Posts
My Heart Will Go On (and on...and on...and on...)
I was sent this by a friend in Sweden (remarkable how quickly these Swedes pick things up on the interweb). I’d been looking for my modern-day equivalent of Jonathan & Darlene Edwards [wikipedia them] and I think I have found it in Matt Mulholland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2WH8mHJnhM
Turns out he’s from New Zealand…. Well it made me laugh anyway. Enjoy.
Try his website: I still think his recorder tutorial should be essential viewing for All school orchestras.
http://www.mattmulholland.com/ or http://www.mattmulholland.co.nz/
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Monday, 2 August 2010
Stephanie Rushton photo shoot - Part 1 (of 3)
Let’s go all the way back to last August (25th) - 2009. I had been approached - probably via the Eccentric Club - by a professional photographer, Stephanie Rushton.
[ http://www.stephanierushton.com/index.html ]
We chatted for a while, she had already taken photographs of some friends of mine - the blogger and musician Winston Chesterfield and “fellow eccentric” Lyndon Yorke - and they both had good shoots with her - so I felt a comfort zone there. She said she was putting together a project “English Eccentrics” and, as I never allow people to photograph me ‘at home’, I suggested the local (and recently restored) Valentines Mansion, a Georgian pile just down the road at Gants Hill.
[ http://www.valentines.org.uk/ and http://www.valentinesmansion.com/ ], see also my previous posting on the reopening of the Mansion on February 14th 2009 [ http://rayfrenshamworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/valentines-mansion-reopens.html ]
http://www.stephanierushton.com/eccentrics.html
As you can see, we started out in the gardens of the Mansion - the walled Old English Garden, to be precise. I have to say, we were both impressed at the splendid and authentic restoration job that had been performed on the Mansion (luckily funded and finished before the credit problems hit this country - and the Borough).
[P.S.: This secret link leads to the full selection of the entire photo-shoot, should you care to explore:
http://gallery.me.com/stephrushton/100522 ]. I shall post up Part 2 of this three-parter next week!
For the record, Winston’s blogsite is:http://venividivrai.blogspot.com/
…and Lyndon’s website is:http://www.lyndonsmachines.co.uk/
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Eccentricity - a Response by Max Davidson
Further to yesterday’s rather bonkers piece in the Telegraph, today they published this:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7915067/Being-a-little-odd-doesnt-mean-that-Im-mentally-ill.html
Being a little odd doesn't mean that I'm mentally ill.
[Labelling every behaviour out of the norm as a sign of mental illness is insanity].
By Max Davidson
Published: 5:46PM BST 28 Jul 2010
The bean-counters at the NHS must be tearing their hair out. If we take our cue from America, as we generally do in these matters, the number of people diagnosed with mental disorders may be about to rise exponentially, with knock-on effects for their budgets.
Even tearing your hair out, once a perfectly acceptable sign of emotional frustration, could soon be re-categorised as psychotic behaviour – innocuous in itself, but symptomatic of underlying mental health problems.
In fresh guidelines promulgated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the definitive American textbook, in use all around the world – the latest buzz-phrase is "Psychosis Risk Syndrome". The clue is in the name: it is concerned not with how people behave now, but how they might behave in future.
Nobody should make light of mental illnesses, or the importance of understanding them. But if the bar for mental illness is to continually lowered, it will sound the death knell for the kind of benign eccentricity at which the British have long excelled. If someone is doing something odd but harmless – sporting an asparagus in their buttonhole, say – doctors will find it increasingly hard to leave it at that. They will ask: "Why the asparagus?" and seek abstruse explanations. Perhaps the asparagus-wearer harbours feelings of sexual inadequacy? Or perhaps he has a pathological hatred of his mother, after being forced to eat asparagus as a child?
Medical knowledge may be growing, but the world is shrinking. Once everyone has been labelled, has had a name slapped on their condition, there is no room left for the kind of people who defy labelling. Sherlock Holmes, brilliantly reinvented in a new BBC series, is no longer a maverick, but a "sociopath". Yet our history is littered with colourful oddballs, from William Archibald Spooner, the Oxford professor whose bloopers packed lecture halls ("Such Bulgarians should be vanished") to Sir George Sitwell, who invented a pistol for shooting wasps and had the cows on his estate stencilled with a blue Chinese willow pattern – and they have been remembered far more fondly than their po-faced contemporaries.
