An afternoon with Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde. Could have done without Dirk Baby. Ham? Yes, and then some

The Daily Mail is giving away a set of 'Hollywood Classic' films, i.e. tat which otherwise no one in their right mind would consider trying to sell. So on Wednesday, I wandered through to Promotions and grabbed myself several. At the moment I am lying in bed with 'flu-like symptoms' (it's not a cold, as I don't have a headache - I suspect it has something to do with those bloody statins) so I decided to watch one of them. I chose Darling because everyone talks about it, but having seen it, I wonder why. Christ, has it dated. And the script is by Frederic Raphael - he even won an Oscar for it - so every second line is a clever quotable quote. It also stars Dirk Bogarde who, in my opinion can't act his way out of a paper bag, always comes across as gay and should have stuck to light comedy. If you want to see some hilariously bad acting in a hilariously terrible film, watch Bogarde in Visconti's The Damned. He and it are truly awful. Who says homosexuals always have better taste. Darling is also pretty dire. At the time, it was daring and modern, but now it just comes over as facile and dated. Those of your interested in a little more pfgpowell bile might care to visit my IMDB review

Blogging: when will it end?

This blogging is getting to be a habit and it seems that so far I have written 419 entries this week alone. When will it end? What will end it? Death? Bankruptcy? Can people (either of them) really find any satisfaction at all in reading the inconsequential dribblings of a washed-up hack whose only gift is knowing more than the average joe about where to put the commas? I hope so.

NB A while ago, I started an entry about 'how the Left works' and got so carried away that I never got around to finishing that particular strand. So if you are getting bored with my interminable account of how over the years cars have got the better of me, stick with it: and exposé of the fiendish Left is still to come.

My cars: a short guide. Part IV — my Datsun Cherry and its sad end

Before I start, I should note that I am quite aware that an account of all the cars I have owned might not make the most interesting reading. However, I have private (and very simple) reasons for doing so.
The 1300 did great work, carrying me up and down the country to visit my then girlfriend - I was living in Newcastle and drove down every 3/4 weeks to see her in South Wales - and then saw me through to my move to Birmingham when I joined the Evening Mail as a sub. But within a few months, a turned into a side street just off Colmore Circus where the Mail offices were (they're now in some godforsaken industrial estate in Castle Bromwich near Spaghetti Junction), lost my concentration as I cheerily waved to a friend and crashed into a car coming the other way. The car wasn't a write-off, but it would have cost an arm and a leg to have it repaired and I couldn't be arsed. The only silver lining was that about an hour after the crash, I was approached by one of the compositors who I had never seen before who informed me that he had witnessed the crash from an upstairs window and that the other guy had been driving in the middle of the road. So we were both to blame, and as far as insurance was concerned, I wasn't out of pocket. I got rid of the 1300 and bought my nest car. The one irritating aspect to the 1300, which was otherwise quite a nice car, was that BL, or whatever they were calling themselves that week, had used a fancy hydro-suspension technique in its design, which provided a great ride when it was in good nick, but which you could never again get quite right once it was out of kilter. And by the time I came to get rid of the 1300, it was well out of kilter. Steering was becoming a challenge especially at high speeds on the motorway.
Datsun Cherry (which looked very much like the one in the picture on the right) was for sale at a secondhand car dealership at the bottom of Milner Road, the street where I lived in Selly Park, Birmingham. It cost was in a very nice condition and cost me a round £1,000. It had no blemishes of any kind and ran very nicely indeed. I was particularly pleased with the spring-loaded gear shift. However, a week or so after buying it, the alternator failed. I was in Leicester at the time, visiting me girlfriend (another one, not the one mentioned above) and, to be fair, there is no way the dealer could have known it was on its way out. However, once I had bought another (courtesy of the RAC chap who came out to help me - they and their AA counterparts have a sideline in supplying parts to stranded motorists who pay a little over the odds, but are grateful for getting the part there and then) and was back home in Birmingham, I walked to the bottom of the road and asked the dealer - there was two of them, in fact - what they were going to do about it. Nothing, they told me, and pointed out, as I just have, that there was no way they could have known the alternator was about to go tits up. Dear reader, I then did something I have never done before and which taught me a valuable lesson: I simply sat it out, was perfectly reasonable and insisted that I should get part of the money back. I was patient, kept it friendly, but I didn't let up. And, finally, I bored them into submission. I can't remember how much they gave me to offset the cost of a new alternator, but I remember being happy with the sum.
The Cherry gave sterling service, was a nippy little car and I liked it. Then things went a wrong. I noticed a little rust on one of the front wings, a tiny amount really, hardly noticeable, but still being young and stupid enough to fancy a little car DIY, I went around to a friend's house and borrowed his Black & Decker. The idea was that I would gently sand of the top coat, get to the rusted area, sand away the rust, apply a primer, then apply paint. The trouble was that the deeper I sanded (actually I was using the rotary wire attachment), the further I delved into filler: it turned out that most of the wing consisted of filler. It seems the dealers were buying up care which were closer to wrecks than anything else, having the body tarted up and selling them. It made - and makes - no sense to me unless they bought them for a song and the bodywork undertaken cost them almost nothing, or else they would not make a profit. And another puzzle was that mechanically the Cherry was very sound and I do not remember having any trouble at all. Anyway, needless to say (although, as always when people use that stupid phrase, I shall say it anyway, whether or not it needs to be said), after my botched attempt at DIY - I didn't fill in the rather large hole I had made - the car looked rather more ragged than I should have liked. Added to that, while on a trip to Essex to try to get off with a girl I fancied (I didn't), someone skidded in the snow and smashed into the Cherry while it was parked outside her house. So it looked even more ragged. That's when I decided to get rid of it. I sold it to the West Indian chap I used to buy my blow from at the Kings Head in Balsall Heath. I was surprised he wanted it, but he seemed happy enough. My next car was a Triumph Toledo, which I bought from my flatemate, Wayne Francis.

