Alive and Frisking!!

When the deadline siren sounded for my Script submission, I almost wept with joy.  For five days straight I’d hopped out of bed, still in my onesie, galloped downstairs and applied my beak to the task of creating a 90 minute screenplay.  So thoroughly immersed in the lives of my characters, I forgot about the fundamentals of life and was getting by on a nourishing bowl of fruit +/- dark chocolate rice cakes.  This only lasted for the first two days.  After a challenging yoga session out in the open air, I developed the appetite of a T-Rex.  Luckily, next door’s main pet choice wasn’t a tethered goat or it would’ve been on the menu. 

Confident I would finish early, I accepted a 60^th birthday invitation to dine at Leicester’s finest eatery, The Suitcase.  I don’t know the difference between a restaurant and an eatery and the internet’s no help but in this case, I suspect eateries are for people who can’t cook.  I submitted with two hours to spare, although much work lies ahead try to make the synopsis and treatment match the script; a task not unlike hiking up K2 in new Louboutin’s.

Turfing through my wardrobe generated a choice of outfits.  Alas the backless, baby pink and blue lace number from a summer wedding went straight to the charity bag along with a silver velvet jacket last seen on the album cover of St Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  I’d also been to Phase Eight and as everything that fit cost twice what I was willing to pay, I’d opted for a dress that aged me 20 years.  I did a twirl in front of the mirror and gazing at the back view, all that came to mind was the main stage at Glastonbury and it went back the next day.

After all the thunderstorms, Friday evening’s air maintained a swampy feel making any garment containing polyester attach itself to the body like clingfilm.  In desperation, I’d ditched my black feathers for a floral wrap number from Wallis but made a subtle miscalculation in my underwear choices.  I tried it on wearing an elderly ‘gardening’ bra in an A cup yet flew out of the Nest in a C cup and found the attractive bundle of fabric gathered at my waist had slithered up to my chin as I clambered up into the front seat of a taxi.  I spent the next half an hour apologising to the driver.  

We flocked at the Gin Palace Bar which used to be a very expensive hi-fi shop; something of a rarity these days.  Its dark interior suggested long nights of inebriation, suspicious plots and after counting up the number of black bottles along the bar, I felt at home immediately.  My relationship with gin has been a long one, especially after two weeks in Ibiza in the 1980s.  Granny’s Bar in Es Cana still exists although the website’s a bit disturbing.  They celebrated a decade of inebriation in 2014, but back in 1982 I was served a highball glass filled to the brim with ice and gin and a tiny splash of tonic; all for a couple of Pesetas.  You could lose days of your life drinking those and I’ve got the pictures to prove it.  On Friday, my beverage of choice on an empty stomach was ‘Burleigh’s London Dry’ with a £34.00 price tag and it tasted divine with a slice of pink grapefruit.  After two of these with slimline tonic, I was ready for that tethered goat again.

Culinary choices as a child were a tug-of-war between what I liked and what we could afford, and daily featured cheese slices, tinned marrowfat peas or a Vesta packet curry with added corned beef chunks (thanks Dad!).  Aged five, I petulantly refused school dinners for a year after being served the malodorous cheese pie and beetroot salad combo; I can still smell it now.

Upstairs in The Suitcase, we finally realised the need to pre-order our food weeks ahead.  We hadn’t and 14 people filled with G&T don’t make decisions in a hurry.  Experience has taught me this and usually I’ll fill up before I leave The Nest.  At one point I was so bored waiting for food that I got up and inspected the ladies room fearing the development of bedsores.  When it arrived, my risotto had lots of parmesan and some green lumps which I think were edamame (windy) beans and tasted absolutely delicious washed down with a good New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc costing £6.99 in the Co-Op or when it’s had the screw top removed by a waiter it becomes £23.00 on the bill.  There was no uncorking fee available I would have smuggled in a case of Aldi’s fizzy for £7.99 which is better than Prosecco.  There, I said it!

I love a good mutton stew or better still a curry for my main course.  Something to be savoured.  They should be gently cooked for at least three hours and left to stand for a day or two.  So will someone please tell me when did it become fashionable to serve lamb not only rare but in danger of exsanguination?  Next time I’m asked how I’d like my lamb, my response will be ‘deceased’ and I didn’t expect it still to be frisking on the plate and surrounded by artwork of brown streaks and green blobs.  One of our number is an interior design student who suggested the blobs might be peas.  Can I please have peas without blender involvement next time?  At 10.00 pm, I refused pudding consisting of a circle of frozen chocolate mousse, tarted up with a chopped up Crunchie bar although the bit I tried tasted lovely.  Those patrons who chose the Eton Mess with Basil Ice Cream felt it was ‘interesting but more appropriate on Dolmio Day’.  

This is the second time in 2016 I’ve been for a meal and landed back at The Nest still hungry.  That’s all good because I’ve been eating French trying to shed a few unwanted kilos.  Small meals with tiny pieces of locally sourced meat, hand picked vegetables from the garden and two Jersey Royal potatoes carved into a likeness of  the Emperor Napoleon.  My inner T-Regina said ‘stuff that’ and as I zombied-out at the weekend, I could barely raise my beak on less than 3,000 calories a day.  All this waiting around burns up some serious carbs let me tell you.

