eight mountains…

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Watershed to see “Eight Mountains” (by Belgian film-makers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, adapted from the 2016 novel by Italian author Paolo Cognetti).
It’s difficult to sum up what the film’s about…
Essentially, it’s a film about the friendship of two men, Pietro and Bruno (going back to their childhoods) and the challenges and experiences they face (both good and bad) on their respective journeys through life. The film is set in the stunningly beautiful Italian Alpine valley of Aosta and begins with the two 12-year-old boys getting to know each other when Pietro’s mum and dad – to get away from the cut+thrust of city life in Turin – come to an isolated village where Pietro befriends local boy Bruno, who is staying with his farmer uncle and aunt… they spend a lot of time together in the mountains and valleys exploring the magical location. Pietro’s parents try to encourage Bruno to join them in Turin; Bruno’s absent father objects… Pietro never forgives his father for splitting them up (and never speaks to his dad again).
But, fate reunites the grown-up Bruno and Pietro (played by Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli) and, after a hesitant reconnection, they spend an Alpine summer re-building a shack in the valley that will become their special place. Pietro is hurt when he discovers that his ‘wounded’ father actually became a friend to the grown-up Bruno, hiking with him in the valley and becoming a quasi-father to him. Pietro feels to need to move on and ends up travelling to Nepal (and becomes a celebrated writer), but is consumed with the thought that his friendship with Bruno was the ‘best of him’ (and that Bruno was the ‘better man’ in being satisfied to make his home in the mountains). I think I’ll leave it there… (you need to see it for yourself!).
The film is stunningly photographed… and it’s sad, encouraging and compassionate and deals with issues of love, compassion, friendship and dreams.
It’s a long film (2hrs27mins), but WELL, well worth it.
Note: the ‘eight mountains’ of the title refers to the eight highest peaks of Nepal: a ‘mysterious symbol of worldly ambition and conquest’.
PS: It was a beautiful sunny afternoon yesterday and I can therefore fully appreciate that most people wanted to be outside, if they could… but it felt a little strange to be part of an audience of FIVE who watched the film!

o’hooley+tidow at st george’s…

Rosa and I went along to St George’s last night to see O’Hooley+Tidow (I think it was the third time I’d seen them). Sadly, Heidi Tidow was ill and was unable to take part and so Belinda O’Hooley performed alone… which was a great shame, because the combination of their voices and characters is crucial to who they are and what they can give to audiences.
But, hey, Belinda and St George’s beloved Steinway piano is a brilliant combination and she didn’t let the audience down!
She was absolutely excellent!
O’Hooley+Tidow were booked to perform at St George’s as part of this year’s Bristol Folk Festival and I suppose ‘folk’ music is the appropriate classification… and yet they’re much more than ‘folk singers/musicians’. Indeed, there were times last night that I felt that O’Hooley and her exquisite piano playing reminded me of a ‘female Rufus Wainwright’ in the breadth and depth of her songs.
Anyway, although we all missed Heidi Tidow’s presence, Belinda O’Hooley went down a storm last night… and the audience loved her (and Rosa was also duly impressed!).
Photo: From last night’s performance (including when she sang unaccompanied and ‘un-miked’… and the audience watched/listened ‘spellbound’… stunning!).

