Eggless at Easter.
I admit to feeling a little bit sad.
It’s a horrid time to be alone, and even worse than Christmas, when at least you can gatecrash people’s parties or go to the pub to mix with other loners.
I used to love Easter as a kid. On Good Friday, my brother and I would be dispatched to “Jean the shop” in the village of Coity to pick up the hot cross buns, and eat them, still warm, at the kitchen table. Saturday night would be like Christmas Eve, in sleepless anticipation of the cache we would find at the bottom of our beds, come Easter morning.
The violet foil that was the Cadbury’s egg with its brown cellophane bag of buttons; the pot of gold that was Crunchie; the mini eggs stashed like private jewels in a chocolate case that opened with all the joy of cracking a safe. I loved them all.
I can’t remember when the eggs stopped, although I suspect it was during my teens, when concerns about my body outweighed the chocolate. But although I have never had much of a sweet tooth, there is just something about an Easter egg that brings out the chocolate lover lurking in my savoury depths, and, this morning, I am really craving an egg.
My oldest school-friend posted on Facebook that she is feeling lonely, and I know what she means. Despite the chocolate, there has always been something faintly depressing about Easter.
I blame the church. As soon as the joys of Christmas were past, the hymns we sang in Hope Baptist Chapel in Bridgend, where I grew up, definitely took a turn for the sombre in the months leading up to Easter. Green hills far away, rugged crosses, bloodied limbs – it was all a reminder that lovely as Jesus’s birth was, we should not forget the real meaning of Christmas – which was a very gory death.
Then came Easter Sunday, and the hymns took a bit of an upturn. “Jesus Christ is risen today, Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-le-eh-lu-u-jah!”
Hallelujah, indeed.
And we would go home from church to secretly stuff our faces full of chocolate and spend the rest of the day in disgrace because we had “spoiled” our dinner.
But as an adult living alone, Easter is the most depressing of all holidays and seems even more of an exclusive – and excluding - family time than Christmas. At Christmas, people tend to stay at home and catch up with friends and family; at Easter, they all head off, usually to catch some sun after the depressing winter they have invariably endured.
Quite why they do this is beyond me. Last week, I caught an easyjet flight to Malaga that was nothing more than a flying crèche; Cardiff’s Apple store yesterday had nine appointments free in the Genius Bar. I wanted my computer to have problems just so that I could take advantage of them.
So, being at home by myself, I have decided that this year, I am not going to be eggless and lonely. I am going to go to the shop and buy up all the 50% discounted eggs, head for the pub, watch the rugby, and not think about crosses and blood.
Let’s think resurrection, not recession.
Cadbury – my gullet awaits.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Walking Tall - My Life As A Giant 4/5/12
This has been the worst week of my life.
On Monday morning, I woke to a furore not seen since elephant no 3 was refused entry onto Noah’s Ark for being too single. My crime? I had written an article in a national newspaper simply stating what everyone has known for years: that I am very, very tall.
During my secondary school years, Bridget the Midget topped the charts and I suffered endless ignominious slights from people who simply did not see what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Where they saw diminutive performers Jimmy Clitheroe, Peter Glaze and Titch (of Titch and Quackers fame), I saw Jane Bunford who, at 7 feet 11 inches, was the tallest English person ever born in the UK.
I can’t pretend that the comments did not hurt. Every time I walked into a room, people would move away, terrified that I might bump into pillars and bring them tumbling down, Samson-like, on their heads. Men who had married women of a diminutive stature would look on in envy as my frocks fell, sylph-like, from my delicate frame; dwarfs ran terrified to cupboards to hide, so immense was my stature.
I learned to live with my height, and there is no denying that it has brought me many benefits along the way. I have been given tickets to the giraffe house at London Zoo, passes and free champagne on the London Eye, and given a complimentary Conquer Your Vertigo programme at a major Los Angeles clinic.
I believe I have deserved those perks: as I was on constant call to replace light bulbs in every place I worked and saved many an executive from having to call out for a ladder, I have seen these things as merely part and parcel of the package I brought to the table.