Glyndebourne opera house is now celebrated around the world, but its founder, John Christie, was so many high Cs short of an aria that he would be placed under restraint today. On one occasion, he was sitting next to the Queen during a performance, when he took out his glass eye, cleaned it, replaced it in its socket, and asked the Queen if it was in straight.
Cricket lovers all over the world treasure the memory of the late, great David Shepherd [above], the umpire who hopped from foot to foot whenever the score reached 111 or multiples thereof. Shepherd hailed from the West Country, and was a mass of old rural superstitions of the kind that psychiatry is powerless to heal. He belonged in a museum, not a hospital.
Of course, eccentrics are not to be confused with the kind of desperate attention seekers who find their way on to Big Brother. If they wear odd clothes, or have acquired odd mannerisms, it is not because they are showing off, but because they live their own lives, oblivious to what other people think of them. The best of them are holy fools, blessed with an innocence that their more conventional friends can only envy.
Sadly, I have never really hacked it as a major-league eccentric: the habits of conformity are too ingrained. But the further I drift from the mainstream – as I did at a barbecue recently, performing a full-on impression of Laurence Olivier as Richard III, hunchback and all – the happier I feel.
I certainly don't want doctors totting up my little quirks – loud ties, Wild Man of Borneo hairdos, DIY fish recipes, talking to myself in the bath – and finding a medical condition to explain them. I would rather be myself, unlabelled and untamed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7915067/Being-a-little-odd-doesnt-mean-that-Im-mentally-ill.html
Being a little odd doesn't mean that I'm mentally ill.
[Labelling every behaviour out of the norm as a sign of mental illness is insanity].
By Max Davidson
Published: 5:46PM BST 28 Jul 2010
The bean-counters at the NHS must be tearing their hair out. If we take our cue from America, as we generally do in these matters, the number of people diagnosed with mental disorders may be about to rise exponentially, with knock-on effects for their budgets.
Even tearing your hair out, once a perfectly acceptable sign of emotional frustration, could soon be re-categorised as psychotic behaviour – innocuous in itself, but symptomatic of underlying mental health problems.
In fresh guidelines promulgated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the definitive American textbook, in use all around the world – the latest buzz-phrase is "Psychosis Risk Syndrome". The clue is in the name: it is concerned not with how people behave now, but how they might behave in future.
Nobody should make light of mental illnesses, or the importance of understanding them. But if the bar for mental illness is to continually lowered, it will sound the death knell for the kind of benign eccentricity at which the British have long excelled. If someone is doing something odd but harmless – sporting an asparagus in their buttonhole, say – doctors will find it increasingly hard to leave it at that. They will ask: "Why the asparagus?" and seek abstruse explanations. Perhaps the asparagus-wearer harbours feelings of sexual inadequacy? Or perhaps he has a pathological hatred of his mother, after being forced to eat asparagus as a child?
Medical knowledge may be growing, but the world is shrinking. Once everyone has been labelled, has had a name slapped on their condition, there is no room left for the kind of people who defy labelling. Sherlock Holmes, brilliantly reinvented in a new BBC series, is no longer a maverick, but a "sociopath". Yet our history is littered with colourful oddballs, from William Archibald Spooner, the Oxford professor whose bloopers packed lecture halls ("Such Bulgarians should be vanished") to Sir George Sitwell, who invented a pistol for shooting wasps and had the cows on his estate stencilled with a blue Chinese willow pattern – and they have been remembered far more fondly than their po-faced contemporaries.
Glyndebourne opera house is now celebrated around the world, but its founder, John Christie, was so many high Cs short of an aria that he would be placed under restraint today. On one occasion, he was sitting next to the Queen during a performance, when he took out his glass eye, cleaned it, replaced it in its socket, and asked the Queen if it was in straight.
