the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society…

Moira and I went along to Bristol’s Cinema de Lux (no, not the Watershed… and yes, my second film in two days!)(I know) to see Mike Newell’s film "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", based on Mary Ann Shaffer+Annie Barrows book of the same name. I read the book in 2010 (and thoroughly enjoyed it) and think it’s probably time I read it again.
It’s set in 1946 and takes the form of an exchange of letters between a writer (Juliet Ashton, played by Lily James - and very lovely she looked too) in London and a Guernsey pig farmer (Dawsey Adams, played by Michiel Huisman) – the latter being a member of the GL+PPS book club. In his letters Adams conveys some of the struggles the islanders suffered during the German occupation… and, in due course, Ashton decides to visit the book club in Guernsey to learn more of their stories.
As I suspected, I didn’t enjoy the film anything like as much as I’d enjoyed the book.
The film was too sugar-coated for my taste (and the same applied to the sections which included musical accompaniment – which was all a little too soft and ‘twinkly’!).
It all looked rather beautiful and cosy – but just a little too charming, if you know what I mean. The Guernsey Tourist Board will no doubt be delighted – even if, apparently, much of it was filmed in Devon and Cornwall (not to mention Bristol harbourside!). The film script invented lots of stuff that wasn’t in the book and I also thought Michiel Huisman seemed a strange choice for the Dawsey character (Peter Bradshaw’s review in The Guardian describes him thus: “one of the handsomest pig-farmers in the world, a stubbled exquisite”!).
But, hey, having said all that, I found it a perfectly enjoyable, feel-good film – just right for a rainy Sunday afternoon perhaps, when you’ve nothing better to do?
Photo: Film poster with Bristol’s very own ‘Balmoral’ ship in the background.
PS: I’d forgotten my previous experiences of Cinema de Lux – a) over half an hour of adverts and previews before the film(!) and b) just how ridiculously loud the sound system was (I would go as far as to describe it as ‘unbearable’!).

let the sunshine in…

This afternoon I went to the Watershed to see Claire Denis’s “Let The Sunshine In”. It’s just possible that the main reason I wanted to see the film might have been that it starred Juliette Binoche (I think she’s got a bit of a soft stop for me too!).
Binoche is Isabelle, a divorced artist in Paris, now single, living alone and frustrated with her life and her (several) somewhat shabby liaisons… and perhaps asking herself: “Is that it? Is that really all that life has got to offer?”. It’s a film about growing older, about the need for companionship, about the fear of loneliness… and it almost goes without saying that Binoche pulls off her role superbly.
Despite lots of tears (from Binoche), it’s actually rather a funny film – beautifully understated, tongue-in-cheek… and the piece at the very end involving Gerard Depardieu, as a fortune teller with suspect motives, did make me smile.
I came away not quite knowing whether I really enjoyed the film or not… I think I did.

first day of the cricket season…

The new cricket season started today… and I went down to Taunton to watch Somerset ‘entertain’ Worcestershire.
The sun shone all day; there were over 350 runs scored and, somewhat ridiculously, 18 wickets fell. The wet conditions of last week turning to glorious sunshine this week clearly affected the wicket – in fact, across the country, the top innings score on this opening day was a mere 256 runs (perhaps the gradual demise of the county games means that players don’t get enough practice of the four-day game?).
Despite the fact that, at 10am today, the visibility from the train was reduced to 150metres at one point (you’re going to tell me it was ‘heat haze’, aren’t you?), by the time the match started at 11am, the sun was shining brilliantly and didn’t stop shining throughout the day.

The day’s cricketing honours went to two young players: Worcestershire’s Ed Barnard took his first five-wicket haul and Somerset’s Matt Renshaw scored an unbeaten century. 22 year-old Renshaw (born in Middlesborough, but already capped for Australia) was making his debut for Somerset and, ironically, he was a last-minute replacement for Somerset’s original Aussie signing, Cameron Bancroft – who you might recall was ‘caught up’ in the recent ball-tampering scandal.

It was all very idyllic – perfect weather, entertaining cricket, a very good crowd and people clearly delighted to meet up again and bore each other with their respective knowledge of cricketing records (that only other cricket fans have any interest in at all). Life is good.
PS: The day’s other points of note included: a) the old lady sitting directly behind me, watching the cricket and constantly humming quietly to herself (and me), b) me buying THREE old cricket books for a TOTAL price of £2 (yes, I’m feeling slightly smug!), and c) the woman announcer at Taunton station (ok, I know it was a recorded message) explaining to passengers that our train was running 29 minutes late due to a signal failure – but, at the same time, actually seemingly to infer something along the lines of “well, that’s what they told me anyway – but, frankly, who knows?”.
Photo: The above image probably should have been added to the “day’s other points of note” … this was the very first thing I was confronted by when I arrived at the ground: the bizarre sight of a press photographer(?) desperately trying to take a photograph incorporating a pint of Thatcher’s cider, a cricket ball and a boundary rope (and I just love his ‘leg action’)!!