april-may 2023 books…

Biography Of X (Catherine Lacey): I’d previously read Lacey’s book “Pew” and purchased this one after going to hear her speak at a Storysmith book evening. She’s a very impressive, intelligent, articulate woman. This ‘epic novel’ is entirely a work of fiction… a fake biography of ‘X’ (she’s “an iconoclastic artist, writer and shapeshifter”) supposedly written by her fictional wife, CM Lucca (‘CM’). CM justifies writing the ‘biography’ on the grounds that she wanted to dispel the lies (in her view) contained writer Theodore Smith’s earlier biography of X. X lived something of a wild life… of secrets and betrayals; the novels recounts of her supposed collaborations (and feuds) with the likes of David Bowie, Tom Waits and Susan Sontag. She ‘died’ in 1996, but it seems she was one of the more enigmatic cultural figures of the 20th century. She always refused to confirm her place or date of birth, and after she took the pseudonym ‘X’ in 1982, it was never clear which if any of her previous identities – Dorothy Eagle, Clyde Hill, Caroline Walker, Bee Converse – corresponded to her actual name. It’s a wonderfully detailed and complicated book supposedly drawing on X’s archives and a range of interviews with the people closest to her – complete with “original images assembled by X’s ‘widow’ and hundreds of cross-references to fictional interviews, books, performances.
Pretty soon it also becomes clear that the events of the book take place on “an alternative timeline of US history in a world very different from our own” (as The Guardian’s review puts it). There’s a female socialist president in the 1940s; some of the southern states have their own dictatorial governance (complete with their own morality police) – walled off from the rest of the country until 1996; the north, meanwhile, has pursued (but not actually realised thus far) a range of enlightened, progressive policies. It’s a long (some 400 pages), haunting, clever book – sometimes so clever that I failed to maintain my concentration!
Whale (Cheon Myewong-Kwan): This is our Storysmith’s bookgroup next book (it’s one of the longlisted International Booker Prize 2023 books). It’s a complicated, bizarre saga set in a remote village in mid-20^th century South Korea and blends fable, farce and fantasy. It follows the lives of three linked characters: Geumbok (an extremely ambitious, enterprising, somewhat selfish woman with a shrewd business brain despite being born into poverty) who thrilled at her first sighting of a whale in the ocean; Geumbok’s mute ‘giant’ daughter (she weighed 15 pounds at birth), Chunhui, who communicates with elephants and is a gifted brick-maker; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle. It’s a long, surreal, satirical book (367 pages) in three parts - with a complex list of characters and situations. It’s a fascinating, clever, frequently funny book, but also an unsettling one (eg. sexual attitudes and behaviour of men towards women; violence; the plight of women in 20^th century Korea etc). Although I found it a very impressive book in many ways, it wasn’t really quite ‘my cup of tea’.
Hugh Casson’s Oxford (Hugh Casson): After the intensity and complexities of the previous two books, it really was rather lovely to envelope myself in Hugh Casson’s book of Oxford (which I’d been given for the 40^th birthday by my architect partner and friend Eric Hardy). It’s a book of the author’s wonderful watercolours and alongside his insights on a city he knew intimately (he died in 1999). His ‘sketching’ technique is very impressive – quick, accurate watercolours depicting the building details with, often, just the merest hint of pen/ink embellishment. My lovely old boss at The Oxford Architects Partnership, Geoffrey Beard, even gets a brief mention.
Death And The Penguin (Andrey Kurkov): This is our next ‘Blokes’ book. This book, first published in 1996) is the second of Kurkov’s books I’ve read (the other was ‘Grey Bees’). Russian-born Kurkov lives in Kiev and, sadly – given the Russian invasion last year – this political satire of a novel neatly reflects ‘life imitating art’. The background to the book is one of contract killings, executed journalists, rampaging political corruption and an environment of profound moral chaos. The novel's hero, Viktor Zolotaryov, is a frustrated, unsuccessful short story-writer who reluctantly takes up a job as star obituarist for a newspaper… with a brief to select powerful figures from Ukrainian high society and prepare mournful, pithy articles in readiness for the possibility that they might suddenly die… which, of course, they do! I’ll refrain from providing further details (*no spoilers*), but Viktor's ‘career’ is watched over by his pet penguin, Misha - adopted a few months earlier from the impoverished city zoo… and it’s the penguin that is the only being capable of inspiring any real affection in Viktor. In the cynical atmosphere of post-communist Kiev, the penguin is the only being which inspires in Viktor real affection (and produces delightful dark humour into the novel). Apparently, the author saw the penguin as something representing a portrayal of post-Soviet chaos ('the penguin is a collective animal who is at a loss when he is alone. In the Antarctic, they live in huge groups and all their movements are programmed in their brains so that they follow one another. When you take one away from the others he is lost… This is what happened to the Soviet people who were collective animals - used to being helped by one another. With the collapse of the Soviet Union suddenly they found themselves alone, no longer felt protected by their neighbours, in a completely unfamiliar situation where they couldn't understand the new rules of life'). It’s a depressing story but, despite its bleak moral landscape, one which I also found very funny and nourishing.
Shy (Max Porter): This is the author’s fourth book… and I’ve read all of them. It’s set in 1995 and Shy, a 16-year-old boy, is a pupil at the Last Chance boarding school – an unconventional institution for the rehabilitation of some of the most disturbed and violent young offenders in the country. He’s been expelled from two other schools and has a history of drugs, violence, crime and, not surprisingly, has alienated his mother. The novel is about childhood, cruelty, compassion and despair. It makes for a tough, disquieting and exhilarating read… brilliantly impressive in the way Porter gets inside Shy’s head and expresses his thinking and actions in a blunt, shocking way. I don’t want to divulge how the story evolves; all I’ll say is that, as with Porter’s previous books, I love the way he constructs his stories - even how they appear on the page… different type faces and font sizes, careful considered layouts. I’m a great lover of Porter’s writing style and found this short, but intense, book hugely impressive.

