Love and Liberty

“I have the Loyhargil – nothing can stop me now!”

Celebrating today’s release of Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 24 Blu-ray, I’ve been transported back to the time with a tune in my head that just won’t stop: Nathan Jones by Bananarama, with a very different chorus. 

Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 24 Blu-ray cover: the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), in cream jacket and hat, bearing spoons, framing the Rani and a set of monsters

I’ve been trying to write something very serious and meaningful that ties in to the far end of Sylv as the Doctor. That’s grinding very slowly, so here’s something very silly and shallow tying in to the beginning of Sylv as the Doctor instead.

“Leave the Girl – It’s the Man I Want!” Season 24 titles triumphant in 67 varieties by  @paulxdesign (badgewolf on Redbubble)

Subtitle for missing graphic: In the absence of any skill with Photoshop, imagine I’ve done a Bananarama single with the heads replaced by Mary Tamm, Lalla Ward and Kate O’Mara. I haven’t, but you can imagine it.

Nathan Jones single, back cover – Bananarama strike an X-pose! Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin (heads up) and, in the middle, the other one (Jacquie O'Sullivan, head down)

Play loud!

Time and the Rani By Romanabarmikarma

You sacked your man, as I recall

When ratings slowly down they fall

You said that you’d be back someday to relaunch fine

And all you needed was just a little Time [Lord]

Woah, Summer’s passed, you’re back this Fall

Time and the Rani [Oh Heaven help me] – exploding balls!

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

If a fanboy could die of fear

Colin cancelled, a well of tears

It seems that you’re folding – where’s the encore?

Was there no room on the box for you no more?

Woah! Sylv is cast, and I’m enthralled

(Though against Corrie [How very sorry] you can’t walk tall)

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

[Spoon crashes: Ur-ak! Bring me Loyhargil!]

[Spoon crashes: Ur-ak! Bring me Loyhargil!]

[Spoon crashes: Ur-ak! Bring me Loyhargil!]

Woah!

[Spoon crashes: Ur-ak! Bring me Loyhargil!]

Woah, Summer’s passed, you’re back this Fall

Time and the Rani [Oh Heaven help me] – exploding balls!

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

Doctor Who – at last you’re back on 

Michael Grade – You’ve been wrong too long

Michael Grade – You’ve been wrong too long…

“Loyhargil!” The Rani in orgasmic triumph

Forthcoming hits by Romanabarmikarma include:

I Heard a Cleaner (Yellow Kangs Are Best)

Quite Relaxed Summer (If You Ignore the Genocide)

Love in the Minus-a-hundred-and-ninety-third Degree

Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Skaro Goodbye

Every Shade of Pink aka Really Saying Something

It Ain’t Very New (It’ll Do, So Screw It)

Shy Fanboy

Nicholas Courtney’s Waiting… (Let’s Get A Round In)

Creature Man

Love, Faith and Haemovores 

Look At My Eyes (Hypnotic Master) aka Cheers Then

And after that…

I Want You Back.

Romanabarmikarma Hits – an irresistible mix of Bananarama and Keff McCulloch. You can check the real titles against my puns.

Though if you really want Doctor Who in the charts – well, the next year it’s the KLF, obviously. But the year after there’s New Order: Round and Round, the first 20 seconds of which sound so like a Keff McCulloch tribute band it’s like licking a polychromatic lizard explosion.

Labels: Bananarama, Doctor Who, Music, Sylvester McCoy

 

Last year I Tweeted a different song every day for a #30DaySongChallenge. Only one drawback: I’d read ahead and there were several questions I just didn’t want to think about. So I Tweeted for thirty days anyway – just answering for Day 1, thirty times (never let it be said that once I think up a terrible joke or a diversionary tactic I don’t flog both to death).

 

Besides, it turns out there really are a lot of really great songs with colours in them.

 

I’ve picked today (the anniversary of somewhere-in-the-middle-of-it) to collect these into a post because (in the middle of not an easy time) the most fun of the lot is both the colour grey – not anyone’s first choice for joy – and a car – not mine – and yet…

 

 

 

1 – Goldfinger

Saluting Honor Blackman – and because it’s so magnificent I’d have picked it anyway.

 

There are several here I really don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

At the same time last year I was Tweeting a James Bond favourite every day too, but properly. Not all my picks were Goldfinger… But top Bond theme was, obviously (as one Bond composer put it, “If you’re dead, you wake up for that”). I’ve already turned that set into a blog post – worth reading for the one-liners.

  

1 – Tired of Midnight Blue (George Harrison)

A brilliantly bluesy piano number unexpectedly turns up to give extra texture.

And it’d gone midnight, and I was tired, so…

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – The Red Shoes (Kate Bush)

Fantastic in several senses, with bonus colours on the same album in Why Should I Love You?

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Union City Blue (Blondie)

Coolly iconic. Also, their:

Put Some Color On You

Much newer Blondie, and a real stomper. Love it (but not appropriately social-distancing).

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Theme from The Black Hole

Queasy swirling weirdness underpinned by magnificently threatening ‘What A Magnificent Vista (Were It Not Being Swallowed By This Endless Maw Into Hell)’ John Barry strings.

[A couple of months ago I performed a scientific observer bias test and found that I mainly hear the unsettling weaving weirdness if I’m watching the wireframe spiral on screen, while mainly notice the orchestral underpinning if I’m just listening rather than getting the visual cues.]

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – The White Tree (Howard Shore)

A magnificent, uplifting fanfare to light the Beacons of Gondor and send flame rushing to the West.

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Moonlight and Gold (Gerry Rafferty)

A gorgeous love song yearning through the night to the dawn (from North and South, probably his best album).

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Grey Cortina (Tom Robinson Band)

I don’t care about cars at all, but too many car songs are just too much fun.

This is probably the most lively and joyous of the lot.

A year ago today!

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Dazzling Blue (Paul Simon)

Percussive, laid back groove.

You see? I can pick songs from the last decade.

The artist’s been around since long before I was born, obviously.

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Yellow Submarine (The Beatles)

(I’d’ve made this an earlier 1, but didn’t want it to be the obvious ‘cramped in a small space and can’t go outside’ and lose its fun)

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Old Brown Shoe (The Beatles)

So lively! Wowsa George fast-bubbling bass and lead. A very ‘A’ B-side.

Bonus: For You Blue, the most bouncily happy of blues.

