Magical Mary Poppins

In my last post, I told you about my wonderful Boxing Day.

A trip to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, delicious Bloody Mary Soup, horse racing from Kempton Park and Mary Poppins on the television.

There was one thing that marred the day ever so slightly and it occurred when I was in my favourite reclining position on the sofa whilst watching Mary Poppins.

Britney (Not her real name) had been given a new game for her X Box and as she and Other Half were trying to figure it out, I was in the lap of luxury – in the lounge with the big television and surround sound. On. My. Own.

This is something of a rarity and I was thoroughly enjoying it.

Then Britney came into the lounge to ask a question, just as Mary, Bert, Jane and Michael jumped into Bert’s chalk drawing.

“That is so fake.” said Britney as she returned to her X Box.

Even though I retorted that the film was made in 1964 and that kind of trickery was ground-breaking at the time, I have to confess I was a bit hurt that Britney was pouring scorn on one of my favourite films.

It’s not surprising though.

Britney is used to Finding Dory and Moana on Blu Ray and let’s face it, they look a lot more believable than Mary’s horse breaking free from the carousel and winning a horse race.

But her remark got me thinking.

I have seen the film Mary Poppins a little over 163,000 times and yet it had never crossed my mind how Bert managed to hold down so many jobs. No wonder he didn’t want to sweep Mrs Bank’s chimney (that’s not a euphemism) as the Lord Mayor’s was needing done. If he was a one man band 1 day, an artist the next and then selling bloody kites whenever the wind got up, when the hell did he get the chance to sweep all the other chimneys?

I’d love to see his CV. You would be putting it in the “can’t hold down a job and is easily bored” pile if you were shortlisting for interviews.

And if Bert only sweeps chimneys one day a week, how does he know so many other chimney sweeps? Do they all just work one day a week? I’m not surprised the London smog was horrendous if all the chimney sweeps regularly bunked off work so they could get together on the roof in the hope of a quick knees up with Mary Poppins. She should have been encouraging them to get on with their work instead of tapping her feet and cheering when they jumped over their chimney brushes. Mary even cavorts with a number of the sweeps during this tea dance among the chimneys and I can’t help but feel that her conduct is sending out the wrong signals. Especially as when Admiral Boom starts aiming fireworks at them, they all end up back at Mary’s place. Thank goodness Mr and Mrs Banks returned home before any major tom-foolery could be undertaken. The Banks family should count themselves lucky that all the chimney sweeps did was terrorise their staff for a very short length of time.

And was it really appropriate for Mary and Bert to have tea together, alone with just some penguin waiters as chaperones? She even insults poor Bert by singing to him that although he’s just a “diamond in the rough” underneath his “blood is blue”. Should Bert not be horribly offended by that remark? It’s a bit like saying “Bert, you’re a bit of a scruff but you act like a posh bloke at the end of the day”. And whilst Mary is beaming and Bert is altering his trousers to resemble that of MC Hammer, what are Jane and Michael getting up to? They could have eaten their own bodyweight in candy floss and won 15 goldfish a piece by the time Mary and Bert rocked up to the fairground. At least in1910 there wasn’t an 18 page risk assessment and an online compliance form to complete before taking the children on an outing so that’s a bonus.

The children obviously loved the magical days with their nanny, but how many years must Jane and Michael have had in counselling to get over a tea party on the ceiling?

Therapist: Yes, yes, I’m sure there was a tea party on the ceiling…

Jane: But there was! Mary Poppins even said I could pour some milk for us to drink.

Therapist: I’m going to prescribe you with some medicine, Jane. It will make all these bad thoughts completely disappear and you will feel completely relaxed.

Jane: (Hammering fists on the table) How many more times do I have to tell you? There was a bloody tea party ON THE CEILING!!

Therapist: (Smiling) Yes, of course there was Jane, now if you would just put your arms in this straight jacket…..

Scarred for life.

Imagine both of them drifting through the rest of their lives thinking that every time a dog barked it was actually saying something, that Greenwich Mean Time was taken from Admiral Boom and that Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a truly acceptable thing to say when you are stuck for words.

I’m a little perturbed about Mary’s manipulation regarding the whole tuppence-gate affair as well. Too be fair it probably would be better spending your money on feeding the birds rather than entrusting it to the bank, but pigeons are simply vermin with wings that get in the way and shit all over everything. Perhaps if they had been endangered songbirds or parrots I would be more with Michael on this one. And the kerfuffle that ensues when Michael digs his heels in is nothing short of calamitous.

If I had done something that had ended up getting my Dad sacked especially if my Mum was out all day raising awareness of the lack of women’s voting conveniences, I would have been running much, much faster than Jane and Michael. In fact the vagrants and beggars of the East End of London would have been the least of my worries.

It was just as well that Bert was on his chimney sweep day to help them home after they’d run away otherwise they’d probably have ended up sweeping chimneys themselves. Can you imagine what would have happened if he’d been on his one-man-band job that day? Jane and Michael might not have made it.