Tip of the Beak:  On Saturday, Alphonse returned from a lengthy stop at Gregg’s feeling a bit confused.  He’d ridden home on the No.54, generally described as a switch-back ride and akin to the Paris-Dakkar rally.  He’d shared his seat with another of the regulars ‘Scouse Alan’ who is a self-confessed alcoholic and generally full of surprises.  Now Alphonse isn’t a great sharer of private information - not rank, name, serial number or retirement status pass his lips - so imagine his surprise when greeted thus.

“Watcher Alphonse … how are ya mate?”  Scouse then took a slug of White Lightening and vodka, and slumped next to Mrs Alan.  Taken aback, Alphonse asked how he knew his jazz name having kept it under wraps.  Alan’s reply was legendary.

“I might be an alcoholic but it don’t mean I’ve got a poor attention span”  For the sheer brass neck of it, Alphonse treated Scouse and the missus to lunch at the chippie with all the toppings.  More than he does for me, that’s for sure.

Raven

What are the odds of Leicester City winning?

According to Piers Morgan writing in the Event Magazine this Sunday morning and a whole raft of bookmakers, at the start of this season Leicester City were 5,000:1 to win the football premiership.  By Monday afternoon [local time] we finally realised that the combined effort of wearing cobalt blue and shouting "C'mon you 8&**3}$s" was all worth it.  At last, the Fairytale has come true, BBC television have turned up at the King Power stadium and in the majority half a million people are out on the streets, honking horns, wearing cobalt blue and proclaiming their affinity with Middle England's finest football team.  My talons are painted, I've dug out my sapphire earrings and short of painting my beak blue, I've joined the Blue Army.

In inverse proportion to the astounding brilliance of LCFC, the fortunes of our Tigers Rugby Club have been slightly lowered of late, so when I was offered a couple of tickets to see the last home game of the season, I dragged Alphonse along to add our voices to the very vocal supporters at Welford Road.  We were playing Worcester Warriors which took me by surprise because I thought we were playing Wolverhampton.  Still, it started off as a cracking afternoon and we had come prepared for everything by wearing ski thermals under normal clothing.  I'd been caught out before.

Having seen many Tigers' players in the flesh, their vast bulk seems to blot out the sun as they amble down the corridors of power.  I've seen them play before too but on the last occasion they were pitted against a South African junior team who resolutely stamped on their stripy hides winning 54:20 in the frozen mud.  And I have quite nostalgic memories of my chum Carole's wedding reception held there a few years ago, and the odd sketchy photos of her and her groom holding the Heineken Cup aloft in all its glory.  As her friends united, we danced into the early hours carefully hiding our true feelings about the significance of the joyful day and wept buckets a week later when told she had passed away on her honeymoon.  Another long story I'm not telling.

Like all blokes, Alphonse couldn't wait to get stuck into his part of any sporting occasion, that of shouting, berating the referee and wondering what the devil Worcester had done with their game plan?  He and the ginger bloke in front bonded over a pint whilst I was howling with laughter at the pre-match entertainment.  Heavily supervised small children were lined up, clothed in mini-tiger outfits and armed with adult rugby balls bigger than their heads.   They were then encouraged to launch themselves at the posts and score a tiny try.  Oh, it was adorable.  Then a local tenor who had been planted in the centre of the pitch with a microphone sang Nessun Dorma to get the supporters in good voice.  Without binoculars it was hard to make out his features on the big screen but Alphonse suggested it might be that Welsh bloke who sings in the 'go.compare' adverts.  I think not, I couldn't see the curly moustache.

The public address system lacked any high fidelity so I missed most of the announcements particularly as I was herded up at the back with my hat and earmuffs rammed on.  I joined in with a polite round of applause for the chap who, after 25 years and to celebrate his retirement from the club, gave a cheery wave.  Secretly, I like to think he wanted to do one last victory lap, naked. Thankfully, there were too many minors present for that to happen, ever.

Overall, the actual game of rugby was interesting in that Warriors took the initiative and stormed into an early lead, only for Tigers to claw back the points with a cracking try.  It was tit-for-tat all the way through to the end of the first half when the heavens opened and the visitors seemed to lose heart when faced with Leicester's infamous weather, it flipping from glorious sun to freezing rain in minutes.  I'd been queueing for a cuppa at the Pie & Pint stall and rather than get soaked, I bought two mugs of weedy tea from a burger wagon. Alphonse's brew was fine.  Mine was £2.50's worth of lukewarm dishwater.

In the half-time entertainment slot, we were treated to a brilliant game of 'catch the rugby ball'. Established as a league throughout the county, it involves 10 men [maybe women, it was hard to tell] and 10 rugby balls fired from a cannon into the air and onto the pitch; the aim of the game is to catch [and hold on to] as many balls as possible.  The current leaders of the league have an impressive 8:10.  In contrast, both of these teams needed more practice, significant improvement in their hand-eye co-ordination and a measure of physical fitness; today the eventual winners managed a respectful 4:10.  It was nearly as funny as the tiny tots earlier.

