"Digger"

"Digger" starring Tom Cruise. I saw it today. It was not as I imagined it might be - about an Australian infantryman who dug trenches in World War I and played "Waltzing Matilda" on his grandfather's harmonica. No. This was something else entirely.

You have probably heard that "Digger" has been panned by many film critics and has nosedived at the box office. Many think it will lose more money than any other film in history. I am sure that the film makers never planned it that way. They probably thought that they had a big hit on their hands.

It was with that knowledge in mind that I went to see "Digger" anyway. Could it really be that bad? Surely, it had to have some merit. Thus I was at "The Showroom" for the 12.30 screening.

And I will say this about "Digger" - it held my attention throughout. I found it to be both odd and intriguing. 

At first you think you are watching a regular film about a megalomaniacal oil tycoon whose activity in the Arctic Circle is leading to an imminent climate disaster while he strokes his anamatromic  white cat. But as the film progresses you realise that that initial reality may be just an illusion. There's scenery, dressing rooms and an audience. You start to wonder what is real - if anything  and you wonder if the film really is commenting on the climate crisis. Is Digger himself meant to be a mere caricature?

It was hard to make sense of it all but there were many powerful cinematic moments. Officially it is a "dark comedy"  and there were certainly some chuckles along the way.

Perhaps "Digger" is  - as some critics have said - "up itself" but I did not feel disappointed as I walked home in sharp October sunshine. It was not predictable. It had used a range of clever film techniques and it contained some very capable film actors - not just Tom Cruise. 

If I lose interest in a film, my mind drifts away and I also look at my watch a few times with light borrowed from the silverscreen. That never happened with "Digger" so maybe it is not as awful as some are claiming. I was glad that I gave it a shot.

Beatles

Currently, I am reading a recently published book about The Beatles. It is titled, "John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs" and I like the approach that the writer takes. Each of the forty three short chapters focuses upon a different song from the Lennon and McCartney catalogue. Ian Leslie, the writer, is knowledgeable about the mechanics of music but he is also passionately interested in how The Beatles developed and how the selected songs reflected their evolution.

I was ten years old when The Beatles began to filter into Britain's consciousness - before they took America by storm. Though very young, I was already very much into popular music. Under the bed covers, I would listen to Radio Luxembourg on my transistor radio. The very first single that my brothers and I bought was "Return to Sender" by Elvis Presley. That came out in October 1962 and soon went to top spot in the charts. Another record that came out that month was "Love Me Do" by The Fab Four.

And that was when I started recording the British hit parade in a red exercise book. Every week I would write down the details of the top number and so I noted The Beatles' meteoric rise. "Please Please Me" hit number one in March 1963 and then they were off like a rocket ship.

Nothing before could compare with The Beatles. They had found their own provincial style, honed in Hamburg, Germany and they emerged into the light writing their own songs, making up their own musical rules as they went along. And of course at the heart of it all were two young men - John and Paul. They were both very aware of popular music trends in America.

Both of them had lost their mothers when they were far too young and John hardly knew his wayward father. They had grown up in post-war Britain, a country finding itself again. Old habits and certainties were being replaced and it was as if our nation's youth were ready to find their own music, their own heroes, leaving the past behind. You could rightfully claim that the circumstances were right for The Beatles and maybe The Rolling Stones too - along with several other lesser recording artists. Together they were breaking the mould.

This afternoon, I read the chapter titled "In My Life". Driven mostly by John, Paul helped to process it and give it its wings. However, at its core, you can still hear John, plaintively reaching out in his search for love and belonging. "In My Life" was recorded and first released in the last three months of 1965...

Memorial

Seeing the grave monuments to the Collins brothers at Shiregreen caused me to consider my own demise as I drove along the motorway to Hull this morning. Naturally, I was off to watch Hull City draw 2-2 at home to Everton.

I have decided that when I die, my family will be instructed to build a grassy mound in the middle of our local park - Endcliffe Park. On top of it will stand a marble statue of me in my prime. It will be twice my actual height making it exactly twelve feet tall.

The funeral ceremony itself will have no religious content whatsoever as I have never believed in that bumph. Instead there will be a couple of Yorkshire rock and roll bands - The Feisty Whippets and The Tweed Flat Caps along with poetry readings by two of my favourite bloggers - Steve Reed from London and Jennifer Barlow from South Carolina. 