My cars: a short guide. Part III - addendum (and a PS)

A reader has written in with comments about the 1300 and my guitar, so I thought I might add a little:

1) The 1300 was a great shagging car. The back seat was almost flat and the car was quite wide, so you could get quite comfortable and shagging was a dream. It was not a dream in the Corsair, on the other hand, which had a terrible back seat.

2) To date my musical career has still not taken wing. On guitar on know several jazzy sounding chords (tho' I can never remember their names), so I am capable of a certain amount of bullshit playing. However, I never play when I know there are guys around who really can play the guitar as they would spot the bollocks within a nanosecond. Like many things, the more you practise, the better you get, and unfortunately I am something of a gadfly as far as that kind of application is concerned. But to put these things into perspective, I did jam (on separate occasions) with both Jimmy Nail and Sting, but was unimpressed with the talents of both so nothing came of these matters, so, not to put too fine a point, they blew it.

NB I twice got drunk with Black Sabbath, the first time just after Ozzy Osbourne had left, and the second time when they had hired a new singer. On that second occasion I also had a spliff or two, which led to the embarrassing situation when the band invited me to hear a couple of new tracks, but, as usual when I had mixed my drinks - beer and spirits - and then had a smoke, I began to feel very sick, so I ran out of the rehearsal room into the john and was very sick for the next hour or so. On both occasions Black Sabbath were staying at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth and I was nominally a British correspondent of some US rock newspaper or other, which is how I got the in with Black Sabbath. For the record, spliff in hand or not, drunk or not, Black Sabbath's music has never done and never will do anything for me.

PS I should like my correspondent to consider adding content to the blog I know he has registered. I can assure him he will enjoy setting down his thoughts.

My cars: a short guide. Part III - My Austin 1300 and how I graduate from dodgy 'good runners' to something a little more respectable

In October 1975, I joined the South Wales Argus as one of its district reporters and was based in Ebbw Vale. I was still running the Ford Corsair, but by early 1978 it was obvious the car was rapidly running out of steam, so I looked in the classified ads and spotted a white Austin 1300 for sale. The price was right - that is it was quite cheap and well within my price range - and the specifications were good. In many ways it seemed to good to be true and I was sure that by the time I was able to look it over, someone else would have pipped me to the post. But they didn't, and I bought it. It was a nice car, very tidy and in good condition. There's was nothing at all wrong with it and I had had a stroke of luck. That July, I applied for, and landed a job as a head office reporter on the Newcastle Journal, a morning paper, so I packed all my belongings into my Austin 1300 (there was not too much, just my clothes, a sound system and my guitar) and headed north. More follows