Loneliness - the new Taboo

Guardian UK

"Loneliness can be twice as unhealthy as obesity, according to researchers who found that feelings of isolation can have a devastating impact on older people.
The scientists tracked more than 2,000 people aged 50 and over and found that the loneliest were nearly twice as likely to die during the six-year study than the least lonely.
Compared with the average person in the study, those who reported being lonely had a 14% greater risk of dying. The figure means that loneliness has around twice the impact on an early death as obesity. Poverty increased the risk of an early death by 19%.
The findings point to a coming crisis as the population ages and people increasingly live alone or far from their families. A study of loneliness in older Britons in 2012 found that more than a fifth felt lonely all the time, and a quarter became more lonely over five years. Half of those who took part in the survey said their loneliness was worse at weekends, and three-quarters suffered more at night." Guardian UK

I never thought I should ever be lonely. I was wrong. When I was 59 and my husband died I found out. Living alone if not chosen is difficult and challenging and I for one have not yet any answers.

One gets used to it. One has to but it is not easy. One makes the best of it but does it have to be so ....well..... lonely?

I am lucky. I have wonderful friends who have families but on occasions I still feel lonely. My family lives two islands away and because of my inability to fly could be on the moon. They come and visit and then go. Flying anywhere is expensive.

But does it have to be like this? The current social attitude is that it is up to the lonely person to make the effort. It is up to them to go out and make new friends who will invite them to share Xmas and public holidays. In reality it does not work like this. Christmas these day means family only regardless of the Christian  meaning, No  room at the Inn and Family only applies.

Sometimes illness and circumstances mean it is not possible for a lonely person to go out. Going out to places costs money and even then clubs close over Xmas as the fortunate go back to their families.

Obviously lonely people must make an effort but so do those too who are socially more privileged. Invite your widowed neighbour in for coffee and would it hurt to have one more guest at Xmas Dinner? Sharing is what Xmas used to be about.

On the whole I am not lonely. I have projects that fill my life. I love life as it is so interesting but I have computer skills and creative ideas and the money to do it and at the moment my health. Many have not but on some occasions mainly during December I do feel alone.

In the past my friends have not appreciated how I felt but this year they have as I have been a bit more vocal on the subject. Even though they may not like it they know now how I feel. To their credit they have taken it well, whether the message has sunk in I do not know but I do know that loneliness is a social problem that can only be solved socially.

One thing everyone can do is to see that their single neighbour is not left out on Xmas Day. Do the right thing and invite them to enjoy Xmas with you. Never leave a single person alone on Xmas Day if you can help it. Everyone deserves to feel wanted. It is up to you to make the invite. Don't wait for others. The lonely/single cannot ask for if she or he does the rejection is horrendous.

Lastly a true friend is the one who invites you to Xmas Dinner, all others are acquaintances. This is now my test for a new friend and should be yours too.

        

Tony Fomison-Janette Miller Heffernan- Fidelio- Beethoven for posterity

Fidelio Programme 1982 featuring Tony Fomison as designer

In March 1982 I had the good fortune to be introduced to Tony Fomison (1939-1990), now considered one of New Zealand's major fine artists of his time.  Fomison was already a well known fine artist in Auckland and Hamish Keith CNZM, OBE  the then Director of the NZ QE II Arts Council suggested he would be the artist of choice to commission for the mise en scene for my production of  Beethoven's opera Fidelio to be given in the newly decorated and upgraded Concert Chamber of Auckland Town Hall. Keith introduced me to him.

The way I came to involved in this venture which saved this attractive and historic Concert Chamber is another story but against all odds, I saved it from being destroyed and being turned into a bar but in return, I received an opera/ballet company. The strangest opera/ballet company ever as it was made up of all the brilliant but under-employed professional Auckland Artists of 1982 and there were a lot of them, on the wonderful Project Employment Scheme. TEP. (Project Employment Scheme).

I meant to start with the best opera ever written and that for me meant Beethoven's Fidelio perhaps the greatest cry for freedom ever composed and hence my collaboration with Fomison who had a reputation to be eccentric and difficult. Nobody gave me a hope in hell of getting him to work for me, a seemingly middle-class woman.