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Mr Blue Sky (Electric Light Orchestra)

Because you can’t beat a bit of ELO.

Glorious (especially as the close of Concerto For a Rainy Day).

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Blue Monday (New Order)

Inspired electro-dance downbeat-beat-beat-beat-beat to get you going without admitting you want to.

Just how I should feel today…

 

Presses repeat on ‘There are several…’ meta-gag

[And if you’re wondering why I kept in all of those, now you know. Really‽ Really]

 

 

1 – Blue Savannah (Erasure)

A rather lovely swirling ballad with a simple but hugely memorable video (which sends me on my way back to Goldfinger; don’t try this at home)

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – GoldenEye (Tina Turner)

An outstanding Bond theme and terrific performance (great video, too).

Up there with She’s a Mystery to Me as the best ever of Bono and the Edge.

[I compiled all 40 – no, you read correctly – into a playlist today, only to find this was the only one I’d not imported into iTunes and couldn’t find the CD single. Looking it up, though I own the single edit (technically, somewhere), there is a longer album edit, so I didn’t feel bad about buying that just now to complete the set. Just for once, the longer version’s not as good. The film edit ends with a bang.]

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – California Blue (Roy Orbison)

Rather lovely in its yearning (I reminded myself of it with yesterday’s).

And why not add the other Traveling Wilburys in New Blue Moon?

[I coincidentally sequenced this for Roy’s birthday (April 23rd) and didn’t notice until afterwards.]

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Every Shade of Blue (Bananarama)

Last night was rough [356 nights ago, but so was last night and it’s a fair bet so will the next] and I was up most of it, so despite the lyrics this is a more upbeat listen in daylight.

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Strike Me Pink (Deborah Harry)

Melting coolness from Debravation. Evocative song, great album title (still waiting for Debravity).

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – White Wedding (Billy Idol)

A roar of excitement!

I was scheduled to go with White Room (Cream), but that day was our semiversary [April 26^th, mid-way from October 26^th]. I think I prefer this one, too!

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Morse Moose and the Grey Goose (Paul McCartney & Wings)

A great sound from London Town – fuzzing guitar and groovy bass. Love a track that starts big and builds!

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

1 – Blond and Blue (Tom Robinson)

An unhappy love song…

and

Green (Tom Robinson)

A – much more upbeat – savage bit of satire:

“It’s an eco-revolution using market forces / As we carry on guzzling the world’s resources”

 

[insert daily recycled line]

 

 

1 – Gold (Spandau Ballet)

Always believe in your soul!

Big sound, Lib Dem anthem, and I had this lined up before seeing Twitter full of fancying Martin Kemp that evening [can I remember why? Did I even know at the time?].

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Grey Day (Madness)

Doom-laden chimes, heavy piano, distorted guitar, despairing lyrics – probably their most downbeat hit, and possibly my favourite.

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Jack In the Green (Jethro Tull)

Feels more Beltane this morning [May 1^st] than my scheduled The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine (though I could really do with one of those).

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Paint It Black (Rolling Stones)

Black Sunrise (Marc Almond)

And not in the title but very much in tone, My Little Town (Simon and Garfunkel)

[Yes, it was getting close to the end and I realised I’d come up with way more than 30 songs]

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)

An incredible sound and – appropriately purple – embraced in performance as distinctly bi:

that girl put a spell on me / ’scuse me while I kiss this guy

 

Several I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Mellow Yellow (Donovan)

Something a bit cheery and relaxing for a new week (same as the old week) when being mostly more incredibly stressed and angry Yellow.

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

 

1 – Yellow (Jodie Whittaker)

Rather beautiful.

 

Green Grow the Rushes…

Oh! You’re thinking REM; I’m thinking John Steed (Patrick Macnee) resisting mind control. And tune control.

[See The Avengers – Too Many Christmas Trees. And you should.]

 

There are some here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time.

 

 

1 – Golden Brown (The Stranglers)

Gorgeous. Always planned for the penultimate day, alongside eerie

Blue Veils and Golden Sands (Delia Derbyshire)

Yet suddenly mournful.

[This was May 6th, getting the schedule slightly wrong so one day late for Delia Derbyshire, but coincidentally also having just seen the news that Stranglers keyboard player Dave Greenfield had passed away]

 

There are several here I don’t want to face, but I cope (when I do) one day at a time…

 

When I first saw the challenges on this list, I thought:

‘Oh no; this one, this, and that would just be too disheartening to go into – I can’t do it.’

And I wouldn’t have, but immediately the old eye-roller ‘Deal with problems one day at a time!’ popped into my head…

Which is how I realised:

‘Oh, I couldn’t. Could I? That would be a terrible, awful gag, and I’d have to keep it going long, long after it stopped being funny.

‘I could!’

And so I’ve been re-setting to day one at a time every day for twenty-nine days.

One more. Just one.

Or is it?

 

 

1 – 99 Red Balloons / 99 Luftballons (Nena)

At last, a number – could this be Day 2?

…No.

30 days on, it’s the end of the run and end of the world.

And one last colour, after all.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the songs in your ears and colours in your eyes! I did.

 

  

  

 

Labels: Fragments, Memes, Music

7/7/77 – who could resist launching a James Bond film on double double sevens? The Spy Who Loved Me opened 43 years ago tonight. Though it’s the first Bond I remember seeing advertised – kids at school had the car-submarine toy! – I was much too young to see it on the big screen. We finally did three years ago, in a UNICEF Benefit double bill with For Your Eyes Only (the first Bond I did see at the cinema) celebrating the life of Roger Moore. They made an unexpectedly successful pairing. When we got in from our night at the Greenwich Odeon, I typed up what I thought about each, and both, and the bits that each film might do better swapping between them…

Now, I know what you’re thinking: that’s a strange choice. Why not The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker? Because that would be like having a massive chocolate gateau followed by an even more massive chocolate gateau. No, scratch that – it is, apparently, World Chocolate Day and that’s making me hungry. I’ll start again. Because that would be like watching the same film You Only Live Twice in a row. Tonally, these do interestingly different things (though I reckon one’s more successful in what it sets out to do). Neither is my favourite Roger Moore Bond film, but they’re the massive success on its own terms, and the critical success that shows his range. And there’s something else: at our showing, the trailers before the double bill were all late middle-aged dreary, and we weren’t interested in any of them. Then, I remember… The very last one starts. Rey’s hand on a rock. John Williams’ music. Into my head comes the thought, ‘Every member of the audience is sighing, “Finally!”’ just as I, too, breathe out with relief. And at that exact moment, Luke Skywalker says, “Breathe.” But the even better trailer came at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me: “James Bond Will Return in For Your Eyes Only”. And for that one night only, he did.