Cricket lovers all over the world treasure the memory of the late, great David Shepherd [above], the umpire who hopped from foot to foot whenever the score reached 111 or multiples thereof. Shepherd hailed from the West Country, and was a mass of old rural superstitions of the kind that psychiatry is powerless to heal. He belonged in a museum, not a hospital.
Of course, eccentrics are not to be confused with the kind of desperate attention seekers who find their way on to Big Brother. If they wear odd clothes, or have acquired odd mannerisms, it is not because they are showing off, but because they live their own lives, oblivious to what other people think of them. The best of them are holy fools, blessed with an innocence that their more conventional friends can only envy.
Sadly, I have never really hacked it as a major-league eccentric: the habits of conformity are too ingrained. But the further I drift from the mainstream – as I did at a barbecue recently, performing a full-on impression of Laurence Olivier as Richard III, hunchback and all – the happier I feel.
I certainly don't want doctors totting up my little quirks – loud ties, Wild Man of Borneo hairdos, DIY fish recipes, talking to myself in the bath – and finding a medical condition to explain them. I would rather be myself, unlabelled and untamed.
Eccentric? - Try this for size................
Firstly, apologies for my silence these last few weeks (I will post some catch-ups in due course) - I was out there in real-life land enjoying the Summer and the sun and not stuck behind a computer (my only friend). I believe it is called "getting a life".
Anyway, I saw the following article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph and took great comfort in it. I reprint in full! The link is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7913122/Eccentrics-could-be-diagnosed-with-mental-disorders.html
Eccentrics 'could be diagnosed with mental disorders'
[Eccentrics could be labelled as having mental disorders under planned changes to diagnostic guidelines, experts have warned].
By Nick Collins
Patients may be more likely to be told they have psychological illnesses after experts proposed to modify classifications in a mental health guide used by doctors around the world, it was claimed.
The suggested new diagnoses in the manual, written by leading American doctors, and the potential lowering of the bar on other disorders "shrinks the pool of normality to a puddle", critics said.
It is feared that difficult or eccentric people may be diagnosed as mentally ill, dramatically affecting their life and job prospects, without ever developing "full blown" psychosis.
One new diagnosis put forward by the authors is "Psychosis Risk Syndrome", which identifies people thought to be at risk of developing a mental illness.
Symptoms for patients in this category may include mood changes, feelings of distress, anxiety or paranoia, or fleeting episodes of hearing voices.
Other diagnoses under consideration include "mixed anxiety depression", "binge eating," and "temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria".
Definitions of some existing disorders, such as depression, may have the bar lowered so that more people are deemed to have symptoms that merit a diagnosis.
Professor Til Wykes, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, described a trend that was "leaking into normality".
She said: "It shrinks the pool of normality to a puddle, and there are going to be fewer people who won't end up having a diagnosis of mental illness."
The changes are due to appear in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) – the first time guidelines have been altered in 15 years.
The guide, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is used closely by mental health care professionals across the world.
The Journal of Mental Health, which Prof Wykes edits, contains a "health warning" about the planned changes in its latest issue, co-written by Prof Wykes and Dr Felicity Callard, from the Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
Prof Wykes said the proposal for diagnosing "at risk" patients may lead to unnecessary psychological or medical treatments.
Dr Callard added: "If this category were to be introduced the people likely to be given this diagnosis are going to be relatively young. What are the implications of someone receiving a diagnosis that is not a diagnosis of a disorder as such, but a potential disorder?"
….so that’s it. Please feel free to visit this website:-
http://www.eccentricclub.co.uk/
Friday, 4 June 2010
30 Years of Fry & Laurie - a Tribute?
I was up in town last week and for some strange reason - the same one that attracts the strange, odd and disaffected to me like dust - I was accosted by a small camera crew from Tiger Aspect Productions (no small-fry here - and no pun intended). “We’re putting together a programme to be broadcast later in the year", they said, " Thirty Years of Fry and Laurie, would you mind being interviewed?”
