Bravo Pope Benedict XVI Right Call!

Pope Benedict XVI2013

Bravo Pope Benedict XVI for knowing when to stop! Not many do. I am not a great fan of this Pope, I am not a great fan of any Pope. My convent school saw to that but at least the 85 year old head of the Roman Catholic Church knows when to call a halt.

His predecessor Pope John Paul II did not. His horrible end must have been an eye opener and a warning to Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger to bow out early. It always amuses me that the Pope as the chosen head of the one and only church that counts is not just allowed to die in the quickest possible way as his welcome into heaven is absolutely assured but Popes do seem to linger. Is it perhaps they are unsure of the possible future? Anyway this Pope has obviously had enough.

Don't think the next Pope is going to be any different. Pope Pius IX saw to that in 1870 at the first Vatican Council when he had all future Popes declared infallible in matters of dogma. The dogma of the time was set in stone and as it is all revealed dogma nothing, not one word of the bible or Acts of Apostles is allowed to be changed. So so women priests, no married priests and no birth control! 

Believe me I am right on this one see Wikipedia. This is the official Vatican version but I see it is being challenged as not subjective. What fun!

So Ratzinger leaves with some dignity as anyone can who covered up the abuse of young boys by his priests and forbade condoms to prevent the spread of HIV Aids. Goodness knows how many he killed doing that. I am not sad to see him go. He believes in invisible magic friends and I don't.

Bring Back Matron! The answer to the NHS

NHS Illustration by Matt Kenyon

Bring back Matron! That is my answer to the problems in the UK and to a certain extent New Zealand's troubled hospitals. The damning Francis Report into the problems of the Mid Staffordshire hospital will be recognized by many a patient who has had the misfortune to enter a hospital over the past few years.

If only it were back to the days of Doctor in the House, a fifties film and sit- com for those of you of younger years, or even Carry on Doctor where Matron ruled the roost. Matron's eagle eye would spot a crumpled pillow at 20 paces and a soiled bed  for more than 30 seconds would mean execution at day break.
Oh to return to the  hospital's where patients came first, Matron saw to that.

My sojourn of three days, aged 23, having my tonsils out was memorable. I was put in the children's ward.  Matron was furious as she said as an ill adult I should feel obliged to look after the child patients, she was right there but I stayed and the three of us two little boys aged 4 and 11 had a wonderful time. We had ice cream and fun and we all cried on leaving each other.

Today nobody seems to be in charge of the wards. To command any organization one does seem to need a single person to be in charge and issue the Follow me Chaps order if any semblance of authority and compliance is to be achieved. A matron can be appealed to on her rounds and a complaint made. Today complaints are seldom made as the patient is sick anyway and has not the strength to put up a fight to find the right person to complain to and in any case what would be the use as nobody will take responsibility and do something.

Hygiene too would be better served with a matron in charge and in general moral. OK the person may be an ogre but that is what is required a the moment. Come back Florence Nightingale! She knew how to run a hospital!

Abandon hope all ye who enter here seems to be the motto of our general hospitals today. Let us pray that the Francis Report does not lie unheeded.

BBC TV Centre to become a Hotel!

BBC Centre to become a hotel

Licence fee payers will soon be able to watch, listen, and live in BBC Television Centre in west London after plans were unveiled to turn the famous doughnut-shaped inner ring of the complex into executive apartments. The cost of the development is likely to be about £500m and is expected to be worth £1bn when completed. Guardian

I have a love/hate affair with the BBC Television Centre which has/is to be sold off and among other things turned into  hotel.

I love/hate it because I always wanted to work for the BBC. It was my ambition as I had watched and admired the BBC ever since I had seen Muffin the Mule in 1947 and I fell in love with the medium. I so wanted to work for them and I did once or twice but it was never a happy experience. I even had my children's ballet TV series, Dance Tales Story Ballets shown by the BBC and I was initially thrilled as this was an honour only to have it spoiled by the BBC being very petty and exceedingly unfair about payment. I had to resort to the Governor General to sort it out. He did.

I hated going to auditions there. The entrance hall was so huge and intimidating. I was scared stiff before I even started. The BBC producers could be very intimidating too, putting their feet on the desk or worse after I had made the effort and expense to see them they would say the part was already cast. I never got a real part from the BBC but I did very well at Associated Rediffusion so  I must have had something!

The BBC secretaries were scary too. I dreaded ringing them up as they were just so rude even if the director had told you to do so.  Thank goodness I could sing and dance and never had to rely on them for a living. I think they were bitter that they were unable to become producers themselves and took it out on actors trying to get work. I once had to ring and ask for an extra day's pay. The reception I received was ear shattering. I never got paid. The BBC were awfully good at that.

By chance my husband owned a house in Frithville Gardens which is the back door entrance to the BBC  so for three years the BBC Television Centre was my next door neighbor. It was strange to live so near to the place I wanted to work and yet so far. We emigrated to New Zealand and in fact it was from there that I attained my ambition. I was employed at last by the BBC but I had to move 11 thousand miles away to do it. I would never have achieved this if I had stayed in London.