Spoilers follow.

To Begin With…

The Spy Who Loved Me stars Roger Moore as James Bond. Barbara Bach is the Bond woman, KGB Major Anya Amasova, Bond’s competitor and one of the few who’s a proper opposite number. Curd Jürgens is the megalomaniac villain, Karl Stromberg, lurking in his (usually) underwater base, Atlantis. And Richard Kiel is Jaws, the giant hench with the steel teeth. With bonus Lotus submersible car, previous James Bond (voice) George Baker and Doctor Who’s Space James Bond star Edward de Souza. Russian and British nuclear subs have vanished, swallowed by Stromberg’s supertanker with the even bigger jaws in a plan to start World War III… The poster’s justified in saying this is the big one – everything you expect from a Bond film and Moore, with a massive world-spanning plot, sets so huge they had to build the world’s biggest stage, and the biggest, most outrageous ski jump in cinema history, they threw everything into Bond to see if it could still be a blockbuster: they doubled the previous film’s box office.

For Your Eyes Only stars Roger Moore as James Bond. Carole Bouquet is the Bond woman, crossbow-wielding Melina Havelock out to avenge her murdered parents. But which gangster is the villain? Could it be, as first appears, cheery Columbo (Topol)? Or will it be, in a twist, Kristatos (Villainous Julian Glover)? It’s definitely not Ernst Stavro Blofeld, whatever the pre-titles sequence might suggest. With a more interesting role than usual for Walter Gotell’s KGB General Gogol and an early one for Charles Dance. On the surface it’s a Cold War plot chasing a sunken British nuclear submarine ATAC targeting device, but deeper down it’s about the local catspaws, the people who get caught in the crossfire and who’s out for revenge on who. This one gets the critical praise for being the sober, serious Bond film. In theory…

The Spy Who Loved Me

“Just keeping the British end up, sir.”

The pre-credits adventure grabs your attention as we’re introduced to new Bond regular General Gogol, the KGB chief who brings charisma and ambiguity to the series as the Cold War comes back (though more often than not with Britain and the USSR in uneasy alliance). Points for the film’s first twist: Gogol calls in his top agent – not Michael Billington’s sexily hairy sub-Bond, who turns out merely to be Major Amasova’s lover. Add sexual innuendo (“something came up”), corniness (“But James, I need you!” “So does England”), a ski chase to great music and an incredible jump off a cliff with a Union Flag parachute, and the movie’s off to an unbeatable start even before the song cuts in.

When you think of James Bond, perhaps it’s the action, the quips, the women, the cars, the villains? For me – well, yes, it’s the villains – a major part what I think of any Bond film is in the music. Give me a bold belter of a theme song with an acid edge, then a brassy, gorgeous score that says ‘What a fantastic vista’, ideally by John Barry. But the music takes a definite swerve for both of these films. Now, you might think, ‘Hit song, but no John Barry, and that’s your problem’. Well… Not quite. The strange thing about The Spy Who Loved Me is that Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better is a massive hit, while Marvin Hamlisch is more disco than the strident, insistent traditional Bond score, but I prefer the score to the song. The pulsing disco of Bond ’77 races along with some serious energy, the eerie, bubbling approach to Atlantis is a great new direction, and this is a composer who gets it – as you might guess from the Bond music documentary in which he was the one who said of Goldfinger’s “Wah wahhh-wah!” opening, “If you’re dead, you wake up for that.” Whereas Nobody Does It Better is a statement of intent with great knowing confidence, but it doesn’t have the bite for me and only lets rip towards the end. The title sequence that goes with it is the first to feature Bond himself, again the statement of intent, though the Maurice Binder naked goose-stepping Russian ‘girlies’ and guns are even more sexist than it sounds.

Odd things I’d never noticed until seeing the film on the big screen: a young, slim Kevin R McNally rushing about on a sub; Stromberg’s underwater-and-sometimes-looming-over-the-water base Atlantis initially being a disappointment, as it should be city-sized but the bigger the picture, the smaller it seems when we first see it rising from the depths. But later, when we get snap-round camera moves and forced perspectives, I believed.

The movie’s other massive special effect – Jaws – is hugely effective. And pretty huge. And though inspired by the book that they weren’t allowed to use (and not allowed to use SPECTRE either, a film that’s so very definitely present but built on absences), he’s part of the pop-culture riffing that’s especially there for the first half (and the Bond film riffing for the whole thing). We see a shark – reference to hit movie Jaws – and a horrible kill. Then we get not the shark but the man named – Jaws. Then he goes up against the shark. And wins! This is Bond saying ‘We are the blockbusters.’ Though even this film’s box office success was nowhere near Jaws’, it’s got the same chutzpah as Nobody Does It Better: enormous confidence in itself after following fashion for two movies, yet never tipping into arrogance, and utterly winning. While after Christopher Lee last time, here we’re really doing a vampire bite. And a massive figure, haunting the pyramids in a big horror movie sequence. He’s Jaws-Frankenstein-Mummy-Dracula!

Disconcertingly, one of the attractions has a voiceover from Charles Gray, as if the film’s haunted by the spectre of SPECTRE – exorcised from it by legal action. “I’m not interested in extortion”; context makes Stromberg’s line funnier. On top of being You Only Live Twice and its threat to the whole world (though closer in plan to Doctor Who’s Warriors of the Deep – which must have been thinking of this, later), I’m getting Goldfinger, too, in the Bond’s Greatest Hits: the amusing car, the obscenely wealthy villain, the memorable hench, the woman who’s impressive in her own right… It really does succeed in what it aims to do, doesn’t it? Because after Goldfinger, this pretty much is the car, the hench and at least one of the best roles for a woman, though not one of the most charismatic actors (Caroline Munro steals it by still flirting as she tries to gun Bond down from a helicopter, and he gives her the feminist compliment of actually killing her as he would any other hench). And a lot of films have tried.

