to eek out the full birthday potential, but the others quickly embraced this 'great' idea. Funnily enough we grown ups don't seem to get a birthday weekend, unless of course the children decide they want to go to the cinema, or out for a meal...

Besides how could we say no. It all seems so, well... Catholic! To celebrate a feast day and then continue the celebrations for some days afterwards (12 days of Christmas and all that). No dour presbyterianism for the Hurley family thank you very much!

And so we found ourselves in the big city, on the first "birthday weekend" of the year. Everyone was dropped off at the cinema and dad (yes the heroic figure of the hour, for 'twas I) went to park the car. I decided to park on an upper floor of the 'Outrageous City Centre Parking Charges PLC' car park, needing the exercise the stairs offered (ahead of the meal we would go for post-cinema).

After the cinema and a meal we all waddled our way back to the car park. Oh we didn't burp, belch or otherwise add to "climate change" (upwards or downwards or whichever fad the "experts" are promoting this week), but rest assured we were all most satisfied after our post-cinematic banquet. After filling the ticket machine with the national debt of a middling size African state, the little ones (ah! bless) voted to use the lift, despite the protestations of me and the boss. It being a "birthday weekend" how could we say no to the upturned pleading visages?

Yet the day was still to be mine. Carpe Diem (trans: every fish dies one day).

Off we tramped into the lift: a lift we have frequented (if one can frequent a lift without being some kind of wandering minstrel, vagabond, vagrant, ne'erdowell, or erm... tramp) many times before, marvelling at this feat of modern mechanics as it triumphantly hoists us upwards (or indeed downwards) to our preordained
destination, which we alight at with a "hoorah" as we toast the health of Messrs Faraday and Edison without whom, there can be no doubt, the marvel that is the modern lift (that's an 'elevator' for Americans, an 'uppy-downy thing' for Isle of Wighters), would not exist today.

Yet on this magnificent and glorious day, Providence was to lend a hand and deliver victory back to the Stairs Lobby ('mum' and I), yet in such an amusing way as not to leave the children feeling cheated of another ride on the mechanical marvel known as the lift (you may scoff, but it's cheaper than the London Eye).

You see, oh much maligned and put-upon reader of this illustrious and munificent blog, despite having used the lift before; even sharing it -- never let it be said that we are not charitable in extremis -- with strangers (how Biblical!) many times, on this particular joyous occasion on the closure of the doors (in that magical Star Trek way -- fill in your own sound effects), the lift refused to move.

There was no alarm, no movement, no nothing. Yes I know that is a double-negative and so means there had to be something. Back of the class Smarty Pants, because that is exactly what I mean. There was something, but the little lit symbol on the control panel (I know, very Captain Kirk again) wasn't immediately obvious to those of us present on this little lift adventure.

Yet there it was, when we checked to see if the little finger at the end of the little arm that belonged to the little person who had pleaded with such fervour to be allowed to press the button (as if her very life depended on the outcome of this particularly weighty parental decision, especially as this wasn't her 'birthday weekend') had indeed carried out her specified task and pressed the aforementioned very same button. There was a little yellow light shining for all the world to see (all the world within the lift anyway):

OVERLOADED.

Cue sinister music. Jaws may be too "moody." Psycho would be apt, yet most unsuitable. I'm thinking something along the lines of John Carpenter's The Fog, but feel free to insert your own favourite, as long as it's not Magic Roundabout (Dougal et al) or Rainbow (a la Zippy), which are sinister for their own occult reasons, best not entered into here, but highly unsuitable if we are to maintain an air of subtle horror at this outcome.

Had it been the particularly fine tapas food we had enjoyed at a Spanish-themed hostelry? Or had the children over-done things with their choice of vittles in the world-of-cine foyer?

The doors of the lift opened (serwish!) and we spilled out into the lobby area of the car park (the payment machines looking at us with a cocky glare that said defiantly "we've had your money already - losers") with bursts of laughter.

Either the lift was playing up (damn you Edison and Faraday, what use to us is your genius now?) or we weighed considerably more than the last time we used the lift - even with an extra pair of 'far from svelte' people.

So we climbed the stairs. Hoorah! The grown-ups had exerted their authority. Not really, but let me have my moment of victory. And the children didn't even mind, so happy were they in the "knowledge" that we must be morbidly obese as a family for the lift to refuse to budge on account of our combined weight.

As Del Boy might well intone, "everyone's a winner."

The King's Speech and the 4 Broken Wittertainment Rules

You know sometimes you find yourself in an everyday situation that is so weird, or that you have spoken about recently, or where someone acts like a character out of a Victoria Wood sketch, that you have to pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming?

This happened to me, or I should say to us, today when we went to the cinema to see the much talked about film, The King's Speech.

We popped along to our local "world of cine complex" and duly bought our tickets for a Sunday matinee showing. I had heard that the matinee performances were being packed out by OAPs and, according to reports on the radio (and the personal experience of my mother-in-law), the pensioner audience was very audible; breaking two of Radio 5's Wittertainment Code of Conduct (see right) re. cinema etiquette, viz noisy food wrappers and audible 'participation' in the plot-line.