On Keith's suggestion, I rang Fomison. I had a memorable first meeting with Fomison one night in mid-March 1982 in his tiny villa in Ponsonby. We both just clicked. It was a meeting of equals. Fomison knew where I was coming from and I him. To most people, I come across as the usual middle-class woman but any true artist recognises another artist immediately that I am a bit special. The other genius that saw a quality in me was Benjamin Britten who opened up to me about his music on one or two occasions when I was employed in his operas at Aldeburgh. Although I was a girl of 19. Britten and Fomison were very similar and both let me in as it were to their special worlds.

Fomison was living in a very humble manner and I was too at the time. We were financially poor. Both of us had restricted incomes but Fomison was definitely worse off than I. In my case my husband Dr Miles Heffernan, though a GP for many years had been attacked violently in his surgery and nearly killed just before this period and could no longer face medical practice.  Fomison was in very ill health in early 1982 although at the time I was unaware of this. A trip to Samoa had been cancelled. He was an alcoholic and a drug addict. I did not know this either.  Fomison's house, humble as it was, was perfectly organised, better than mine. He made me tea served out of blue china cups at the kitchen table and talked and talked.

That night I explained what I needed. I would commission him as the scene designer o. I needed two original designs, preferably in oils but they could be on paper. I could only afford two, that I could use as slide projections for my production as I could not afford a painted backcloth this time. We would make the scenery around them and  I would show them in the foyer of the theatre and slowly build up a collection of NZ fine art for posterity that I could sell if times got difficult.  I was pioneering theatrical projections, as seen at the 2014 Olympics, much to Auckland's horror as Auckland audiences preferred painted canvas scenery for opera. Fomison had never encountered Beethoven's Fidelio before but when he heard the plot of the plan of a wife to rescue her husband from imprisonment he became immediately emotionally involved.

For the rest of the night, Fomison recounted his extraordinary life as a student in Paris where he had gone to study. How he had been destitute and had sat down with his chalks and drawn on the pavement only to be arrested for vagrancy as he had no license to do this. Having no money to pay the fine Fomsion found himself in a Paris jail for three months and he said this was the worst months of his life.

Fomison described in detail the horrors of the Paris prison system. The lack of food and warmth. According to Fomison the management deliberately starves the inmates to avoid revolts. Fomison said the prisoners were so weak they could hardly stand and the only thing they wanted was to sit down. Consequently, in my production, the prisoners crawled out of the dungeons into the light and sat down. I said insisted that one of the paintings had to have a hopeful and radiant outlook. Fomison said he would do his best. Hopeful was not is his artistic vocabulary. Fomison did not do optimistic!

Since about 1962 all Fomison's paintings had been with dark backgrounds but I had changed the usual dungeon into a Soviet-style medical mental ward where the Soviet's kept their political prisoners so I needed a hospital ward which is usually light in colour. For the first time in many years in 1982, Fomison rediscovered a white background and I am told went doing so. It was the beginning of his greatest period of work.

The scenery had to be original as I wished to feature this in my advertising. Fomison said he would paint the two pictures. He was hopeful that the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council II (QEII) would give me a grant. I said this was unlikely as this body never funded small organisations but a few days later out of the blue I received a phone call saying the QEII had just heard I had commissioned Fomison and the QEII might be able to help with expenses for my production. I had approached the QEII about my PEP project and told them I wished to use fine artists but I never told the QEII I had done so. I was about to give up on the PEP scheme as the Labour Department had brought the scheme forward about three months and had not left me enough time to plan but both the QEII and Labour Department we so enthusiastic and offered help with production expenses that I was almost forced to go ahead which I did. Sometimes one has to take a risk and I knew that the artists were worth the effort.

I am very cautious, I am not really an entrepreneur. I knew I was responsible for the Fomison commission and Fomison had already started, in fact, he finished well in the time allotted which was a week for each, so I knew I had to pay him but at that stage I was not responsible for 20 PEP clients, many other artists I should have to employ and hiring the Town Hall for 6 months at least. I should only have had to hire The Concert Chamber for two weeks!

Then it all went wrong as things in the arts have a way of doing. A fortnight later The QEII withdrew the offer in writing.  This unfortunate letter exists somewhere in the QEII archives.  Perhaps this offer should never have been made? When I objected the reply was that it was my problem and as I commissioned the paintings and I would have to pay for them. They were my responsibility, not the QEIIs. Although I protested I never heard from the QEII again and I never had one QEII grant. Not one! Eventually, the  Northern Regional Arts Council (NRAC) came up with a tiny grant for loss which did help....a bit. The NRAC's excuse for no funding being I was getting help from the Labour Department and no applicant could be funded by the government twice.