I cannot believe that they have moved BBC production to Manchester. I think it is a shame that multi camera dramas and live entertainment shows are nearly a thing of the past but I shall certainly make sure at least I stay a night there when the BBC hotel is reality although the rooms are very, very small. I was astounded just how small the head of children's programmes office was. It was minute.

Religion is for people who can't handle science - Matt Westwood

Video Credit & Copyright: Mark Gee;

This a comment by Matt Westwood on Platitude for the Day  which I found so amusing that I want to share it with you. Really I think it says it all.

Religion is for people who can't handle science. After all, it's difficult and complicated, and requires that you paid attention in school. Not the sort of pay attention where you all sit and recite the words by rote, but the sort of pay attention where you have to think hard when the teacher asks you a question. Not the sort of questions where you are asked things like: "What was it that Little Miss Muffet sat on?" but the sort of questions where you are asked things like: "If you drop a hammer from the height of one metre, how fast is it moving when it hits your toe?"

My elder sister, who had religion when in her teens (still got it, poor thing) considered it completely beneath her dignity to know anything about science, even basic physics (so such domestic knowhow about centre of gravity and coefficients of friction were deliberately a closed book to her, which is why she managed to demolish such a colossal quantity of crockery etc.) but if you were to profess to be ignorant of the fact that her personal spiritual humility was right up there with Jesus, you were in Deep Trouble. 

Matt Westwood 

For those who have not yet discovered the Rev Peter Hearty's  brilliant spoof blog on the BBC's totally biased four minutes of belief system drivel on the today programme  entitled Thought for the Day when a  group of enthusiastic religious believers are given their heads to say what ever they like safe in the knowledge that no one will contradict them Platitude for the Day is the antidote.

Non believers are not allowed which is rather unfair and very un-British.

With a few minutes of the BBC broadcast the Rev Peter gives his version of what has been said and if you have, as I had, to sit through hours of sermons on Sundays for  years on end this is a revelation.

So enjoy!

BONUS FEATURE

Every day the Rev Peter includes an image from APOD and today'simage is the moon arising over Mt. Victoria, Wellington,New Zealand where I live. I cannot embed it unfortunately but HERE IS THE LINK. This is not time lapse but real time.

Another Benjamin Britten surprise - Syphilis! Whatever next?

2013 is definitely going to be the year of Benjamin Britten. Every week there seems to be some new revelation and each one gets worse. The latest is in the new biography by Paul Kildea published on 7 February 2013 and shock, horror it appears that Britten was suffering from tertiary syphilis although he did not know it. I wonder? Evidence seems a bit flimsy. Maybe they should exhume him and find out. Poor Ben!

By accident I got to know Benjamin Britten. I met him when I was 14 at an audition for the first Noyes Fludde in 1958. I was a girl and Britten had difficulty finding girls who could sing. I could.  Britten was searching for a Flora for his opera The Turn of the Screw based on the novella by Henry James. He had looked since 1953, auditioned over 40 little girls and could not find one. The first production had a small adult which he found unsatisfactory as a young Flora is essential if the horror of the story is to be at its maximum consequently I was precious and always he treated me as an adult.

I think Britten knew that his reputation would always be open to speculation after his death and I think it horrified him as he desperately wanted to be considered normal but like everything he got used to it. Britten seemed to envy me my normality. I found this strange as  to me he had everything. Aldeburgh Festival looked so amazingly traditional Upper Class prim and proper but Britten knew one day this mirage would disappear. It has.

The tragedy for Britten is that it is not the homosexuality or the tertiary syphilis that is the problem today but Britten's liking for young boys which in his day was not considered a sin at all but will possibly be his current downfall. Today Britten would have kept this passion to himself. Many of us enjoy gazing at beautiful bodies. Look at the bookstands.  This is not a sin. Britten liked looking at young boys which is. Now thanks to the Roman Catholic Church and Jimmy Savile this is totally unacceptable. I find this unacceptable too and yet at the time in 1959 colleagues laughed at it. Sir Charles MacKerras, the conductor got hauled over the coals for a unwise but true remark!

Artists write about what they know and consequently all Britten's operas and especially his major works are on these dark forbidden subjects. Britten knew all about  the struggle between heterosexuality and homosexuality and he wrote about it. The Turn of the Screw which is considered by many to be his masterpiece and which I had the good fortune to be in, is all about this conflict. Like Miles Britten may have experienced the struggle between the love of a boy for either a man or a woman. Like Miles he could never choose which he liked the best. Maybe Britten only experienced male love although he was curious about the other as I know from my own limited experience. I do appear to be the only 19 year old girl with whom he had a relationship and actually took home in his sports car.

Male seduction of a young boy has never sounded so beautiful as in The Screw and this is Britten's gift to music but because of the Savile affair this opera is now unmentionable in the centenary year because of its unfortunate subject!