The final score reflected Tigers' domination and Warriors' loss of body temperature; they were beaten 31:17 and a great time was had by all.  And being the last game of the season, the players did their own gladiatorial lap of the pitch to thank loyal supports for their continued efforts in a difficult season.  On the forced walk back into the city centre, the homebound crowd began speculating on our football club's chances of a) winning the Premiership and b) if LCFC could offer any of their spare cash to the Tigers to improve the toilet facilities.  Please help them you Foxes, or next time I'll be nipping along to the King Power rather than brave a frozen rump at half time.  Sorry.

Tip of the Beak:  I'm bursting with pride today, chest feathers puffed out and basking in the borrowed phenomenal glory that is Leicester City Football Club.  And although I've travelled a lot in my life, Leicester was the only place I genuinely wanted to be this weekend; as it's possibly the only place on Earth I'll ever truly call 'home'.  As Gary Lineker said on Match of the Day recently,
"It's Leicester City; it's complicated."
Complicated it may be but who cares?  WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!

Raven

Are You Listening?

Indeed I am.  Or at least if I'm not listening, I'm trying to pay rapt attention throughout a half-hour Medical Records meeting that's into its second hour.  The first hour had been taken up with the usual fluff followed by a sit.rep from the Andrex Puppy and her sidekick who had paid a visit to a sister hospital down south.  Their mission was to bring back good ideas of how we could streamline our filing system and the genius at work in her head had seen 'Alphabetised Filing' as the way forward. Now being a bird of positive proportions, I could see how this might appeal to the unwary thus: small hospital with small throughput of patients and no-one in the county of Sussex with an unusual name. Translate this to the multilingual conurbation that is Leicester 2016, and I could see how we would need 50 extra staff to get us past names beginning with Al- in the first month of the project.  Alibone was giving it the full beans in the face of management stupidity and at this point I stopped listening.

Shame on me.  When the second hour of the meeting screeched to a temporary halt because The Fruit Bat had to leave, she nominated me to do the minutes, suggesting I was a faster, better [smarter?] typist than her and could she have them in the morning for editing.  I opened my beak, didn't I?
"How can you edit Minutes for a meeting you've only half attended?"
"Oh don't be naughty Raven.  You just do your best and we'll make up the rest."  Not patronising at all then?
"Sorry?"  I meant 'pardon' but it sailed straight over her Primani hairpiece. "Nine tomorrow will be okay.  Fire it off on an email will you?"  Oh god, someone's taught her jargon.
"But I don't start until noon."  She really wasn't listening.
"Nine will be fine.  I've got to apprise Matron of our progress stat."  Alibone kicked me under the table.
"Better do them stat Raven!" Stat!? Who are you ... Colonel Jack O'Neill of SG1?
"Right.  I'm on it!"  I thrust out my chest with enthusiasm.  Except I was still listening to interminable drivel from around the table 60 tortured minutes later, as we had to be briefed on the building's musical office policy which will be played out over the next month.  See if you can understand this because I'm damned if I can without a flow chart.  Trust me, it rivals Game of Thrones.

The first push happened this week when two bedrooms were converted into an overspill area for Medical Records, locally known as Room 101.  Alibone was thrilled and chirped out without thinking.
"Seventeen years and I finally get a window seat!!"
Let's curb our enthusiasm shall we?  Next week pre-assessment are moving downstairs one floor.  The secretaries already occupying this space are moving upstairs to a room opposite the Kingdom of Princess Valkyrie.  The finance manager has been bumped sideways to her old domain, sending the Spin Doctor downstairs to share with Marketing now they've lost their 'Manager with Cardigan' bloke who only lasted two weeks before bailing out.  Two different offices occupied by 'very elderly medical secretaries of the old school' will be needed for some nefarious purpose so the old biddies will be ejected into the Goldfish Bowl, where I started off and was certainly happier than I am now.  Especially as I am confined to The Smallest Desk in the World and at some point, someone will be made to pay for putting Raven in the corner.

Back in the Bunker I was given special dispensation to abandon file preparation in order to type up the Minutes.  It was only when I hit a snag over whether we'd agreed to go alphabetised or were sticking to the quarter of a million notes we have currently in numeric-only order that I needed help from the office upstairs.  Good Job McGee, one of the engineers, was behind me when I dialled Room 101 on what I believed to be the correct extension.  Nothing happened so I asked for tech assist.
"I'm ringing Room 101 but there's no answer.  Any ideas?"
"There's no-one there."  Another comedian, that's all we need.
"Four of my colleagues are perspiring over tomorrow's clinics.  Guess again."  I had to wait for the lightbulb moment but it came on eventually.
"We took the phones out."
"Why?"  I suspected for sheer devilment but had to give the bloke a chance.
"The management told us to.  We thought it was a bit stupid to be honest because no-one can ring them, they can't ring anyone and at some point there'll be a problem."  I'll say.
"So ... I want a set of notes that I know they've got.  How do I contact them other than email?"
"You could get up and talk to them."  True, I could.
"The new room is to ensure we concentrate on the the task at hand, not go wandering off like Dr Who's assistants."
"You'll have to ring them then, won't you?"  Wahh!