In 2019 the documents from the NRAC and the QEII turned up in discovery for my copyright case against the Auckland Art Gallery and they prove that what I said in 2014 was absolutely true.

Fomison at first refused to deliver the painting to me saying they were wet and there were problems. I said I had commissioned them and I had to have them for the production staff for costumes and to get the set built. I was very firm and he delivered them. For a period in May 1982, I had them in my house and had them photographed by Graham Creamer, the official photographer for Television New Zealand and of course they were used by the production staff for costume, scenery and lighting. These paintings were after my designs for my production.

Strangely just before the production, Fomison begged me to return them for technical reasons so he could supervise and control the drying. Fomison made his own oil paints using an egg tempera method of long ago and he was afraid they would flake. This he said could take months and they would be safer with him. My house with a young child was unsuitable. I had plenty of other oil paintings that came to no harm! I believed him and I trusted him. Like an owner returning faulty goods, this did not alarm me. I did not want to do this as Fomison knew I was to exhibit them in the Foyer of the Concert Chamber. I was most put out. I never saw them again until years later.

At the time I was very naive. Had I known what I know today both of these paintings would be back on my walls for under the unique NZ Law Commissioning Rule, the commissioning party owns both work and copyright.  The Copyright Work belongs to the commissioner and the artist becomes what is known in law as the author. I have never sold or given the rights away but both of these painting have found their way illegally into major institutions as can be seen above where I encountered Fidelio Act I & II again on the walls of the Auckland Art Gallery after searching for it for 33 years  It had been on the disappeared list even in 1990's the book listing all his works.

Nemo dat quod non habet. Latin for You cannot sell that which you do not own

Fidelio Act I  also known as Leonora has been in the possession of the Bank of New Zealand since it was bought in 1983 where it has been on show in Wellington and exhibited around New Zealand.  Fidelio Act II  also known as Beethoven is now in the possession of The Auckland Art Gallery as a gift from the Chartwell Trust in 2009. Both institutions are reluctant to recognise that I commissioned Fomison but I did. These are not Fomison originals. I had plenty of input. In 2018 I found had my pre-production notes that everyone worked from and they are quite clear.

Fomison left his archives to the Auckland Art Gallery. Being intrigued in 2014, just after discovering my Fidelio Act II on its walls, I searched the Fomison archives and in file 14 I found the reference to myself and my production.  Fomison had kept everything, a letter in my handwriting, thanking him and sending him a cheque, I always pay my artists and bills. The letter ended with the words that I looked forward to showing one of the works the foyer.  I meant to keep the other at my house, just in case because I found out that theft of my property at the Town Hall was a constant losing battle.

A scrap of paper in his own hand which said:

"Painters are like composers, they are one man bands but that's no reason why compatible talent shouldn't get it together occasionally as it happened."

There was the programme designed by Ross Fraser poet and artist, and friend of William Dart, editor of Art New Zealand where Fomison is credited as being the scene designer for the production.

Fomison was and hands-on as he and my husband had overseen the projection of the many of slides that were used which had been given to us by Amnesty International for this production as well as Fomisons.  Government import restrictions had meant that instead of having two Kodak  Carousel projectors with fader we were reduced to one Kodak Carousel and one 1939 project with fades done by hand. Fomsion and my husband became great pals and Miles knew Fomison much better than I.

In 2014 in the Fomison Archives which are held by the Auckland Art Gallery there was also some very strange notes and correspondence of events of 1982 for which I knew nothing at all except that I was only to be allowed to have the pictures for 3 days! For a Sale of Good Act Sale 1908 (1) the Artist, if First Owner, must never deliver the goods! Was I being set up for this type of perfectly legal sale where an artist can get two fees for one painting? I wonder. Eventually, Fomison got two fees. In a 1991 Thesis on Fomison by Lara Strongman for her MA1983 Fomison's financial position and had deteriorated. He had had to sell his Ponsonby house and my pictures. He failed to get me to sign a certificate of transfer for the painting or the copyright. Did he know of The NZ Commissioning rule? I wonder.

It appears that in 1982 Fomison had planned an exhibition of his work and asked all his clients including me if we would allow our artwork to be exhibited. When asked if I would I said I would think about it. This was to be a retrospective vision of his work, not a sale but there was no exhibition in 1982.