Meike Riley will sing "Nessun Dorma" which means "no one shall sleep" and using only a ceremonial stainless steel garden spade, Roger (Cro Magnon) will be charged with digging the hole into which my bio-degradable cardboard casket will be lowered.

Australian bloggers Elsie and Andrew will perform an unclothed aboriginal war dance and Bob  Slatten who blogs out of Camden, South Carolina will take the mike from Meike to sing  "In The Ghetto" by Elvis.

It will be a marvellous affair - long to be remembered in the annals of Sheffield folklore. Afterwards, the thronging  crowd will be directed to Sheffield United's BramalL Lane Stadium where local Asian restaurateurs  will have prepared a sumptuous curry meal that no one present will ever forget as the  RAF Red Arrows  aeronautical display team weaves crisscross patterns in the sky.

If the Collins brothers  funeral legacy was meant to be impressive, it will not be a patch on my own. Yes that is the way I want it and it has all been clearly written down in my last will and testament. To defy my dying wishes would be abhorrent, almost unthinkable and frankly - sacrilegious.

Monuments

Not much happened today. The weather seemed temperamental with the distinct possibility of rain so a long country walk seemed out of the question.

Instead, I decided to drive over to the north eastern edge of Sheffield to visit Shiregreen Cemetery. It's something that I had been tempted to do for a while - ever since I first heard about the grave of William Collins. Anyway, today I got round to it.

"Who was William Collins?" I hear you ask. He was a member of Sheffield's traveller community with his roots in Ireland. He was born in Athlone in 1970 and died of natural causes in Puerto Pollensa, Majorca in 2020. He was without doubt a tough guy, famed for his boxing skills and at one time he was a bare knuckle fighter. In his community, he was known as "Big Willy Collins" and "The King of Sheffield". There were hundreds of mourners at his lavish funeral.

Following his interrment, his family spent thousands on a unique white marble monument with various interesting features - including a full-size statue of William in his boxing days and two large planters in the shape of boxing gloves.

The erection of this £200,000 monument attracted various complaints and Sheffield City Council claimed  that the family had not acquired the proper permissions. 

Then two years ago, another of the Collins brothers died. He was Michael Collins - born in 1973. He was buried close to his older brother but this time the family chose black marble for the thirty tonne grave monument. Again, it has several interesting features - including a juke box with a pint of Guinness and a Diet Coca Cola can carved on the front of it. I guess that Michael liked records or perhaps it is there to provide background music  for his afterlife.

When I got home, a little research told me two other brothers are buried in Shiregreen Cemetery. They were Terry and Anthony. Apparently, the latter was murdered by a drug dealer several years ago.

Personally I do not mind the lavish monuments. They are not harming anyone and if that's how the Collins family wished to honour their deceased loved ones then in my view it was up to them. William and Michael both died far too young which must have made their deaths feel all the more tragic.

Death

Today, mostly for a bit of exercise, I walked a mile to the "Waitrose" store by the inner city ring road. I made a few purchases - including two jars of Italian roast coffee granules, two bottles of my favoured "Essential Care" shampoo and conditioner and half a dozen eggs. Then I caught a bus home.

Almost as soon as I got in I noticed our main kitchen window. It was now smeared or something. It wasn't like that when I left the house.

"What's happened to the kitchen window?" I asked Shirley.

"Well I heard something hit it. I think it might have been a pigeon."

She asked me to look closer and I agreed with her that the ghostly shape seemed to suggest a pigeon's wings and beak and it was just the right size, If a pigeon had flown into the window glass, it was the first time it had happened in the thirty seven years we have lived in this house.

"Well was it a pigeon? Did you go outside to look?"

"No," said Shirley. "I was too frightened!"

"What?"

So Brave Sir Pudding unlocked the back door and sure enough, under the kitchen window was our kamikaze wood pigeon. Now deceased, kapput, no more, gone to pigeon heaven.

There was no funeral ceremony. Instead I picked the dead pigeon up by one of its wings and took it up the garden where it could nourish other creatures - magpies, crows and perhaps one of our neighbourhood foxes.

I found a big black folder and held it up to the window so that Shirley could capture the impact image with her smartphone (see top picture) and then five minutes later, two magpies were pecking at the pigeon's carcass. Later there was a hungry crow and as evening fell, a fox appeared at the feast, licking his lips.