But the downside has been immense. All men prefer tall women. Danny de Vito, Woody Allen, Verne Troyer – I will always be at an advantage when it comes to pulling. At two foot eight, Verne could be said to be punching above his height, but why should we deny what is an absolute truth: size is everything.
The social network marketplace went into meltdown when I explored the possibility that short people might not attract the kind of attention that I, as a giant, have encountered. Small people everywhere spouted forth incredible bile, claiming that it was not my height that had caused such widespread approbation, but the fact that I had spent so many years boasting about it, not only in print but everywhere I went socially.
I went on television to defend my position this week, but was met with the usual size-ist reaction from presenters far shorter than myself, and also a psychologist of the kind much favoured by daytime programmes these days.
It was not my height, they said, that was the problem; nor my acknowledging that I was, indeed, very, very tall; but that I had dared to voice it in public and blame small people’s attitudes for the devastation wrought in my life on a daily basis.
What can I say?
I am a giant.
I always will be.
And I have the column inches to prove it.
On Monday morning, I woke to a furore not seen since elephant no 3 was refused entry onto Noah’s Ark for being too single. My crime? I had written an article in a national newspaper simply stating what everyone has known for years: that I am very, very tall.
During my secondary school years, Bridget the Midget topped the charts and I suffered endless ignominious slights from people who simply did not see what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Where they saw diminutive performers Jimmy Clitheroe, Peter Glaze and Titch (of Titch and Quackers fame), I saw Jane Bunford who, at 7 feet 11 inches, was the tallest English person ever born in the UK.
I can’t pretend that the comments did not hurt. Every time I walked into a room, people would move away, terrified that I might bump into pillars and bring them tumbling down, Samson-like, on their heads. Men who had married women of a diminutive stature would look on in envy as my frocks fell, sylph-like, from my delicate frame; dwarfs ran terrified to cupboards to hide, so immense was my stature.
I learned to live with my height, and there is no denying that it has brought me many benefits along the way. I have been given tickets to the giraffe house at London Zoo, passes and free champagne on the London Eye, and given a complimentary Conquer Your Vertigo programme at a major Los Angeles clinic.
I believe I have deserved those perks: as I was on constant call to replace light bulbs in every place I worked and saved many an executive from having to call out for a ladder, I have seen these things as merely part and parcel of the package I brought to the table.
But the downside has been immense. All men prefer tall women. Danny de Vito, Woody Allen, Verne Troyer – I will always be at an advantage when it comes to pulling. At two foot eight, Verne could be said to be punching above his height, but why should we deny what is an absolute truth: size is everything.
The social network marketplace went into meltdown when I explored the possibility that short people might not attract the kind of attention that I, as a giant, have encountered. Small people everywhere spouted forth incredible bile, claiming that it was not my height that had caused such widespread approbation, but the fact that I had spent so many years boasting about it, not only in print but everywhere I went socially.
I went on television to defend my position this week, but was met with the usual size-ist reaction from presenters far shorter than myself, and also a psychologist of the kind much favoured by daytime programmes these days.
It was not my height, they said, that was the problem; nor my acknowledging that I was, indeed, very, very tall; but that I had dared to voice it in public and blame small people’s attitudes for the devastation wrought in my life on a daily basis.
What can I say?
I am a giant.
I always will be.
And I have the column inches to prove it.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Are You Not Being Served? 4/2/12
La La means I love you – and, hopefully, haven’t lost you.
Yes, there are many things I miss about Los Angeles since returning to the UK full time in November. I miss not being in a one-industry town in which nearly everyone you meet lives, breathes and talks TV and film (well, apart from the realtors who are too busy whingeing about the lack of tenants).
I miss the sun, the palm trees, the outstanding drama on telly, sunsets over the Pacific – leaving these things behind has been a real wrench.
But the thing I miss more than anything is the service.
The phrase that drives me nuts in the UK is the one on the other end of the phone when I call to complain that my latest purchase – let’s just pick a vacuum cleaner at random - isn’t working. “It should do” is the inevitable response.
Yes, I know it should work; that’s why I bought it. It’s a vacuum cleaner. I didn’t buy it to place on my mantelpiece and admire it from afar.
Having established that said vacuum cleaner should work but doesn’t, the next question is invariably: “Have you turned it on?” No, because I have managed to get through 50 plus years on the planet without understanding the basic rules of electricity.