The second typed letter supposedly sent to Fomison by myself is a forgery! This typed letter was not signed or written by me although it is very convincing and Fomison must have believed that it was from me as he kept it. I was shocked when I first discovered this forgery 34 years and immediately informed the curator. It did puzzle me for years. I expect it has a very innocent explanation. I could speculate but I have no evidence that could prove it so it will remain a mystery.

A year in 1983 later Fomsion had added a newspaper cutting about myself as I had been made a Plunket Auckland Woman of the Year 1983 for my work in the arts.  I found this so moving that he kept it.

One vital piece of evidence is missing. The transfer of the Copyright Title from me to Fomison. This is needed by law if the author of the copyright work is to claim Title himself. Like a photographer who is commissioned to take a portrait for a customer has to ask for a transfer of copyright from the customer to the photographer at the time of commissioning Fomison should have done this on that night in March 1982. It is The Commissioning Author's responsibility to do this. Fomison didn't. Fomsion was a squirrel, if there had been such a transfer it would have been kept in these archives. The transfer is conspicuous by its absence.

For 33 years our joint achievement has been airbrushed out of history. LCM Saunders music critic of The NZ Herald did not even mention him although the critic had the PR handouts and programme where Fomison is credited. The only recognition we had was from William Dart and his then partner Ross Fraser who designed our advert in an article in Art New Zealand a few year's later. As Fraser was a friend of Dart, Dart quite rightly kept his distance as a critic. Even Lara Strongman left me out of her Thesis in 1990 but that is not surprising as everyone else in the media had done so and at that time she would not have had access to the archives which were only on show since 2014.

Even the name on the painting and its meaning have been lost but thanks to the internet at least a bit of its history can be corrected. The painting is the plea and hope of a prisoner for freedom. The prisoner is Fomison. Fomison had been there and done that! It should be titled Fidelio Act II! One day it will. It is one of his most beautiful paintings and perhaps the easiest to live with.

Today if we mounted this production it would receive major funding, The Aotea Theatre and the NZ Symphony Orchestra with a guest list of opera stars. It would cost millions but we did it in a small theatre, with simple staging and a collection of slides on a shoestring. I was not allowed to import a suitable projector because of import restrictions at the time. It was magnificent, Tony said it was Strong Stuff we never argued, we trusted each other artistically but I never saw him or his paintings again until now. He died 8 years later in 1990. To say I admire him is an understatement and I am sure he admired me too. Maybe he knew what happened to the paintings was murky. I like to think that Tony Fomison just did not grasp the implications of being a commissioned artist although I feel sure whoever was his agent did and new well the rules for Bought in Good Faith, or how to get two fees for the same painting, selling on!  

The paintings were sold on through RKS Galleries in 1983 but without a legal title. Under the Copyright Act of 1962,  I am, as commissioner, the First Owner of the Copyright and copyright works. The paintings are still my legal property and to make the sale legal the buyers have to have a transfer of title from me in writing to make the sale legal even if the buyers Bought in Good Faith which I am sure they did.

I don't think Fomison ever collaborated again but I hope now our project will be recognised as a brave attempt to give artists the freedom to express themselves in new and original ways.

One day soon I hope to get my Fomison paintings back from The Auckland Art Gallery and The Bank of New Zealand but the going is going to be tough. Both considered these paintings, which only came to be through me to be among both galleries treasured possessions and both appear to have copyright arrangements in place. Discovery has shown that the Auckland Art Gallery does not have one and the BNZ has acquired one from Mary Fomison, Fomison 93-year-old mother in the full knowledge of both parties that this was disputed copyright. Both are powerful corporations with vast pockets and determination not to give the paintings back to the First Owner so that she and enjoy and benefit from them.

Sadly I have seen my commissioned artwork just a handful of times and now both are locked away. in a vault. Both  could be sold on internationally and I shall never see them again but the Berne Convention for Art Theft to which NZ is a signatory, that came into force because of this type of Bought in Good Faith sale, The Third Reich was very good at it, all paintings sold in this manner have to be returned to The First Owner me! I have never transferred the titles in writing.

In 2019 I am now nearing the end of my life, so it is important that the world knows and understands my side of the story. All I have said can be referenced.  I have tried and will try to the end of my life to have at least one of my paintings restored to me as they have cost me so much and I want to leave on public record what has happened. Maybe I shall have a happy ending in my lifetime maybe not but
Fidelio Act I & II will live on.

La Belle et La Bete British Film Institute revival my first horror film

La Belle et La Bete Jean Cocteau 1946

I saw this film for the first time in about 1948 on a very early 12 inch black and white television. Lord Reith saw to it that the limited BBC broadcasts were of top quality.

