Friday Night's All Right for Rambling

I missed a trick this week - I missed the chance to pretend I was at the Cannes Film Festival with my new film, the same way I tell people I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe with my one man show every August.  Ah well, there's always next year.  Mind you I did read a story set around the Cannes Film Festival this week.  It was in the Saint in the Sun collection by Leslie Charteris.  It was one of the last original Saint stories Charteris wrote, in the early 1960s, whilst the Roger Moore TV series was being shown for the first time.  It was typical of the later Saint stories: an exotic setting, Simon Templar getting involved with a beautiful woman in distress who leads him into an ultimately inconsequential adventure with a wealthy and obnoxious villain.  They're basically fluff, but very entertainingly written.  Indeed, the Saint stories are surprisingly meta-fictional (I think that's the right term), in that Simon Templar is well aware that he is a character in a series of stories, whilst his chronicler, Charteris, often spends the opening paragraphs of stories explaining why it isn't an unbelievable fictional conceit that one man can have so many adventures.  I've reread quite a few Saint stories this week, mainly late at night when the heat made it difficult to sleep.  Ah, that heat, it's given me a good excuse to be an idle bastard - I've completely failed to record the talking bits of the next Sleazecast, as I'd intended.  Mind you, my choice of late night reading was largely inspired by one the bits of the Sleazecast I have created.  Suffice to say that The Saint is scheduled to make a guest appearance.

Getting back to that unseasonable heat: bloody wonderful.  After weeks of miserable weather, including that desultory May bank holiday, a taste of Summer.  All we can hope for now is that it lasts for the next couple of weeks, so that we can have nice weather over the forthcoming double bank holiday, which commemorates the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen's fascist regime, (as the Sex Pistols might have said).  Not that I'm a royalist, of course, but as we get an extra Bank Holiday, on this occasion I'll say 'God bless Her Majesty (and her fascist regime)'.  That said, I notice that the other day, as part of the Jubilee celebrations, the great and the good of the UK arts and culture scene were all invited to meet Her Majesty at some do at Buck House.  Needless to say, I wasn't invited.  I do think that, in my capacity as editor of The Sleaze, I've made an outstanding contribution to UK culture over the last twelve years.  But there you go - another snub from the Queen, to match that time she ignored me when I was walking down Whitehall as she drove past in her Daimler, accompanied by Nelson Mandela (who did wave to me).  I should be used to it by now, I suppose.  But there's part of me that still looks at the New Year's Honour list every January, to see if I've got an OBE.  Ah well, I think I've rambled on enough for now, it's the weekend, so I'm going to have a few beers.  You should do the  same.