memoir of an ancient Lady Writer

MEMOIR OF AN ANCIENT LADY WRITER

By Anonymous

I used to be fastidious

Now I'm just slow, and tedious.

Outside I'm plump – I'm slim within

And when I speak my voice is thin.

My hair is red with greying roots

And men who cared don't give two hoots.

My friends are old, or else they're dead

The rest of them all lie abed.

My hands no longer open jars.

My feet don't wander into bars.

I cannot race and win the cup

I've too much trouble keeping up.

It's the race itself that is the prize

not winning, like those other guys.

So I'll keep running till I drop

And hope my last book's not a flop.

Scripwriters, Please Note

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Thanks to Frank Nugent, a pioneer script writer, for a few of these suggestions, which come naturally, when you've written a few dozen TV scripts.

To all would-be screenwriters: To any script, there's always a beginning, middle and an end.  Here are some considerations:

1.Beginning: Make it physically move.

2. Middle:Upset the status quo.  Create excitement.  

Something goes wrong. Fix. it. 

But you didn’t quite fix it. Fix it again. 

OOPs! Still a problem.

3 End: This time you really fix it and....

As Nugent put it: Write a good last line.

I have moved my blog to my website www.Pat Silver-Lasky.com  with a whole new concept and some interesting itemes. Have a look. you might find a laugh or two.Pat

Hi, everyone. I'm moving my blog to my official website.  Click here to visit my new blog and meet me on my website.

A Brit and a Half Lost in OC  by Pat & Peter Betts

A Journey of Discovery, Memories and Comparisons

                                    THE BITCH IN THE BOX ©

I’ve always considered myself able to find my way around the UK with the aid of a fairly recent map and a first-class memory.  Even my highly critical wife, Pat says I must have studied ‘the knowledge’ because I dodge my way around London corners like a taxi driver.  It’s a talent.  But Pat, who admits to being geographically impaired, insisted that once we arrived in sunny Orange County, California I must buy a SatNav so we wouldn’t get lost.  It was only when we went to Palm Springs to visit a friend and I chose to take Highway 74, that she talked me into it.  How was I to know it wound through the mountains for stomach churning hours?

So with my human SatNav wife, we headed to the store where the satellite delight was duly purchased and installed in our car. Because the surface of the dashboard was pebbled, we had to fasten it to Pat’s overhead mirror. This technological wonder came with a somewhat human woman’s voice.  She sounded extraordinarily like my schoolteacher in the fourth form at Noel Park Primary. Pat’s daughter Lisa calls her the bitch in the box.

In preparation, I’d read up on the various products and learned that several road accidents have been attributed to SatNav misdirection.  One dark night in Exton, Hampshire in 2007 a woman driver following the bitch’s commands went through a railroad crossing not indicated in her system and was hit by a train.  After that, the County Council erected a sign warning drivers to ignore their SatNav system and take another route.  But on the bright side, that same year a man in Australia successfully overturned a speeding conviction when evidence from a GPS navigational track proved that he didn’t exceed the speed limit.  These days even some Golf Carts may have integrated GPS units tailored to certain golf courses, providing interactive course maps and instant readings of distance measurements to the green.  Pat, who never likes it if I exceed 60mph, told me with a hint of triumph in her voice that the system would alert me if I were driving above the speed limit - or in the direction to be 'caught' by radar detectors.  Was it a threat or a promise?

One system even gives you a choice of voices, mostly humorous but after listening to what sounded like an out-of-work actor lucky to get a voice-over doing a take-off on Woody Allen - I mean, would you really want him to get you where you were going?  Now Penelope Cruz would be different.  But I’m stuck with the bitch I’ve got, though she may not be able to pronounce some words such as Niguel (Nigell) and calls it Niggle, or Jeronimo Road, which she calls Jerro-Nimmo.  Mission Viejo (veeayeho) fares no better as Vee-Joe.  I thought we were doing all right and it wasn’t her fault that we got side-swiped on Golden Lantern at Pacific Coast Highway by an Aston Martin.  Did the driver’s SatNav tell her to run a red light?

Our friend Ray has a friend who lives in Irvine.  “You’ve got to look for a house there,” he advised from his multi-million pound home in Kensington, without suggesting an introduction to this fabled friend.  Not sure how rich Ray’s friend was or if Irvine had modestly priced properties, we decided to give it a look and then to take in nearby Costa Mesa.  Pat, eager to get her fingers into the act, punched in the directions for our trip with the bitch.  The route took us up the freeway to Irvine, side-swiped Costa Mesa and somehow ended up in San Clemente twenty miles away without ever getting off the freeway. “You have reached your destination,” came the cool report.