I was four/five and this film scared me stiff and fascinated me at the same time. I was very precocious and even then I knew I was watching something truly remarkable. The hands holding the candelabras, the falling petals, the blowing curtains. I was so terrified I did not watch it the end and it is only recently that I completed the film on YouTube which is no longer possible as it has been taken down. I had not missed much and it was just as I remembered.

I am so pleased the the British Film Institute has shown the film. It seems it has been made into an opera  by Philip Glass but the original sound track is the one for me. That was scary too. 

Delight of Painting in Oils in Photoshop

Joy in the Winter Garden

In 2014 I have decided to author an iBook with all the whistles and bells but to do this I have to master the new Photoshop, dread horror, gasp. The old Photoshop was daunting but the new is even scarier as it now includes Photoshop Raw. Ahhhhhhhh.......

There was nothing for it but to upgrade to Mavarik on my Mac so I can preview the ibook and learn how to use the new Adobe iCloud suite. When I started in this world in 2007 everything was new and one could get away with a lot but today everyone is so good.

I started in September with Premier Pro and that was not too difficult, then I began on Photoshop CC, masks. I need to use masks. Photoshop is tricky as it is not intuitive. You cannot play your way out of a problem. Once the error sign arrives there is little you can do but start to research and that can take hours.

Photoshop Raw was not too difficult to grasp as it is really just a iPhoto but a bit better. Snag comes as now one can add this non destructive edit as a filter in PS. To the uneducated this can be a nightmare and as yet I have not got to the bottom of it so I rarely use it.

Masks took 6 weeks. They are really hard as there are so many of them. It seems there are infinite ways of adding a mask with channels, paths, layer mask, clipping masks, alpha channels and on and on and on and I have just about managed it...... I think.

So for Xmas as I need to draw I bought the new Wacum tablet. The one you can draw on like paper and on New Years Eve when I knew that Applecare and the shop would be open I had a go. I needed both as the tablet does not come with a tiny connection that is absolutely vital and I had to upgrade my Mac  which if anyone has done this takes 5 hours and both are not intuitive.

This is a mashup of all the Art History Brushes

On New Year's Day I started on brushes. These are complex too but the results have been worth the effort. Magic.  I can turn any photo into an oil painting better than I could ever realise in real life. The process actually teaches you how it is done but quickly and without the mess. It is not easy to do although there are apps that will do this for you but actually getting in and messing up the pixels is so liberating. Love it.

Also the camera is so good at composition. It gets it right most of the time. I am good at drawing but not that good. It is frustrating because it takes time to work out how the brushes work and there is a History Brush that doesn't work most of the time unless you know the trick. It is snapshot, by the way, it the history brush refuses to work take a snapshot in History and it will.  Photoshop Help, Google and Yahoo do not tell you this. Took a morning's research.

I just enjoy doing this so much I think I could become addicted. Here's a Paris Scene which is half way through the process and I cannot wait to start on Venice!

2014 is off to a good start and hopefully this year I shall not be so grumbly.

Welcome 2014 Janette Miller in Auckland

2013 has been an exceptional year for me! Quite unexpected and in some ways unbelievable. At the ripe old age of 70 when one's life is supposed to be over and there is nothing left to which to look forward a year pops up and delivers some of the goals that you thought you had missed arrives by magic without you doing a thing.

I have two blogs, one for my family Janette Miller's Strange Life, where I can reminisce  about the past without boring my family stiff, I get very few views but it is good social history and one day a great grandchild might, just might be interested.

This blog is where I get things out of my system so I can be a bit grumbly on occasions, a bit like the character Victor Meldrum who finds life in his mature years unbelievable! This year I shall try to be more positive if I can so I shall take this opportunity of saying just why 2013 has been so strange and yes exceptional and none of it was of my making.

Putting aside that access to enough B12 healed my compromised nervous system and why UK doctors fail to give patients enough injections of a vitamin necessary to do this I shall never understand. The fact that my garden has been ravishing thanks in part to a glorious summer here in Auckland and I watered it, my year has been exceptional because of the patronage and friendship of one man who 56 years ago saw in a tiny 14 year old, mousy, formally uneducated child something that made her special to him.
Although none of us knew it in 1958 this man who at 44 was famous but not a superstar has gone on to icon status and taken all of us who he favoured along with him. 2013 was the centenary of Lord Benjamin Britten's birth and as one of the few left standing who worked with him and knew him I became part of these festivities without lifting a finger.