This is all supposing that you can get someone to answer the phone in the first place, of course, and the verbal obstacle course just gets worse with every communication. “You have four options”, so I press number one. “You now have six options”. So I press number three. “You now have 12 options”. Finally, after you have endured three birthdays and whittled your options down, there is light at the end of the tunnel. “You now have two options”. Could it be, at last, that a human being is imminent? The tension is unbearable. I press two. “You now have 103 options” - and you’re back where you started.
Personally, I blame the music that now pollutes almost every working environment; it just isn’t conducive to concentration and putting the customer first. Lloyds Bank in Queen Street might as well have “Disco” tattooed on its black horse, so ridiculously loud is the noise throughout the entire branch.
In Starbucks, you need a megaphone to get yourself heard above the racket. A visit to O2 requires you to down Valium if your nerves stand a chance of surviving the background – or, more accurately, foreground – music. As for Mocha bar, a 60 piece brass band would be drowned out by what they play there.
This has been a traumatic week, as I ventured into town to sort all sorts of problems and suffered the musical ear-bashing in every place I visited. There was, however, one glorious exception – an oasis of calm for my otherwise nerve-racked body: the Apple Store in St David’s 2.
I have to confess I am an Apple girl through and through. My loft is an Apple cemetery, stacked with every Mac that has hit the shelves since day one. The turquoise desktop like a finely carved torso; the blue laptop that could pass for a handbag; silver laptops whose beauty brings tears to the eyes – I have loved them all. And now, in the Apple store, there are more of these divine creatures: a sea of white and silver like a heavenly host, reaching out to welcome me and starve my purse of the little money I have in it.
The store also has the best and most knowledgeable staff of any Apple store I have ever visited. They really are geniuses at the Genius Bar, and if I could pocket Nick and carry him around in my bag, always at hand to sort my computer problems, I would.
He has made me promise to stop using the word “nightmare” in relation to the numerous difficulties I have been having with my new computer and the Lion operating system. I just want Apple to promise to pick up the damned phone when I call. It doesn’t take a genius to do that.
Of course, as readers of this blog will know, there were things that drove me mad in LA about the service – not least, when people promised they could do things and either couldn’t or didn’t; and I always said that the slogan most suited to Best Buy was Best Buy Somewhere Else.
But, for the most part, service in LA was in a different league. Lucky my stuff is still in storage over there.
I am never more than a hair’s breadth away from my next Virgin Atlantic flight – all supposing I can ever get anyone to answer the phone at the damned place, of course.
Yes, there are many things I miss about Los Angeles since returning to the UK full time in November. I miss not being in a one-industry town in which nearly everyone you meet lives, breathes and talks TV and film (well, apart from the realtors who are too busy whingeing about the lack of tenants).
I miss the sun, the palm trees, the outstanding drama on telly, sunsets over the Pacific – leaving these things behind has been a real wrench.
But the thing I miss more than anything is the service.
The phrase that drives me nuts in the UK is the one on the other end of the phone when I call to complain that my latest purchase – let’s just pick a vacuum cleaner at random - isn’t working. “It should do” is the inevitable response.
Yes, I know it should work; that’s why I bought it. It’s a vacuum cleaner. I didn’t buy it to place on my mantelpiece and admire it from afar.
Having established that said vacuum cleaner should work but doesn’t, the next question is invariably: “Have you turned it on?” No, because I have managed to get through 50 plus years on the planet without understanding the basic rules of electricity.
This is all supposing that you can get someone to answer the phone in the first place, of course, and the verbal obstacle course just gets worse with every communication. “You have four options”, so I press number one. “You now have six options”. So I press number three. “You now have 12 options”. Finally, after you have endured three birthdays and whittled your options down, there is light at the end of the tunnel. “You now have two options”. Could it be, at last, that a human being is imminent? The tension is unbearable. I press two. “You now have 103 options” - and you’re back where you started.
Personally, I blame the music that now pollutes almost every working environment; it just isn’t conducive to concentration and putting the customer first. Lloyds Bank in Queen Street might as well have “Disco” tattooed on its black horse, so ridiculously loud is the noise throughout the entire branch.