facebook…

Like many people, I struggle with the mysterious world of information technology, smart phones, social media and the like… and I simply know that I’ll always struggle.
And like many people, I’ve been appalled by some of the recent revelations/accusations regarding facebook and Cambridge Analytica (eg. the analytics firm apparently having harvested more than 50 million facebook profiles without permission; staff boasting about using manufactured sex scandals, fake news and dirty tricks to swing elections around the world etc etc) and other stories about a digital services firm linked to Cambridge Analytica receiving large payments from a pro-Brexit campaign organisation which potentially violated referendum spending rules.
As a result of these apparent violations to privacy agreements, there’s been a growing #DeleteFacebook movement.
A few of my best friends have decided that they‘ve “had enough” and have either deleted their facebook accounts or are about to do so. I understand that and, obviously, such decisions are very personal and need to be respected. But it saddens me. Will such actions have any real effect? Will the power of facebook or google or one of the myriad of other similar organisations get to them anyway? I really don’t know.

I have over 600 facebook ‘friends’ from all over the world. Of course, I’m probably only in proper, regular contact with a relatively small proportion of these friends but, nevertheless, facebook is the way I ‘keep in touch’ with them… and I love that. “But”, I hear you say, “if they were REAL friends, surely you’d make every effort to see them on a regular basis?”. Well, yes, wouldn’t life be wonderful if we were able to do that… but such options are both impractical and unrealistic. Yes, I could email or telephone my friends (I hate the telephone!), but it wouldn’t be same and it would be hugely time-consuming and inconvenient… not to say, far less effective (and enjoyable).

So (perhaps selfishly?), I’ll be staying with facebook – at least for the time being – and only hope that the privacy issues etc can be satisfactorily and quickly settled… and that I learn the very best ways of protecting my personal data (and that my friends learn to do the same).
I’m really sad that some of my lovely buddies have already decided to delete facebook, but recognise and accept their perfect right to do so (and will miss them big time).
But, of course, as they’re no longer on facebook they won’t be reading this.
Photo: illustration by Mitch Blunt.

wonderstruck…

Ok, I admit it, I went along to the Watershed at lunchtime primary to have a glass of wine, some chunky chips and to do some surreptitious sketching in the bar… but, given that it was a rotten wet day, I also booked in to see Todd Haynes’ “Wonderstruck”.
The film is an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s young adult novel of the same title. According to the Watershed’s blurb, it’s “both a children’s film for adults and a refreshingly grown-up film for children” and, if that wasn’t enough to whet your appetite, “Wonderstruck is a movie that will leave you just that”…
Given such cheesy descriptions, I really should have known better!
As far as I was concerned, the film was neither a “children’s film for adults” or a “grown-up film for children”.
The main action takes place in New York 50 years apart (1927, in black+white, and 1977, in glorious colour). The two principal characters, Ben and Rose (both 12 year-olds, I think)(played by Oakes Fegley and  Millicent Simmonds respectively) are both deaf (actress Simmonds is actually deaf in ‘real life’) and both “desperately unhappy”. They both dream of a better life and head off for the Big Apple in search of a) Ben’s absent father, following his mother’s tragic death and b) Rose’s silent movie star heroine.
They both end up being drawn to the American Museum of Natural History as the two stories become interwoven. I think I’ll leave it at that… (frankly, the plots are pretty ridiculous and unconvincing – but the music is good!).
Look, it’s a perfectly ‘pleasant’ film (for a horrible, rainy day) but, frankly, I would have been much happier if I’d gone to watch “Isle of Dogs” again!
PS: On the positive side, I did do three very rapid scribbled sketches before watching the film (and I don’t think I was ‘spotted’ by any of the ‘victims’… and without either spilling my wine or covering them in mayonnaise!)

we all need ‘spark’ in our lives…

I’ve just finished Alice’s second book, “Spark”, in her ‘Skin Trilogy’.
Don’t worry, this is a *no spoilers* post – I’m definitely not going to give away any clues about the storyline!
All I will say is that, in my humble unbiased opinion, my daughter is a brilliant, BRILLIANT storyteller!
I absolutely loved it. An outright ‘page-turner’ if ever there was one…
So, I’m not going to spoil things for you… I’ll just repeat some of the words on the book’s inside cover: “This sequel to bestselling ‘Ink’ is a story of deception and truth, of old foes and new friends, of abandonment and acceptance. These words will get under your skin”.
In this world of power and control/ haves and have-nots/ morality and corruption/ manipulation and duplicity/ judgement and risk/ belief and unbelief/ integrity and hope, this is a wonderful, thought-provoking, wise and powerful book. It might be labelled as ‘Young Adult’ (YA) novel, but it has a message for young and old alike.
Having three, talented, creative daughters who constantly make you feel massively proud… How special is that!?
The BIG question is… how on earth am I going wait another year for the final book?!