Nothing could be stranger than finding oneself part of such an illustrious scene 56 years on. If I had been told then that a tiny part in a children's opera would lead to my place in posterity I should never have believed it or that I should have to wait all that time for recognition that what I was asked to do by Britten was quite extraordinary. It still is.

Again this recognition is reinforced because at the time of the actual broadcast of  Britten's masterpiece Peter Morley's 1959 The Turn of the Screw for Associated Rediffusion which was even then an artistic triumph in public was for me a personal family disaster.

Far from my family being proud that their 16 year old relative had the honour of being in this prestigious production my family who gathered expectantly to watch their relative at 11 pm on Xmas Eve  1959 on UK TV hated it. They hated it. They watched in total silence and I could feel the atmosphere going from bad to worse. At the end of Act 1 a stunned family audience were speechless. No applause, no we are so proud of you, just silence. My aunt who was there with a male cousin from Argentina who I only met twice in my life, was shocked. Her grim face said it all.

Nobody said anything. It was after midnight and the TV and tape recorder that had been my Xmas present were turned off. I dared to ask if my family enjoyed it and my aunt speaking for all of them said NO! It was like a funeral. What should have been a joyous occasion was like a funeral. Although my mother had prepared a delicious after viewing meal nobody stayed to eat it. Coats were brought and they all went home. My mother and father too were very subdued about the performance. No praise of any sort was given and we went to bed.  They all returned for a repeat performance for  Act 2 with a similar reaction! Three months later my father wiped the tape as he needed it for his amateur radio.

And yet Britten knew what I had done for him was exceptional. Flora for that was my part, is the hardest role to cast in the opera. It is hard to grasp that casting a girl singer for this role in the 1950's could be so difficult but Britten found it impossible. He had had no idea of how to write for a girl child. Boys yes, he did it all the time but a girl? There were just no little girls who sang in the 1950's. Britten had searched for a child since 1954 and never found one. Henry James' had described Flora as An old, old woman, consequently Britten who was working with an adult Flora made no concessions  and Flora's aria is one of the most difficult to sing in the entire opera as it is high, uses intervals singers hate and orchestrally exposed.  It is terrifying. Britten was brilliant at casting and he knew that for The Screw to succeed theatrically it had to have a child not an adult pretending to be a child. He was so determined to do this that after the original Venice production he would not allow The Screw to be performed again until he found a Flora. He had already auditioned 40 little girls and gave up hope. The Screw remained on the shelf. And then as if by magic I turned up.

Britten knew I was special. He went out of his way to get to know me and help me. He watched me grow up.  I think I may have been the only girl of 19 he ever got to know. Unknown to me I became a favourite. He was so kind. I was given seats for opera's. Invitations to swim, rides alone in the car. He was interested in what I was doing and talked freely as one does to a colleague. I was privileged to be mentored by such a man. I was around Aldeburgh for 5 years and as I grew our friendship deepened.  I knew first he was fond of me as Jennifer Vyvyan told me "Ben is so fond of you Flora", they called me Flora.

My family ensured that I really never enjoyed the success of The Screw.

So it has been somewhat gratifying to discover that the British Film Institute has remastered the iconic recording and shown it  in London to great acclaim in 2013. I am told the print looks magnificent and I am in it. The TV cameramen made me look so beautiful.

Today my family would have been flabbergasted. They were so wrong and so unkind that night 56 years ago. When the BBC asked me recently what my family reaction was the interviewer was shocked. That bit got cut out of the interview. But I do find it incredible that that performance that was just at the start of my career should give me my posterity. I am there in Britten's first TV production for all time for this will always be preserved as it really is his masterpiece. I have been so fortunate. 2013 will be hard to replicate and in fact I don't need to.

BBC Death Comes to Pemberley or how to ruin a good Novel by PD James

Enjoyed BBC's Death Comes to Pemberley so I decided to read the PD James's book and compare I first did this exercise when I was ten when I compared Olivier's film of Richard III with the Bard's. I was very precocious. Both adaptations were miles from the originals and I wonder just what PD James thought when she visited the BBC set. Was she aware of the hatchet job? 