In Starbucks, you need a megaphone to get yourself heard above the racket. A visit to O2 requires you to down Valium if your nerves stand a chance of surviving the background – or, more accurately, foreground – music. As for Mocha bar, a 60 piece brass band would be drowned out by what they play there.
This has been a traumatic week, as I ventured into town to sort all sorts of problems and suffered the musical ear-bashing in every place I visited. There was, however, one glorious exception – an oasis of calm for my otherwise nerve-racked body: the Apple Store in St David’s 2.
I have to confess I am an Apple girl through and through. My loft is an Apple cemetery, stacked with every Mac that has hit the shelves since day one. The turquoise desktop like a finely carved torso; the blue laptop that could pass for a handbag; silver laptops whose beauty brings tears to the eyes – I have loved them all. And now, in the Apple store, there are more of these divine creatures: a sea of white and silver like a heavenly host, reaching out to welcome me and starve my purse of the little money I have in it.
The store also has the best and most knowledgeable staff of any Apple store I have ever visited. They really are geniuses at the Genius Bar, and if I could pocket Nick and carry him around in my bag, always at hand to sort my computer problems, I would.
He has made me promise to stop using the word “nightmare” in relation to the numerous difficulties I have been having with my new computer and the Lion operating system. I just want Apple to promise to pick up the damned phone when I call. It doesn’t take a genius to do that.
Of course, as readers of this blog will know, there were things that drove me mad in LA about the service – not least, when people promised they could do things and either couldn’t or didn’t; and I always said that the slogan most suited to Best Buy was Best Buy Somewhere Else.
But, for the most part, service in LA was in a different league. Lucky my stuff is still in storage over there.
I am never more than a hair’s breadth away from my next Virgin Atlantic flight – all supposing I can ever get anyone to answer the phone at the damned place, of course.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Marc's Cherry On The Cake 3/25/12
Nicollette Sheridan’s Edie Britt did not stick out like a sore thumb on Desperate Housewives; it was more of a sore torso.
The final series of what has, for me, been one of the most brilliant TV dramas ever, is ending with more than a touch of controversy (and I don’t just mean Mike’s inability to buy a change of shirt). Nicollette Sheridan has been in court, suing the show’s creator, Marc Cherry. She claims that he got rid of her for reasons other than those he claimed (you will have to read up on this elsewhere; I don’t want to enter the legal minefield), and it’s allegedly all heading back to court.
Obviously, I know nothing of any of this, other than what I have read about the court proceedings, but as a TV critic, I was always 100% behind Sheridan’s departure – in fact, as passionately as I was against her arrival in the first place. To me, her character never worked; she just sort of landed on Wisteria Lane with about as much at-home-ness as ET arriving to address the Senate.
It wasn’t just that she was new. The central four – Gabby (Eva Longoria), Bree (Marcia Cross), Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman) – have made relationships with several newcomers, including, among my favourites, Katherine, played by the sensational Dana Delaney (now the star of Body of Proof).
I could just never get to grips with who Edie was supposed to be. She was a vamp, certainly, yet without the charm of vampishness that Vanessa Williams has brought to the part of Renee – who, despite outward appearances, still has layers that often expose her vulnerability. By comparison with both Renee and the foursome, Edie was . . . well, very one-dimensional and predictable.
I’ve been pondering these matters today as I’ve sat indoors, despite it being a beautiful sunny day outside, catching up with the series – the eighth, which will be its last. If you’re in the UK and watching Channel 4, don’t read on if you don’t want to know what’s coming up (even though some papers have already ruined the surprise).
I’ve been weeping uncontrollably at Mike’s funeral, as characters’ flashbacks of him steer them in different directions in their lives. If you are still reading, you would be well advised to stock up on Kleenex as you prepare to say goodbye to this wonderful character – and Hatcher delivers her best performance ever.
Yes, yes, I know that it will be the end for everyone soon, and I have stocked up on tissues for that day, too (anyone on for a DH end-of-life party, by the way?); but Mike’s death took me by surprise.