march-april 2018 books…

The Fading Smile (Mike Burke): Author Mike Burke is an Anglican clergyman who came and spoke at one of the recent ‘Resonate’ events at Saint Stephen’s, Bristol. I suppose one would categorise the book as ‘Christian fiction’ – and, although I haven’t read many such books, this genre probably rates as one of my least favourite! The book is set in the 2020s (although, frankly, there are several references that are simply too far-fetched to fit into such a time-frame… maybe 2040s or 2050s would be more credible?) and draws us into a world where things are covert and shadowy and neither individuals nor governments are in control. Huge private security firms seem to call the shots with their ever present surveillance and multinationals wield immense power… and people’s lives have become severely controlled and monitored. Religion isn’t part of this world… although the re-emergence of a language of faith and prayer (albeit in ‘underground’ form) shapes a central core of what the book is about. It’s a political thriller (of sorts) which explores an alternative future centred around the fear of terrorism, rampant consumerism and the suppression of information. I certainly didn’t think it was a brilliant book, but I DID find it thought-provoking – especially given all the recent reports about #CambridgeAnalytica, the apparent violation of social media accounts and ‘smart’ messaging to influence behaviour.
Words From The Well Of Wisdom (Laurie Farnell): This is a rather beautiful book of aphorisms gathered over the past 20 years or so (in tiny bound notebooks) by a man who was homeless for a ‘considerable period’ of his life and who started to write aphorisms as a way of coping with severe depression. He was eventually introduced to an organisation called ‘Converge’ at York St John’s University and began to develop his writing skills and sing in a choir… and, importantly for him, ‘become part of a community where I’m not labelled or judged’. His words made me smile, think and wonder. Here are just a few examples: “All adventures start with a dream imagined”; “An adventure is only an adventure when things go wrong”; and “To progress is to remember what we’ve learnt from the mistakes that we’ve forgotten”… and I have no doubt I’ll continue to re-read the book several times over the coming years.
The Way Of The Carmelites: A Prayer Journey Through Lent (James McCaffrey): This was my ‘spiritual’ book through Lent. It’s a beautifully-written, gentle, wise book about Carmelite spirituality – essentially in the “company of the Carmelite saints” - and, in particular, about prayer.  As someone who constantly struggles with his prayer life (or lack of it!), I was especially struck by the chapter on ‘Teresian spirituality’ (focussing on St Teresa of Avilam 1515-82), which I found very helpful and enlightening. I think my one criticism of the book was that, at times, it didn’t seem to be focussing on our respective journeys through Lent itself (well, as much as I’d hoped anyway). Nevertheless, an insightful and very helpful book.
Goodbye To All That (Robert Graves): First published in 1929, Graves wrote this autobiography in his early 30s. He described it as his “bitter leave-taking of England” before departing to live in Spain. I can’t quite believe I’d not previously read it. It provides a brilliant, candid account of his life: from childhood and his unhappy days at Charterhouse to his harrowing time serving as a young officer in WW1 (and the depressing daily register of the lost lives of his colleagues)… together with his encounters with fellow writers and poets (including Sassoon, Hardy and TE Lawrence) and his increasingly unhappy marriage to Nancy Nicholson. Probably the best personal account of the Great War I’ve ever read – of experiences and scenes that were to haunt him throughout his life. A really wonderful book.
Tears Of The Giraffe (Alexander McCall Smith): Some welcome light relief after the gruelling horrors of conflict! Another of McCall Smith’s enchanting, pleasurable and refreshingly heart-warming books. I love the characters, the gentleness, the humour and his writing style.

isle of dogs...

Moira and I went to the Watershed this afternoon to see Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs”. It’s a ‘stop-motion’ (animation) story set in an imaginary Japan of the future (the Japanese setting was apparently simply chosen because of Anderson’s love of all things Japanese… or something along those lines) where dogs have been exiled to a vast refuse-dump called Trash Island. Essentially, in Megasaki City the cat-lovers have the upper hand and with outbreaks of dog flu and snout fever(!), the Mayor (boo hiss) has quarantined all dogs on to the island. In order to show an example to his fellow citizens, the sinister, dog-hating mayor starts the process by dispatching the dog (Spots) of his 12 year-old nephew, Atari. But Atari isn’t going to accept this situation (oh no!) and he sets out on a daring rescue mission to Trash Island… where he meets a group of abandoned dogs who are determined to join him in his search.
Well, let me be quite candid here… I think Anderson can do absolutely no wrong when it comes to producing films. I absolutely LOVE his eye for design, detail, colour… and his humour.
As far as I’m concerned, this film has them ALL in spades.
Despite its affectionate and funny backdrop (I spent most of the film with an inane grin on my face!), the film also has bite… there are powerful references to rigged elections, fake news, hackers, environmental issues and (given the recent Florida shootings and the stand taken by students, for example) its young people who are left questioning authority.
The animated characters are simply wonderful and I adore Anderson’s eye for detail.
I absolutely LOVED this film (and so did its Watershed audience, who applauded at the end!). You definitely need to see it… you’re in for a treat!

"don't talk to me about cricket..."

Another truly AWFUL day for the England cricket team on the first day of the First Test against New Zealand in Auckland today (remember they lost 4-0 to Australia earlier this winter). England were bowled out for a meagre 58 (with five batsmen scored ducks!). BBC commentator Jonathan Agnew summed things up thus: “I don't think anyone who watched the play would claim England were bowled out for 58 because of tricky conditions. That was not the case and New Zealand's reply put the performance into context”.
At the end of last season, I blogged about the sad demise of English County Cricket – which is the closest format to playing Test cricket (they play 4-day games compared with 5-day Test matches). Agnew raised similar concerns in his report on the BBC website today: “Cricket's administrators are responsible for protecting the game and they seem keen to protect the 50 and 20 over formats - but the majority of people who love cricket want the same devotion to Test cricket. The administrators have to be extremely careful. If Test cricket gets squeezed, more and more the standard won't be what it should be”.

