Just For Lookin' Thru

The bad-tempered hibernating bear part of me has been temporarily pacified by the sudden arrival of Spring today. I drive around in my car, wearing sunglasses, with the windows open. The sky is a deep Mediterranean blue and birds are singing in the hedgerows. How soon I forget the misery of the last four months with one burst of warm sun and blue sky. It is the return of hope, like coming up from underground, from the dank, dark, almost suffocating pressure of winter into the light and air. Glory be. It is even better that each week I show people round these houses, I come into the office the following week to find they are all under offer. Either there’s a shortage of properties or I am a stunning saleswoman. Every property looks fabulous today, and all the viewers are in sunny moods; outgoing and cheerful. No-one is taciturn and morose. Until I meet Mr Expert at the end of the afternoon but he’s not going to spoil my day. He comes with his old mum to give his second opinion on a

On the return train there is no dining car layout, instead we have plastic boxes with pre-packed sachets of washed and cut fresh apple, all the way from France, biscuits in wrappers, a bread roll with a smear of filling, and as many drinks as we like. Same company, different style of catering. Why? There is a buffet car though, for the gourmets among us. The carriage is full of workers, beavering away on their laptops or shouting their importance into mobile phones. I wish they’d shut up. I don’t care who they are or what they said to so-and-so in the meeting. I pity the poor fools that think this qualifies as a life. A very attractive, and smartly dressed Scotswoman was very loud on her phone on the way up here, on her way to Glasgow after a day of such meetings. I was sitting about ten seats away but, such was her annoyance, her conversation was inescapable. Not really a conversation, but a diatribe, directed at her son, aged 19, who had a friend that had annoyed her very much by ‘li

Michael Buerk chats about Carnage and the Media and says he feels strongly that the public must see real images of the results of violence. He also says that he firmly believes that fictional violence anaesthetizes people against the reality. It seems to me there is an anomaly here. If fictional violence makes us immune to real violence, then surely repeated exposure to real violence via news reporting will have the same effect. I have a particular question I want to ask him but there are many hands going up in the auditorium and I don’t get the opportunity until later. I approach him and ask him if he would mind answering a question I have. I can feel an extraordinary energy from him; the power of his mind. He exudes mental acuity, and it fascinates me how we can sense that. It’s like being next to an engine. Anyway, I feel very strongly about this particular issue and ask him what he thinks about newspapers printing front page photographs of corpses with their body fluids staining th

The softly spoken, quietly friendly German visitor has hurt his back. He has hobbled into the town and bought some Tiger balm because he feels that heat will help. I suspect he may have a disc prolapse but he is sure it is not so serious. The third time I see him I ask how he is. We’re all a long way from home and a bit of friendly concern can go a long way. Hell, I’d appreciate it. I am seated at the kitchen table, writing up my notes from the morning. He asks me if I would rub some of the balm into his back. Of course. He is standing before me; my eyes are about level with his stomach. He unbuckles his belt, unzips his jeans, and drops his trousers. They fall to his knees in a moment. I blink and am up, out of my seat, and round behind him in a flash, darting into a safe position with the pot of balm, anxious not to see more than I have already seen. I am more comfortable with the back of his underwear and, as I compose myself before action, he reaches round and pulls down his underp

Youth Hostels are great; a huge advance from the boarding houses of a century ago, but working on the same, simple idea. Cheap accommodation for a variety of travellers, all bunked up together – only today the beds are clean and not lice-ridden. I come into the bunk room and see the window has been opened although it is bitter winter weather outside. I see another bed has been taken. I close the window and chat to my room-mate who is from Germany, over for a National Trust working holiday. Her friends think she’s mad to pay to come to the UK; to work, and eat bad food in bad weather, but she smiles and says she loves everything about England, and that they don’t understand. I bump into another woman in the kitchen. I look twice to make sure, but it is a woman. Her hair is close cropped; she’s thick set, wearing a round necked black tee-shirt and black straight leg trousers. Her voice is deep, her manner brusque and bluff. I realize that this is the window-opener. I feel wary because sh

The Literature Festival is a jolly affair. Hordes of animated, chattering people are everywhere and there is a warm, friendly atmosphere. Strangers talk to each other as if they were old friends, all brought together by the love of writing, reading and the opportunity to hear about and discuss a wide range of topics: History, Philosophy, Travel, Humour, News and loads besides. My task this week is to chat to as many writers as I can and try to get an understanding of how they feel about attending festivals such as these, and why Literature Festivals have grown in popularity over recent years, such that they are now the main marketing method for publishers (so I am told). Each author I approach is delighted to be there, and see it as an opportunity to meet their readers, to socialize with other writers, and to enjoy the scenery of the Lake District. It’s a stimulating mini-break for writers and an escape from slaving alone over a desk in an isolated garret. I have lugged two enormous ha