 It seemed Pat had stabbed in a multi-freeway trip with no stops. I decided to turn to a map for the rest of the journey, which thankfully brought us straight back to our little hotel in Dana Point.  We never did see Irvine.

The bitch and I were finally getting used to each other until the night she had a nervous breakdown.  “No, no!” she thundered out of her box.  “I said riiight on Jaeger Drive!  Now get ready for a U Turn.  Do a Uiee!  A Uiee...!”   The voice began to panic and I was about to attempt it when I saw it would take me over a cliff!

 As I screeched my brakes, the bitch yelled, “Turn right in 200 yards.  Left in a third of a mile! Straight ahead!  U turn! You turn!” Her voice rose as the instructions came faster and faster.  “Three hundred yards turn Left!  Turn right!  Straight ahead!  Are you listening?  I said a Youeeee!” shrieked the bitch. I was in a cold sweat.

Then I woke up.

A Brit & a Half

This is a story by Peter Betts: The 'Pat' he refers to is me.

A Brit’ & a Half Lost in OC by Peter Betts

On a journey of discovery, memories and comparisons

Every Assistance Short of Help

It’s a miracle I haven’t thrown the phone out of the window, precious lifeline that it is.

Technology is wearing down my defenses. “Tried to call you, Pete. You forgot to put your Voice

Mail on again,” David complained. “Don’t you ever look at your Missed Calls?” Pat accused.

She’d called me to pick her up and where was I? I wish her six-year old grandson were here to

explain the mysteries of modern-day cell phones. I’m just getting the hang of American land

lines. Although I’ve finally mastered the act of punching in the number and remembering

to push TALK, invariably I have to jam the phone to my ear in a futile attempt to translate

the far-away voice of an operator who sounds like he’s in Uzbekistan and who’s speaking on

some muffled headphone when all I’m trying to do is call an office in downtown L.A. After

several “Can you repeat that more slowly” or “more loudly” or both at once, I’m switched to

dead silence as I wait for Customer Care or Customer Service to vent my complaint. Am I

still connected? To whom and to where?

In the UK I got an earful of music while the operator put me on hold - Pop, Rap or

Classic don’t take your choice but they never played mine - Jazz. Here in America it seems

to be plain silence and silence isn’t golden unless we’re talking about the cost of the bill I’m

running up on my temporary pay-as-you-go cell. But the cheery, “Thank you for choosing dedah-

di-dah-di-dah” doesn’t cheer me when I wouldn’t call them if I could help it.

Back in Blighty, a colorful multitude of phone cards pasted inside local corner shop

windows obscuring the view offered passersby the opportunity to call Norway for as little as

21p or Ghana for 39p. They were guaranteed to save on British Telecom’s exorbitant rate on

phone calls but I never had anyone in either country that I felt I needed to speak to. Until

one day here in OC’s lovely Laguna Niguel, Pat needed to connect with the ‘outside world’.

She’d chosen to buy an item advertised on the Internet from a far off land. Emails shot from

here to China and back.

How did they wish to be paid for this possibly nefarious transaction for an item we

might never see? The Chinese person with the un-Chinese name of Nerissa emailed ‘Pay

only by Western Union.’ Didn’t even know they still had one. Thought it went out with the

Pony Express.

The phone number was found in the telephone book. Pat dialed. She had the name of

the payee. She had the amount due. All she wanted was a living human; even Wall-E would

have done. But the automated phone clicked in and she was talking to an electronic voice

that required answers: a distinct yes or no and no room for maybes. Finally, a human being

of unknown origin deigned to listen while she explained what she wanted to pay to whom and

why. She even gave her life story in an effort to get the purchase moving. When finally she

gave her credit card number she was told the transaction was confirmed and it would cost

forty dollars.

“Forty dollars? Why didn’t you tell me that at the beginning?” she moaned. The

Western Union voice explained that in this part of Orange County there were three

possibilities but a personal visit to Dana Point, the nearest point of call, would only cost $14.

Worth the trip.

WHAT A GREAT DEAL! IT’S EVEN WORTH

CALLING SOMEONE WE DON’T KNOW.

I SEE YOU CAN CALL

TIMBUCKTU FOR JUST

19P A MINUTE.

www.peebycartoons.com

©

Nostalically, we imagined Western Union to have a formidable building like the Post

Office with Stars and Stripes flying, so reaching the destination it was a surprise when the

address seemed to refer to a less-than-super market. The Mexican eating a tamale outside

thumbed the way inside. Taking a chance we stepped past him and went in.