For an Xmas murder mystery I suppose the BBC felt they needed the hanging and the arrival of the King's messenger  in the form of Elizabeth Bennett as Miss Marple and indeed the series did prompt me to read the original book which I loved but I cannot see the justification to reduce a well known author's work to such a major and unfortunate re-write. The confidence of the BBC Drama Department to be able to do this and get away with it amazes me. No on second thoughts it doesn't. The BBC have always been arrogant.

Ms James has penned a delightful tongue in cheek parody of Ms Austen and the book is cleverly braided to amuse lovers of the original. Mary, the plain daughter gets married leaving the more attractive Kitty on the shelf, Mrs Bennett is left at home and just when the novel is ending Ms James offers another touch of genius. The solution in the book as to who is to look after the unwanted child which in the TV series Mr Darcy accepts to meet today's politically correct standards, is  given to a Miss Harriet Smith of Highbury and comes highly recommended by a Mrs Knightly. No happy ending for the child!

The court case in the book is tried in London at the Old Bailey. Louisa, the mother of the child does not recognise Wickham at the inquest. Colonel Fitzwilliam is not the bastard he is made out to be,  quite the opposite and if I were him I should sue and Mrs Darcy knows her place and plays no part in the denouement. The adaptation is a travesty. Why the BBC did not stick to the original novel I shall never know as PD James is much better than hack screenwriters. It is lucky I did not read the book before seeing the BBC's version as I should be so furious my Xmas would have been ruined.

 So congratulations PD James, pity your publishers and agents did not get script control. I hope many more are now encouraged to read your book. At US$6.50  on Kindle it is a great read.

Pandora Bracelets an Unhappy Pandora Experience

Last week I tried to buy a Pandora Bracelet!  This is a worldwide company and they pride themselves on offering the Pandora Experience but like the Pandora of Greek Legend opening the Pandora box can lead to a nightmare.

The Pandora advertising is lush and inviting, the web experience is all that can be asked for. The new products for Xmas are gorgeous and are displayed enticingly so after a evenings deliberation all that is needed is one's credit card and a visit to the local Pandora agent.

Simple? Well no! For me trying to buy one of these bracelets was very difficult indeed.

And this is where the experience turns to custard, for me anyway for Essence the product that is heavily marketed on the web site is not so easy to buy unless you live near certain Pandora stockists. In the strange world of Pandora marketing certain stockists come first, the rest second and the poor customer who actually wants to buy that which is extensively marketed last.

I do not live near a favoured store, the store has to pay Pandora for the privilege and I found that my local stockist although they do all the donkey work of showing me the initial range cannot sell me the advertised items. Initially I found this unbelievable. To buy these precious  mass produced objects I have to travel many kilometers through traffic to parts of the town I usually do not visit or wait until well after Xmas when Pandora may let my local stockist sell them or may not.

When I complained to the Marketing Division in Australia I was given plausible explanations of why it was impossible for Pandora to help me like sending the wanted articles to my local stockist.

It seems it is all my fault. I did not read the small print at the end of the scroll down saying that this major collection could only be bought at selected stores. Silly me as I though as they had advertised it so widely they wanted to sell it to me. It seems that the only place these bracelets can be bought is in a few stores in Australia and New Zealand as it is an experiment so poor old New Yorkers who are featured cannot buy these either.

It is my fault I do not live near a franchise and there is nothing that the customer services can do to help! This was a first for me. Never before have I met a marketing PR  department who turned away business. Usually customer services  fall over backwards to help. Not at Pandora.

It seems although Pandora rules the waves when it comes to who can sell what but when it comes to special offers that it supports, the stockist is responsible. I missed on one by three days as when I bought my bracelet the assistant who knew of the offer did not tell me until after I had purchased and when I asked Pandora later could my purchase be considered for a gift  was firmly put in my place. Not their responsibility. Pandora has nothing to do with stockists except  to arrange special offers and have the power to not let them stock what the customer wants.

After a week of trying I came to the conclusion that Pandora does not want customers that actually buy what the customer wants. It is all for the retailers. My local stockist only has outdated goods.

It is no surprise that Pandora's many imitators have such an easy ride as in desperation one turns to them. Once one makes the change to another brand one is unlikely to change as the idea is to make a collection.

So that was my Pandora Experience for what it is worth. I write this in the scant hope that the Pandora bosses will take on board that all is not well in their world. Customer satisfaction used to be number one priority not with Pandora.

Now every time I look at the bracelet I  managed to buy I remember what grief it has caused me. I am even writing about it now! But this is the last as I am cured and no doubt my bank balance will be much improved by the experience.