canny granny

I’ve never really trusted telephones. My grandmother instilled a fear of electricity in me at an early age.

“Electricity is dangerous,” she said, “and phones talk in electricity. Make sure you always remember that!“. I have always remembered that.

(And no one was ever allowed to forget that my Great Aunt Sadie saw something nasty in a phone box on Labor Day in 1934.)

So it comes as no surprise to me to learn that job seekers who dialed a Maryland Job Service Hotline found themselves chatting on a sex line. Hot being the operative word here. Can you imagine the conversation? Mind boggling.

But did people who phoned the true blue original sex line find themselves talking to a vocational guidance counselor? I shudder to imagine that conversation.

It seems someone who may, or may not, still be working for the State of Maryland, put the wrong number on the State’s website. For heavens sake, we all know how easy it is to dial a wrong number, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, but I find it puzzling how numbers can be interchanged in this fashion.

You can’t tell me it’s a coincidence

After the previous post about the sad lack of good looking men to be found in the lists of alleged hunks - I have to show off my family pictures.

My son Reuben turned 30 on the weekend and, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I can show you a pic of him with his own little son.

The young lady in the photo is not Reuben’s wife/partner but his niece, my granddaughter Hannah. So what you see is my eldest grandchild, and my youngest.

The little fellow’s name is Tien. Amazing isn’t it? The world, which was once so big, has shrunk incredibly, and I am no longer surprised at the blending of people which results in the delightful addition of a little Eurasian boy to my fair-skinned, pale-eyed family.

Last night I watched a replay of a mens’ beauty pageant and let me tell you, the standard of good-looking men is lamentably low. And they were all glossed up, oiled and gleaming! Tell me the truth, are you attracted to some bloke who looks like he rolled around a few times in a large bowl of vinaigrette?

Now here is a real man. No, I am not showing you cheesey pics of male models or celebrity men with hairy chests. No pictures of Juan Garcia Postigo who is famous for having his eyes set way too close together. These days, little beady eyes are considered sexy.

No, I am showing you a genuine hunk. Look at that face. A whole lifetime of living is on that dial. One glance and you know that man has a great sense of humour, pathos, a trusting simplicity and loyalty galore. He’s nice and tall too.

He looks good even when covered in yak hair.

The morning TV showed me previews of Get Smart and I suppose I will have to bestir myself to get out and see it. There is a cheap day in picture theatres during the week to see films, I will check my purse for loose change. Or else wait till it’s on DVD at BlockBusters.

But it made me think of the shows I used to watch on TV (how many many years ago?) in the 60s and 70s.

Get Smart was one of course, and I enjoyed Dick Van Dyke too - we were more innocent then. The only other American show which I remember enjoying was the Twilight Zone for my tastes ran - and still run - to English cops and robbers, and to English spies.

Z-Cars was a fabulous show. At the time it was shocking! There was suddenly a new realism to the genre as it featured ordinary policing in Newtown, a fictitious town to the north of Liverpool. Apart from the crooks, it featured the day to day lives of the policemen themselves, depicting them as fallible human beings capable of gambling, drinking and, most controversially of all, wife beating.

Society was changing rapidly and Z-Cars mirrored the social changes of its era. The writers bravely dared to push the envelope of the dramatic depiction of the police and their role in a rapidly changing society, to starkly realistic new heights.

It went on to be replaced by an even more realistic show, the Sweeney. More on that later, and on Callan.