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And as I consider death, yesterday was my 73rd birthday so I myself am  a year closer to pigeon heaven now. We invited our next door neighbours - Jill and Tony to lunch out in The Peak District. I share my birthday with Jill who is now well into her eighties. I booked a table at "The Barrel Inn" in the hamlet of Bretton.

You go up narrow, winding lanes to reach the remote pub. At the gravel pull-in on Sir William Hill, I spotted a blue camper van and thought to myself - I have seen that van before!  Incredibly, it belongs to Ashley - a vlogger I blogged about here. And there was Ashley just outside the van putting her dog Apollo on his lead!

I determined that I would stop to speak with her after the lunch date but when we went back that way, the blue van was gone! I think the mathematical chances of such a sighting happening are incredibly remote. Almost like winning The National Lottery but with no five million pound prize attached!

Later, we had spaghetti at Frances's house and there was a lovely chocolate cake that Shirley had baked and decorated. Of course both Phoebe and Margot needed to have their own goes at blowing out my candles with repeat singing of the "Happy Birthday" song.

As humbly requested, Phoebe portrayed a tiger in her grandpa's homemade birthday card...

You might be able to make out an abstract fellow who is stroking the tiger and saying, "I love Tigers". That my friends, is a depiction of the author of this blog!

Enhancement

Over at Microsoft Image Creator, new AI tools are being created all the time. A new offering allows users to quickly enhance old photographs - bringing them alive as never before. Here are two pictures I have recently put through the system . They are both of my late parents - Philip and Doreen.

They married in New Delhi, India having met there in the early nineteen forties. They were both in the Royal Air Force and had been sent to India along with thousands of other British servicemen and women who had signed up for military service in 1940.

My mother was from a coal-mining family in South Yorkshire and my father was from a humble family of North Yorkshire farm workers. I believe the picture below was taken in Rajasthan, during their brief honeymoon in early 1946 - before they returned home to England. World War II was over by then and the Japanese imperial threats upon India had been successfully averted. Mum would have been twenty five and Dad would have been thirty one.

Eighteen years later and they now live in the village schoolhouse where I was born in the middle of The East Riding of Yorkshire. Dad is now fifty years old and Mum is forty three. In both pictures she is holding a cigarette. Dad is the village school's headmaster. 

I know exactly when this picture was taken because I was the photographer. It's Saturday October 10th 1964 - two days after my eleventh birthday. I had been given my first camera and this picture was one of the first thirty six I ever took. I developed and printed them myself with my father's guidance.

They were just about to drive to Hull to shop at the "Savemore Stores" near King Billy's golden statue. They did that most Saturday mornings - saving money to feed a family of six.

Behind them is the old schoolhouse and the Bedford van that my father bought with a view to transporting school sports teams in it even though it was primarily a "family car".

Well, I was quite happy with both enhanced images above. Then I asked Microsoft Image Creator to enhance the following picture. It is of my coal-mining great grandfather -  Arthur Jackson, the father of my mother's father Wilfred Henry Jackson...

And here's the AI enhanced picture...

But wait a minute! The picture has not just been enhanced. It has utterly changed my great grandfather's head and hairstyle. No longer do we see a proud, timeworn coal miner in his best suit. Instead, we seem to be looking at a well-groomed bank manager or a headteacher. It was most disappointing to me that AI had the audacity to do such a thing. And the chair back is very different too. 

Here's a close up of Arthur Jackson's head as he stares at us from a hundred years ago:-

And here's the AI impostor, sans moustache:-

At least the AI enhanced images of my parents did not turn them into other people. They are recognisably themselves.

Quiztime

 

In this big wide world there are many strange or funny place names. I am going to give you ten such place names and you are invited to match them up with the jumbled answers given below - all countries or two American states. I feel sure that some visitors will have been to these places. Good luck! (You'll need it!)

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PLACES...

1. Shitagoo Lake
2. Condom
3. Shit
4. Horneytown
5. Piles
6. Bottom Bush Scenic Reserve
7. Rectum
8. Mount Fanny
9. Dickshooter
10. Shitterton

COUNTRIES... 

a) Spain
b) Netherlands
c) New Zealand
d) Iran
e) Australia
f)  France
g)  Canada
h) England
i) North Carolina USA
j) Idaho USA

How did you do?