I remember the series of programmes where Sir Gerry Robinson tried his hand at turning the NHS into a profit-making organisation.  To his credit, he gave it the full 110% before admitting defeat.  And yet I'm sure there's a whole barge of wannabe management types out there who would love to sink their teeth into such a challenge.  At my minuscule level, it's far too big for me to understand how it all works especially when I spotted an email from my favourite Gastroenterologist.
"Erm ... my new ward assistant has complained because you sent her a letter using 'Ms' in the title."  I replied thoughtfully at first.
"Only the first time because I didn't know any better.  Now I know, I will stick to her first name if that's okay?"
"Yes thanks."  Then with too much time on my hands I fired off a further small reply.
"When I started here, all the ward clerks were called Jo.  To avoid confusion, I was called Jo too even though I'm Raven.  So imagine my horror recently when one of the nurses asked me when I was leaving and said 'I'll miss you Jo'."  The Gastroenterologist thought I was being sarcastic and didn't believe a word of my story.  Why should he when one of the Orthopaedic Surgeons is convinced I write porn in my spare time ... now there's a rumour worth listening to.

Tip of the Beak:  The Scriptwriting Tutors suggested we listen more to what people really say, insisting that writing great dialogue is very hard and should be as authentic as possible.  This morning, over a lukewarm cappuccino, I cosied up to a table of writers having a bit of a chat at the Phoenix.  They were all male save one lady of an uncertain age, all had iPads and note pads, and there was one bloke at the top of the table giving it his all.  I'd already guessed they were Science Fiction writers and edged a little closer to hear him utter these immortal words.
"Oh absolutely ...  there can be great moments of action in periods of complete silence on screen."  Yep.  Sci-Fi has it and that noise you can hear is Stanley Kubric quietly rotating!

Raven

Coolest Ever Dude

Last Saturday morning was all very confusing.  The sign outside a huge Asda store nestling in the groin of Leicester shouted out ‘Open 24 Hours’ and although my eyes were barely focussing, I’d spotted the basic untruth.  It was shut and the doors refused to slide open whatever I waved in front of them, so I checked my watch.  At 6.58 am, I was starting to panic. I’d had the genius idea of shopping for provisions after completing an early morning dash to deliver ‘Last Minute Alphonse’ onto the first train to Bristol for the annual Hi-Fi Show.  He’d been gifted with explicit instructions to ‘buy nothing or else’ and assured me he was only on a fact-finding mission.  This is akin to Bear Grylls being dropped into the Great African Rift Valley for an awayday.  He would automatically seek out something to jump off whereas Alphonse would need to be dragged away from his favourite German speakers, so blissed-out by the purity of sound that he might just ignore the almighty price tag of £60K. I was invited to attend Bristol to ensure no large cheques were handed over but I have an aversion to the place which stretches back to March 1999.

IT Project Management had been a newly chosen career for me.  I was keen enough to impress my boss with my knowledge of telecommunications and the mobile phone industry and daft enough to swot for a month in advance of the supplier meeting.  Little did I know that these excursions were an excuse for an almighty piss up.  To be precise, the supplier of the first part [BT] would be required to pay the bar bill of the customer [us] which gave our hardened IT Management carte blanche to drink themselves into oblivion, which they did at the San Carlo restaurant and the hotel bar afterwards.  

We had been booked into one of the Marriott Hotels i.e. the most expensive on offer and my reasoning for staying sober was the gorgeousness of my room, the roll-top bath on a raised plinth befitting a movie star and a bath robe you could dive into.  I also realised the meeting and corporate presentation the following morning was in the alternative Marriott, over a mile walk through the city centre.  

It was a struggle but I made it to the marble-lined pool area and downstairs gym at 7.00 am independent of the only other survivor of the previous night’s excesses,the IT Manager of the Distribution Fleet and one very dark Raven indeed.  We were made for each other then but, stupidly, neither of us would admit it and so 'the rest is history' part didn't happen.  After breakfast, the previous night's carnage was obvious.  None of the others could walk straight and most got taxis.  I lost count of the litres of mineral water drunk around the table that morning and observed that no-one paid any attention to the corporate deals on offer except me.  It was Budget Day too and on the way home, I keeled over on the back seat of a BMW 328i with Radio 4 ringing in my ears.  Luckily I wasn’t driving, particularly as I couldn’t account for the Walls Solero stains all down the front of my pale grey suit.  I daren’t look in the mirror either in case my vital life signs were absent.  These days, I avoid the Leicester branch of the San Carlo just in case it unleashes a tide of Bristol-related nostalgia.

With no life coming from inside the superstore I used the ATM, turning around to make sure there was no-one behind me to steal my pin number.  In reality, there was no-one awake within a half-mile radius of me and the only object of interest nearby was the enormous phallus of the National Space Centre rising into the sky through the dripping mist.  The last time I was there, they had a TARDIS but it’s vanished apparently.  And just as I considered heading to Tesco, I heard banging coming from behind me.  Urgent and insistent, the security guard was knocking on the window and shouting ‘oi!’ to attract my attention.  He mouthed something and believing I was deaf as well as dense, he shouted through the glass.

“Seven!  We’re open at seven.  I’m getting my keys.”  