The plot has a deliberate feel of the Sean Connery movies, and firmly underlines Moore as the same Commander Bond after Live and Let Die in particular introduced a different man. For all that, this is also the definitive tongue-in-cheek Roger Moore. It couldn’t be anyone else. It’s all done with great verve, with amazingly huge sets from genius designer Ken Adam, a villain with glowering presence who wants to destroy humanity for nihilism (rather than the ’60s exploiting the Cold War for profit), and while it’s not the most creative Bond, much of it’s great fun, much of it’s a bit crass, and it is indeed “Bond – and Beyond!” I enjoyed it immensely, and though my head says to give it 007 out of 10, the whole experience swept me up to an 8.

For Your Eyes Only

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”
“That’s putting it mildly, 007.”

This was the first Bond film my parents let me see at the cinema, and I have to separate a lot of baggage from it. The longest-carried is that I had dearly wanted to see Moonraker, for lasers! But was judged too young (though we’d been allowed to watch Bond films on TV). Four decades later, I probably prefer this to Moonraker, but when I was nine the lack of lasers was a cruel disappointment. But that’s only the start. What I expected, what it isn’t, what it does with the lead villain, and right from the beginning, the pre-titles sequence and, oh, dear, the music…

Where The Spy Who Loved Me wanted to be a big hit and aimed – and squarely hit – You Only Live Twice with a splash of Goldfinger, For Your Eyes Only always feels to me like it really wants to be the taut Cold-War-to-one-side-seen-through-third-country-rivals thriller From Russia With Love, but without the thrasos, as Columbo would say, while it somehow can’t stop casting its eyes to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The pre-titles sums this up and sums up the film’s tonal dissonance. Roger Moore is terrific throughout the movie, less commanding than in his imperial The Spy Who Loved Me but stretched beyond the innuendo and charm to disturbingly psychopathic flashes of chilling coldness and, opening, quietly underplayed grief. He visits Tracy Bond’s grave in one of the most solemnly introspective moments in all of Bond, then is kidnapped by a remote-controlled helicopter which he in turn hijacks in order to drop contractually not-Blofeld, babbling about delicatessens, down a factory chimney. Even when I was nine and tonal dissonance was not the foremost term in my critical vocabulary, that felt like whiplash. Reading the endless backstory of court cases, it feels like a massive ‘Up yours’. Quite literally. Someone’s suing you to make a rival Bond film with Blofeld and defector-Connery? Erase Connery’s last movie and go back to the Telly Savalas incarnation (ish) so they can chuck him in the bin after, and there is no subtle way to put this, using the landing prop of the helicopter to f—k him in the arse first. This does not set the tone most of the film is aiming for.

If you’re having a really frustrating time in court, wouldn’t therapy be cheaper?

Sheena Easton’s For Your Eyes Only was another big hit song, and though it’s terribly unfair, again it’s one that I only quite like, and this time with the double let-down of not just what it is but what it isn’t: it isn’t Blondie. It’s not bad, and it opens with a certain mysterious longing tone, but it’s a little bland and sugary next to the best Bond themes. Bill Conti first approached Blondie, who turned them down when it turned out he only wanted Deborah Harry, not the musicians, and she wasn’t going to be allowed to write the song, just pout for him. Worse news for Sheena Easton: Blondie wrote and recorded their own song on their album The Hunter, and the film’s theme is no match for the punchy challenge sung from a female Bond counterpart with, in Debbie Harry, the most icy-cool voice in pop. But that’s only the second most famous factoid about the title song. The most famous is that, for the first time, the singer appeared in the main titles, Maurice Binder having taken a fancy to Sheena Easton. But, as her lips were to be in a fifty-foot close-up on cinema screens, the famous tacky titles obsessive made one small demand. She could only do it if he could fix her entire head in giant clamps to stop her moving a millimetre. And she did! She looks terrific in the clamps, but I’m afraid I still find myself thinking ‘But she hasn’t got Deborah Harry’s cheekbones. Or voice. Or song.’

Does the rest of Bill Conti’s score make up for losing Blondie? It does not. Far, far too many early ’80s porno funk guitars (though the Bond Theme survives one arrangement here, another makes even that cheesily near-unlistenable) and piping little ‘pah pahs’ instead of proper brass. Of all of the films, the music for this one has dated horribly. Close your eyes and just listen to the score, and you imagine people dancing on ice in neon-toned legwarmers. Open them, and discover to your horror that it’s not far from the truth. All right, there are some swirling strings when Melina shoots someone with her crossbow and more nice strings with a sinister bubbling fade after the ‘Countess’ dies. But, on the whole, I’d’ve preferred the film entirely re-scored by John Barry, and I’d love to have heard what he might have added to the Blondie song, too. Of all my For Your Eyes Only baggage, the heaviest may be that, while the music boosts several of the weaker Bonds, it drags this one down.

That’s a shame, as much of this is rather good in a low-key way, but even the subdued elements aren’t always well-judged. There’s a feint between two potential villains that partially works, but Topol’s exuberant character comes over rather more strongly than the usually magnificent but necessarily underplayed Julian Glover. Famously, Julian Glover was cast as the villain after producer Cubby Broccoli saw him as Count Scarlioni in Doctor Who – City of Death. That is a fantastic performance. Urbane (“My dear, it was not necessary to enter my house by – well, you can hardly call it stealth – you had only to knock on the door”), deadly on an extinction-level scale, gorgeously dressed with a splash of green. if ever there were an audition for the perfect Bond villain, that was it. Julian Glover might just be my favourite actor. He’s one of very few for whom, on meeting him at a convention, my mask of confidence collapsed into an incoherent babble of it’s Julian Glover!! Doctor Who, Star Wars, Blake’s 7, Quatermass, Indiana Jones, Game of Thrones, four-times-over guest star Villainous Julian Glover in The Avengers – an extraordinary career of all your favourite things. I should be so pleased to see him in this as Kristatos. And I am. Ish. I’m ashamed to say it, but he is a brilliant actor giving a mostly subtle, double-edged performance that isn’t called on to give the rip-roaring, showboating, flamboyant, let’s face it, what I miss is massive ham villain that would probably have been much less interesting to play but, I confess, this feels a bit of a waste. It’s like a reverse Diamonds Are Forever: where Charles Gray gave his usual villain performance, which is an ideal Bond villain but not remotely Blofeld, Glover is given a subdued character part with an accent so, while naturally superb here because he’s a brilliant actor with range, if anyone had charismatic posh perfect ur-Bond villain potential, it was Villainous Julian Glover. Yes, I know: now I’m criticising this film for not being crass enough. I can do tonal dissonance too.