The number of Test matches played has remained roughly the same, but the huge difference is the number of One-Day International and Twenty20 games that now take place.

I’ve been comparing the forthcoming season’s County Cricket fixtures with those of, say, the 2000 season. In 2000, teams played 16 games; now, in 2018, they play 14 games. Here’s the comparison of when those County matches take place (with the figures in brackets denoting the number of fixtures in the respective months for the 2000 season):
April: 2 (1)
May: 2 (3)
June: 3 (3)
July: 1 (4)
August: 2 (2)
September: 4 (3)

In other words, it seems that cricket is no longer a “summer game” – unless you regard the 50 and 20 over formats as “proper cricket” (which, old codger that I am, I don’t!). ONE championship game in the whole of July for goodness sake!!

The County game is effectively the ‘nursery’ for young players and a stage for them to both ‘learn their trade’ and to attract the attention of the England team selectors.
The trouble is that cricket (or at least the County Championship element of it) has now been shunted towards the start and end of the season (the season now starts at least a week earlier and finishes a fortnight later than in 2000) in order to make ‘space’ in the fixture lists for the 50 and 20 over formats in the prime of the English summer – so that clubs can make some money from the dumbed down version of the game.
Not In My Name!

 

you were never really here…

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Watershed to see Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here” (Ramsay was the director of the acclaimed “We Need Talk About Kevin”).
Oh. My. Goodness (think: blood, guns and ball-peen hammers!).
Joaquin Phoenix (Joe) is a hired gun with a reputation for brutality – he’s ex-military and specialises in retrieving lost children. His task is to track down the teenage daughter (Nina, played by Ekaterina Samsonov) of a politician; she’s has been abducted, drugged and sold off into sexual slavery.
Joe himself is a shattered, fragile man. A combat-shocked veteran, he’s haunted by his past – his abusive, violent father… and the film is peppered with flashbacks and horrors from his past. Suicide never feels far away (plastic bag over head; dagger blade in mouth; looking at jumping from bridges; drowning – you get the picture!). But he also has obligations: caring for his aged mother and an apparent moral crusade to rescue Nina from her nightmare existence.
The soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood is excellent – and absolutely right for the film.

Even though the film only lasts for 90 minutes, it’s still pretty overwhelming. At times, it’s dream-like, at times it's surreal and disorientating… and exhausting.
Phoenix’s performance is spell-binding (you wouldn’t want to confront him in ANY way!).
On the face of it (ie. with all the blood and bodies), this really isn’t my kind of film… and yet, I was completely captivated by it.
I think you should see it – you might be pleasantly surprised (ok, well perhaps ‘pleasant’ might be the wrong word!).
PS: The film has very little dialogue, but (and you’re going to think these are merely the ramblings of a slightly-deaf, aged codger!) I actually found that the little there was was virtually incoherent. I definitely needed sub-titles!

