It's Feelgood Week At The Cinema

With temperatures falling and the evenings drawing in we felt it was the ideal time to get back into our movie going this week and, we've done that with a vengeance. We started with  Frank at Little Lightning here in Framlingham which I wrote about in my last blog and we followed it up with Pride at the Aldeburgh Cinema on Tuesday evening.

It's one of those quintessentially English movies such as Bold As Brass andThe Full Monty which centres on a working community fallen upon hard times (usually due to the wicked Margaret Thatcher) but brought together by a mutual passion (brass band, strip act and now the miner's strike/gay and lesbian rights). It tells the fascinating true story of how a group of LGBT  men and women, tired of being victimised, decided to show solidarity with another victimised group by openly supporting and collecting money for a mining community in Wales during the notorious 1984/5 industrial action. 

The film centres on the prejudice of both those that the gay group is trying to support and the community in general and it is funny and heartwarming even if a little predictable. In a very standard three act formula we open with the Pride march in London, move to Wales and close back in London with the following year's Pride march. In between there is plenty of comedy based mostly upon the open mindedness of elderly Welsh women (Imelda Staunton in particular) and gender confusion within the mining community. For me the highlight was a scene in the working mens' club when the flamboyant Jonathan played by Dominic West takes the audience by storm with an outrageous dance routine that brings the house down. It was good to see Bill Nighy playing against his usual type as an elderly Welsh union official and also good to see George MacKay's career continuing to flourish after his promising roles in Sunshine On Leith and Meg Rosoff's  How I Live Now.

After Aldeburgh on Tuesday it was Woodbridge yesterday afternoon when we went to see The Grand Seduction a gentle Canadian film which reminded me of Local Hero. A young doctor is coerced into staying in Tickle Head, a tiny Newfoundland fishing community which must have a doctor if the inhabitants are to stand any chance of winning the bid to be chosen as the location for a major new factory. Whilst major new factories (especially in the petro-chemical industry) and beautiful coastal communities make strange bedfellows, the fishermen are out of work and on benefits due to quotas and industrialisation of the industry and want alternative jobs to maintain their dignity.

The humour in this film, which is gentler than that in Pride, centres around the community's duplicity, lead by the mayor (Brendan Gleeson), in trying to persuade cricket loving doctor (Taylor Kitsch) that, despite his fiancee thousands of miles away and his city loving ways, Tickle Head is the place of his dreams and to convince the city slickers that their tiny place has over two hundred residents AND a doctor. Although their methods are, to say the least, questionable, the message is that anything goes if it is for the good of the workers. The result is an enjoyable and entertaining 115 minutes of whimsy which, slightly puzzlingly, both opens and closes to the sound of orgasms throughout the harbour side houses and the implication that all is very fine in the world as long as everybody is enjoying conjugal harmony. Which may, I suppose, not be too wide of the mark.

Interesting to see in ITV's I Married The Waiter the other night that no less than three of the women involved in the programme had met their loves on the wonderful Greek island of Symi which is, of course, the loosely fictionalised Symos of my romantic novel.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Give Me Your Tomorrow

by John Brassey

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Hats, Shirts And Subtitles

I mentioned on an earlier blog that we've got a wedding coming up shortly. It's two of our oldest and dearest friends' son's big day and we want to create a good impression. I got a new suit last week and Marion has a dress for the occasion but she didn't have a hat and I didn't have a suitable shirt so, in the absence of a hatters and a menswear shop here in Framlingham we decided to take a trip in the direction of Norwich yesterday. Marion had found The Hattery at Ringland on the internet and they were very helpful on the phone.

They had a massive selection of hats and Marion had no difficulty in finding the right one to go with her outfit.

As we were near Norwich, I decided to drive into the city centre and visit John Lewis for the shirt. I found a great selection and managed to buy three in their sale for little more than the regular price of one. I was very pleased until I got home and tried them on (I didn't want to trouble the assistant with taking them out of their fancy packaging) . Sadly it seems that Calvin Klein's style is ultra slim fitting and, sadly, I'm not ultra slim. This meant another drive to Norwich today where I managed to replace the shirts but at double the cost as none of the bargain shirts were right. At least I did trouble the assistants to take them out of the packaging this time and probably left them cursing as they rewrapped the three or four that didn't fit.