I’m on the train to Cumbria for the Literature Festival on the shores of Derwentwater. Strangely, a first class single is cheaper than a return ticket but I’m not complaining, and am looking forward to the promised free tea and coffee all the way there – five hours. I step into the compartment but, seeing that is laid up like a dining car, I retreat, and look in the next compartment. No, I was right the first time; I am to travel for five hours with a table in front of me, laid with a French style heavy paper mat, cutlery wrapped in a blue serviette, a wine glass and a white china dish containing a white china cup on a doily. I try to make some room for my papers, and manage to write a bit amongst the crockery and cutlery. I am soon joined by two Chinese men who smile and bob their heads at me and, by gesticulating, indicate that they want to know if the seats are taken – they’re not – and if they may sit down. They sit and chatter with great animation and good nature, and I smile and

I meet young first time buyers at a tiny nutshell of a cottage, new on the market at 120K. The sitting room appears too small for a sofa – a deal table and a couple of chairs would have been a luxury when the old place was built. Upstairs there is just one room, not even a landing and, as we discuss the best way round to put the bed, I am quite wistful. What a precious and unforgettable time this is; buying a first home together, and I’m very anxious that they only go ahead with it if they’re sure; I want to minimize life’s pitfalls for them, or to delay them awhile. I emphasize the need for a full survey, point out the woodworm, and suggest they go away and talk it over for the weekend. It’s a dear little love nest but the price still has to be right, and unforeseen problems revealed – so love doesn’t get too battered too early. There’s an offer of 385K in for a huge but shoddily built place out in the country. Over six months on the market, frequent viewers all thinking it’s overpr

This is a highly intelligent, deeply affecting film. Shot in documentary style, it offers the realism of unforced observation, yet it is brilliantly arranged and choreographed. Innaritu has achieved actors’ performances which appear absolutely natural, and understated, and which give their characters enormous dignity. The result is so accomplished that the unfolding story is totally absorbing. A sequence of events is set off by an accident when two brothers are arguing over the distance a rifle can fire; they hit a tour bus. The introduction of the rifle into the Moroccan community suggests corruption of a way of life, and the film shows how far-reaching are the repercussions of this mishap. Innaritu plays with timing and fate, guns and panic. People are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and characters respond differently when under pressure. Only the Englishman is unsympathetically portrayed, when his fear and suspicion overcome any compassion. Social divides and t

Sometimes I just get fed up. Not unreasonable when the working day starts at 8.45 am (first fifteen minutes unpaid) and runs until 4.00 pm without a lunch break, or any chance of a cup of tea. By 3.00 pm I am feeling cranky, although everyone I’ve met today has been a pleasure to spend time with. Maybe it’s just dehydration and starvation but, when the fat guy and his partner arrive I feel that I’m really not at my best. Is it me, and has my professional attitude deserted me in my comfortless state? It’s cold, windy and rainy, and I am in and out of the car, driving all over the county taking people into cold, empty houses. What I could really do with is a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake, preferably sitting somewhere warm. What I get is a fat guy who does not speak, at all. I start off trying to get some eye contact, to engage one or other of them but it’s no dice. They don’t even speak to each other, merely move lifelessly forward, without apparent enthusiasm for the house, or f

Two elderly thesps have their familiar routines disrupted by the arrival, from the North, of Ian’s niece’s daughter, a young woman with plenty of attitude but little education. Both men respond to her differently and the interest shown in her by Maurice is not simply kindly. The collision of the generation gap and the North-South divide is too much for Ian (Leslie Phillips) but is an awakening for Maurice (Peter O’Toole).He becomes fascinated by her youth, as he faces the increasing decrepitude of his own body, and each has something to learn from the other. Hugely funny and deeply moving by turns, Venus is a painfully insightful and wickedly wry look at old age; at modern manners, or the lack of them, and at relationships between old friends, ex-lovers, and new friends. Hilarious at first; poignant later; story weakened by Maurice’s implausible love and the descent into the sexual. The contrasts age –v- youth, north –v- south, culture –v- ignorance were strong enough without it.