I don’t know how I’m going to live without the show. Eva Longoria’s beauty and Gabby’s hilarious selfishness; evil Orson and his determination to destroy Bree, the wife who spurned him; the gorgeous Tom, who has yet to realise that Lynette and he belong together; Susan as grandmother, supporting her daughter as she prepares to become a mother – I have loved every minute (even the daft bits).
It’s a shame for everyone that it’s ending on such a sour note and in court; but for some of us, Ms Sheridan’s exit really was the Cherry on the cake – literally and metaphorically.
The final series of what has, for me, been one of the most brilliant TV dramas ever, is ending with more than a touch of controversy (and I don’t just mean Mike’s inability to buy a change of shirt). Nicollette Sheridan has been in court, suing the show’s creator, Marc Cherry. She claims that he got rid of her for reasons other than those he claimed (you will have to read up on this elsewhere; I don’t want to enter the legal minefield), and it’s allegedly all heading back to court.
Obviously, I know nothing of any of this, other than what I have read about the court proceedings, but as a TV critic, I was always 100% behind Sheridan’s departure – in fact, as passionately as I was against her arrival in the first place. To me, her character never worked; she just sort of landed on Wisteria Lane with about as much at-home-ness as ET arriving to address the Senate.
It wasn’t just that she was new. The central four – Gabby (Eva Longoria), Bree (Marcia Cross), Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman) – have made relationships with several newcomers, including, among my favourites, Katherine, played by the sensational Dana Delaney (now the star of Body of Proof).
I could just never get to grips with who Edie was supposed to be. She was a vamp, certainly, yet without the charm of vampishness that Vanessa Williams has brought to the part of Renee – who, despite outward appearances, still has layers that often expose her vulnerability. By comparison with both Renee and the foursome, Edie was . . . well, very one-dimensional and predictable.
I’ve been pondering these matters today as I’ve sat indoors, despite it being a beautiful sunny day outside, catching up with the series – the eighth, which will be its last. If you’re in the UK and watching Channel 4, don’t read on if you don’t want to know what’s coming up (even though some papers have already ruined the surprise).
I’ve been weeping uncontrollably at Mike’s funeral, as characters’ flashbacks of him steer them in different directions in their lives. If you are still reading, you would be well advised to stock up on Kleenex as you prepare to say goodbye to this wonderful character – and Hatcher delivers her best performance ever.
Yes, yes, I know that it will be the end for everyone soon, and I have stocked up on tissues for that day, too (anyone on for a DH end-of-life party, by the way?); but Mike’s death took me by surprise.
I don’t know how I’m going to live without the show. Eva Longoria’s beauty and Gabby’s hilarious selfishness; evil Orson and his determination to destroy Bree, the wife who spurned him; the gorgeous Tom, who has yet to realise that Lynette and he belong together; Susan as grandmother, supporting her daughter as she prepares to become a mother – I have loved every minute (even the daft bits).
It’s a shame for everyone that it’s ending on such a sour note and in court; but for some of us, Ms Sheridan’s exit really was the Cherry on the cake – literally and metaphorically.
Ready, Steady, GOOOOOOO! 3/25/12
The selection of teams during games lessons probably ranks amongst the most humiliating experiences of anyone’s school life.
In Brynteg Comprehensive in Bridgend, not once was I ever chosen to be a captain and do my own picking; no, I was always among the last four – not the bottom of the barrel but the dregs under the barrel - and praying that I would never be last and have to witness the disappointment on the faces of the golden nuggets who had been snapped up first.
They were Susan, Alison, Mandy, Caroline – the girls who smoked in the toilets during break and mitched off lessons when the Radio 1 Road Show came to town. How they ran out of the school gates when news of Tony Blackburn’s arrival spread.
But their naughtiness counted for nothing when it came to the last double lesson on Friday afternoon, when teams were chosen and hearts broken.
It had nothing to do with how good you were at sport. I was a very fast runner and a pretty good hurdler, too. I wasn’t too bad at the long and high jumps, and I also remember scoring three goals during one hockey match and thinking that surely this would be enough to get me cherry picked first next time.
But not a bit of it.