Even the villainous twist they go with lacks oomph. While Julian Glover’s been understated as the fake Bond ally setting up Topol as the bad gangster who Bond must eliminate, there’s not quite been anything bar a bit of music on the beach to suggest wrongness in that, and then – Topol just spills the whole truth, and after a moment of doubt, he shows thrasos and Bond believes him, so rushes in shooting on his behalf. Well, I can believe Bond taking a leap of faith after sizing a man up, but it kills the spy thriller ambiguity stone dead. It’s never ambiguity – just a switch from one state to another. So Kristatos gets one scene where he gets to laugh like a Bond villain, the keelhauling, which is fine, but that’s next to nothing. I enjoy his slipping around the blond idiot hench to grab the goods and make his exit at the end, but that’s a bit of business, not a proper climax. I want the two old smuggler rivals fighting – there’s only a smidgeon of that, and not much drama. I suppose they don’t want to take the attention from Bond, but it means the thing lacks a heart save Melina, and she’s not driven it as much as those two.

The two best lines are both Bond found with priests: the opening, sober, “Some sort of emergency” / “It usually is” followed by the eerie blessing at the graveside and then, as established, ‘with hilarious results’, and the not at all sober but very entertaining reversal of “Bless me, father…” later. As if seeking absolution for the opening chimney dropping on Tracy’s headstone, traces of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service keep glimmering. The exciting ski-and-bobsled-and-extra-bike-chase is more original and more in your face than I’d remembered (marred by truly ghastly music), while Columbo comes across as another take on chummy gangster Draco (and to be fair, Topol is way better in the role), and there’s even a ‘down to earth’ version of the swanky Piz Gloria turned much less glam old abbey for the mountain climax. Bond’s climb is new to the series and very tense – even pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.

One effect of the largely subdued tone is that the film runs short on memorable set-pieces. The climb near the end is gripping, but at the beginning they throw away the terrific ‘hi-tech boat’ lost scene that’s more ‘real’ and even more tense than Spy’s, and the murder of the Havelocks, which they should have got over their urge to stick it to Kevin McClory’s lawsuit and positioned as the pre-credits sequence (it doesn’t help that the script jarringly makes James Villiers, probably the poshest actor in any Bond movie and a nob who’d know, call Sir Timothy “Sir Havelock”). I rather like the aftermath to their murder that sees Gonzales going into his own pool with a bolt in his back, then Loque not only taking the briefcase payment back, its owner no longer able to spend it, but that his henchman meanly snatches back the bundle of notes tossed to one of the women! Unfortunately, that’s followed by the exploding car. It was, I imagine, intended to be symbolic of not relying on gadgets. So it’s ironic that the ‘We’re realistic!’ statement is one of the silliest in all the movies: a car ‘security device’ that blows it up when anyone so much as touches it.

Daniel Craig is, like Timothy Dalton, often seen as a backlash against the ‘silly’ Bond before him (now I’ve got Graham Chapman in my head as M saying, “Stop that, it’s silly,” with Terry Jones as Moneypenny. You couldn’t have John Cleese as Q, though. That would never work). Watching For Your Eyes Only, it’s clear that so is Roger Moore a backlash against the ‘excesses’ of Roger Moore: not only in his underplaying but that his use here of anything to hand to wallop people prefigures Craig’s Bond. The Bond women and his relationships with them are interestingly characterised this time, too: he turns down too-young Bibi; he’s got proper chemistry with Melina, as she genuinely laughs at one of his one-liners and there are a few ‘touristy’ scenes where, unusually, they seem to enjoy each other’s company; and the Countess, closer to his own age, is rather lovely, as both relax and let each other know they’re play-acting. Like – again – OHMSS, but played at high speed, they go from a brutal fight on a beach to tragedy, which in turn leads to Moore’s coldest yet most feeling kill, Loque’s “no head for heights”. Though the Countess’ death creates a jarring note with Topol’s Columbo, charming and scene-stealing as he is, because he’s so jolly that he doesn’t seem to give a toss about his lover. Merely one line where he’s marginally less expansive, quickly over.

Roger Moore is the best thing in this, and holds the film together even when he is unexpectedly being the serious, dangerous part and all around him panics at the thought of getting too heavy. That’s what I have to make of the way that For Your Eyes Only is a meditation on destructive vengeance that before saying “First dig two graves” opens on Tracy’s grave just to set up the Blofeld-McClory revenge gag, or that despite Bond’s impressively ruthless moments and the thoughtful spy thriller elements, it’s hamstrung by a lack of verve and of nerve, edging away from its darker places with crudely ill-judged mickey-taking instead. The exploding car might just be a statement that went wrong, but the film closes on more panicky slapstick that simply undermines the mood. Geoffrey Keen’s grumbling minister gets on my wick in each of his Bond films, but especially this one, where he appears to have defected to Mrs Thatcher’s government. Yes, Mrs Thatcher. The film’s last scene features a parrot saying rude things to a Margaret Thatcher impersonator, and it’s shoddy beyond belief. Finishing on an innuendo makes me smile, but somehow that ending has always put me off the film.

The James Bond Double Bill

Watched in one night as a follow-up to The Spy Who Loved Me, I don’t think I’d ever appreciated For Your Eyes Only more. The two films have a lot in common, but a very different feel, so they made remarkably good companions. Though, first, an aside on the bearers of the bad news: I love Graham Crowden. Another of my favourite ever actors, amazingly tall, especially on a cinema screen, and his gravitas on “Not deep enough, I’m afraid” is so perfect on so very little (no, it’s not a critique of what the film is attempting). But just this once, in the second underwater Bond of the evening, I look to Noel Johnson next to him and my Doctor Who brain exclaims, ‘F—k me! It’s the King of Atlantis!’ [Graham Crowden starred in a differently fabulous Doctor Who take on Greek Myths.]

