Same procedure as every year!

 

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Dinner for One is watched all over the world on December 31st. The 18-minute British comedy sketch, recorded in 1963, holds the Guinness World Record for the most frequently aired television programme.

It is a particularly crucial part of Germany’s festive programming, where it has been broadcast since 1972. Around half the population still tunes in on New Year’s Eve to watch it; some Germans recreate the meal served in the skit, and serve Mulligatawny soup accompanied by dry Sherry, North Sea haddock with white wine, chicken with Champagne, and fruit for dessert served with a fine port wine.

In 2018 the German Post Office unveiled a set of commemorative stamps featuring its characters. One of its lines — "the same procedure as every year" — has become something of a catchphrase in the country.

 

 

Filmed in grainy black-and-white, the routine involves Miss Sophie (May Warden), who is celebrating her 90th birthday with James, her butler (Freddie Frinton). She has outlived her four closest friends and so insists that James impersonate them all in turn. They are an eclectic bunch. First is Sir Toby, a raspy-voiced northerner. Next up is Admiral von Schneider, who raises his toasts with a loud “Skol!” Then comes the turn of Mr Pommeroy, who speaks in an alarmingly high-pitched falsetto. The last guest is Mr Winterbottom, Miss Sophie’s "very dear friend", who is a booze-swilling lecher.

"Dinner for One" is the greatest cult film you’ve never heard of, but now, thanks to me, you have! Allow us to wish you Feliz Año Nuevo, Bonne Année, Boldog Új Évet Kivánok, Gott nytt år, С Новым годом, Felice anno nuovo, Prosit Neujahr, and Happy New Year. And don't forget: it's the same procedure as every year! (nudge nudge wink wink)

 

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Did Ne Win read Norman Lewis' "Golden Earth"?

 

A rare signed First Edition from 1952 of "Golden Earth"
Read the book here

 

My year spent in Burma in 1975 shaped much of my personal and professional life like no other time before or since. Burma was then still under the regime of its military dictator Ne Win and his particular "Burmese Way to Socialism" (Burmese: မြန်မာ့နည်းမြန်မာ့ဟန် ဆိုရှယ်လစ်စနစ်)

Madman Ne Win, using a slaphappy mixture of Buddhism and socialism, eliminated all private enterprise, expelled all foreigners, and sealed up the country's borders. When he took over, the country had been the foremost exporter of rice, and even today it is rich in teak, vast quantities of rubies, even oil. Yet with one wave of his wand, he managed to put the entire country to sleep. In 1974, it had emerged from its solitary confinement just long enough to announce its willingness to enter into joint-venture projects. My new employers, TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were the beneficiaries of one such joint-venture, and I became their chief accountant.

Had Ne Win, who came to power in 1962, taken a leaf out of Norman Lewis' 1952-book "Golden Earth"? Then, Norman Lewis had written, "The Burmese way of life has never been based on unnecessary consumption, and there is no reason why it ever should. It is as good as any, as it is."

 

"Even in the present state of tragic disorder the Burmese can still export annually several million tons of rice. All that is necessary, then, is to cure the people of their infantile craving for manufactured trash from overseas that fills their markets, and to import only essential medicines, hospital equipment, means of transport and agricultural machinery. If necessary a little teak could be cut, and oil pumped to help pay for this. While the population stays at its present level the Burmese need neither kolhozes nor Boulder Dams (nor, since they cannot afford an atomic pile, do they need armaments), and there is no mysterious natural law which compels a country to produce a greater population than its own soil can support. Above all, they do not need the glittering baubles described in the advertisement sections of American magazines. The Burmese way of life has never been based on unnecessary consumption, and there is no reason why it ever should. It is as good as any, as it is ... Herein lies a simple blueprint for Utopia."
Page 270

 

It's been almost fifty years since I left Burma. I began to regret my decision to leave even as the creaky old "Union of Burma" plane was taxiing for take-off from Mingaladon, Burma's only international airport, and I have never really stopped regretting leaving this "Golden Land".

 

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Steaming to Bamboola

 

 

After a long Christmas weekend when we didn't know what day it was - and we had been binge-eating on Christmas cookies and binge-watching WHITECHAPEL followed by SPOOKS - Monday morning has dawned and we are back to normal, whatever normal may be.

It has been a long Christmas tradition of ours not to buy each other any Christmas presents because neither of us really knows what the other really wants, so why bother, but Padma, on her last grocery shopping spree, had found herself inside K-Mart where she looked for a last-minute book present for me. Can you imagine buying any sort of meaningful book at K-Mart? Anyway, amongst all that dross she found Anthony Hopkins' "We did Ok, Kid" and "The Endless Sky" by Di Morrissey.