And true to his word, I was in the warm at 7.03 precisely and outnumbered  10:1 by incredibly cheerful staff.  As the sole customer you’d think I’d do the whole 26 aisles in ten minutes then head home wouldn’t you?  There was no way I was going to pass on such exemplary customer service which out-greeted the staff of John Lewis.  I progressed slowly through each department, hauling into my trolley all the kit needed to give our jaded bathroom a ‘Death in Paradise’ vibe with watermelon coloured towels and a vibrant, retina-destroying shower curtain.  I ambled through the Home section heaping scented candles and knick-knacks onto the pile.  My hand trembled as I approached the pot pourri and later as I delicately arranged it in the bowl with the precision of an Australian bowerbird, I could hear Alphonse’s voice echoing from Christmas when I bought a pack of Frankincense-scented nuts and dried fruit from M&S. 

“You HATE poo-pourri.”  Honestly, anyone would think it contained toe-nail clippings.

“No.  What I hate are ten year old bowls of dust and crap masquerading as pot pourri.”  And plastic flowers, but that’s another story.  “But this is new stuff.”  

Besides I was having fun.  I never have time these days to stop and stare, to go swimming at dawn or to spend an hour over breakfast and I was determined to make the most of this small, meaningless task.

After half an hour I stopped being ‘the crazy lady’ and stepped up to ‘valued customer’ when I was overtaken by a bloke in Leicester City-themed jammies.  It was zero degrees outside and -4 in the freezer section yet this chap was wearing flip-flops.  Heading through the wine section for a second pass, I picked up some joyously cheap Sicilian white which sparkled as it went down with my fishcakes much later.  I even saved some for Alphonse who is pining for the return of Inspector Montalbano.  As the store started to fill up and customer numbers reached double figures, I took my cue and gatecrashed the checkouts, having spent triple the amount I’d normally hand over and barely any of it was real food.  It was 8.00 am.

Tip of the Beak:  At 8.00 am this morning as I walked from the Retail Cathedral to the hairdressers, I heard the unmistakable sound of a Bentley approaching along the pedestrian-only route into the City Centre.  This acuity of hearing takes practice and I’ve had lots in this lifetime.   The car was black with immaculate coachwork; it even sounded black.  It had a cream leather interior which you could just glimpse through the tinted windows and as it pulled alongside me, the driver’s window slid silently open and out came a manicured hand complete with awesome wristwatch.  The dude held a remote control device.  He pressed it once and the shutters of the classiest jewellery store in the city started to rise.  The rollers weren’t silent but I was speechless; my jaw was hanging open.  It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and I vowed to be up early in future to experience more of the same.

Raven

The Force Awakens ...

Our old mattress was like sleeping on the surface of Mars.  In stark contrast, our new Sealy 5* experience with pocket springs is heaven although the memory foam topping hasn't quite remembered my bird-shaped curves yet.  Still, it's early days and even as I stretched out in the showroom, I knew it was 'the one'.  I let out a long yoga-type sigh as I lay staring at the ceiling and so did Alphonse as he handed over the credit card.  So why am I wide awake at 6.00 am with my force on full blast?  I'm shivering and my ankles are blue but my brain's on 'red hot' and bursting with ideas for a screenwriting course I start on the 2nd of February.  Normally, I prepare by drinking sherry and watching tele in bed although this is proving difficult.  I'm missing the old, noisy springs, the nightly 'comfy-spot-jiggle' and sleeping with my talons dangling over a floppy edge thus the necessary concentration for the task ahead has to be done in sub-zero temperatures.

On Epiphany, I trotted off to see The Winter's Tale filmed from a live performance at The Garrick Theatre in London.  Like most British school children, I've studied all of Shakespeare's greats and analysed them to death thus wringing out any enjoyment left for my future self.  Having drooled over Toby Stephens in Hamlet a few years ago, I decided I was finally Shakespeare'd out.  Joyfully, The Winter's Tale has changed all that.

I'll precis the story for you.  Leontes, Sir Kenneth Branagh, is the King of Sicilia.  Overcome with imagined jealousy, he goes bonkers in a heartbeat and by the end of Act I has banished his baby daughter to the farthest corner of the kingdom.  He is kept in check by Paulina, Dame Judi Dench, in this a torrid tale of abandonment and ruined friendship and seems only to live for his misery.  Sixteen years seems excessive in holding a grudge but I managed it once. Act II starts off in a very jolly way but the redemption of Leontes arrives when a column of white light reveals him with his back to the audience, completely alone on stage.  Sir Kenneth didn't need words to convey the ice in his heart.  He was being snowed on and it was breathtaking.  Later when Leontes sees the statue of the wife he believes to be dead and wants to kiss her lips, his only hope is Supersavers.  There wasn't a scrap of dry mascara in the house, and that was just the men.  And in the missing decades since the last Star Wars movie, how I wish the scriptwriters had taken a look at this glorious production, because in parts of The Force Awakens I thought they'd taken leave of their senses.

Tell me you've seen it.  Unless you live in an electricity-free facility hidden deep under Derbyshire, you've surely seen it?  And probably the previous six episodes? So, mid-movie, when Princess Leia and Han Solo clap eyes on each other after years apart, it's a real shock when he says this.
"You've changed your hair."  In my head their fiery relationship suggests his first words might be along these lines.
"What the flip happened to Ben, Leia??  I left him with you and his daft Uncle Luke and now he's wearing black, worshipping Vader's helmet and trying to dominate the Galaxy."  Not an uncommon reaction from any father whose son has recently joined the Goths.  And why, does their son look more like Professor Snape than the Skywalker/Solo gene mix might suggest?