I’m sure the double bill was chosen for how well both films showcase Roger Moore, but they do have themes that interestingly intertwine. Ski chases to pepper largely secrets underwater affairs and a McGuffin machine that compromises nuclear subs? Check! But it’s that McGuffin that compromises nuclear subs in both films which is the crucial element for me. For Your Eyes Only’s best bit of music comes approaching the St George wreck underwater. But here’s where we get one of the biggest plot holes, too. Kristatos has more resources and has had more time. Why hasn’t he got to the wreck already? There’s a line afterwards about Bond saving them the trouble of disarming it, but it seems like that was handy, not a plan, and a hell of a risk. Because why didn’t Bond destroy the ATAC underwater? There’s no reason at all in the plot. And that would have been that. Between us, walking home after the cinema, Richard and I came up with a simple fix: the British government want the data from the spy-ship’s mission. That’s why it was there. So Bond has been ordered to destroy it only as a last resort. That would only take a line. Or here’s another: the diving-suited killer attacks. Bond and Melina use the self-destruct bomb to kill him (in a Battlefield moment, when the suit blows he visibly starts to say “Shit!”). Just switch that around very slightly: they’ve armed the self-destruct; he attacks; they’re about to die; the only weapon they have is the bomb, so they have to make the choice, tear it free and use it to save themselves, but now need to take the ATAC and find another way of destroying it properly.

Why Bond doesn’t destroy the ATAC earlier in the film is a problem for For Your Eyes Only in isolation. And yet watching the two films back-to-back, the two devices prompted inspiration. Each would be more effective with a little swapped between them. In The Spy Who Loved Me, it’s hugely important that there’s now a device that can track nuclear submarines, but only for the first half of the movie. Then everyone forgets about it. But it should still be a critical Cold War game-changer, and for all that Q is blasé about the theory, should have been definitely finished off with Stromberg. The McGuffin seems more ‘real’ in For Your Eyes Only: an updated Enigma machine, or – one of my From Russia With Love echoes – a reverse-Lektor that the Russians want to get their hands on to compromise the British this time. And yet… Despite this ‘realism’, and being carried all the way through to the end of the plot as Spy failed to, its role in the climax would have made more sense if this machine was instead the machine they had last time. Spy’s device was something new that neither had and could tilt the balance: Bond destroying it would absolutely make his “Détente” line true. Except it isn’t. In this film, it’s not an irreplaceable third-party development but a British device the Russians want. The British keeping it from the Russians is… Actually a British victory and the whole point of the entire movie. Though Moore’s defiant charisma and the ambiguous smile from General Gogol still makes the (anti-)climax rather interesting, that’s the actors, not the script.

I enjoyed For Your Eyes Only on the big screen far more in May 2017 than little me did in 1981. But I still can’t help wanting to fix it. The Spy Who Loved Me thrilled me by succeeding in exactly what it wanted to do, while the second film just doesn’t have the confidence to follow through on its own instincts. I would love this to be the movie it so nearly is and give it 007 out of 10, but I can only say 6.

James Bond Will Return In Octopussy

Just to be contrary, my favourite Roger Moore Bond film is the next along – Octopussy. The title song is adequate but bottles out of using the title-word (“All Time High” swapping one hostage-to-fortune title for another, I fear). With a competing ‘Bond film’ that year, though, John Barry is back to do the score, and it’s terrific. Particularly the forbidding strings for the sinister twin assassins near the Berlin Wall, the rousing mix of Bondian and exotic for the balloon-led attack near the end, and most strikingly the bomb, where a deep, sinister circling beat builds from deceptively soft to powerful strings – all the more effective for saying ‘something big is in reserve’ while Bond is trying to disarm a live nuke. The other main element I love it for is the villain, or rather the villains – three key antagonists, each memorable and with their own agendas, though loosely allied. Octopussy herself is one of the most intriguing and powerful Bond women (with, unsurprisingly, hints of Pussy Galore, greatest of them all), deposed prince Kamal Khan is urbane-but-deadly, looking for money, power and the main chance and tossing out bon mots (“You have a nasty habit of surviving”), yet it’s still stolen by Steven Berkoff’s scenery-chewing Cold War hawk General Orlov (when I’m rushing for a train that I’m just too late for, I always have him shouting, “I must get to that train!” in my head).

The most electrifying sequence does not involve any of the principal villains, but a pair of henches as the titles fade: it’s East Germany, and a clown – in truth, 009 – is running through the woods, only to run into knife-throwing twin assassins, to fantastic music. Mortally wounded, he staggers through the window of the British Ambassador, his outstretched hand (still with a balloon hovering above it) releasing a Fabergé Egg that rolls towards His horrified Excellency. The scene always makes the hairs rise at the back of my neck, and it’s like an Avengers episode wandering into John le Carré. 007, too, will dress as a clown for one of the most tense, gripping pieces of acting Moore ever does. This is not a critically acclaimed film, but like the circus that provides much of the backdrop, if you don’t like one act, another will be along in a minute to make you wide-eyed, and it never fails to entertain me.


This is the fourth of what might be a series of Fragments – not-quite-finished, not-quite-polished, from ideas I’ve written up over time and maybe I’ll share some of them anyway. If you’d like more, please let me know, and if you’d like to help, please ask me, ‘Have you at some point written something intriguing about Story / Series X, and could you find it, consider it and post it?’ You might suggest one that I can (TS;RM [Too Short; Read More]? Here). This one’s for Millennium.

Labels: Blondie, Debbie Harry, Film, For Your Eyes Only, Fragments, James Bond, Julian Glover, Music, Roger Moore, Star Wars, The Spy Who Loved Me

2016’s been a bloody awful year for anyone apart from fascists, and I’m not trying to say I’ve had anywhere near the worst of it. I’m just aware some people have been worried about me in the last few weeks, because my health’s been extremely worse than usual. So the main thing I should say is: as when I was hospitalised with the same thing two and half years ago, while it was intensely awful, it wasn’t life-threatening. Just, like all my other miserable chronic conditions, stopping any sort of quality of life. I was in hospital again, I’m out again, and I’m told it’ll take at least a month for the bonus pain and other suffering to settle down until my health is back to Alex-normal. Which is pretty crappy but which I can cope with some of the time.

After my worst ever year for health and – not unconnectedly – for writing, I made a determined effort in November and published a few blog posts. Even if they were mostly repeats special editions. I finally got a little mojo back. What could possibly go wrong?

The Gory So Far

When I ended up spending an entire holiday in hospital in mid-2014, I wrote about it a month later when I was starting to recover. Reading it back, it was a pretty good piece, though obviously deflecting all sorts of awkward questions and dark places with humour. I’m not at the stage where I can write anything like that yet, so if you want some of my better work, read it again. This is going to be more of a bulletin from the pit and less diverting.