You would have thought that Mr Banks would have had to work some kind of period of notice too, especially as he had worked at the bank for so long. And he must have done other bad things at work. There would have to have been 1 verbal and 2 written warnings before they could vandalise his umbrella and ravage his bowler hat so badly that it let the rain in. And as his Father had worked for the bank as well, I can only conclude that loyalty must mean absolutely nothing to this company.

After having his employment terminated, Mr Banks then returns home shitfaced and humiliated, wondering how he can continue to afford to pay the nanny, cook and maid and heads straight to the cellar to make the most rubbish job of mending Jane and Michael’s kite.

And it took him all night.

All night to stick a bit of tape on a kite.

It took Walt Disney nearly 20 years to strike a deal with Pamela Travers who wrote the Mary Poppins books and by all accounts she was a very difficult woman to please. Travers was not happy with the animation, the music (she treated the Sherman brothers who wrote and composed the music for the film appallingly) and was not invited to the film’s premier. She was so aghast by the whole film making process that when she was approached years later regarding the making of British stage musical, she requested that only English born writers be used and no-one from the original film production be involved. These points were even stipulated in her last will and testament, ensuring that Disney would never be allowed to get involved with her Mary Poppins stories ever again. Clearly when she finally agreed to give Walt Disney the film rights to Mary Poppins, the royalties from her books had dried up and she was facing a very hard time financially. Travers was interviewed in 1977 and said that she had seen the film a few times and had learnt to live with it. She said “It’s glamorous and it’s a good film on its own level, but I don’t think it is very like my books”.

During the film’s initial run it grossed $31-33 million. In honour of Walt Disney Productions’ 50^th anniversary it was released theatrically in 1973 and earned an estimated $9 million in American rentals. It was released once more in 1980 earning another $14 million and has a lifetime gross of over $100 million, quite a feat for a film that was made on a $6 million budget.

Mary Poppins was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won 5 of them (1 of them for Best Visual Effects, Britney). It was nominated for 2 Golden Globes and won 1, won 2 Grammys and The Writers Guild of America awarded it Best Written Musical.

Mary Poppins was the first Disney film to be released on DVD in July 2000 and on 14^th December 2004 it had a 2 disc release in a digitally restored 40^th anniversary edition. It was released again on 27^th January 2009 as a 45^th anniversary edition and was released on Blu-ray as the 50^th anniversary edition on 10^th December 2013.

If the film Mary Poppins was a person she would be driven everywhere in a 1960s Cadillac. She would wear diamonds and fur and would make time to speak to every person at the side of the red carpet. She would willingly stop for autographs and as time progressed, selfies, with her fans. She would do breakfast time television interviews with exceptional charm and would be able to have a glass of champagne and still hold her decorum. As her years advanced she would hold the respect of all the up and coming films as they would be humble in her presence and value what she had achieved in 1964. She would even have the grace to forgive Dick Van Dyke’s Irish voice coach for telling him that his cockney accent was acceptable.

She would indeed be practically perfect in every way.

Boxing Day and Holy Island

I’ve got Man-flu.

It began the day before New Year’s Eve with a slight snuffle and a faint burning sensation in my throat. By New Year’s Eve the snuffle had escalated into a force 10 head cold and I felt so drained and rubbish that I didn’t even have the energy to get dressed. I spent the day in my pyjamas, draped on the sofa sipping Lemsips every 4 hours, sneezing so hard that I thought my eyes were going to burst out of their sockets and using half a toilet roll in 6 hours for blowing my nose. I left the house twice, once (with my waterproof trousers and wellies on over the top of my pyjamas) to put Wet-Dishcloth-Horse out in the field and to unconvincingly muck out and again to bring him in to his stable at night.

This Man-Flu thing also meant that there was no point in opening any fizzy stuff at New Year as I couldn’t taste anything apart from garlic, curry and piccalilli. This was an enormous frustration as there was a bottle of Bollinger and a bottle of Taittinger in the fridge that Other Half has been promising to open for months.

Aside from being unwell at New Year, we had a good Christmas in the Jodhpurs household and I personally had an almost perfect Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is a much better day than Christmas Day because it is perfectly acceptable to have an enormously hefty martini and watch the racing from Kempton Park. Kempton can afford the £10,000 that it costs to cover the entire track with frost covers and this keeps Jack Frost and his sparkly crispness off the ground and almost guarantees Boxing Day racing.

This year however I broke my usual Boxing Day tradition and after a late breakfast Other Half, Britney (Not her real name) and I hopped in the car and went to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne just off the Northumberland coast.

The 3 mile long island is reached by a causeway that is covered over by the North Sea twice every 24 hours. If you are planning a trip to Holy Island (and I honestly cannot stress this enough) check the Tide Tables. And I really, really mean that. Check the Tide Tables and do not go if you don’t have plenty of time. Please be aware that the safe crossing times to the island change daily; like the tide. So if you were there last Wednesday don’t assume that the safe crossing time will be the same next Wednesday.