I remember Mrs Davies saying to me, after my glorious hockey triumph: “You’re too competitive”. I was very competitive; I still am - but to me it has always been a virtue. I’m not saying that I missed my chances at the Olympics, but the only day I’ll hide my light under a bushel is when I’m six feet under – and even then, I wouldn’t count on it.
Was it a lack of competitive spirit that gave the Welsh rugby team their third Grand Slam in eight years?
Is it a lack of belief that has taken Cardiff City to both the FA and Carling Cup finals?
Is it reticence that is driving Swansea City up the Premiership when everyone predicted they would be back down in the Championship at the end of the season? Of course not.
It is competitiveness of the highest order that lies at the heart of each of these team’s successes and, at the helm, managers and coaches who know how to harness that competitiveness in something that we often lose sight of – team spirit.
Apart from Craig Bellamy, I couldn’t name one player who has played for Cardiff City, but I follow the team’s progress and still cried when they lost the Carling Cup penalty shoot-out.
I can’t name even one player in Swansea City but rejoiced when they beat Manchester City.
I can name all of the Welsh squad but think of them as an extraordinary collective whose closeness as a team is one of the keys to their success.
Being a team player is tough.
While you bring your individual skills to the table, you also have to know how to use those skills in order to best bring out the skills of others.
You have to know when to pass the ball – literally and metaphorically – and you have to be there for each other on the bad days as well as the good.
I was in New Zealand when Wales went out to France in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup. When Sam Warburton was sent off, the stadium went silent; at the end of the game, we left like one massive funeral procession, our hopes and dreams already a distant memory.
The next day, I happened to be in the same bar as several members of the team, who turned up to watch the All Blacks/Australia semi-final. They were cheered when they entered and enjoyed celebrity status as fans gathered round to have their pictures taken.
They were dignified in defeat, humble in the limelight, and they were undoubtedly the team of the tournament. It felt good to be Welsh.
It still does. These are incredible times for Welsh sport and, in particular, Welsh teams. We know that young people hero worship sports personalities and now they have three teams to look to for inspiration.
Each one is a great symbol of hard work, dedication, self-belief and, in aiming to be the best, they show the importance and true meaning of competitive spirit: great team work.
During the two and a half years I spent in LA, I witnessed at first hand such a positive attitude among the people I met. They were undoubtedly competitive, in a town in which so many are competing for the ultimate accolade of living the Hollywood dream.
To me, if you don’t aim high, you’ll never know how high you can reach, yet back in Cardiff, I am constantly reminded of the adage with which I was brought up when growing up in Wales: Never hang your hat higher than you can reach.
Thankfully, and goodness knows how, I managed, and continue to manage to ignore it and, for me, I will always not just hang but throw my hat as high as I can, always in the belief that I will be able to leap to catch it even before it begins to fall.
You can never be too competitive.
Finally, in Wales, our sports teams seem to have woken up to that.
Now, they just need to spread the message to everyone else.
In Brynteg Comprehensive in Bridgend, not once was I ever chosen to be a captain and do my own picking; no, I was always among the last four – not the bottom of the barrel but the dregs under the barrel - and praying that I would never be last and have to witness the disappointment on the faces of the golden nuggets who had been snapped up first.
They were Susan, Alison, Mandy, Caroline – the girls who smoked in the toilets during break and mitched off lessons when the Radio 1 Road Show came to town. How they ran out of the school gates when news of Tony Blackburn’s arrival spread.
But their naughtiness counted for nothing when it came to the last double lesson on Friday afternoon, when teams were chosen and hearts broken.
It had nothing to do with how good you were at sport. I was a very fast runner and a pretty good hurdler, too. I wasn’t too bad at the long and high jumps, and I also remember scoring three goals during one hockey match and thinking that surely this would be enough to get me cherry picked first next time.
But not a bit of it.
I remember Mrs Davies saying to me, after my glorious hockey triumph: “You’re too competitive”. I was very competitive; I still am - but to me it has always been a virtue. I’m not saying that I missed my chances at the Olympics, but the only day I’ll hide my light under a bushel is when I’m six feet under – and even then, I wouldn’t count on it.
Was it a lack of competitive spirit that gave the Welsh rugby team their third Grand Slam in eight years?
Is it a lack of belief that has taken Cardiff City to both the FA and Carling Cup finals?