From the smell of chili, the store was clearly catering to a Mexican clientele. “Western

Union?” Pat asked the man behind the till. The shopkeeper pointed with his free hand to the

back of the store.

And there it was, just behind the bananas. No sign. Nada. Only a Mexican girl in

a little cubicle behind a window, fronted by a desk for the customer. Pat’s transaction was

sandwiched between a girl sending money back to her family in Mexico and an elderly woman

with a bag of japaleno peppers in her hand, surprised at our presence.

But all was not smooth sailing. Pat’s attempt to send the money hit another snag.

Having carefully completed the lengthy green-headed form she handed over her debit card.

“Sorry, Señora, we only accept cash.” We had ten dollars between us. “There’s an ATM

around the corner,” the teller advised, with a look of disdain.

“Don’t trash that form!’ Pat glared at her. “We’ll be back.” So another short walk,

another bout of too many fingers as we attempted to extract dollar bills from an unfriendly

machine by not pushing the right buttons. Equipped with sufficient funds we returned to the

Western Union office secreted in a Mexican Supermarket and concluded the transaction to

everyone’s satisfaction.

As we headed back to our rented apartment, I marveled at the tenacity of the human

race. Those adventurous souls who set forth to another land always ready to send some of

their hard-earned bucks to their families back home and I wondered which of our family

might be needy? Was it us?

Swimming With Hummingbirds

SWIMMING WITH HUMMINGBIRDS   ©Pat Silver-Lasky 

We have a small swimming pool in the back garden with a rather high wall between us and our back neighbor. Trees, shrubs and flowers fill that four foot planting bed behind the pool, making that entire back wall look like a garden stage set. When we first moved in we noticed two hummingbirds buzzing around the beds of pink roses, needlepoint beaks at the ready. That's something you don't see in England, so we hung up two hummingbird feeders on trees at each end of the 'stage set'.

Then there were three. Then four. Now we regularly see five of the little buggers when we are paddling our way across the pool. Did they have babies? The nest would probably fit into a thimble but we haven't spotted it. Last spring we saw a swarm of at least fourteen birds––but they only came by once, took a look at us paddling and whizzed on elsewhere. They never came back and for a while five hummingbirds (known to be territorial) flew back and forth between the two feeders with a few side trips to tree tops and flowers.

One bird we call The Boss has taken to standing guard on a branch near the right feeder. If another bird approaches, The Boss will buzz off its perch and zoom in at the intruder, chasing it away before it can get a sip. He/she lands back on the branch, ready to see off any pesky sippers. That feeder is reserved. The Boss helicopters up to a maple tree just over the wall where it has a wider view of marauders. When satisfied the coast is clear it zips down to its favorite spot near the bottle. According to the experts whose knowledge I plunder,  hummingbirds spend 80% of their day just sitting.

The other feeder is left completely undefended but no contender approaches it. Sometimes, when things quiet down, two or three birds will feed from it in convivial joy, but the Boss doesn't seem to care.

We usually swim at the end of the day.  Hummingbirds zoom over us, pausing like mini-helicopters––a startling sight right above our heads. They peer at us as if to say, "You here again?' Well, keep our feeders full and what about that vanilla?"

Yes, vanilla. Each feeder holds two cups of liquid. I make it fresh, two quarts at a time with a mix of two cups of sugar to eight cups of water. Then I add three drops of red vegetable coloring because the birds are supposedly attracted to red. One day I accidentally put in vanilla drops, and seeing my mistake, hastily added the red food color.

Peter hung out the bottles. Each has four little plastic flowerets at the bottom pierced with tiny sipping holes just wide enough for a hummingbird's thinly curved beak. They land on a little perch and sip. More often they pause in mid-air, wings whirring, sipping a bit now and then before flying off to a nearby tree. One bottle could last three days or even more. But after the accidental vanilla, the next morning, both bottles were empty.

How thirsty could they get? The mystery deepened. Had they given up on all the flowers in the neighborhood? Had I turned these dainty creatures into vanilla junkies???

One way to find out.  I cleaned and refilled the bottles. In went the vanilla and the little critters knocked the stuff back like it was going out of style.

It was. A friend came by and when I told her about the vanilla, she reacted in horror. I must surely be killing them! Think of their tiny digestive systems, she wailed Actually, I couldn't think of it, it was too tiny.  But I stopped putting in the vanilla, just in case. And I did notice that the bottles took about 2 or 3 days to empty again.

Anybody out there got any ideas about the vanilla? Is it bad for humming birds?  How about some conversation about these amazing little creatures who only seem to live in the Americas.?