the challenge of technology…

We just wanted to change our internet provider…
The deal is duly done (it’s really a very simple matter).
“Your connection will be made on Wednesday…” (that’s 19 April)
“Oh, sorry, we’ve had to change our plans… make that Thursday…”
“Sorry, another change… make that Monday…”
“Your service is ready to go…” (Monday 24th)
“Your Home Tech Expert’s visit is tomorrow…” (referring to Tuesday)
Tuesday: Home Tech Expert (HTE) duly arrives… (we’d booked one, because we’re useless at technology stuff)
There’s something wrong: the connection isn’t working…
HTE reckons the engineer who ‘connected’ us, remotely, on Monday failed to carry out the necessary checks…
HTE departs telling us that, when the lights on our new hub turn to blue, it means our connection has been completed…
“It’s a good job you’ve still got your Virgin Media link…” (he really said this!)
“How long will it take before everything is sorted?” (we ask HTE)…
“Don’t know… perhaps a couple of days?” (says HTE)… HTE departs.
The following day (our hub lights still aren’t blue!)…
We check our emails for updates (none)…
We check online (there appears to be no way for us to actually SPEAK to anyone)…
There isn’t even a way of us getting specific online help (or even know that someone’s dealing with it)(which they weren’t)…
Cutting a long story short… (choose option 1 blah blah etc etc).
We end up being asked to text the word ‘fault’ to a particular number…
“We will then run some tests to see how your service is performing…” (it’s NOT!!).
“We got your (fault) message and will get back in touch shortly, usually within 15mins…”
“We’ve passed your case on to one of our agents to call you back within 20 mins (calls may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes)…”
We hear nothing… 4 hours later, I reply to their text: “still waiting”.
“We’ve passed your case on to one of our agents to call you back within 20 mins (calls may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes)…”
“Your service should now be back up and running. But if you’re still having problems simply reply ‘1’… (it obviously WASN’T!).
But hey, we then DO receive a call from one of their agents (and actually she was very helpful)… she undertakes remote checks and eventually confirms that they’ve booked an engineer appointment for us on Friday 28th… (phew!).
Having listened to our frustrations, she asks if I’d like to register a complaint…
Yes, I would (because the process has been something of a nightmare)… she makes notes.
Within a couple of hours, we receive this text: “Based on your recent interaction, how likely are you to recommend XX to friends or family?...” You couldn’t make it up!!
“Your bill is ready…” (Wednesday evening email). Really? We haven’t even been connected yet!!
“We’ve closed your complaint… thanks for getting in touch with us recently” (Wednesday evening email) Really?… hang on, it’s not yet sorted!!
“Our engineer will be visiting you shortly, he won’t need to come into your home, but might need to get into the main building…” (Friday)
Engineer Jake duly arrived and immediately apologised that he DID need to get into our flat (one of the outlets apparently wasn’t working - and he also detected a fault in the street service cabinet “210 metres away”). Actually, Jake was brilliant and sorted out the fault and connected our system (Friday).
I actually managed to SPEAK to someone at XX (Sunday) – in response to a text reply I’d sent to one of their previous messages – and, amazingly, they’ve set up by their Home Tech Expert to come on Wednesday (3^rd)!
He came. He was freelance, he explained (he didn’t work for XX). He asked if he could park his car in our parking space (fine, but such things have not previously happened with plumbers, electricians and the like that we'd booked at other times... seemed strange).
Personable and clearly had good engineering knowledge but, strangely, wasn’t really able to answer some of my specific queries… and I found it frustrating that he always seemed to answer my questions while typing on his phone at the same time.
Anyway, it happened… we’re now connected (even if I don’t yet really know how the system works).
I duly contacted Virgin Media (via chat line) and cancelled our account. This took an hour (but Roberto was very helpful)… and I now know about when (and how much) our final bill will be(!)… and that we’ll also receive a refund within 45 days(!) and that we’ll be sent an “equipment returns package” for us to deal with.
I then contacted (again via chat line) XX (Sougadip was incredibly helpful) to ask some very basic/naïve questions about retaining our current email address (answer: I think we can… but only time will tell). At the end, I thanked him for his patience and help and received this rather amusing (but lovely) reply: “It was lovely chatting with you, you were very co-operative throughout the chat. Trust me you are the most co-operative person we have ever come across. I am sure your friends and family are happy to get you in their life as we are glad to get you as our customer”. If I was going to have a gravestone (which I’m not!), these words would take pride of place on it!!
It’s only taken 14 days, but we think we’re there (although there’ll no doubt be teething problems - or worse - ahead!). 