Hobbs writing immerses the reader in the world of an eighteenth century preacher in rural Cornwall. The preacher is an earnest young man aged 27 and the novel is a study of his thoughts and preoccupations about death, faith, religious doubt, and freedom. Working six days a week in a forge, as apprentice to a smith, he spends the Sabbath day walking many miles over the country to preach, often without food, and frequently to find a sparse congregation. He develops a fascination for a blind girl, Harriet, whose own faith in God is absolute, and his visits to her are mannah to his soul. Hobbs beautifully captures the young preacher’s urgent desire to deliver his message, to show the rural folk that God is there for them, as their redeemer and provider, yet the evidence around him is of poverty and want, and he despairs that people seem to have turned away from God and become too concerned with material needs and desires. What is most striking is the sense of grief and loneliness, and the

Evangeline is 29 and pregnant. She thinks about the baby she is about to have, and remembers her own mother who died when she was eight. She is sent to live on a Welsh farm with her grandparents who she had never met; she adapts, and develops a deep affection for them, the farm and the landscape. Eve Green is an observant novel, sensitively written, with close detail that allows the reader to become absorbed in the world of the story. Fletcher writes with a great sense of affection for people and place and, although I was astonished to find the editor had missed the phrase ‘bored of’, there are some deft touches; ‘I felt that our secrets had been pressed together, twisted into the same shape, and that they couldn’t be peeled apart again.’ Memories are interwoven with her childhood perspective of detail from one long, hot summer, when a girl from the village went missing. Fletcher inserts little pieces of supposition, as a child might speculate, and builds up tension around Eve’s childh

Also published in West Briton Newspaper 7.3.2007 1700 people made their way through just about the worst Cornish weather of the winter; gale force winds and torrential rain, to see James Morrison on stage. They all cram in, with loads of laughter and chat, fill up the balcony and pack into the standing area so tightly that there’s no room to dance, and barely room to breathe. It’s hot; it’s tight; it’s intimate. Morrison and his band are pretty tight and intimate too. His trademark husky voice gives the lyrics a soulful sound, and a sexy, sleepy quality that is romantic and close. A couple in front of me have their tongues down each others’ throats throughout the entire set but maybe Morrison’s music is a love thing for them. I can imagine it would be. He has an appealing, tousled look as though he’s just tumbled out from his duvet, and the slight hoarseness in his voice adds to the pillow talk atmosphere on his recordings. In the densely packed theatre tonight, in the deep dark, blue

A triumphant performance with understated elegance and high drama. Set to Tchaikovsky’s familiar score, the troupe of young Russian ice dancers astonish and impress with their breathtaking skill and grace. The performance ranges from the divinely elegant, through joyous and comic, jaunty and confident, to dramatic and heart-stopping. Many times the slender girls are thrown by powerful men, and sent spinning into the air, with a surprising momentum; yet they land perfectly, with inches to spare, on the stage sized ice rink, and the audience can breathe once more. Despite an accident during their matinee show the cast perform again in the evening with consummate professionalism, throwing themselves into the ice dance with exciting enthusiasm, having reworked the routine in their short break to omit the trapeze sequence. It is not only their stamina but their courage that is applauded. They look so young, yet their punishing schedule often means six evening performances and three matinees

Accatone! (1961) is the first film by director Piers Paulo Pasolini and re-relased as part of a box set of his work. Accatone! features a pitiless, self-serving, manipulative young pimp living in the slums and rubble of Rome, whose lassitude is infectious. Images of his death recur throughout the film and he seems barely living. The exclamation mark in the title may be there to try and wake him up. Pasolini shot the film on the streets, using the people he found there rather than professional actors. The effect is a slow moving realism which casts the viewer as reluctant voyeur; it is impossible to gain any distance from the unrelenting sadism of hollow machismo. Seeing this film fifty years after it was made, the misogyny in this film is deeply disturbing; women are either Madonna, virgin or whore. Accatone says prostitution is ‘a mother’s situation’ which provides the mixed message that it’s selfless and necessary for survival, yet he and his friends view whores as trash; to

John Sharpe drives repeatedly round a ring road all day musing on his wife, his baby son, his business, his upbringing, his family, and the GM trials that his company are undertaking. There is close detail about potatoes, childbirth and sex. Sharpe thinks about various characters which tells us something about them but, unlike the characterizations and minute observation evident throughout In The Place of Fallen Leaves, I am left feeling I do not know these people, nor does Sharpe, and nor does he know himself. I warm to none of them. There are three occasions when he plainly contradicts himself; he says he went to a therapist, then says he made it up; he says he met his wife hitchhiking, then says he met her playing football; says she fell head over heels for him, then that she settled for him after loving someone else more deeply. These deliberate contradictions are strangely psychotic and disturbing. Sharpe is left to continue on his way.