A Walk From Home

 

I waited until the afternoon on Tuesday to start this walk from home, a mostly circular route of over five miles. For the first time I took some photos on my mobile phone so they are not the best. Leaving the house, I walk up Church Lane and then turn left up World's End Lane to reach Weston Turville Reservoir. Normally there would be lots of ducks and swans at this end, but the water had completely frozen over after many nights well below freezing. In the distance are the Chiltern Hills which always makes a great setting.

There is a stony path at the back of the reservoir which leads through some woods before arriving at the canal on the right of the photo above. The field on the left was still covered in frost at 3pm. The canal path takes me all the way to Halton where I turn right and follow the road to the junction with Halton Lane. Here is the start of the playing fields of RAF Halton.

Turning right again, I followed Halton Lane where further down is the football ground on one side and the cricket field on the other, which is in the photo below. Again there is a good view of the hills in the distance.

Halton Lane has a bridge over the canal (the Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal) where I stopped to take this picture. 

At the end of Halton Lane I turned right for a short stretch of Wendover Road before turning right again at the top of World's End Lane.

The beech hedge on the far right had started to sprout some leaves but the freezing temperatures of the last ten days has put paid to that. 

So back all the way down World's End Lane, past the reservoir and this time taking the footpath through the Weston Turville allotments.

In the distance I could see the monument at the top of Coombe Hill.

A walk that usually takes me over an hour and a half turned into nearly two hours with stops for photos. Although the temperature had struggled to 3C, the sun in the clear blue sky and not a breath of wind made it a perfect day for a walk. 

Loved and Missed, Crusoe's Daughter and A Narrow Door

 

I enjoyed Susie Boyt's latest three books, but this earlier novel is exceptional. Narrated by Ruth, the mother of chaotic Eleanor, and taking care of her child Lily. This is a book about feelings as it first follows the ups and downs of Eleanor's teenage years, and then those times when Lily is growing up, and Ruth seeing less and less of Eleanor. In the chaos of Lily's christening, we know that Eleanor has gone downhill and it is left to Ruth to care for Lily.

The baby turns into a model child and teenager. She is a constant surprise to Ruth as she is both hard working and caring. It is only late on that we hear about Eleanor's father. But what we do have is a writer on top form, the prose is actually superb. In other hands this might be a boring story, but here you can wallow in the words. Thank goodness there are a couple of her other books still to read.

Polly Flint is born in 1906 and the story follows her through the twentieth century with all that entails. Two world wars and electric light. But these hardly effect her life, an orphan at six years old living in isolation with her two strange ancient maiden aunts near the north coast. She tolerates her life with gumption and increasing intelligence, they have a maid and shelves of books. She is told she is good:

"I listened and watched and began to allow myself to be taken charge of and was rather put out to find very quickly that goodness, though a gift from God, was something I had to see after. For it appeared I might lose it. I must hold tight to it. I must clutch at it like the newel-post of the stairs, like the string of a kite. I must examine it like my new clothes. As soon as I saw signs of wear and tear it would be well to report".

A sheltered life is followed at sixteen with a first adventure with Mr Thwaite of Thwaite. An interesting house populated by strange wannabe poets? There are new places and people to see but always going home to the aunts. Young men come into her life before we race through two wars. So a fairly traumatic life but always tolerable. I didn't find this book to be as good as any of the other nine I have read, that is until we reach page 268. The last forty pages are trademark Jane Gardam and the ending is worth it after all.

Nowhere near as good as the previous two books about St Oswald's School and elderly Latin master Roy Straitley. Here he alternates narration with the new head Rebecca Buckfast. Although it is the latter who dominates by telling Roy her story. One of murder and intrigue. So very little about the school, more a rambling excuse of what and why she did it.

We are pitched back and forth between 2006 and 1989. Becky is a troubled soul and so she might be with all that baggage. There is a lot in the earlier days about her first job as a teacher (boring) and her marriage to Dominic, even though we have to wait until the very end to find out what happens to him. (Do not hold your breath! It's pathetic).

The ending is so poor. It is all set up for the next book, one that I shall avoid at all costs.