Normally I turn down things like this or fend them off with lines like “you’d have to speak to my Agent first”. But what they did not know was that about 25 years ago (in the late 1980s) I fleetingly worked on a couple of programmes that Fry & Laurie were involved with [Friday Night Live … or was it Saturday Night Live? and The Tube].
“Just don’t expect me to say anything complimentary about them”, I stung back, but the crew replied “No, that would be great”. So here are a few remembered questions and my replies:
Q: What’s your opinion about thirty years of Fry & Laurie?:
A: Well in their early days (A Bit Of Fry And Laurie) and most especially in Jeeves And Wooster they were superb and for many were the definitive couple - as Simon Cowell might say, they really nailed it. But then one got fat and neurotic and the other got thin, emaciated and psychotic and neither have produced anything of any worth since.......
Oops! [OK, maybe I forgot Blackadder]
Q: What's the first thought / word that comes into your mind when I say the name… Stephen Fry?
A: Over-exposed
Q: …and Hugh Laurie?
A: superb pianist.
Q: If you met them on the street, what would you like to say to them?: Stephen Fry?
A: Could you perhaps throw me a spare million pounds, please?
Q: …and Hugh Laurie?
A: why don’t you play the piano more often?
And that was it really. Well, all I can remember. I signed the Release Form and disappeared into the night. Most of it will probably end up on the cutting-room floor.
But seeing as they weren’t paying me for it, I felt justified in saying my bit.
Normally I turn down things like this or fend them off with lines like “you’d have to speak to my Agent first”. But what they did not know was that about 25 years ago (in the late 1980s) I fleetingly worked on a couple of programmes that Fry & Laurie were involved with [Friday Night Live … or was it Saturday Night Live? and The Tube].
“Just don’t expect me to say anything complimentary about them”, I stung back, but the crew replied “No, that would be great”. So here are a few remembered questions and my replies:
Q: What’s your opinion about thirty years of Fry & Laurie?:
A: Well in their early days (A Bit Of Fry And Laurie) and most especially in Jeeves And Wooster they were superb and for many were the definitive couple - as Simon Cowell might say, they really nailed it. But then one got fat and neurotic and the other got thin, emaciated and psychotic and neither have produced anything of any worth since.......
Q: What's the first thought / word that comes into your mind when I say the name… Stephen Fry?
A: Over-exposed
Q: …and Hugh Laurie?
A: superb pianist.
Q: If you met them on the street, what would you like to say to them?: Stephen Fry?
A: Could you perhaps throw me a spare million pounds, please?
Q: …and Hugh Laurie?
A: why don’t you play the piano more often?
But seeing as they weren’t paying me for it, I felt justified in saying my bit.
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Ready for my close-up, Mr. Scorsese
And so I tripped into London for a casting call - not one of those open castings with thousands lining up, this was more targeted, there were only four of us in the room.
It was for some film-maker chappie called Martin Scorsese (he wasn’t there) for his new film The Invention of Hugo Cabret, based on the children’s novel by Brian Selznick. I’m told it’s part novel, part comix, part picture-book visual adventure, I must go out and get a copy.
It’s about a young kid who lives in the tunnels of the Paris Metro of the 1930s -filming across the next few months in London and Paris. Apparently they’ve built a huge set at Shepperton of the main Metro concourse. Somewhere along the line the story involves Georges Melies, the pioneer of movie making (aha, hence the fascination for Scorsese?) - sorry I can’t seem to add the accents.
Believe it when you see it, of course: but the idea was we were commuters on the Metro in 1930s Paris and we are supposed to react negatively to this mad surrealist artist working away on the Metro walls and denounce his work.
What they didn't tell people (but what I found out) is: the artist is a cameo played by..... yeah, well let’s keep quiet about that one for now! It‘s always good to have a few secrets. (Suffice to say: be still my beating heart).
There were only about four of us up for the commuters so I might be in with a chance.
And they wanted to know whether I could “take direction”, I guess.
They said they liked the moustache but the side whiskers would have to go. The standard response in circumstances like this is: "for a price, I will", but secretly I was thinking "for Mr S, he can slash my wrists and film me bleeding to death, I don't care".....