march 2018 books…

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Alexander McCall Smith): I think I started reading this book about ten years ago, but didn’t get very far with it at the time. (As you probably already knew) Precious Ramotswe sets up a detective agency in a small Botswanan town (the only lady private detective in the country) with the proceeds of the sale of her father’s cattle and duly enters the mysterious world of wayward daughters, missing husbands, curious conmen and the like. Miss Marple she is not… but I found it all delightfully different: gentle and even joyful in Ramotswe’s attitudes and her approach to life, people and circumstances. Beautifully written and a rare pleasure.
Six Weeks (John Lewis-Stempel): This is a brilliantly-researched, powerful book about young officers in WW1 who, as the book’s title suggests, had an average six-week life expectancy on the front line. These very young officers were invariably public school-educated (or occasionally from grammar schools). I found myself feeling quite prejudiced against this world of privilege and class whilst reading the book… but ultimately had to acknowledge that, with a need to form a huge army from scratch, this was probably the only practical option. Nevertheless, comments such as these from Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Hamilton (written in 1874) still rankled: “The soldier in his hour of need and danger will ever be more ready to follow the officer and gentleman whom education, position in life, and accident of birth point out to be his natural leader… than the man who, by dint of study and brain work, has raised himself (much to his own credit, certainly) from the plough or anvil”. But, having said this, Lewis-Stepel’s book is quite brilliant – containing, as it does, numerous, poignant extracts from letters written from the Western Front (often, they proved to have been the last words written by these soldiers before their deaths) - and skilfully conveys some of the harrowing, unimaginable reality of life in the trenches and all its horror and its dignity (and sometimes its humour, despite everything). A memorable book which provided further insight into the bleak experiences my grandfather Frank went through on the Somme and elsewhere.   
note: Somewhat strangely, the book also reminded me of my own experience as a working class, grammar school boy in the early 1960s. The school had its own Service Corps - complete with shooting bunker/mini-firing range(?) and armoury - which was taken VERY seriously (I well remember one of the ‘old’ teachers dressed in his full Army uniform riding a white horse on the Corps Annual Parade day!). I was in the ‘Remove’ stream at school - fast-tracking boys to sit O-Levels in 4 years instead of 5 - and the school clearly saw us as potential officers of the Corps. Given this background, you can imagine their utter disbelief when only a couple of boys out of the entire class indicated that they wanted to join the Corps. The school hierarchy was horrified by our actions (but, hey man, this was the swinging 60s!)… the powers-that-be even came to lecture us about our ‘duty and obligation to the school’. Even so, we dug in our heels and resisted!
The Full Cupboard Of Life (Alexander McCall Smith): Another book about the life of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency… and, once again, I found reading it a hugely pleasurable experience – gentle, kind, funny and beautifully written.
Inside The Wave (Helen Dunmore): Helen Dunmore died last year, aged 65. This book of poems is her final collection… they’re concerned with the borderline between the living and the dead. They relate to her interest in landscape and the sea but, crucially, about her personal experience of dying (she knew she was dying of cancer)… “To be alive is to be inside the wave, always travelling until it breaks and is gone”. I found them both eloquent and moving (there’s something rather powerful about poets writing in the knowledge that there life is coming to an end – although he’s still alive, but ailing, Clive James’s “Sentenced To Life” comes to mind). A lovely book that I’ll re-visit on a regular basis. Dunmore and I shared two connections: living in Bristol and loving St Ives. This short interview with her children is rather nice.   
Weather: A Very Short Introduction (Storm Dunlop): I originally thought that any book that describes itself as a “very short introduction” to a subject implied that it would brief, but also relatively straightforward. I was wrong… this book is FULL of complex information! I ended up feeling hugely inadequate intellectually. Typically, I’d read a page full of complicated terminology (which I didn’t really understand), only to be told that “obviously, this is just a very simplified explanation”! And all this coming from an author by the name of Storm Dunlop – anyone called “Storm” who writes a book about the weather doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously! Having said that, I feel sure that I’ll be consulting the book at various times over the coming years (Dunlop obviously knows his stuff!) and, maybe, it’ll all start to make complete sense?

oneweek100people…

My friend Charlotte posted a recent link about this ‘challenge’. Essentially, it involved sketching 100 people between Monday-Friday 5-9 March… anything goes: quick scribbles to more detailed drawings; any medium; ideally, drawn ‘out on location’, but copying from postcards/photos is fine too.
So, I decided to give it a go.
From the outset (and given the time constraints, not to mention other stuff I needed to be working on), I knew it meant that my own sketches would be not much more than very rapid caricatures. In fact, I experimented in the Watershed bar one lunchtime and soon realised that my offerings needed to be limited to one-minute sketches (literally).
In order to keep things simple, I gave myself some specific ‘rules’, namely:
1.    7x4.5cm ‘picture frames’ (ten per A4 sketchbook page x 10 pages).
2.    The sketches would be very simple, ink LINE drawings only – no shading or black infilling.
3.    On completion, I would ‘colour’ (with watercolour markers) backgrounds to each sketch (limited to just three colours: red, yellow and blue).
4.    Every sketch I produced would be included in the final 100 images – NO editing or corrections allowed!

Most of the other people participating would no doubt have been entering their respective offerings on Instagram: #OneWeek100People2018 (for some reason, I can no longer update my Instagram account via my laptop… so I abandoned Instagram a few months ago).

For me, I decided that I would simply post a SINGLE image, incorporating all 100 scribbles, on my One Day Like This blog and also this blog.
The resulting sketches were hardly inspiring art(!), but I did enjoy the process AND the challenge. The vast majority of my images were indeed produced ‘on location’… most of them are VERY ordinary, lots are absolute rubbish, but perhaps a handful are quite good (well, I like them anyway). Lots simply look like pretty awful cartoon characters!
For my taste, I ended up concluding that ‘keeping it simple’ was the key.
If I did it again, I’d probably do things very differently… I don’t think the three-colour backgrounds worked very well… and my insistence on drawing ‘frames’ for every image ended up making them look a bit like those old cigarette cards (you’re probably MUCH too young!). Although restricting my sketches to very small frames simplified (and therefore speeded up) the ‘100 people’ challenge, I also think it would have been good to vary the style, size and medium (and not just heads)… Having said that, the use of ‘frames’ (as opposed to lots of random scribbles covering pages of my sketchbook) made it easier to come up with very sparse, graphic images – perhaps I should have concentrating on producing more of these?
Anyway, I’ll be fascinated to see what work other people end up producing.
PS: You'll need to click on the image to enlarge it... but it'll probably be a little blurred!