Empire of Light, The Enforcer and A Man Called Otto

 

Was it just me who felt the first half was quite boring? (Possibly not if I watched it again).Whereas the second half was much better dramatically. A homage to Margate and cinema palaces of years gone by. It was The Spectator who want Sam Mendes to stop writing his own scripts (most other reviews are also pretty negative) and there is a lot that is hammy here. Every social problem of the early 1980's is crammed in. Fortunately we have cinematographer Roger Deakins filling the screen with Margate's colour. 

The film is saved (just about) by a bravura performance from Olivia Colman. Colin Firth plays the seedy cinema manager who somehow disappears completely half way through. Michael Ward is fine as Stephen, loved by Colman and his co-workers but suffering racial abuse from others. Toby Jones is excellent as the projectionist, his scene late on with Colman on the steps at the back of the cinema is superb. There are also some great supporting performances. 

Not to be confused with the 1976 (superior) Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. Predictably formulaic which was a shame. It tried hard to be character driven but failed dismally. Just didn't know what it wanted to be. Antonio Banderas looked pretty bored with the whole thing. A nonsense plot almost saved by the atmosphere of Miami. But not quite.

Tom Hanks and a cat. That is it. Well, maybe a little more, a well written and acted drama based on the Swedish  novel "A Man Called Ove". Director Marc Forster has pitched the film in a claustrophobic community where it snows a lot. I liked the flashbacks. Tom Hanks is the grumpy widower trying to keep everything out there perfect, and failing. A good supporting cast try to help him with the loss of his wife, but only the cat succeeds. 

A New Handbrush

 

I thought that it was about time I replaced my old handbrush. It had seen good service over the years but there were not many bristles left. The new one is a Newman and Cole Stiff Bassine Handbrush. Should last for ever.

Wilstone Reservoir and St Mary the Virgin at Drayton Beauchamp

 

For my Friday walk I picked a route I had not walked for a very long time. There is free parking at Wilstone Reservoir I was not certain to find one of the dozen spaces. But I was lucky yesterday and set out on the circular route that weaves across fields and up the Wendover arm of the Grand Union Canal. 

The normal route turns left at the canal but I have often turned right and a mile down to the bridge by the road. Instead of turning back as usual,  I decided to try to locate the church I could see not far away. I had to turn right down a lane and then follow the path to the church of St Mary the Virgin.

The gates were locked, but anyway it was time to head back. I noticed that there is another path that I found later would take me back to the reservoir, instead of backtracking along the canal and taking the remainder of the circular route back to Wilstone. That will be for another day when it's not so muddy.

Photos from the camera on my phone. 

The Garden in the New Year

 

After the snow and freezing temperatures in  the middle of  December, the weather turned almost mild on the 19th (14C) and has been wet, windy and frost free since. 

So on Thursday I was about to set out on one of my walks when the rainfall radar showed a band of showers heading our way. So I took the opportunity to tidy the main border before the rain came, pruning, weeding and clearing leaves.

The rain duly arrived at lunchtime but didn't last long. It was so nice to be out in the garden again that I went back out and worked on all the other borders. It was mild enough that my fingers were not too cold. When I finished I took some photos as i never had before at this tie of year. Starting with a primrose and snowdrops.

Some of the bulbs are coming up.

The Iris are sprouting from their rhizomes.  

And the Lilies in the wildflower border.

 The first photo below is from the original Acanthus I planted some years ago and the second is the more healthy plant from a cutting I took a couple of years back.

One of the Astrantias is already coming into leaf.

The shrubs are also showing signs of life. First the Honeysuckle.

And finally catkins on the Corylus Contorta.

Due to the mild spell in early January I pruned the roses as they were starting to come into leaf. Far too early as the last two years I pruned on the 3rd and 16th February. We will see if they survive!