Not wanting to offend her, I made an effort to at least find out on the double-double-double-u who Di Morissey is, but got sidetracked by one of those algorithm-generated advertisement in the margins which displayed the book "Steaming to Bamboola". How does AI know more about my reading preferences than my own wife? Anyway, I'm caught!

 

 

The good thing about books published as long ago as 1952 is that you can find them on www.archive.org where I have since started reading Christopher Buckley's book - if only to "test-drive" it prior to placing my order on ebay - and I've also found the above interview with Peter Robinson. What a beautiful camaraderie between two longtime friends! And only minutes into the YouTube clip, I have already learned what a 'knish' is and also the meaning of 'Bamboola'. Di Morissey can wait!

 

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What do you think this is - book week?

 

 

We all had them growing up, miserly old bloke school teachers who’d rather be anywhere than the schoolyard. Well, they've now made a movie about one: "Book Week".

Filmed in the Blue Mountains (that's in New South Wales, Des), the film takes the time-honoured school tradition of Book Week, where kids dress up as their favourite characters from books, as its backdrop.

 

 

Mr Cutler, a drunk, cop-bribing, strip-joint loving teacher and disgraced author looking for redemption, hates teaching literature. Not only does he have to 'teach' rather than 'do', but he's also left with the realisation that kids these days just aren't that into reading. The one bright spot comes in the form of a trashy zombie novel Cutler's managed to pen. Staring down the barrel of a return to the literary scene, Cutler's got to fight against his worse impulses and keep it together for Book Week.

While this little Aussie movie got some pretty mixed reviews, David Stratton's three stars were enough for me to lash out ten dollars for it on ebay. Or maybe it reminded me of the old response to a request, implying that one is being unfairly imposed on or taken for a fool, which was so prevalent in Australia in the sixties but never heard again since.

 

 

"I'm just going to have my dog shit on your lawn, hope it's ok?"

"Come on, mate, what do you think this is, bush week??"

 

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Once we cease to dream, it is simply time for us to die.

 

Click here to open the online book
in a separate window

 

In 1975 I worked in Burma and lived, for the first six months at least, in Rangoon's Inya Lake Hotel which, together with the Strand Hotel, was one of Rangoon's two luxury hotels. However, Burma, being then the most isolated country in South-East Asia, allowed us no access to Western goods, Western food or Western books, and so my employers, TOTAL-Compagnie Française des Pétroles, sent me on a shopping trip to Singapore.

Knowing nothing about Singapore, I had booked myself into a hotel also called the Strand which I assumed to be of a similar standard to Rangoon's. Today's website certainly suggests that it has received a major make-over but back then it was a real dive in what was a very unsanitary Bencoolen Street.

I spent my evenings along Singapore's famous (or then infamous) Bugis Street which was just around the corner ...

 

 

... and my days inside the MPH Bookshop (which these days no longer exists except online) where I became acquainted with W. Somerset Maugham's Short Stories, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the large collection of James A. Michener's novels.

James Michener's novel The Drifters became my much-loved and much-read 'Bible' during those footloose and fancy-free years, and I completely fell under its spell. The novel follows six young characters from diverse backgrounds and various countries as their paths meet and they travel together through parts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Mozambique: Joe, a disenfranchised twenty-year-old youth who is enrolled at the University of California during the Vietnam War; Britta, an 18-year-old girl from Tromsø, Norway; Monica who lives with her father in the African Republic of Vwarda; Cato, the son of the Reverend Claypool Jackson; Yigal, the son of a dean at a college in Haifa, Israel; and Gretchen, a very intelligent girl from Boston who, at the age of 19, has already completed her bachelors degree, and is working for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign.

The story is told from the perspective of the narrator, George Fairbanks, who is an investment analyst for the fictional company World Mutual Bank in Switzerland. Mr. Fairbanks is connected with nearly every character in some way, and they all seem to open up to him throughout the novel in one way or another.

Strangely, I didn't identify with any of the young people but with Harvey Holt, who is introduced only in the ninth chapter. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is a fan of classical music and old movies and very old-fashioned. Enough said?

 

 

I dread to think that today I should perhaps identify with Britta's father who was a radio operator during the war whose mission it was to alert the Allies to the arrival of German ships in Norway, and who dreams of going to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) once the war is over. As Britta grows up she watches her father endlessly listening to Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers during the endless arctic nights while his dream slowly fades into a distant vision never to be realised. I don't even like Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers! Carmen yes; The Pearl Fishers no!

Fifty years later I only marvel at Michener's genius in having made me once enjoy a 700-plus page book about a group of unlikeable characters who no longer resonate with me. I guess the permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality, and the permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. Perhaps Michener's message is that once we cease to dream, it is simply time for us to die.

 

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