Years ago when I worked for Miserable Finance Limited, I used to go to Holy Island every 3 months to complete a VAT job for a client. I recall one day in December the lady who I worked for came into the office and told me kindly that I was “cutting it a bit fine” to make the tide. I consulted my watch and replied that I still had 20 minutes until the end of the safe crossing window, to which she replied “they’re big tides at the moment and there’s a strong wind today”. She then practically threw me and my calculator into my car and waved me off to the mainland.

This wonderful lady also advised me that should I ever be worried about the level of water on the causeway I was to turn back immediately. And if this happened when I was trying to leave the island, she assured me that she had a spare bed already made up should I ever require it. Clearly this woman should be advising the visitors who believe it is possible to drive their family saloon car through the rising tide. Some of these muppets even try to traverse the causeway 2 hours after the end of safe crossing time and have to be rescued from the roof of their car by either the RNLI Lifeboat or Air Sea Rescue. 

Prior to Bristow Helicopters taking over the Air Sea Rescue contract in 2015, we used to sit in our garden and watch the bright yellow RAF Sea Kings flying over our heads as they flew from their base at RAF Boulmer to the Holy Island causeway. This occurred much more frequently during the summertime and frankly I’m surprised that the locals weren’t standing on the mainland firing stones from catapults at the stranded tourists.

The cost of a sea rescue is around £1,900 and an air rescue costs approximately £4,000, yet there is no charge to these people who fail to check the tide tables. This is because the RNLI is manned by volunteers, funded by donations and Bristow Helicopters are undertaking the ASR contract on behalf of Her Majesty’s Coastguard, which is again a free service. These services also do not wish to charge for rescues in case someone really is in danger and won’t ask for help as they cannot afford to pay for their recovery.

I would be one of those people.

I would be too petrified by embarrassment to request being rescued. I would sit in the little white rescue box, on its stilts high above the waterlogged causeway, right next to the sign that reads: DANGER DO NOT PROCEED WHEN WATER REACHES CAUSEWAY and watch my car getting washed off to Norway in total silence. I would then try to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. I would even lie to Other Half and say that I had sold my car because I no longer liked it. I would do anything to avoid admitting that I had made a total idiot of myself by getting stuck on the Holy Island causeway because I hadn’t bothered to check the tide tables that are on a board at both ends of the causeway.

Anyway, I digress.

So, despite the fact that I had an invitation on my fridge asking Other Half, Britney and me for coffee and drinks on the Island of Holy between 11am and 1pm on Boxing Day; I still checked the Tide Tables to see what time we could get on and off safely.

We arrived just after midday and walked through the village in the biting wind, towards the church and down onto the South beach.

Inside the boat house the wood burner was roaring and keeping warm a tray of sausages, an enormous pan of tomato soup and a vat of Hot Toddy on its top.

After a mug of tomato soup I was then introduced to the exquisite concept of Bloody Mary soup. I’m a huge fan of the original Bloody Mary and this hot equivalent invented by The Assassinator a few years ago, is just the thing on a bitterly cold day. You begin with the best homemade tomato soup ever and then get Kamikaze Girl to administer a generous glug of vodka and a hefty dash of Tabasco whilst giving it a good stir with the handle of a knife.

Perhaps we should commission The Resident Vet and Kamikaze Girl to make some of this amazing, forget-your-own-name-soup for all the people who are rescued from the roof of their cars on the causeway. Or better still, they could make it in cartons and send it to the insurance companies so they only have to pop it in the microwave when they are laughing themselves sick at their clients’ stupidity.

In fact, I could order a shipping container of digital watches from China and set an alarm on each and every one of them to notify the visitors that safe crossing was coming to an end. I could make an absolute fortune if I had a little stall at the mainland end of the causeway and charged £3 per watch. I would even let the visitors take their watches home with them at the end of their visit.

The Lady whose VAT I used to do all those years ago, once told me that the islanders have their own tide tables. And from time to time, when I was booking a visit to Holy Island to meet her, she would advise me that I could safely access the island 20 or even 30 minutes earlier than the time given by Northumberland County Council.

But I had and still have the uttermost respect for the secret tide tables of the islanders. The inhabitants of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne understand and listen to the living, breathing creature that the sea becomes as it engulfs the sandflats around their beautiful home. They know that a strong North wind can considerably alter their secret tide tables and cut them off from the mainland much more quickly than anticipated. They treat the sea with the respect that it deserves. A respect that the visitor in his Mercedes trying to get off the island 2 hours and 40 minutes after the end of safe crossing time, does not have.

My Boxing Day was perfect because what else can you ask for? Holy Island, Bloody Mary soup and making it home safely in time for The King George at Kempton.

Bloody marvellous.

Holy Island Safe Crossing Times