The Cold Pigeons

Warning – spoiler for To Serve Them All My Days

Listening to a Radiophonic Workshop collection which my wife says sounds like someone pulling their ringlets and letting them spring back, but then again, the title of this entry is one step down from what she thinks is the name of The Arctic Monkeys.

My daughter had saved up a lot of money in order to buy various DVDs – Nanny McPhee being one of them. However, when we were out at the weekend, she frittered away a bit of it on various cheap and plastic items that are destined to clutter up the house and be thrown down the back of the Telly by youngest. When we were back on the Park-and-Ride bus I suggested that she needed to have a clear out and get rid of some things before any more was allowed in. Specifically, I said that she had to jettison some of the approximately 20 Barbie Dolls which fill one of her drawers in a way that suggests a scene from Team America which did not make the final cut. I said that she didn’t play with all the Barbies. There was an immediate and indignant response that she did, followed by a tense few seconds of folded-arms and pouting lips. Silence was eventually broken by “Well! I do play with the ones with heads!” Collapse of stout party!

I suspect that this may have something to do with her assertion that she is related to Royalty by virtue of her mother’s maiden name being the same as that of Mary Queen of Scots which suggests that a certain amount of the Barbie Noggin Lack is caused by re-enactment of said Queen’s demise. Oh to be seven again! Most of my play revolved around many Lego versions of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and those little saucer-shaped submarines that Jacques Cousteau used to drive – er – pilot – er fly? I did of course pronounce the name of the great undersea explorer in the official Anglicised version of JACKQUEES Cousteau which probably caused my father as much merriment as my daughter’s pronouncement on doll heads. Good name for a band that – The Doll Heads – which of course takes us in one big circle back to the title of this entry.

I suppose that should be the end of it but there is more. Poor Charles Kay died on the telly in front of us twice this weekend. Well the first time he was just dead already – stiff as a board in the headmaster’s office in To Serve Them All My Days – more on that later – and secondly diving from the window of a burning house in - I apologise for this – Midsomer Murders. I know this sounds like “I need some advice about a friend” but it is my wife who watches them – honest!.

Anyway – back to TSTAMD – Kay played the nasty headmaster who was given the job over PJ and Carter – and died of a heart-attack after not being supported by the Governors over his feud with David. I seem to remember the few minutes when David picked up the body to “make him more comfortable” were quite shocking because they were the first time I had seen a supposedly dead body for an extended time on screen. It was much more shocking than any number of cowboys or soldiers actually falling to the floor after being hit. It was quite unusual for the time. We are immune to this now having seen many grizzly bodies laid out on slabs in various cop shows. Having said this, Jonathan Miller’s The Body In Question was shown around this time and I remember my dad switching over to that after watching the news headlines and seeing Dr Miller and a tame pathologist in the middle of a no-holds-barred autopsy. Despite marrying a doctor, my dad is extremely squeamish and I thought he was going to be sick. As it was, I was uncomfortable going to bed. We had been asked to watch the programme by our biology teacher and I think there were some complaints from some of my classmates. Weeds! It turns out as well, that the poor subject of the slicing and dicing was a tramp with no one to object to his posthumous TV fame. It was not like the bloodless autopsies that Channel four shows these days …. But I don’t think I should go there, remembering one of my few readers’ reaction to a short story by Chuck Palahniuk. Think nice thoughts – hello Clouds – hello sky!