Just For Lookin' Thru

Fiona and Grant have been married for 44 years. Filmed in Canada, the beautiful snowscapes, sunlight on snow, and red tinted sunsets, make a fitting backdrop to Julie Christie’s cool, elegant beauty. She plays the wife of a retired University lecturer Grant, (Gordon Pinsent), who succumbs to the early onset of Alzheimer’s. At first it troubles her, then it intrigues her and she says she feels as though she is ‘disappearing.’ It is she who decides when it is time for her to go into a home, who instigates the process and, when they arrive, who determinedly checks herself in. She bravely comments that it will be like staying at an hotel. What other line can she take? Grant’s quietly desperate attempts to dissuade her only threaten her fortitude. She has to be strong for them both. It is hard for her to say goodbye too, but it is so much harder for Grant to go home and be without her. It is always hardest to be the one left behind. The unkindest cut of all is that the home...

I am getting to know Ella a little bit. I have been out to the rambling old cottage quite a few times now, showing folks round. She usually keeps out of the way, as though she doesn’t want to be involved in the process. Today, she’s inside with her family, and we pass through the rooms as respectfully as we can, aware of her sensitivity towards the old house. With a cup of tea, her daughter and her grandchildren, she is confined to one small room while we have free range of her home. After the first couple have left I go in and sit down to talk to her. They have made an offer of 500K and want to go for an immediate exchange of contracts, legals permitting, with a completion date set for September. This is a reasonable timescale. She looks worried, unhappy. “I don’t know.” She says. She tells me she wants her original buyers to have the house although they are now unable to proceed because their own sale fell through. She says that she ‘clicked’ with them; that they fell in love w...

This is a remake of a 1934 classic starring Greta Garbo and is based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. Kitty is a bored, rather empty, piano playing socialite with an overbearing mother who wants her to get married because that’s what girls do (it's set in the 1920s). Kitty likes dancing, playing tennis, and has never been in love. Along comes a rather serious but unexciting bacteriologist to woo her; Kitty accepts his proposal, and they leave for Shanghai. Kitty has escaped from her mother only to succumb to a deeper boredom amongst the colonial set. She embarks on a passionate affair with a diplomat, is discovered, and she becomes victim to the intensity of her husband’s feelings of rejection, pain and anger at her infidelity. His punishment is to take her into rural China where there is a severe cholera outbreak. It is a study of repressed emotion and correct behaviour, and it makes horribly uncomfortable viewing with its sense of being trapped in a loveless marriage,...

It’s fascinating to see the BBC setting up for Question Time - two enormous lorries filled with a mass of recording equipment arrive early in the morning and spend all day unloading. They set up six cameras, the set, computers, televisions and enough cabling to go round the world twice. A team of men in black put everything together and a security team frisks all the audience as they come in, while four local policemen contribute their presence. They omit to frisk the stewards which is interesting, as any one of them could have some polonium to spray on Boris Berezovsky. They can't have read any John Le Carre or Claire Francis novels or they'd have realized what a strong possibility this is in the provinces. Berezovsky’s a brave man who says he feels safe in England, yet I don’t see any security men on the stage door side of the building. The whole team is at the other entrance checking people’s bags and scanning them with detectors. Progress into the building is slow. Other pa...

There are 1800 folk in tonight for a gig that sold out in just over an hour. The Manics were in Bristol last night, and Truro has drawn in this huge crowd from Devon and all around the west country, the Celtic fringe, all in great spirits, all looking forward to a good night. If people were smart and checked the ticket prices maybe they’d think it worth the drive down to Cornwall for tickets at £25 compared to £59 at Brighton and £65 at Southampton. Hey, good deal. We’re cheap down here. The security guys are a nice bunch of lads, enormous, and very polite. One guy stands next to me and accidentally brushes my face with his arm; he’s so big he can’t see me down here as he scans the floor from his vantage point. I look up to see what it was that bumped me in the dark, and connect my face with his upper arm – my head doesn’t even reach his shoulder. Ridiculous. I’m not small. What on earth did his mother feed him on? He’s got to be 6ft 8ins at least. Good manners though. He’s one of thos...

It’s been 25 degrees in London and I step onto the Penzance train, relieved to be in the cool. I’m in an inside airline seat and a man in his forties sits on the outside seat. I say hello and get on with the serious business of eating my train picnic. His train picnic is a bottle of white wine and a newspaper. I wake from my post-prandial nap to find him chuckling over a news story. He enlightens me. He’s disposed to chat. Uh huh. Only five hours to go. How is this one going to play out? Not always wise to get friendly so early on a long journey, when one of us is trapped in the inside seat. He’s looking forward to a few days in Cornwall, he says. He loves Cornwall. Me: It’s okay - if it wasn’t cloudy all the time. At least you can see the sun in London. He doesn’t know me, and can’t decipher that this means I am feeling grumpy and not very friendly right now and, more importantly, I am protecting my psychological and physical space. If I liked the look of him, I would have been playfu...