Let's see what happens anyways. (It’s not even due in the cinemas until December 2011, and it‘ll be in 3-D).
It was for some film-maker chappie called Martin Scorsese (he wasn’t there) for his new film The Invention of Hugo Cabret, based on the children’s novel by Brian Selznick. I’m told it’s part novel, part comix, part picture-book visual adventure, I must go out and get a copy.
It’s about a young kid who lives in the tunnels of the Paris Metro of the 1930s -filming across the next few months in London and Paris. Apparently they’ve built a huge set at Shepperton of the main Metro concourse. Somewhere along the line the story involves Georges Melies, the pioneer of movie making (aha, hence the fascination for Scorsese?) - sorry I can’t seem to add the accents.
Believe it when you see it, of course: but the idea was we were commuters on the Metro in 1930s Paris and we are supposed to react negatively to this mad surrealist artist working away on the Metro walls and denounce his work.
What they didn't tell people (but what I found out) is: the artist is a cameo played by..... yeah, well let’s keep quiet about that one for now! It‘s always good to have a few secrets. (Suffice to say: be still my beating heart).
There were only about four of us up for the commuters so I might be in with a chance.
And they wanted to know whether I could “take direction”, I guess.
They said they liked the moustache but the side whiskers would have to go. The standard response in circumstances like this is: "for a price, I will", but secretly I was thinking "for Mr S, he can slash my wrists and film me bleeding to death, I don't care".....
Let's see what happens anyways. (It’s not even due in the cinemas until December 2011, and it‘ll be in 3-D).
Saturday, 8 May 2010
A day out in sunny…Walthamstow?
Saturday 8th May, 2010
A relaxing, if uninspiring, day. First, a casting call booked for 1.30.pm at Blackhorse Road (yes, I had to look it up too). It’s sort of north-east London, vaguely near Walthamstow - it hardly lifted my spirits, but still…onwards and upwards.
So I got out of the tube at Blackhorse Road and set foot onto a deserted wasteland, like an industrial business park that had been evacuated years ago through some nuclear alert. In fact, the area was epitomised by my visit to this place:-
I was running thirty minutes early for the call so, deftly dodging the drifting tumbleweed, I decided to go for a coffee, and this place was about fifty feet from the station. I entered and there were just two people sitting by the window and behind the counter was a forlorn looking aging Turk - you felt like: if he smiled, his face would be rent asunder. And there was no menu. Anywhere.
So I said, all chipper, “A cup of coffee please”.
“No coffee”, he moaned, “coffee machine broke”. I looked at his food cabinets, every one of them empty and I struggled to find any kind of food - and there they were: four lonely looking deflated croissants. And that was it.
So I left. Once outside I could not resist taking that photo (above), then off I went to the casting.
Casting was the usual stuff: snap, snap, snap, chat, chat, chat, thank you, we’ll let you know. I left the building (on this glorified business park) and, looking for a place to relieve myself - as you do when you reach my age - I turned a corner and was confronted by this.
Is it me, or do I just attract the weird? This fantasy of fibre-glass seemed to epitomise the strange and surreal day that was developing around me. And besides, if the sole reason for this blog is a chance to post this picture up, fine.
On my way home I decided to drop into Walthamstow. It was a dump in the 1960s when I was growing up and has succeeded in expanding its capacity for being even more of a dump ever since.
Today, the only reason I might visit the place on the off-chance is to drop into the sari shops along Walthamstow market to browse the fabrics for possible future waistcoats. What a disappointment. Times must be hard, there was nothing of any interest or stimulation fabric-wise. What has gone wrong?
And the market itself?: nothing special, the same as any other scuzzy old London market in decline. Identikit. Kiddies clothes and foreign footwear. Cheap shit.
Elections, hung parliaments and political paralysis mean little to these people. Look at their faces. Nothing has changed.
At least I had a chance to drop into Manze’s for some (delicious) pie and mash and not bad at £3.95 for one pie, one mash and licker (hot parsley sauce/gravy).