Here are a sanitised few of the main details, then. I have several chronic health conditions which are there all the time. The biggies have been going for about two decades. Most years I seem to get a bonus one or two, which if I’m lucky will be temporary, but rather in the health equivalent of standing on a narrow plinth being given another cabbage, I’ve collected quite a few more permanent ones over the years and as a result had to stop doing most of life. Sometimes I can cope, most days I can’t do anything more than just about cope, and rather than rattle off the list (I keep four pages of prescriptions on my phone to show at all my hospital appointments) I have long-term things wrong with me literally from my head to my toes.

So when some other health problem hits me, it tends to hit me very hard and it takes me a long time to recover. 2016’s been my most incapacitated year of my adult life. It started with my being clobbered by various viruses in concert for rather more than the first three months of the year, so I went from the usual ‘didn’t get out much’ to ‘barely got out at all’ and haven’t really clambered steadily as far as Alex-normal for more than a week or so at any time since. None of this helps any of my usual conditions, none of which take a holiday, and while the rest of my psyche can’t find eagerness for any part of life my depression feeds eagerly on every physical downturn. Several other extras hit me in between, knocking me out completely for several shorter patches, one infection starting in June lingered about three months and half a dozen prescriptions, then came back again, but hasn’t been especially extra-painful most of the time, so, hey… And then came the hilarity of November.

Among the few things I’m grateful my body holds up on are that I don’t routinely get high blood pressure, and that while plenty of the prescriptions I’m on have several awkward side effects, I’m not actually allergic to any medications. Until last month, when I suddenly had a massive allergic reaction to an antibiotic I’d had several times, and when the tests I’m always having started to show my blood pressure soaring. The doctor was concerned enough that this was becoming a thing that I was booked on December Seventh to have a device fitted to monitor me for twenty-four hours. Of course, I’m now waiting for that to be re-booked, because it turned out I couldn’t make it to the surgery that day while interned in the Royal London Hospital.

“From what I can see of the people like me
We get ‘better’
But we never get ‘well’”

Paul Simon – Allergies

A&E

After a few ominous days of trying to ignore the signs, I woke at three in the morning on Thursday December First with a great deal of pain and dauntingly familiar symptoms. By five, after several different painkillers and failure to get back to sleep, I woke my long-suffering husband on his busiest day of the month and asked him to drive me to Accident and Emergency a few miles away in Whitechapel (in part as, though I thought I knew what it was and that was bad enough, I’d also been told before that the same symptoms could mean something very much worse). At least this time I decided to act much earlier in the condition and went armed with a clinical record I carry on my phone and can recite with the speed and accuracy of a soldier collapsing prone to attention with name, rank and number, which I suspect helped the whole thing to be pretty bloody awful but not reach quite the appalling crisis of last time.

One plus, at least: it turns out Thursday at 5am isn’t one of the busier times for A&E, so it wasn’t long before I was in a gown and a cannula and being SirDigbyChickenCaesared around on a trolley. No, there was another bonus, too: the cheery doctor who was the most reassuring part of the whole experience (after my beloved Richard). So he told me I was very ill, and was absolutely right to come to A&E, and that though he was giving me some antibiotics now and sending me home after five hours, it was quite likely things would get worse instead and that, if they did, I should come right back to A&E as first point of contact rather than trying to wait anywhere else in the system. But he was cheery while recognising my pain and fear, and he actually listened to me, and he paid attention to my clinical record, and he kept me informed, and he told me what I needed to do. I won’t go into later experiences in detail, but let’s just say each one of these attributes is a rare and precious jewel, so I wish I’d caught his name to thank him.

Diversion: Putting the F in TFL

At this point I would like to thank Transport For London for their imaginative rebuilding of Whitechapel Station. Since the Royal London itself was rebuilt, there is only one lane leading towards the nested north entrance of the hospital, but at least it was planned to face the entrance of the Tube Station across the road, so on my frequent visits for tests for all my Alex-normal chronic conditions all I and other patients had to do was go up two flights of stairs and through to the hospital in a direct line.

This year TFL has had the genius idea to move the station entrance to such a remarkable extent that, although the train I get out of still emerges directly below the pavement facing the hospital, anyone entering or leaving – a sick person, for example, one who might be in considerable pain or have difficulty walking – now has to go up several extra flights of stairs, walk the whole length of the station west and some way more, then leave at a point way back from the road, then walk to the road and round the corner and up the road before being able to cross the road into the narrow cleft to the hospital entrance. This adds a minimum of five minutes – as timed when late for an appointment and running – but more usually an extra ten minutes’ walk or much more for the more significantly invalided. Good show, TFL! Perhaps you could ask your staff to look out for anyone clutching a hospital letter and give us a good kick down all the additional stairs as a bonus.

Hospital Again

After two days of drugs, pain and exhausted attempts to sleep, obviously I had to face up to both feeling and very visibly being very much worse. I strongly suspected I would not just be sent away with stronger drugs this time, so packed such essentials as my tower of prescriptions and several books, as well as loading my phone with more books, Doctor Who stories, an extended playlist I’d prepared after the last time, and of course that still extraordinarily accurate and topical documentary Carry On Doctor. Plus recharger and plugs. As it turned out, I mostly read JP Martin’s Uncle tales, which I’d recently found as eBooks many years after consuming them at my school library.

On the Saturday afternoon Richard drove me back to A&E. I was there five hours, and I was not happy. This was a busier time and the cheery doctor only passed me in a corridor. There are few things so alienating and afraid as hours alone in a hospital room: my condition may not have been as bad as in 2014, but the communication was far worse. No phone signal in the deep places, either. When they eventually decanted me into a chair and wheeled me round and round and up and up to be admitted into a proper ward, somehow I wasn’t grateful for the excessive speed after the long wait – being dragged and bumped behind an orderly so that I received the maximum excessively painful jolts and couldn’t even see where I was going. I just managed to read the ward number as I whizzed past, but wasn’t helped by the sign headed “Visiting Hours” without any times marked on it.

