I do love a good Death

SO MARGARET THATCHER IS DEAD! I can't think of a single other person who polarizes opinion in Britain so much. I would put myself at a central point in this ideological schism. Half me loves her (well, being as I'm Southern, middle-class and didn't grow up on a sink estate) I loved her when she was in power), the other loathes the woman.

While she was selling off state monopolies in telecommunications, power, steel, oil, railways etc I thought "privatization" was a great idea. Now I see it as nationalized theft. If it's good business to generate a load of electricity and sell it off in bulk cheap to companies who then sell it on to us the customers ~ why can't they sell it that cheap to begin with? Cut out the middlemen and give the discount to the consumer?

Thatcherism was, after all, supposed to be a consumer-driven society.

It's SHE who put millions on permanent state welfare handouts by destroying industry and employment in the North.

I do like the pretty buildings ~ you know, the skyscrapers and all ~ that Thatcherism (and neo-Thatcherism) generated.

Also there's "Thatcherite food" ~ which tastes a lot nicer than a lot of bland traditionally "British" fayre ... pasta with loads of pesto and foccaccia. What used to be called "foreign muck" is now the Daily Bread of the bourgeoisie!

Hey and according to today's Sun newspaper Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead is now number one in the download charts!

I would love to go on but I'm in an internet cafe and about to be terminated. Hope you're all doing well.

HERE'S THE VIDEOs...

COMMIES (and others) CELEBRATING MAGGIE THATCHER'S DEATH

ON THE STREETS OF BRIXTON

SCENE FROM 1939 WIZARD OF OZ

Grey Hurray For Another Dull Day

I DARE NOT read back whatever whining, self-pitying crap I wrote yesterday. Back then I was depressed. Today I'm not as badly depressed ~ so my mind has more valuable. I'm swinging from utterly worthless back to "of some inherent value" again. Maybe I'll even go up to superstar blinging Emperor of the Day, shining like a padparadascha, in a brief instant, only to be swallowed once more by the howling night.

London is incredibly depressing today. Grey streets under grey skies and grey people huddling home in the cold. I even dared turn on the central heating for half an hour. Running back and forth to the gas meter to calculate how much this cost. The house barely got any warmer ~ and yet 20p went down the drain in not much more than 20 minutes! So I'm not doing that again. Normally I either go to bed, or wander around in coat, scarf and wooly hat. (Indoors.) It's been far too cold to watch television...

... But eventually I took more methadone (more than prescribed) and started feeling relatively "fine". So I searched for a DVD to put on and found something called Million Dollar Hotel. (I don't even recall where it came from, I just found the DVD in my house a couple of days ago...) Well if you're thinking of watching it, I can tell you that Million Dollar Hotel is weird bordering on plain odd. Even though it does star Mel Gibson. It's a terrible movie. So I shoved A Star Is Born into the player. This was disc 2, the Pantages Theater TV Premier, as shown to millions of gawking Americans back in 1954. It's weird how so very few of the actors are still recognizable today. Even Elizabeth Taylor, supposedly the last great movie star showed up failing to gain a personal mention; she was merely "Mrs Michael Wilding".

If you're wondering why the gemstone illustrations and what they are, the top 2 feature fancy coloured diamonds in varying saturations; the orange heart is a rare padparadascha sapphire. And finally an Ethiopian black opal... And they're just there for the sake of it. To brighten an incredibly grey day.

I would have spent all day in bed, but I slept so long last night there was no hope of sleeping any more. This is the type of day that is only worth sleeping through. (I sometimes wonder why I bother living at all. If life was down to "bothering" I can assure you I'd have died of indifference long ago...)

So there's not so much to say. Have a look at this old premier footage (same stuff I was watching) if you want a real blast from Hollywood's past...


A STAR IS BORN PREMIER, PANTAGES THEATER, HOLLYWOOD, 1954
I like the bit where the guy who says he named Frances Gumm "Judy Garland" says that even if she was called Tel Aviv Windowsill she would still be a rare and fragile talent... (interesting that he chooses fragile... which she certainly was)




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Judy Garland: A Complete Mess

I SAW A TV FILM called Life With Judy Garland: Me And My Shadows first thing in the morning. My: was she a mess. I knew she had her pill problems, but didn't realize they were quite that bad. In the end she was taking 1600mg a day of Seconal, on top of heavy doses of (prescribed) amphetamine. Plus she was drinking heavily. Barbiturates like Seconal are supposed to magnify the effects of alcohol considerably. They also cancel out the jitterier side-effects of speed, so you get a double-high.

In the beginning she was depicted on speed giving a master performance: singing her heart out, gesturing, pinging across the stage, reaching out to audience members' hands etc. Then she put in an Oscar-nominated performance opposite James Mason in the 1954 film A Star Is Born ~~ and yet no-one wanted to hire her afterwards because by that stage in her career she was already considered unreliable.

In the end she was performing concerts in theatres for practically no money because she owed it all to the IRS as back taxes for movies made the decade before. Drunk, confused, forgetting what song it was, tangling herself up in the microphone wire. And booed off the stage in Australia.

Her poor daughter Lorna Luft (upon whose memoir the film was based) had to tell a family court judge that she wanted to be with her mom rather than her dad because her mother couldn't live without her. This was true, in the most literal way. The judge sighed and granted custody to "Miss Garland". And the drunken, drugged confusion continued.

Towards the end, Lorna, who is barely in her teens, is reduced to a state of nervous collapse and physical exhaustion and realizes she just cannot go on. So Judy Garland is left alone and drinking. One night she cannot sleep despite all that Seconal and so she takes several more. And is found on the bathroom floor, dead.

It was a pretty horrible story. Funny how when you see something close-up it doesn't seem in the slightest bit "glamorous". A lot of people do consider drug-taking and even drug addiction glamorous. The more you see, the less you like it. But many don't see the full details until they themselves are addicted. By that time your one comfort, that seems to give you life, is the thing that is killing you.

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I wasn't trying to say yesterday that I thought my lovely label would get my any special treatment. Merely that I tick a box. So they would know what preconceptions to shove my way if I ever did get inpatient "care"...

Here's a furry picture of a cute koala.

Illustrated: the woman to the left in the second picture is Jacqueline Susann, author of the 30,000,000 copy bestseller about pillpopping, Valley of The Dolls...

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MUSIC: Judy Garland sings THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY in A Star Is Born

  I HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE WEEKEND   ***