Is it reticence that is driving Swansea City up the Premiership when everyone predicted they would be back down in the Championship at the end of the season? Of course not.
It is competitiveness of the highest order that lies at the heart of each of these team’s successes and, at the helm, managers and coaches who know how to harness that competitiveness in something that we often lose sight of – team spirit.
Apart from Craig Bellamy, I couldn’t name one player who has played for Cardiff City, but I follow the team’s progress and still cried when they lost the Carling Cup penalty shoot-out.
I can’t name even one player in Swansea City but rejoiced when they beat Manchester City.
I can name all of the Welsh squad but think of them as an extraordinary collective whose closeness as a team is one of the keys to their success.
Being a team player is tough.
While you bring your individual skills to the table, you also have to know how to use those skills in order to best bring out the skills of others.
You have to know when to pass the ball – literally and metaphorically – and you have to be there for each other on the bad days as well as the good.
I was in New Zealand when Wales went out to France in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup. When Sam Warburton was sent off, the stadium went silent; at the end of the game, we left like one massive funeral procession, our hopes and dreams already a distant memory.
The next day, I happened to be in the same bar as several members of the team, who turned up to watch the All Blacks/Australia semi-final. They were cheered when they entered and enjoyed celebrity status as fans gathered round to have their pictures taken.
They were dignified in defeat, humble in the limelight, and they were undoubtedly the team of the tournament. It felt good to be Welsh.
It still does. These are incredible times for Welsh sport and, in particular, Welsh teams. We know that young people hero worship sports personalities and now they have three teams to look to for inspiration.
Each one is a great symbol of hard work, dedication, self-belief and, in aiming to be the best, they show the importance and true meaning of competitive spirit: great team work.
During the two and a half years I spent in LA, I witnessed at first hand such a positive attitude among the people I met. They were undoubtedly competitive, in a town in which so many are competing for the ultimate accolade of living the Hollywood dream.
To me, if you don’t aim high, you’ll never know how high you can reach, yet back in Cardiff, I am constantly reminded of the adage with which I was brought up when growing up in Wales: Never hang your hat higher than you can reach.
Thankfully, and goodness knows how, I managed, and continue to manage to ignore it and, for me, I will always not just hang but throw my hat as high as I can, always in the belief that I will be able to leap to catch it even before it begins to fall.
You can never be too competitive.
Finally, in Wales, our sports teams seem to have woken up to that.
Now, they just need to spread the message to everyone else.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Escape From Alcatraz (The TV Show) 3/13/12
Alcatraz.
It’s one of those words that sends a shiver down your spine.
It’s that movie you vaguely remember about a bunch of blokes who swam away from the horrible guards on a rock in the middle of an ocean no one had ever heard of.
Well, it seemed like that when I was growing up in Wales at the time. But then the biggest excitement our parents allowed us in Newport was a Cadbury’s flake sticking out of a Mr Whippy cone of a Sunday afternoon.
I saw Alcatraz "The Rock" last year. I was living in LA at the time and, as everyone told me how much I would prefer San Francisco, decided to head up there for the weekend.
I hated it. If I tell you that Alcatraz was the highlight of my SF week-end, that will give you an indication of quite how much I loathed it. And I didn’t even get to Alcatraz. Just the view of it was enough to make me feel better after the horrors of SF.
No restaurants serving after 9pm, an attitude to women dining alone that was positively prehistoric, and by far the scruffiest, dirtiest place I had ever been in the US.
Apart from that, I loved it. Ha!
But I will go back. If only to visit Alcatraz. Which is more than I can say of the TV drama. That, I hope never to visit again.
It promised so much. Big hype, big sets, dramatic music . . . but ultimately never delivered. A better example of style over substance it would be hard to find, and in the absence of a decent script (barely any script, come to that), it relied on stereotypes against a glossy background (grey, of course – apparently, it’s the new black, amongst people who know about such things).
So, we had the unshaven hunk with a mysterious air; closely followed by the petite, pretty, blonde, female cop, whose partner had (of course!) been killed; and then the proverbial Fat Bloke who, quelle surprise, got on rather well with said blonde, when she declared that she wanted him to be her new sidekick.