When we're reintroduced to C3PO, he has a red arm to co-ordinate with his shiny gold body.  Worse, there's an awful dialogue line thrown in at random.
"Excuse the red arm, I must get it fixed sometime."  Pardon?
This is akin to having a new wing bolted onto your Ferrari and forgetting to have it resprayed.  Nuts! And now that R2D2 has felt the force again and recovered from a massive 16 year sulk, will it pitch in to help redeem Ben Solo from the darker-than-dark side?  I can't wait.  Although I'm concerned about the engineering prowess of the new, ultra-cute BB-8 droid.  Rotating on the gritty sands of Tattooine would surely shut down his momentum drive like a cheap set of castors on a shag pile carpet.

And there's that uncomfortable moment when the two worlds of Bond and Star Wars collide in the seven minutes it takes for the weapon of mass destruction to power up until someone presses the red button.  Lets also forget the tedious speech about the New Order.  To the poor kid brandishing a light sabre on the front row at Vue, Leicester, it must have felt like seven days in his Yoda hat. Of course I loved it but I wouldn't have taken the scriptwriter's job for £20m, although the chamber of my heart totally dedicated to science fiction is beating again with renewed vigour. I had to hide my Darth Vader advent calendar behind Amble's filing cabinet before Christmas.  The eyes followed everyone, everywhere and someone complained.  But it was the eyes and real tears shed by actor Shaun Evans which prompted me to chose Endeavour as my third project.

Yes it's set in the 1960s and the production designers have done a glorious job but I don't remember our homely decor being quite that vibrant.  It was much dingier somehow and there are still parts of the Nest that when you apply a wallpaper scraper too close to the plaster, you find evidence of a darker past.  All wallpapers were tinged brown in those days because everyone smoked and pipes were cool.  It's a big surprise that our lungs aren't cured like kippers.  The core of Endeavour was to get to the bottom of why Morse remained unmarried throughout his life.  Initially, I thought it was down to Colin Dexter's excellent characterisation of him but in these enlightened times, it seems every tale must have unrequited love in the mix. And young Morse was no exception in his struggle to express burning passion for his boss's daughter, Miss Thursday.  After a traumatic bank robbery goes awry, she runs off with her suitcase leaving Oxford forever and leaving no forwarding address.  But isn't Morse a detective?  Why didn't he 'detect' her whereabouts and write to her?  Better than being miserable for decades.

Some of the messages were too subtle for me unlike the scriptwriter's nod to my favourite author.  When Inspector Thursday gave a packet of cigarettes to his peroxide-coiffeured PC, he told her to keep the pack hidden in the pocket behind her notebook.  A tip from his old Guv'nor he said, with a nod and a wink, "Inspector Vimes of Cable Street".  Brilliantly shoehorned in I thought from the pages of 'Night Watch' by Sir Terry Pratchett.  Can we have more of those please, if only to keep me on my scriptwriter's toes whatever shade of blue they are.

Tip of the Beak:  Alongside David Bowie, Alan Rickman and now Sir Terry Wogan, there was another great loss to the world of entertainment last week, Glenn Frey.  He knew a thing or two about killer lines and is credited for adding "It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me" to Jackson Browne's smash hit song, Take It Easy.  It wouldn't have had the same resonance had it been about a flat in Bedford, England but it did secure fame and fortune for a little known band called The Eagles, as well as for the town of Winslow, Arizona.  No wonder they put up a statue to him.

Raven

A Great British Soggy Bottom

The joy that is Bake Off has gone from our screens for another year but memories of the hospital's technical challenge day will sustain me through the coming months.  To raise money for Macmillan, we were given a choice of two Mary Berry classic recipes; a chocolate roulade or a tarte citron requiring thin, shortcrust pastry sans soggy bottom.  My pasty-making skills have been dogged by 'hot hands' and a lifelong aversion of cooking with lard, hence I opted for the roulade. To be fair to Alphonse, culinary skills in the Nest have been greatly enhanced by the digital scales he brought me; I was touched by the gift as he can't cook and also his Virgoan self even strains the sauce from baked beans.  Oh yes ... and people call me 'alien'.

I felt the need to trial the roulade and set out to find a regulation 33x23cm swiss roll tin in John Lewis.  Shouts of "How much?" and "Fifteen quid!" could be heard throughout the Retail Cathedral as I inspected the only one on offer in the cookware department.  Instead, I opted to use the battered tin I've had for a decade and scaled down the recipe according to my meagre mathematical talents.  I melted the chocolate, beat eggs with sugar, made a meringue and lobbed it into the oven quite pleased with myself until I inspected my hair in the mirror.  My new Next top was strafed with the dense chocolate sauce which even the Bosch loaded Vanish couldn't remove.

