It’s been a mostly homely week of books, radio, sewing, knitting, cycling, enjoying the colours of the leaves, the pavements turned to gold, the sunshine on medieval stone, sitting outside small Cambridge cafes, buying amaryllis and daffodil bulbs, an inspirational Small Publishers Fair and a fortuitous meeting with book artist friends from a Zoom course, and a birthday outing to Soho for dumplings.
[birthday socks for Phoebe]
I like ordinary and peaceful and uneventful. It’s good, and really all I’ve ever wanted. And it’s also been nice to do some watching, rewatching, catching up, although none of it has been exactly cutting-edge and modern.
I watched Local Hero for the first time since it came out in 1983. It’s a lovely, funny, cinematic paean to Scotland, empty beaches, and colourful night skies. I’d remembered it well, apart from the fact that virtually every scene shows men discussing and deciding the future of the small fishing village community. There’s a wife who hangs out the washing and makes sandwiches, a marine biologist (actually called Marina ffs) who is practically a mermaid so not to be taken that seriously, and a post office lady who waits for the return of her love-interest Russian sailor. After watching it on Sunday, I felt sure that this sort of thing wouldn’t be possible now, forty years on.*
Then on Monday we had this:
[total men: 23; total women: 3]
Just a normal screenshot of a national daily newspaper in 2022.
(*Interestingly, I see that the recent stage musical version of the film has addressed this: “as for those nice girls, well, there are more of them, they’re real grownups and they aren’t quite as nice.”)
I highly recommend Talking Pictures TV for black & white films, railway documentaries, and two series in particular. The 1960s Maigret series with Rupert Davies (above, wonderful, but still not my ideal - that would be Roger Allam) has great outside shots of Paris without traffic jams and just a few stylish Citroën DSs, creaky recycled sets, the actors interrupting each other, fluffing lines and ad libbing, and some incomprehensible plots.
The Edgar Wallace Mysteries feature great shots of a traffic-free London, this time, the same interior sets done up in different ways (always with split-level rooms, as though everyone in the Home Counties in the 1960s lived in groovy pads), a cast of con men, killers, and double-crossing women with rigidly hair-sprayed hair, and people driving to London Airport, as it then was, parking the car outside the terminal and walking straight in - no long term car parks, shuttle buses, or chaos. Again, I often lose the plot, but am transfixed by the images.
With great pleasure, I revisited Simon & Garfunkel via ‘The Dangling Conversation’ after listening to Rick Rubin on Desert Island Discs. I first heard S&G when I was in a children’s ward in hospital. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ came on the radio and the nurses went into raptures. I just thought it went on too long. Ha, I love S&G but still think this one gets a bit carried away with itself and the orchestra, and much prefer the simpler arrangements, the purity of the voices, and the brilliant lyrics and evocations of the New Jersey Turnpike and cold railway stations.
I’m trying out a beginners’ pottery course at Kiln Cambridge with encouragement from Phoebe who is an excellent potter. I have very little in the way of 3D skills and clay feels alien after a lifetime of textiles, but it’s fascinating to consider and work with a new material which is as basic and ancient as cloth. I don’t see myself turning into the next Lucie Rie, though. However, I do feel comfortable making a linen pottery apron for Phoebe’s birthday, with a split front for sitting at the wheel. (Pattern here, and it’s very good.)
Finally, I’m waiting to listen to the second part of this, which is a revisiting of Ethel Carnie’s work adapted for radio. It reminded me of Dorothy Whipple and Winifred Holtby; it, too, has some wonderful Northern voices and moments.
So that’s my Sunday afternoon sorted. Hope you have a bon dimanche, too.
Roger Allam as Maigret is inspired! Thanks for that thought. And amazing socks, I have followed yarnstorm for a long time and am now so pleased to be able to complete socks but am still a long way off those beauties!
If you are getting into pottery (or as a holiday gift for Phoebe, I highly recommend the book, Life in the Studio by Frances Palmer. Stories about pottery, creative process, her garden, with a few recipes thrown in for good measure, it reminds me of your writing.