And so I ended up laid out in a small ward so deep inside the hospital that not only did it not have any windows but that the nearest windows were along enough tangled corridors that I didn’t see natural light again until the following Thursday. This did not have a cheering effect. The evening wasn’t helped by having had literally no food all day and told that I’d missed the evening meal so all they could give me was a packet of biscuits, nor by it taking several requests and an hour to find out when visiting time was. I was finally able to send my distress call to Richard after it had officially finished, but he stayed until they threw him out, for which I was even more grateful than the half-hour in the middle where he legged it out to the nearest supermarket for their saggy surviving sandwiches. Which at that point were awesome (and my husband far more so).

I don’t really want to talk about the next four days. Richard came every minute allowed – and considerably more – that he wasn’t at work. He is the most wonderful man. Be nice to him. He’s frazzled and he needs it.

Thank you, too, for all the people who sent good wishes via his FaceBook, to several people who sent very kind messages (and I’m sorry I replied to so few), and to a friend who came to visit and was extremely nice even when I was at one of my worst points and was shakily and soggily poor company (not least for asking if I could cope with a visitor and then asking if it was time for him to go so I could be alone with Richard). Thanks also particularly to Nurse Tracy, who ran the ward at night over the weekend and was really good at it – the medical side, the reassurance side, and even the little things like bringing replacement gowns and wash-kits before you think to ask for them. If they don’t do that, ask for them. Which brings me to…

Things To Do In Hospital

If you ever end up in the same sort of situation, the most important thing is to fight to stay informed and to ask questions. Particularly if you have a medical history that you know and that they’ve not read (I’m still impressed that, along with two antibiotics that I’m still taking and still being knocked out by, one of the painkillers I was discharged with explicitly warns against taking if you have not one but two of my chronic conditions and, when a doctor suggested I risk it if I really needed it – obviously I really needed it – had as bad an effect as you might imagine).

If a doctor seems to contradict another doctor, ask and give evidence-based back-up to your questions. They probably won’t listen to you, but there’s a chance the next one will when they contradict again. I’m glad that they hit on the right treatments eventually, as a week after discharge I’m showing slow but noticeable signs of improvement, but when you have a different medical opinion and complete reversals every day you must pay attention, because there’s a strong chance you’re the only one who is. My particular winner was the specialist who came up with the best antibiotic but at the same time seemed fanatically in favour of a medical procedure that I’d previously been and was subsequently told would be a disaster. He was also the doctor who told me with utter certainty what had caused my condition and simply repeated himself in the most dismissive way possible when I asked how his off-the-peg assumptions squared with actual individual medical facts and clinical records that not just contradicted him but proved what he was saying was impossible, including those from two and a half years of follow-up tests and operations by his own department. I am not a trained doctor, but I am at least able to grasp that an operation in January 2015 and the continuing complications from it may indeed be among of the banes of my life, but they did not cause the condition that first hospitalised me in July 2014 and to which they were themselves all consequences. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by a doctor whose firm and unalterable convictions were based on time travel, but I wasn’t reassured by him.

If you’re at your lowest and weakest and most in pain, if two other patients strike up a loud and extended vitriolically homophobic conversation (one led it, but the other went along), you should probably do something. But I’m f**ked if I know how to summon up the spirit to do it rather than just both feeling more vulnerable and isolated than ever and feeling grateful you’re isolated in a corner constantly inside curtains and can try to pretend you’re not in the same room.

Cannulas are the work of the devil (they’re a sort of tap fitted into you so they don’t need to find your veins with fresh needles every few hours). I find they bruise hideously in the hand and much less so in the arm, but both will be painful all the time and far more so when they snag on your gown or as you turn in fitful sleep. When your blood pressure is measured every four hours of day or night, learn not to be too disturbed because there’s nothing you can do when each new nurse says, alarmed, “Did you know your blood pressure is very high?” and when it starts flashing and saying “Emergency” on the readout be patient when they switch to the other arm in the hope that reading will be a crucial few points lower and they don’t have to call a doctor. But especially, if your cannula is in the crook of your elbow, tell the nurse loudly every time and when they don’t listen, push the blood pressure armband further up your biceps before the pressure closes on the needle in your arm and risks breaking it.

If you’re cold, and in an air-conditioned ward with only a thin gown and a thin sheet you probably will be, ask for a blanket and keep asking when the nurse’s face suggests you have asked for a statue of yourself in an ermine wrap. If you are still cold, ask for another one. If you are to be trundled on your bed to another floor for tests, ask for blankets in advance. Assume that you might, for example, be about to be left in a much colder corridor for an hour and a half while waiting for the scanner. Whatever you are in for will not be improved by catching a chill. This might mean, for example, that you are shuddering uncontrollably while the doctor who’s just peeled back your gown and gasped, “Oh! That looks very painful” is trying to keep a steady hand, and that, for example, your temperature and pulse might rocket that night and the nurses have to give you extra medication while you ache appallingly and sweat your entire bodyweight.

Most importantly of all, fight your British instinct to answer ‘Are you feeling all right / better / comfortable?’ with ‘OK / fine / not too bad / embarrassed shrug’. You must gaze steadily at the medical professional and say the words ‘Very bad. I need some morphine.’ Or you will remain in an even greater level of pain than you will be when stuffed with painkillers.

Also get up the bottle – especially if the doctors have ticked you off for not drinking enough fluid after no amount you drink can make up for your massive dehydration after another night pouring sweat on a plastic mattress – to ask for more water and keep asking in the three hours after breakfast in which the jugs have been taken for cleaning and the nurses believe they will return instantly by house-elf while patients discover replacements will only arrive at the next meal. Unless you doggedly keep asking.

Doggedly keep asking.


And that’s it for what I’ll say. I’m out. I’m hoping not to go in again. I’ve had two short walks since I was released and both were so painful and exhausting I was knocked out for a couple of days afterward. I am still in a great deal of pain, somnolent from all the pills, and in either a foul or just a hopeless mood, and very grateful that my husband somehow puts up with me. My health has now been increasingly poor for twenty years and after this year I am very much more fed up with it than ever.


Here’s hoping that my personal 2016 goes into the bin and takes with it all the bonus health disasters so that by a few weeks into the New Year I can enjoy the giddily flourishing vigour of Alex-normal.

“All component parts are functioning normally, master.”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! All component parts functioning normally – ha! Puh. You mean to tell me that after all we’ve been through, the systems are functioning perfectly?”
“No – not ‘perfectly’, master. Adverb attributed was ‘normally’.”

K9 reporting on the Doctor’s broken-down TARDIS, Doctor Who – Full Circle

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