Feel What I Feel, When I Feel What I Feel...

The sun is shining, the weather is sweet yeah,

 makes you wanna' move your dancin' feet.

Its only April and its......

SUMMER -- SUMMER -- TIME!

  

and for a little less "cheese"

Like my ol' mamma used to say..

Enjoy it while it lasts !!

Serve and volley

  

Now, Got my keys, locked the door, turned the gas off...I just can't think what I'm forgetting?

As the weather has been so nice here these last few days summer seems to have come (lets hope not gone too) all of a sudden. The air is thick with the smoke of BBQ's and the recycling boxes overflowing with empty cans of Fosters. The noise was deafening on Wednesday morning when the bin man emptied the bottle box, a 1000 empty Pinot Griggio tumbled into the bin lorry. The sun beat down and temperatures soared to 22degrees that is 74degrees in "old money" so naturally thoughts turned to out door sports. Our local park has three all weather tennis courts, they are a mix of tarmac gravel and glass but give them their due the locals being the tough breed that they are play on without complaint. Although the Tennis "Season" usually lasts the two weeks in June that Wimbledon is on the telly, you cant for the life of you get a go on the courts at the moment. So as its the holidays and the girls have been going on about playing I decide to treat them to a game at the local tennis club, they have very nice grass courts locked away behind 25ft metal fence with razor wire along the top. 

 Call me a tight fisted old miser if you like but £20.00 for an hour is a little extortionate, especially when, and I am being gracious when I say, they stood there swinging the racquet around like they were swatting fly's. In the hour they must have hit the ball 10 times, 3 times the ball managed to clear the fence, 6 times it went on the next court and only once did it clear the net and land within the lines. Not the calmest hour of my life trying to get them to hit the ball back to me without either injuring themselves or doing little girly screams and jumping out the way when ball came near them. 

Have you noticed that as soon as the sun comes out all the pretty girls appear? Well with this in mind I wore my best mirrored shade's to the tennis club sure in the belief that there was going to be a little eye candy as per the above pic, alas this is what we were greeted with....

DOUBLE FAULT!

Almost had to put the shades on backwards!

 I think I will take them Bowling next.

Behind the scenes...II

I also found this...

 Miss Stockport 2010

"Come to sort out my pipes you say.... well you had best come up then"

This is a genuine photo from Katie Miles's portfolio. I think the pornographer photographer uses this as the starting scene in many of his shoots.

(Apologies to Katie, I am not implying anything other than maybe a different photographer)

Behind the scenes

 In "research" for the previous post I googled "MISS MARPLE 2010" and got this.... (For those that don't know Marple is a little town/village just outside Stockport, Cheshire.Uk.)
.......those of a squeamish disposition scroll down quickly NOW.

Miss Marple 2009 & 2010

Yes, a fine selection.

This Merry England

 We have had some interesting debate recently about what it means to be English. As Britain is made up of four countries in one (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) we have a bit of an identity problem. A bit like a four way schizophrenic. This does have its benefits, an excuse to drink ourself into oblivion- St Patrick's day, Hogmaney, St George's day and whatever the Welsh celebrate and drink to (mostly to forget that they live in Wales!).
 However due to our welcoming immigration laws we seem to have adopted more cultures into our own. Some feel threatened that we are being "diluted"  and other question their national identity, all to the detriment of in this case, being English. We have what we call "National Institutions" Cricket, Warm Beer, Best Kept Village competitions, Stiff Upper Lip kind of stuff,  middle class predominantly white, all very genteel. Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this at all, in fact its idyllic. A whole industry has grown up around  the desire for a country life, as well as a dearth of second rate t.v programs.
 There is one such program that has recently cause a storm, albeit in a bone china tea cup, about the inclusion of Black and Asian  characters in a popular Sunday evening program called "Midsummer Murders".  The premise of the show is that its set in a fictional (very important) village populated by such people as "The Colonel" and "Ms Sourtits" the spinster, "Mr Givinitaway" the antique dealer and "Johnson" the gardener, all very upstanding citizens from somewhere c. 1950. Until recently I thought it was set in "the olden days" but apparently its not. The writer of the show made comment that he didn't want to include any Black or Asian characters as it would spoil the feel or the "Englishness" of the program. This resulted in claim and counter-claim of racism and political correctness going too far.
 As a work of fiction then its up to the writer to construct a story populated with characters from his or her imagination, so if Mr True-May , the writer of Midsummer Murders wants to portray his fictional village in this way then its up to him. This does not make him racist, its up to him to decide who and what appears in his story, if you don't like it or cant relate then don't watch, simple.

 However there has been reports of a new film that takes a character that was clearly described and written in such a way to create a persona that has been changed to such a degree that she is no longer recognisable in the efforts to "Sex" her up.

 From This

To This

Not actual film footage....sorry.

 Now, when Agatha Christie wrote her series of books about the adventures of Miss Marple she was a little old lady who everyone thought of a s a bit of a busy body but quite harmless only to be exposed by her rapier mind and powers of deduction. Not once did they look at her and go "Phwoar I'd give her one", unless of course they were a bit kinky that way. The casting of Jenifer Garner as sweet old Miss Marple is just wrong!! Yes Miss Marple is very "English", she doesn't work as young, American, Black, Asian and certainly not SEXY.(apologies to Joan Hickson, I am sure you were very fine in your prime). (just googled young Joan Hickson and I take that last comment back...sorry).

 It seems in the quest to become more Tolerant we have crossed the line between fact and fiction. 

What Next?

Portrayed by

Oh No, No, No!