I was consciously un-clenching my buttocks whilst waiting for it to cool; not out of nervous tension you understand but I'd injured myself the previous week trying to dismount Betty during a rainstorm.  My right gluteus maximus had gone into spasm thus giving me a soggy bottom.  Still, when the chocolate confection was cool enough for its double cream filling, I thought it needed to look a little less bland so I added a molten core of blackcurrant jam from Lidl and drizzled M&S berry sauce all over the double cream before rolling it up.  It looked marvellous with lots of ooze coming out of the centre.  I'd already alerted Them Next Door and between us we demolished 1,000 calories before tea time with Alphonse bagging the jammy end.  Sensibly, they elected to go for a five mile hike before bedtime and with hindsight, we probably should have joined them.

To raise extra cash, I'd opted to make two of Delia Smith's finest bakes; a lemon curd sponge and a ginger traybake.  So, in Great British Bake Off style, I had a plan for the evening's baking activities and a Tick List, and had stupidly decided to make the roulade early and keep it in the fridge overnight.  Even Mary Berry says this is okay.  It is not! As part of the plan, I'd been to the pound shop and bought a special carrier, serviettes, a pink cake knife and a silver cake board for the tray bake, which Alphonse propped up on a damp tea towel.  Minutes later, it had sucked up all the available moisture in the kitchen and had trebled in size.  It barely fitted in the bin.  

By 9.00 pm, my Tick List was going well.  Lemon sponge - tick.  Ginger cake - tick.  Pasta for tea - erm possibly - tick.  Chocolate roulade - no tick.  It had spread very evenly over the shallow tin and cascaded over the top, coating the oven with goop.  Still, nothing that couldn't be saved with a sharp knife and a bucket of cream, unlike the lemon sponge.  After a restless night, I got up at 6.00 am for a cuppa and found Alphonse inspecting the matching lemon circles.  

"Don't touch it!"  I barked.

"I'm not touching it ... I'm trying to lift it."  By profession, Alphonse was a Metallurgist before taking a powder and joining the Civil Service, so he knows when a mixture has gone 'out of kilter'.  Granted, a huge crucible of stainless steel isn't quite on the same scale as a lemon drizzle cake but the principle is the same.  It looked unusually pale, so I gave the sponge the 'Paul Hollywood finger of shame' and conceded.

"It's like concrete."  Alphonse agreed.

"There's no sponge-effect going on there."

"But I used the standard six, six, six and three method plus the juice of a lemon."  I'd done the maths in my head so what could go wrong?  How could it go in the oven weighing just over 20 ounces and now weigh double that?  Alphonse put his razor sharp beak at the centre of the problem.

"That's not cake, it's ballast!"  He handed me a coffee and stalked off in the direction of the bathroom.

I dressed swiftly and with a heavy heart drove to Tesco in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic.  If you don't know, they do a lovely vanilla cheesecake and with some M&S mini meringues and a long squirt of lemon sauce, I transformed it into a showstopper.  Yes of course I confessed to the adjudicators at work but they didn't care as long as it could be sold for charity.  So I lined up my traybake, now on an old plate, and my roulade safe in its special carrier along with the others.  As I undid the clips the handle snapped off and I fumbled it.  Everyone watched in horror as my cake landed edge down in a soggy heap but remarkably, a dusting of icing sugar hid most of the carnage.  The theatre manager looked utterly smug and pointed to his efforts on the plinth.

"I got up at five this morning to make mine."  His had cherries all along the top.

"The rules say we're not supposed to add fruit to it."  Had I misread the instructions?

"Soddit! It looked a bit ordinary so who cares as long as it's tasty?" In a state of shock, I went to yoga to contemplate the infinite.  Apparently, I had won third prize out of three contestants, and the nurses told me it tasted great even without the blackcurrant sauce.

Tip of the Beak:  By the weekend, no-one had mentioned the ginger cake.  I even quizzed the Physio who was doing acupuncture on my buttock.  Did anyone buy it, eat it, or had it gone in the macerator?  No-one seemed to know and naturally I assumed its kick-ass, spicy taste was too hot to handle and I'd poisoned half the theatre staff, until one of the management stopped me by the first floor sluice.

"Could I have the recipe for your ginger cake Raven?"  Result.

"I wondered where that went ..."

"Well I bought one slice then went back for the rest to take home.  I want to make one myself ..."

I dropped my voice to a whisper as if confessing to a crime, "It's not a Mary Berry.  It's a Delia Smith!"  She raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow and reached over, patting me hard on the shoulder.  

"You need to get out more."

She is right of course and, contrary to all rumours, I won't be entering Bake Off Series 7.  Paying close attention to the emotional final episode last week, it was plain to see that Ian had lost weight since the first episode which is quite a feat considering all that fat, sugar and cream he must have consumed. Personally, I couldn't stand the stress or the clothing bills because my Next top has just followed the carrier and cake board into the bin.  Lucky I didn't buy the swiss roll tin then?