I would walk 1,000 miles…

You probably remember The Proclaimers “I’m Gonna Be/500 miles” song (“But I would walk 500 miles/ And I would walk 500 more/ Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles…”)?
Well, when I had a health scare last April, my consultant asked me what exercise I did. I responded by saying I walked every day. “How far?” he asked. “I’m not sure, but probably something like 3 miles a day” I replied.
Actually, I realised that I didn’t actually know how far I walked on a daily basis, so decided to make a spreadsheet (yes, I know!) to monitor things. I don’t use a fitbit app or a step monitor, I simply plot my basic routes via Google maps – so I think the results provide a fairly conservative figure for the distance I actually do cover on a daily basis. I certainly didn’t change my walking habits, I simply made a note of how far I’d walked.
Well, it’s been interesting just monitoring my daily walking routines and, in fact, it turns out that, on average, I DO walk just over three miles a day.
Indeed, in the 46 weeks since I started my walking spreadsheet, I’ve covered 1,000 miles (that’s, on average, some 22 miles a week).
In other words, since 22 April 2017, I’ve walked the equivalent (according to Google) of John O’Groats to Lands End (874 miles) and then back beyond Exeter!!

the shape of water...

Moira and I went to the Watershed again this afternoon… this time to see Guillermo Del Toro’s much-acclaimed “The Shape of Water” (it’s received ‘quite a few’ Oscar nominations!), featuring the extraordinary Sally Hawkins (as Eliza – an orphaned, mute, isolated woman who’s a cleaner working in a secret US government facility in 1962), plus Doug Jones (as a brilliant marine creature), Michael Shannon (Strickland - the cruel research head) and Richard Jenkins (Giles - shares a sort of father+daughter bond with Eliza)… amongst a very talented cast.
So, the facility receives a ‘creature’ in a tank, which has been captured from a South American river by Strickland… and the US government wants to exploit the creature for possible advantages in the Space Race.
Meanwhile, Eliza accidentally discovers that the creature is a humanoid amphibian and begins visiting the creature in secret, forming a close bond with it… which slowly turns to love.
Essentially, the film is a deliciously weird, extraordinary fairytale-cum-romantic thriller… Daughter Ruth described the film as being something of a ‘dark “Amelie”’… and I think this is a pretty good description (although, perhaps not quite in the ‘Amelie’ league for me, personally – perhaps my very favourite film of all time!). Like ‘Amelie’, the soundtrack is also an important feature within the film (eg. Alice Faye’s “You’ll Never Know How Much I Love You”), as do various Hollywood film references/extracts.
It’s certainly ONE of the best films I’ve seen this year but, perhaps fairytales are not quite my out-and-out cup of tea? Nevertheless, it's very beautiful and has to be one of those films you just HAVE to see.
PS: And if you thought Paddington Bear could make a mess in a bathroom, just wait until you see this!
PPS: But the film also highlights the awful homophobic, sexist and racist views adopted by many people in the US (and elsewhere) in the early 1960s. The fact that they come across as hugely shocking probably says much about how far we come since that time.

lady bird…

Moira and I went to the Watershed yesterday afternoon to see Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird”. It’s a film about adolescence set in west coast America in the early 2000s. Specifically, it’s about the relationship between mothers and daughters.
Christine (or “Lady Bird” as she prefers to call herself), brilliantly played by Saoirse Ronan, is an artistically inclined 17 year-old in her last year a Catholic school with has dreams of a different life of cosmopolitan culture, Ivy League universities on the East Coast and her own self-importance (of course!). Her mother Marion, equally brilliantly played by Laurie Metcalf, is a nurse working double shifts to keep her family afloat (her husband’s just lost his job).
So, confused, precocious teenager with lofty aspirations, falling in and out of love, trying to balance friendship and popularity (and frequently failing)… and trying to be true to herself. Mother attempting to manage her daughter’s expectations and, annoyingly/frustratingly, regularly ‘getting it wrong’ (telling Lady Bird that she has ideas above her station, telling her how expensive it’s been to raise her… and, of course, criticising her lack of tidiness and her dress sense etc etc).
You get the general idea…
Lots of the film’s other characters are excellent too – I particularly liked ‘best friend’ Julie (played by Beanie Feldstein)… and I came away feeling that I needed to watch the film again in order to pick up all the nuances and to appreciate some of the ‘secondary’ performances and characters a little more.
It’s a film about growing up, about relationships and about the things that shape our lives… about how teenagers perhaps can’t imagine the emotional lives of their parents and about the difficulties and sense of loss for some parents when their children leave home.   
I thought it was a really lovely, frequently funny, sometimes sad (often predictably uncomfortable), very enjoyable, coming of age film… you need to see it.