This place is probably the last remnant in Walthamstow market - in Walthamstow itself maybe! - of the “true” East End from the era that I grew up in (1950s/60s)…and the opportunity to admire the interiors. Sadly the marble-top and iron tables were no more, replaced by plastic ones - probably a victim of Health & Safety or Hygiene or something, no doubt.
I don’t know if this place has a Preservation Order on it, but it should have.
I could tell you how I also felt like following my meal with a plate of jellied eels (but I passed on that) - at least I shall save your stomachs churning at the thought…. I mean, what is it about jellied eels that seems to turn people off???? They are yummy.
…And that was it really….an odd sort of day piqued by two tiny moments: the strange and the sublime.
But is good old fashioned pie and mash enough to make me want to stay in the UK? Hardly. I shall purchase the latest copy of Living Abroad magazine and ponder on’t.
(At least I’m glad my mobile phone has a camera in it - here’s an early attempt to frame the mannequins picture).
A relaxing, if uninspiring, day. First, a casting call booked for 1.30.pm at Blackhorse Road (yes, I had to look it up too). It’s sort of north-east London, vaguely near Walthamstow - it hardly lifted my spirits, but still…onwards and upwards.
So I got out of the tube at Blackhorse Road and set foot onto a deserted wasteland, like an industrial business park that had been evacuated years ago through some nuclear alert. In fact, the area was epitomised by my visit to this place:-
I was running thirty minutes early for the call so, deftly dodging the drifting tumbleweed, I decided to go for a coffee, and this place was about fifty feet from the station. I entered and there were just two people sitting by the window and behind the counter was a forlorn looking aging Turk - you felt like: if he smiled, his face would be rent asunder. And there was no menu. Anywhere.
So I said, all chipper, “A cup of coffee please”.
“No coffee”, he moaned, “coffee machine broke”. I looked at his food cabinets, every one of them empty and I struggled to find any kind of food - and there they were: four lonely looking deflated croissants. And that was it.
So I left. Once outside I could not resist taking that photo (above), then off I went to the casting.
Casting was the usual stuff: snap, snap, snap, chat, chat, chat, thank you, we’ll let you know. I left the building (on this glorified business park) and, looking for a place to relieve myself - as you do when you reach my age - I turned a corner and was confronted by this.
Is it me, or do I just attract the weird? This fantasy of fibre-glass seemed to epitomise the strange and surreal day that was developing around me. And besides, if the sole reason for this blog is a chance to post this picture up, fine.
On my way home I decided to drop into Walthamstow. It was a dump in the 1960s when I was growing up and has succeeded in expanding its capacity for being even more of a dump ever since.
Today, the only reason I might visit the place on the off-chance is to drop into the sari shops along Walthamstow market to browse the fabrics for possible future waistcoats. What a disappointment. Times must be hard, there was nothing of any interest or stimulation fabric-wise. What has gone wrong?
And the market itself?: nothing special, the same as any other scuzzy old London market in decline. Identikit. Kiddies clothes and foreign footwear. Cheap shit.
Elections, hung parliaments and political paralysis mean little to these people. Look at their faces. Nothing has changed.
At least I had a chance to drop into Manze’s for some (delicious) pie and mash and not bad at £3.95 for one pie, one mash and licker (hot parsley sauce/gravy).
This place is probably the last remnant in Walthamstow market - in Walthamstow itself maybe! - of the “true” East End from the era that I grew up in (1950s/60s)…and the opportunity to admire the interiors. Sadly the marble-top and iron tables were no more, replaced by plastic ones - probably a victim of Health & Safety or Hygiene or something, no doubt.
I don’t know if this place has a Preservation Order on it, but it should have.
I could tell you how I also felt like following my meal with a plate of jellied eels (but I passed on that) - at least I shall save your stomachs churning at the thought…. I mean, what is it about jellied eels that seems to turn people off???? They are yummy.
…And that was it really….an odd sort of day piqued by two tiny moments: the strange and the sublime.
But is good old fashioned pie and mash enough to make me want to stay in the UK? Hardly. I shall purchase the latest copy of Living Abroad magazine and ponder on’t.
(At least I’m glad my mobile phone has a camera in it - here’s an early attempt to frame the mannequins picture).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