She Said, Corsage and Aftersun

 

An excellent movie, well documented and presented by director Maria Shrader and writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Of course the two lead actresses, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, deservedly garnered all the praise for their roles as the investigators from the New York Times, but they would have been nothing without the writer and director who should get all the prizes. They let some of the conversations linger and are not at all rushed. We know it took years for the abuse to surface, and for a long time in the film the reporters found it so hard for anyone to go on the record. But their persistence pays off and the newspaper gets it's scoop and law enforcement gets their man. All down to  Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. I liked Patricia Clarkson as their boss and the fact we were shown the two reporters with their supportive husbands as a counter to what went on. 

Was I the only one who saw two alternatives to the title? Not only the tightness of the corset Elizabeth has to wear, (is this a dig at Hollywood's ideal actress) but the restrictive nature of her position as Empress of the Austrian/Hungarian Empire. The film follows just one year of her life, as she reaches her fortieth birthday in 1877. This is not a standard biopic by any means. There are modern touches from a couple of songs to props from today. The story itself maybe flimsy, but everything else was superb. Vicky Krieps is brilliant as Elizabeth, she must be up for the best actress Oscar. I thought Katharina Lorenz was excellent as her closest friend Countess Marie Festetics. The saddest scene in a movie for years came when she is refused to leave to marry.

The cinematography is top drawer, the interiors are exquisite, whether a banquet, a dinner or private dining. As are the locations of palaces and countryside, except I have never seen a mountain in Northamptonshire. All part of the irreverent production design. But it is Austrian director Marie Kreutzer who has given us such a wonderful film.

Of course the costumes are terrific and Camille's modern soundtrack  works well. Those modern songs include harpist Dina Nimax playing the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By", and a stable boy strumming  (ukulele or violin) and singing to Kris Kristopherson's "Help Me Make It Through The Night". Then the end credits are supplemented by Elizabeth dancing to Soap&Skin's "Italy". There are numerous excellent reviews of the film including those on slantmagazine.com and moviejawn.com. 

After all the five star reviews, I was at first completely underwhelmed by what looked to me as a typical arthouse film where nothing happens. In a way I was right, it doesn't. Just a divorced father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his eleven year old daughter Sophie (an amazing Francesca Corio) spending a week in a cheap Turkish resort. Despite their separation they are both very close in their time together. So that is it. That's where the one star audience reviews come in. This is definitely not a mainstream movie with a plot and so on. So what is it? I was going to say experimental and improvised, it certainly had that sort of feel. 

However there are images that stick in the memory like no other traditional film. It's Sophie who carries the narrative, meeting a boy at the arcade, gathering tourists to sing at her father's birthday, trying to get her dad to join her at karaoke and failing. You would have to go on the numerous glowing reviews from the critics to find their take: "childhood memories" of the glimpses of the older Sophie? The editing is all over the place, looking back it seems to me that it looks like those scenes from their 1990's video camera, short glimpses of doing not a lot. Those fragmented memories of the older Sophie. At the time it felt somewhat boring and a little sad, why wouldn't it? 

Director Charlotte Wells has certainly made something different. The colours are those you would expect from a Mediterranean resort. There is occasionally an underlying feeling of dread that never comes to the surface. And she does elicit an extraordinary performance from young Corio. What they both do next will be interesting.

George Harrison - Living in the Material World

 

This is a documentary by Martin Scorsese from 2011 so it has taken some time to be shown on Sky Arts. I never knew of it's existence until now. It is a long film, nearly three and a half hours. I was only going to look at the section at the end about him setting up Handmade Films, but I became engrossed at all the early stuff with The Beatles. So much I had not seen before. For a start I didn't remember he was only seventeen when the band was in Hamburg, turning eighteen whilst there. There were clips of Astrid Kirchherr showing us lots of the photos she took, especially that one of George and John.

We saw recorded performances of  "I Saw Her Standing There" (remembering dancing to this on my last day at school) in July 1963 and "This Boy" and "You Can't Do That" from 1964. We were told about the lightning recording of their second album "With The Beatles" released in November 1964. I bought it the week it came on sale at a shop at the top of  Kings Street in Hammersmith and played it on repeat. 

Paul and George talked about their residency at the Hammersmith Odeon from December 1964 into January 1965. I walked past there on my way to work every day they were there and wondered why I didn't go. It was up to Eric Clapton (who did go) to remind me That  you could not hear anything for the screams and you would be a solitary male amongst very young teenage girls.