So it was my heart leapt for joy when we entered just 5 minutes before the scheduled start to find an empty and very large auditorium.

Oh joy. Oh rapture.

We settled into our seats in the centre of the auditorium, sure as we could be that the theatre was unlikely (to say the least!) to fill in the few minutes left.

The minutes passed by. The seconds ticked down. The tension was palpable.

How exciting.

Then, just as the first adverts started (as a rule I hate adverts, always remembering what Hilaire Belloc said of them, and always wondering why skateboarding, skydiving and mountaineering sells - ahem! - 'ladies items' or why car adverts so very rarely tell you anything useful about the car they are selling) in walked a couple...

Cue the ominous music!

Now - oh faithful and patient reader - let me ask you one question. With an entire cinema theatre (or 'screen' as it's called in these here days) to sit in, where do you think these two people chose to sit?

A few rows away? A few seats off?

If only.

They sat directly behind us!

Directly.

I suppose it could have been worse, but only if they'd sat in front of us with Carmen Mirandaesque fruit hats on, smoking Old Holborn in sailors' pipes with the worst halitosis since mangy old dogs drank out of portable toilets at a music festival!

As it was they sat right behind us. I know I'm repeating myself, but even now I can't believe they sat where they sat. I mean, to quote that great sage of the 20th Century Bart Simpson, aye carumba!

It would be bad enough if the story stopped there. But oh no.


Worse was to come.

They proceeded to break four of the ten 'Code of Conduct' rules as detailed above.

They began as soon as the film began.

• They ate. Loud enough to notice. Sweets and what sounded like biscuits. Munch, munch, munch.
• They rustled. Sweet wrapper after sweet wrapper was unravelled. Rustle, rustle, rustle.
• They kicked my seat (I don't think purposefully, but nonetheless, the seat was indeed kicked).
• Last but not least shoes were removed.

Thank the Good Lord for His Mercy, the unwrapped appendages did not smell, but the sound of velcro being pulled apart twice (yes: velcro!) signalled the removal of a pair of God-only-knows-what. I could only imagine that the offending articles were from the Innovations catalogue (RIP 2003).

I was tempted to move, but the film had begun and the upheaval of us moving might have annoyed my familial companions and I more than the drip, drip, drip of Chinese water-torture style cinematic misdemeanours I could hear and feel.

I was tempted to turn around and request they behave in a more civilised fashion, but the fear of them refusing, or ignoring my courteous supplications and me "blowing a fuse" as a result was too much for me to contemplate, and so I thought silence was the better part of valour, in this instance.

The film itself was superb and a joy to watch, moreover for the struggle of an individual to overcome his personal shortcomings, albeit with the added ingredient of the Royal Family and its environs in the 1930s in the shadow of the rise of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. It deserves all the plaudits it receives and the awards that will surely follow.

Would that those attracted to view it at their local multiplex behaved in a fitting manner for such a cinematic treat.

Sad news: Pete Postlethwaite Dies

Very sad news, the death of Pete Postlethwaite at the age of 64.

There was a time when I thought 64 was ancient, a veritable lifetime away, but as the years tick by 64 seems what is - a young age to die.

His most endearing role was in the 1993 classic film In the Name of the Father, a film full of the heartache, fear, terrorism and repression of the 1970s in which innocents (like his character) suffered.

Since then he went on to star in many varied films, always seeming (to me!) to bring a wry smile to the character.

There are a few actors and actresses whose names will make you gravitate to a film, TV show or play, and his was surely one.

Cinema Code of Conduct: About Time Too

GK Chesterton (hurrah!) said that morality is like art: it's knowing where to draw the line.

Quite so GKC. And were it that we learnt that lesson the modern world might not be in such a mess.

It might seem pedantic to some, but I am a great believer (in the footsteps of St David) that if we do the small things well, the big things will follow, thus it was that I was awaiting the cinematic 'Code of Conduct' put together by Radio 5's Messrs Kermode and Mayo.

Having suffered the rustle of a plastic bag umpteen times through one film by a couple sat behind me, who turned out to be in their 40s or 50s; through the piercing light of mobile phones being checked in my peripheral vision; to people explaining the film/plot to young attendees throughout the duration; even down to having a bare pair of cheesy feet placed on the back of the seat next to mine (honestly! in a Swansea cinema)... enough was enough.

So cinema-goers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but umpteen distractions to the cinematic treat you have shelled out your hard-earned for.

Maybe a return to acceptable standards in the cinema, coupled with an acceptance of behaviour that is conducive to the Common Good might see the rebirth (or a re-embracing) of civilised, Christian standards in more spheres of life, viz that we should do unto others as we would wish done to ourselves.

Let's make the cinema a battleground for acceptable standards, norms and behaviour.

I know GKC would approve.