february 2018 books…

The Labours Of Hercules (Agatha Christie): First published 1947 (my copy: 1958)… another Hercule Poirot book. Poirot decides to undertake twelve more cases before he retires… choosing each one because of its resemblance to one of the twelve labours of Hercules – his mythological namesake (but he doesn’t end up dying wearing a poisoned shirt!). Twelve very clever short stories of detection and logic.
Fludd (Hilary Mantel): Set in the mid-1950s, in a village on the edge of some northern moorland and where the Roman Catholic Church holds sway against a dismal backdrop of ancient local feuds and general disillusionment. The village is presided over by a Catholic priest, who seems to have lost his faith in God while keeping to his horrified belief in the devil, and an appalling mother superior of the local convent. Into this bleak world comes the curate Fludd – apparently sent by the local bishop – who turns out to be a spiritual alchemist who can free anyone who will listen with the influence of his magical (not particularly holy!) powers. Enjoyable, funny, moralistic and compassionate.
(This note appears at the front of the book: “The real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical”).
Alexander Pope (Edith Sitwell): First published 1930 (my copy: 1948). Before reading this biography, I knew very little about Pope (1688-1744) – apart from knowing he was poet (“The Rape of the Lock”). Her introduction to the book is telling. She clearly worshipped Pope and was ruthlessly disparaging of his many critics, for example: “We must remember when reading certain of the biographies and certain criticisms of Pope’s life and of his work, that the authors were schoolmasters and scholars, not poets, and that no matter how great their learning and how deep-rooted their kindness, they could scarcely be expected to understand that to this man, who was one of the greatest poets England has produced, whose sense of texture in poetry was so excessively delicate that it has never been surpassed, and, I think, has scarcely been equalled, to this fine and sensitive artist, inferior poetry and clumsy texture were an agony, and must have had almost the effect of physical rupture”. As you might have gathered, she was a poet! Frankly, once I’d read her introduction, I realised that it was highly unlikely that the biography of her hero could ever be regarded as unbiased… and so it proved. Nevertheless, an interesting insight into the life and times/work of the poet (and his biographer!) about whom I knew so little. From the age of 12, he suffered numerous health problems, such as Pott's disease (a form of tuberculosis that affects the bone), which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback (he was only 4’6” in height) and his tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal pain. At times, 18^th century society life seems to have been all about protracted quarrels, snide remarks, jealousy… and publishing correspondence (often altered to suit one party against another). Social media ‘bitching’ and ‘fake news’ are clearly nothing new!
Holy Disorders (Edmund Crispin): First published 1946 (my copy: 1958). The third Crispin crime novel I’ve read (I think)… predictably clever, predictably absurd and, of course, typical of 1930s/40s crime novels - but it provided agreeable, ‘light’ reading material for my train journey. The back cover featured a photograph of the author in a typical pose of its time, with the head suitably framed by the ‘delicate’ fingers of one hand… except that these fingers also held a smouldering cigarette, just a couple of inches from his face. All rather ludicrous!
Where Poppies Blow (John Lewis-Stempel): This is a book about the British soldier, nature and the Great War. At first, I felt the writer was romanticising war and how soldiers (particularly officers) spent much of their time bird-watching, fishing and taking strolls in the countryside. But, thankfully, I was wrong… and Lewis-Stempel goes to great lengths to provide the flip-side to this ‘life’ – including harrowing descriptions of rat-infested trenches, lice, flies, disease and death. It’s very well written and brilliantly researched (using correspondence from soldiers). As my grandfather Frank was a ‘driver’ with the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) on the Somme from 1914 onwards (ie. horse driver – I think each driver was responsible for a pair of horses), I was particularly interested in this extract: “NCOs and men working in transport or with the artillery also had riding lessons, invariably of the intensive type, condensed into a week, as Sargeant George Thompson recalled: ‘All the drivers were taken to 50^th Division RFA and went through a week’s training to learn both to ride and to drive. They gave us some stick, I can tell you. First came riding bareback and then with saddles on : we were sore for days’”. Living in Birmingham, as he did, I suspect that the war was Frank’s first encounter with horses? An excellent book which provides a new perspective on WW1.

phantom thread…

I went to the Watershed again yesterday afternoon to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread”. It harks back to fashion-minded London of the 1950s… where Reynolds Woodcock (brilliantly played by Daniel Day-Lewis), celebrated dressmaker to the debutantes of Britain, is starting to feel the pressure from the ‘New Look’ and influences from across the Channel.
Like many elite artists(?), he is a man of strict routine – who, putting it mildly, doesn’t take kindly to interruptions to his daily routines. Peter Bradshaw in his review for The Guardian describes Woodcock thus: “A brilliant English couturier of the postwar age: fastidious and cantankerous, humourless and preposterous – and heterosexual, in that pre-Chatterley era when being a bachelor and fashion designer wasn’t automatically associated in the public mind with anything else”.
I found Day-Lewis’s characterisation of Woodcock totally mesmerising… and yet I also found myself utterly despising the man and his impossible, controlling ways (actually, despite this, I’m also considering buying a couple of hair brushes and copying his hair style!).
Woodcock meets, and falls in love, with a shy, ungainly German waitress at the country hotel where he happens to be staying. This is Alma (beautifully played by Vicky Krieps)(I absolutely fell in love with her!).
Woodcock sees in her a grace and beauty no one else had noticed, certainly not Alma herself. Dazzled, she comes to live with him as his assistant and model in the central London fashion house over which Woodcock rules with his sister and confidante Cyril (somewhat chillingly played by the impressive Lesley Manville).
Woodcock is the ruthless and selfish. Alma is shy and in awe of her wealthy lover… and yet her personality is stronger than you think.
That’s all I’m going to say… I don’t want to spoil things for you.
But you DO need to see this film – it really is rather good (slight understatement)!