He could hardly contain himself (actually, that’s a lie: he looks as if he could contain not only himself but at least three families of refugees and a multi- storey car park). I predict his sad demise round about episode eight, series two, all providing the doughnuts and the Big Macs don’t get to him first.
Then there was the proverbial Bad Guy, who turned out to be running what appeared to be a cryogenics spaceship and . . .
To be honest, this IKEA showroom killed it for me at the end of the episode, because by then I really didn’t know where I was and, more importantly, didn’t know whose side I was supposed to be on.
For me, it’s important to know for whom you are rooting at the very beginning of a show, and Alcatraz didn’t have a clue. The hunk who drew us in turned out to be a nutcase and, worse, a nutcase convict from another era.
They missed a trick here and they should never have made him a killer in the pilot episode. There was just too much happening and they over-egged the pudding to such a degree that we had – and still do not have – any idea who the hero is.
Any show, TV or film, must address the fundamental question that any viewer or cinema-goer asks before their seat is even warm: whose side am I on?
After episode one of Alcatraz, I’m on the side of . . . well, any side that isn’t the channel it’s on.
Not only is it the poor man's Lost; it's the poor man's Lost behind bars.
A sad case of not getting my Rock off.
Or this jailhouse not rocking.
It’s one of those words that sends a shiver down your spine.
It’s that movie you vaguely remember about a bunch of blokes who swam away from the horrible guards on a rock in the middle of an ocean no one had ever heard of.
Well, it seemed like that when I was growing up in Wales at the time. But then the biggest excitement our parents allowed us in Newport was a Cadbury’s flake sticking out of a Mr Whippy cone of a Sunday afternoon.
I saw Alcatraz "The Rock" last year. I was living in LA at the time and, as everyone told me how much I would prefer San Francisco, decided to head up there for the weekend.
I hated it. If I tell you that Alcatraz was the highlight of my SF week-end, that will give you an indication of quite how much I loathed it. And I didn’t even get to Alcatraz. Just the view of it was enough to make me feel better after the horrors of SF.
No restaurants serving after 9pm, an attitude to women dining alone that was positively prehistoric, and by far the scruffiest, dirtiest place I had ever been in the US.
Apart from that, I loved it. Ha!
But I will go back. If only to visit Alcatraz. Which is more than I can say of the TV drama. That, I hope never to visit again.
It promised so much. Big hype, big sets, dramatic music . . . but ultimately never delivered. A better example of style over substance it would be hard to find, and in the absence of a decent script (barely any script, come to that), it relied on stereotypes against a glossy background (grey, of course – apparently, it’s the new black, amongst people who know about such things).
So, we had the unshaven hunk with a mysterious air; closely followed by the petite, pretty, blonde, female cop, whose partner had (of course!) been killed; and then the proverbial Fat Bloke who, quelle surprise, got on rather well with said blonde, when she declared that she wanted him to be her new sidekick.
He could hardly contain himself (actually, that’s a lie: he looks as if he could contain not only himself but at least three families of refugees and a multi- storey car park). I predict his sad demise round about episode eight, series two, all providing the doughnuts and the Big Macs don’t get to him first.
Then there was the proverbial Bad Guy, who turned out to be running what appeared to be a cryogenics spaceship and . . .
To be honest, this IKEA showroom killed it for me at the end of the episode, because by then I really didn’t know where I was and, more importantly, didn’t know whose side I was supposed to be on.
For me, it’s important to know for whom you are rooting at the very beginning of a show, and Alcatraz didn’t have a clue. The hunk who drew us in turned out to be a nutcase and, worse, a nutcase convict from another era.
They missed a trick here and they should never have made him a killer in the pilot episode. There was just too much happening and they over-egged the pudding to such a degree that we had – and still do not have – any idea who the hero is.
Any show, TV or film, must address the fundamental question that any viewer or cinema-goer asks before their seat is even warm: whose side am I on?
After episode one of Alcatraz, I’m on the side of . . . well, any side that isn’t the channel it’s on.
Not only is it the poor man's Lost; it's the poor man's Lost behind bars.
A sad case of not getting my Rock off.
Or this jailhouse not rocking.
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