the unlikely pilgrimage of harold fry…

I went along to the Cinema de Lux earlier today with Ru and my good friend Ed to see Hettie MacDonald’s film based on Rachel Joyce’s novel (which I first read 10 years ago… and re-read a couple of years ago).
Recently-retired Harold Fry (Jim Broadbent) takes a stroll to the postbox one Devon morning to post a letter to an old work colleague (Queenie, played by Linda Bassett) who’s dying of cancer. But for some reason he can’t bring himself to post the letter and then, following a chance encounter in a petrol station, he decides to walk from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed (something like 500 miles!), where Queenie is receiving palliative care in a hospice… leaving his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton) feeling just a little hurt and confused (understatement!) by her husband’s abandonment. Fry somehow believes that, by walking through the B-roads of Britain, he can save his friend’s life.
But the film is much more than this… it explores all sorts of other stuff (life, love, family, loss, relationships, friendships, purpose, boredom, old age…).
Like the book, I enjoyed the relatively gentle (pedestrian even!) pace of the film – which felt absolutely ‘right’ and appropriate for Harold’s pilgrimage.
The film also represents something of a fantasy… 500 miles walked in deck shoes and with virtually no equipment by a retired, somewhat overweight man unused to exercise? Some days (at times, when Harold was joined by a ‘gang’ of marching supporters), they were apparently only covering a mile day? Doing the journey utilising B-roads and without maps (and a compass for only the latter stages) seemed like a breeze (a walk in the park?)? But, hey, I’ll forgive it…
I loved the book and very much enjoyed the film version… and felt hugely relieved that it was done ‘well’ – keeping more or less to the book’s storyline and, crucially, using perfect actors for the key roles (Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton were both absolutely excellent).
PS: Sadly, this film wasn’t on the Watershed’s current programme… Cinema de Lux was fine (larger seats, more legroom… and more expensive!) but you had to put up with the VERY loud (even for me without my hearing aids!) Dolby Sound System, not to mention the 25-30 minutes of adverts and promotions at the start.
PPS: There were less than a dozen people in the audience (for the 11.05am screening!).