Raven

A Grand Old Opera

I've started to see the time I spend working in a hospital as if I'm inhabiting a grand Opera.  Not a soap opera as we're not allowed to use soap, only skin-peeling hand sanitiser which blisters my skin with overuse, but a huge and riotous comedy piece of theatrical nonsense with a list of characters complex enough to make Messrs Verdi and Strauss envious to the core.  We even have music in some quarters but it's only in the background and mainly provided by Saga FM.  Here are some of the current bodies on stage:

Prince Theodore:  a consultant surgeon who is seen by many as The Massive Ego in the ENT department.  I've been there for four years and have never seen this chap in the flesh, with or without his theatre gown.  I suspect he is a tenor, and could command a sizeable audience while able to puff out his chest and declare his power in a grand duet with the heroine of the piece.  And yet, a storm in the sea of life has sent his secretary away on a sabbatical for three months.  Needing a replacement pretty damn quick for the missing assistant, he has nabbed the one person in the hospital least suitable for the role.

Princess Valkyrie:  The ultimate Fat Lady.  Ubiquitous in nature with a foot in every department, she admits she's a great secretary although one who has never learned to type.  After two weeks of correcting her work and explaining the wrongness of slipping into block capitals in the middle of a letter, I gave up.  Without consultation of any kind, she has been given a desk in our office and granted three months' work to get Prince Theo's stuff in order.  This means one of us has to give up our desk i.e. me.  Apparently, there was a meeting while I was on leave which I would have attended, but they chose to move the time so I couldn't go.  So, I have been banished to the frozen wastes of an old desk in Sterile Services.

The Management:  You are familiar with these characters already in the form of the Andrex Puppy and the Fruit Bat, and with Matronella appearing triumphant in the background accompanied by a chorus of nurses, they make up The Three Little Maids.  By email, the Andrex Puppy asked me last week if I would consider applying for the full time post as advertised around all the bulletin boards and agencies in the area.  I was undecided for a day until a moment of clarity arrived in the nick of time.  We had a visit from The Management later that day, backed up by the Fat Engineer, who asked questions about our office and how many of us serviced the twenty four consultants.  There's no need for a magician or a psychic in this opera as it rapidly transpired they wanted our room returned to a bedroom, along with the rest of the first floor, before the sun set.

Raven with Attitude:  Me, I guess.  And I can't join in with the soprano songs because I'm at least a mezzo soprano if not lower.  At school, every hymn we sang in assembly was a struggle in the wrong key and 'Hark the Herald Angels' is a non-starter at Christmas.  Only last Saturday, I was croaking along to the Last Night of the Proms and when the vast collective voices in the Albert Hall hit the high note in Jerusalem, I reached for the throat spray.  No high arias for me, thank you.

At the end of the first act, I am at the corner of the stage, singing for my supper.  A tear-jerking number, I declare myself sans d'argent et pauvre and decline to apply for the job I've done easily for the past few years.  Clutching at my heart, I know that Princess Valkyrie has been given the nod and the promise of a whopping payrise, and even if I did the best interview in the history of job hunting, she would still be given the starring role.  I am cast out into the cold after being reassured I still have a valuable role to play.

The Fool:  If not me, this has to be the Director of Operations.  Not surgical in nature, he's more financial and is in charge of playing chess with the personalities.  Manipulative in nature, he sings in the baritone range with great expression as he stalks around the place, hiding in plain sight alluding to the bloody dagger secreted up his sleeve.  He is a man of dark deeds.

The IT Guy:  He only appears briefly when Princess Valkyrie asks for her equipment to be mended.  He hums, head down and fluffs his lines and then disappears, leaving her in distress.  From the wings, he sings a haunting melody as there is another job to partly finish.  When the stage lights dim to darkness, I like to think he's a male stripper in his spare time and wears a monkey thong.

Skulking at the back with some members of The Chorus of Disapproval, I attended a briefing just to let us know how we are doing and what's coming up next.  Act II mainly follows Act I, but what do I know  When The Fool and Matronella had completed a mercifully short duet, there was a lull in the performance requiring audience participation.  'Any questions' they trilled.  The elderly matriarch standing next to me had to get another verse off her chest.
"The government is enforcing payment of the national living wage from April next year.  Will we be getting it?"  The Fool answered truthfully.
"In the great scheme of things, it's an insignificant amount of money and yes, definitely, you will."
Thus the chorus responded at full volume.  "If it's so insignificant ... can we have it now?"
'No." Replied The Fool.

It seems The Management are about to completely rewrite the third act with a smaller chorus and some duff songs and in the medical secretaries department, I'm gearing up for the Fat Lady to start singing.

Tip of the Beak:  Act III opens at dawn on a Saturday morning.  I have to escort patients up to their bedrooms at 6.30am but the time on the script says 6.45am.  In computers, this is called an 'interface'.  We are very bad at interfacing.  On the whole, The Chorus of Disapproval are lovely girls but lacking initiative in the main.  All ten sets of patients were early but none had been admitted and the stage area was getting bad tempered and crowded.  The Administrator was fluttering around checking the automatic doors worked.  Open, close, open close. Yes indeed.  Frustrated, I asked her a question.
"Why cannot you get your 4rse in gear and put these guests on the computer?"
"They are early."
"So what happened to efficiency?"
She trilled back at me.  "It is only six forty four."
"Count Alexei and his interpreter have to go upstairs NOW."
"They are still early.  They cannot go upstairs."  Ignoring the score, she inspected her new nail job for an entire 60 seconds.  I filled my lungs and let rip.
"Yes they can ... Yes they can ... Yes they CCCAAANNN!!!
Now where did I put that tin helmet with the cow horns?

Raven