more january 2018 books…

Haunted (Edna O’Brien): I don’t read many plays, but picked up this book from the Last Bookshop (again!) and, given that its author was Edna O’Brien and that the description on its sleeve was somewhat beguiling, I thought I’d ‘give it a go’. I’m glad that I did. The play was first presented at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester in 2009 and featured Niall Buggy (Mr Berry), Brenda Blethyn (Mrs Berry) and Beth Cooke (Hazel) in the cast of three. It’s a sad, subtle, memory play about an aging (well, aged ‘about sixty’!) Shakespeare enthusiast and budding horticulturist (who names a species of rose after his wife – “sturdy, bears no scent and has remarkable thorns”!). Meeting the ‘bewitching’, young Hazel causes Mr Berry to reflect on the wife he has ‘lost’ and the child he never had. Rather beautiful.
Germany: Memories Of A Nation (Neil MacGregor): This is a truly brilliant, remarkable, inspiring book… written by the former Director of the National Gallery and the British Museum (you might have come across MacGregor’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects”?). It’s a superb account (complete with lots of illustrations and photographs) of the richness and diversity of German history and culture. The book covers an awful lot of ground (it’s nearly 600 pages long!)… people such as Dürer, Kant, Klee, Bach, Goethe, Luther and Gutenberg; art, manufacture and history such as the Bauhaus, the VW Beetle, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (actually, as you might imagine, the list is huge!)… and yet MacGregor still manages to include the intricate and the obscure. Just when I’d been thinking that Germany’s story seemed to be almost entirely male-dominated, he highlighted the work and life of Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945, a printmaker and sculptor - someone previously completely unknown to me), who he described as a “suffering witness” of the two World Wars. What he wrote about her made a great impression on me. Likewise, when he went on to describe the amazing way in which Germany has recovered after 1945 (“the economic miracle”), he emphasised the vital role played by women (“trümmerfrauen”: rubble women who cleared the streets of bomb debris)… a truly astonishing story. This, in turn, reminded me that I used to play on bomb-sites as a child and also, when I visited Dresden on business some 25 years ago, how surprised I was to see that a number of Dresden’s bomb-sites still hadn’t been cleared. It’s brilliantly researched and presented book… one that shines a light on the country’s many wonderful achievements, but also one that isn’t afraid to address horrors of its past. In some ways, I also found it a sobering reflection on Britain’s depressing Brexit vote… we effectively turning on our back on Europe, while Germany is facing the future with openness and confidence as one of the key players in the heart of the EU. Inspiring stuff. I probably won’t read a better book all year.   
Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 (Naoki Higashida): This is a pretty amazing book about autism, written from the perspective of a young adult. Higashida, a very gifted young man, was diagnosed with severe (‘full-on’ in his words), non-verbal autism when he was five (he was born 1992) and subsequently learnt to communicate using a handmade alphabet grid and began to write poems and short stories (I won’t go into any details here). Renowned author David Mitchell (who himself has a young autistic son) provides a helpful, illuminating introduction to the book (outlining his family’s own frustrations with coping with autism). Higashida is the first to admit that every autistic person’s experience is different (I worked with some ‘mildly’ autistic children – who were in mainstream education - during my time assisting in a secondary school). The book contains lots of short chapters which shed light on a whole range of things (based on Higashida’s experiences, at least) – for instance: why he banged his head on the floor; why there were phases when his clothes felt uncomfortable; why he would be seized with fits of laughter or fury or tears without apparent reason etc etc. We have a 12 year-old grandson, Mikey, who’s autistic (he also has Down’s Syndrome… which complicates things still further for him and his parents) and, whilst I struggle to get my head around all (or even some) of the issues involved, the book has helped me to appreciate a different way of thinking about autism… and a little of what Mikey’s world might be like (getting through daily routines without meltdowns? nurturing motivation? making choices? positivity about learning and practical skills?). The book doesn’t try to give any answers or provide detailed explanations (in fact, at times I found it somewhat repetitive), but it has shed a light on how poorly I’d ‘understood’ autism. An important, uplifting book.  
Peril At End House (Agatha Christie): First published in 1932 (my copy: 1950). Had been feeling pretty rough, so ended up having a ‘duvet day’ and read this as part of my get-well-quickly-therapy! Hercule Poirot provided suitable comfort reading… but, actually, I thought the book had quite a clever plot (that Christie woman may have a future as an author!). A woman has three near escapes from death (accident or design?)… then avoids a fourth attempt. But, hey, there IS a murder and Monsieur Poirot sorts it all out… in the end. Of course he does!
The Autobiography Of Margot Asquith, Vol 1 (Margot Asquith): First published in 1920 (my copy: 1936). This is a remarkable book (this first volume concludes with a diary extract from 1906) about a remarkable woman. Despite her privileged background, her passion for hunting and horses and the fact that the virtually all of her friends and acquaintances seem to have titles (ie. all the sort of characteristics I deplore!), I found this autobiography of Margot Asquith (1864-1945) absolutely fascinating. She was the wife of Prime Minister Asquith and lived at the centre of political events (although she didn’t involve herself in politics – taking no part in the women’s suffrage movement, for example), but from her girlhood onwards she numbered among her numerous friends and acquaintances most of the famous men and women of her time (the book contains graphic sketches of King Edward VII, Queen Alexandra, Gladstone, Chamberlain, Rosebery, Balfour, Jowett, Salisbury, Tennyson etc etc). She was an exceptional, hugely intelligent writer with swift, shrewd analytical power, observation and wit.