Britten never came out during his lifetime. Britten said on many occasions to colleagues that he wanted to be normal. If anyone had hinted Britten was gay while he had been alive Britten would have sued. Britten was definitely gay but he was also bisexual and this has to be taken into account when trying to understand his strange character. It never is. Like Flora's personna this trait is never addressed and it should be.

Gradually over the years I have found out what was kept from me while I was at Aldeburgh.  I await Paul Kildea's book for further revelations. Maybe now I should write one of my own!

Performing Arts Schools are they worth it?

Arts Educational Schools, London and Tring

Is sending your son or daughter to a performing arts school worth it? An old school friend of mine asked me this question today. The standard required of performers today is so high I don't see how you can avoid it if you want to be employed. If you wait until they have finished their A levels at a normal educational institution it could be too late as the students who are professionally trained will have had a huge advantage and a head start.

There is always the exception to any rule but if you want to be a ballet dancer then waiting until 18 before applying to the Royal Ballet School is just too late. I have seen many girls who are encouraged to wait and who have regretted it for the rest of their lives and I have seen equally brilliant children have a dance career and then go on to become successful  doctors.

Here is what I wrote on Facebook in reply:

Arts Educational Schools London gave me the intro to the world of the arts and I don't think I should have got anywhere without it. It introduced me to the world of ballet and opera by getting me jobs in those fields and I could learn on the job. This part of the training was invaluable. I learned from the best and I mean the best although I possibly did not appreciate it at the time.

Our qualifications from the RAD counted for nothing in those days although they were very hard to obtain. You had to be really good to pass the RAD major exams! Many failed. I did my GCE's there and the educational standard was very high as we were all so bright but today the degrees that are offered for RAD exams are the same as A levels. RAD Intermediate is en par with A Level and  Arts offers a fully recognized BA.  

Janette Miller outside Stage Door Covet Garden 1957

I loved Arts but I was lucky. It offered a broad spectrum of artistic fields which I enjoyed as I had no outstanding individual talent but was competent in many and perfect for musicals. I think Arts gave me the practical skills, like learning lines, being on time, doing what a director says which sound obvious but many young artists fail to master. Also I had plenty of opportunity to practice getting auditions. I realized that this was the only way to get a job although I hated them.

It also helped me find employment but I don't know if they still run an agency. In my day it was very like the school in 'Ballet Shoes'. Most importantly it gave me the opportunity to become a professional. No school or training can wave a magic wand. You have to want to be a performing artist. I did. It was explained to me that being good was not good enough and that it would be tough. It was. It was also explained that you become a public figure and your life would be on show for all to see. It has been and I find this aspect 'difficult' even now as the past can catch up with you in unexpected ways as it has with Benjamin Britten.

I wish I had gone to Arts earlier. I went at the age of 12 and was way behind my school friends artistically and even educationally. Of all my arts schools it was the most helpful. However if I were starting out again today I should include a course of IT in the fields of video editing and production as this can help promote yourself which is essential today as on the whole nobody is going to do it for you. YouTube used properly is a magnificent window of opportunity. A subscription to lynda.com where she can learn how to do this on line might be a good present.

Hope this helps. The young are so much better than we were and times have changed. I have had a challenging life, sometimes very tricky but I have enjoyed it and I did at least try.

Farewell Royal Institution? Never!

Is the game up fo the Royal Institution ? (of Science for those challenged in this area, I speak from experience as you will see if you read on!). I do hope not. Up until I married my GP Oxford educated husband in 1972 this hallowed hall of learning was really the only occasion when science and I collided and even then it was not until many years later that I discovered I had been an extremely privileged young lady.

In 1964 I had been a successful professional musical singer in London. I was appearing in The Desert Song at the Palace Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue. I also frequented the Variety Acts Club which booked cabaret acts and it was there I met a young baritone who asked me out to coffee. He was not after my body but after advice on how to work in my field. I was not much help as I too would have loved to know how to work in my field. I had been lucky!

As payment for this advice I was taken to the Royal Institution, an organization of which I had never heard at the time. My science education had been sadly lacking at all my schools. It was impressive and I thought I better look impressed. The young man was the librarian and I was duly ushered into the famous meeting room where he informed me that all the fellows of the RI meet. It had a beautiful Adam/Georgian table, I recognized that at least and walls lined with books in white gilded cases.

The librarian took out his key and removed a large, old leather bound book. It was the Principia Mathematica by Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most famous and valuable books in the world. He put it on the table and allowed me to handle and look at it which I did. I may not have known what it was but I have always loved old books. If only I had known what is was I was handling! I would now. After a decent amount of time he locked it up again.

That was it! It was only many years later I realized how lucky I was. My husband quickly filled me in and gave me an excellent Science education for which I am extremely grateful. In fact one of my little YouTubes has made it onto A Best of Science List and it mentions Sir Isaac!



It would be a pity to lose this famous building and I do hope that my country  has enough common sense to save it for further generations. Schemes to make money can sometimes go wrong and this it appears is one that has, scientists are not banksters but that does not mean the building should not be saved. I have every confidence that it will.