George martin talks about the recording sessions and Paul mentions George's riff which makes "And I Love Her". I didn't know they played a summer season in Bournemouth in 1963 and 1964. Eric talks about his friendship with the band and there are clips of George with Pattie Boyd. Pattie talks about their time together and looked great. I skipped all the stuff about George and India with Ravi Shankar.

But there is a great passage when Eric Clapton describes his "isolated recording" on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" when he first turned down George's request to contribute. George was maturing as a songwriter with "Something" and "Here Comes The Sun".

At last the documentary moved seamlessly on to George meeting The Pythons when he loved "Monty Python and The Holy Grail". Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam tell us about their following film "The Life of Brian" and how EMI pulled the plug, leading to George mortgaging his house to pay for the filming. There is much more about his Handmade Films in Michael Palin's book "Halfway to Hollywood". The percussionist Ray Cooper, a good friend of George, and Terry Gilliam talked about "Time Bandits", "Mona Lisa", "Withnail and I" and "The Long Good Friday", all classic handmade films. 

There was a nice part about The Travelling Wilburys, quite a bit from Tom Petty. I liked those clips from the studio making the recording, "Handle Me With Care" etc.

There was lots from Olivia Harrison about her husband, how he was "always a challenge" when it came to other women. But they had a good marriage. I didn't know that George actually became a passionate gardener. I had forgotten that they were attacked  in the middle of the night in their own home by an intruder. Apparently it could have been a lot worse than the injuries George sustained. 

It was left to Ringo to tell us about his visit to the critically ill George in Switzerland. Ringo had to leave to see his ill son in America and George asked if he needed him to go with him. That was George.

Territorial Rights, missing the midnight and Slough House

 

Once I got over Muriel Spark showing off her knowledge of Venice, I warmed to this gentle farce with a wonderful set of characters. Having recently re-read Sarah Winman's "Still Life" and watched "Don't Look Now" I feel as if I know the city so well. A canal is described as "a narrow lane of Venetian water". It is Robert who seems to be the main character, a young man escaping events in Paris, but then he disappears half way through. His much older friend, the American (who insists of being called "Curran") becomes involved when Robert's father turns up with his lady friend in tow. There is stacks of brilliant dialogue and trademark Spark wit. I loved it.

The first in this collection of short stories, that gives this book it's title, was by far the best. It was first published twenty seven years ago in "The Oldie" magazine. A young woman is boarding a packed train on Christmas Eve, on her way home from a university where she has failed her exams, and lost an older lover. Was this affair the cause? On her way to a family who despise her and whom she herself despises. Forced with her loads of luggage into a first class carriage (is she not going back to Uni?) she is joined by a young couple and a priest, a father of one of them. How will she get from Kings Cross to Watford without any money? No, she does not borrow or steal. We find out at the very end. Just ten superb pages.

There is one short story called "Old Filth". This was published in 1996, and was the germ of the idea to which the author returned in 2004 with the novel of the same name, that turned into a prize winning trilogy and three of my favourite books of all time. So this short story was very familiar as the ex-QC Filth (Failed in London Try Hong Kong) is now eighty plonk and retired to Dorset. I cannot remember if this story actually told us his real name, but the novel obviously does. A recap about his career in the Far East and about his wife Betty, who now has died. His hated adversary Veneering has actually moved in next door, and avoided for a couple of years at all costs. Until .....

There are some stories that are strange and fantastical but not to my taste. Then "Soul Mates" is a spooky story about a retired couple meeting new friends at a hotel on holiday. Again, an unexpected ending. The last, much longer, story called "The Green Man" is another weird concoction of the myth. "Now you see him, now you don't".

Before reading Slough House, I found that my review of Joe Country, the previous book in the series, had noted "I quite enjoyed the first half of this book, however when the violence started I couldn't wait to finish". Slough House is exactly the same. There is some great stuff about the characters who return from the previous novel, lots of great dialogue, but I have to skip the violence. This time there is a sense of dread early in the book that turns out to be only too real. Just don't get me started on the ending.