The evenings are drawing in and the summer weather is not quite what it was so we decided to go to the pictures twice this week. First was the Swedish adaptation of The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson's brilliant debut novel, at the lovely Riverside in Woodbridge on Tuesday where we enjoyed a great meal at the restaurant before the film. I read the book a year or so back and loved it. The film is good fun but misses out huge swathes of the novel and fails to meet the book's dizzy levels of absurdity. There are still plenty of laughs and it is well worth seeing but if you want the very best of The Hundred Year Old Man read the book.

Last night we went to Ipswich to the excellent IFTT for Cycling With Moliere. We particularly wanted to see this movie as it was filmed on location on Ile De Re where we enjoyed two holidays in the last few years. Ile De Re was as stunning as ever - especially as the off season filming depicted it free of the crowds who flock there in the summer. A successful actor travels to the island to recruit an old (unsuccessful) actor friend for his proposed production of Moliere's The Misanthrope. Over a week, the pair rehearse the lead and supporting roles alternating the parts on the toss of a coin. It's a gentle and whimsical film with a touch of romance and comedy as the misanthropy of the lead role starts to creep into each of the actors' characters and threatens to destroy their already shaky friendship. I'm a big fan of whimsy (as you will know if you have read my book) so this film was right up my street. 

And speaking of my book, the proof copies of the paperback version arrived today. I'm very pleased and will be starting to publicise it as soon as we get home from our next trip to Scotland.

Happy 80th Aunty Maureen

We've had a weekend away. On Saturday we drove to Rochester and spent a day with our lovely little granddaughter while her mum and dad had a well earned day to themselves. We had a great day - nothing beats the company of a bright and cheerful two-year-old.

Yesterday was a happy day tinged with a little sadness as we headed to North Sheen for Marion's Aunty Maureen (seated above's) 80th birthday party. It was good to see Maureen together with her brother Gerald and his wife Joan looking so well but sad to think of those who are no longer with us like Maureen's husband Arthur and Marion's mum and dad (Maureen's brother Dudley and his wife Flo). We stopped briefly at the crematorium en route to the party to spend a few moments thinking of them.  

Maureen's family did her proud and put on a fabulous spread which could have fed the eighty guests for a week. The Kew Park Rangers football pavilion was a perfect venue and everyone enjoyed catching up with family and friends some of whom they hadn't seen for a long time.

I can't remember how long it was since we last saw Marion's cousin Allison but we hope that we can catch up with her again next time we are in her home town of Edinburgh.

Marion's uncle is so like her dad.

And Marion's sister Sue looks more like their mum every time we see her.

Thank you to Lynne (right) and Sharon for inviting us. Don't forget to visit us in Suffolk.

We've a fairly quiet week ahead this week so we're taking advantage of the darker evenings and heading to the cinema tomorrow night for The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared at the Riverside in Woodbridge and Bicycling With Molieres at Ipswich Film Theatre Trust on Wednesday.

Families Eh?

Now that our Scottish branch of the family is safely back in St Andrews it's been time to get back into our old routine and we found time yesterday to head to the excellent Riverside at Woodbridge for the early evening showing of August Osage County. It's one that we missed when it hit the multiplexes and we weren't sure whether or not to try it as the critics had been generally unfavourable. I'm glad that we went as it was a fabulous study of a family - or perhaps I should say a dysfunctional family.

Meryl Streep plays Violet the matriarch, a cancer victim whose drug and booze filled attempts to escape her situation drives her husband Bev to an early grave and the film centres on Bev's ensuing wake. It's based on a stage play and, as such, is divided into fairly formal acts and scenes with most of the action taking place indoors. Violet has three daughters who all have mid life problems; Barbara (Julia Roberts) has marital difficulties and her sisters have troubled relationships and health problems too. Throw Violet's sister Mattie and her husband and son (Benedict Cumberbatch) into the mix with Barbara's estranged husband (Ewan McGregor) and daughter plus racist Violet's Cheyenne housekeeper and the stage is set for an eventful funeral party.

If I tell you any one of the half dozen reasons that the wake turns into a disaster I would spoil the film for you but Julia Roberts is fabulous as the eldest daughter who finds herself morphing into her drug addled and foul mouthed mum (I think the playwright was challenging The Wolf Of Wall St for the highest f-word count). Families eh? Where would we  be without them.

Perhaps life would be far simpler if, like Joaquin Phoenix in Her we all fell in love with our computer operating system. Okay so it sounds very far fetched but if you analyse it it's not as way out it sounds. It's 2025 (the not too distant future) and  Phoenix is Theodore Twombly a thirty something guy who has recently split with his wife. He buys a new voice operated operating system for his computer and is captivated as he finds himself having his files and desktop organised by the comforting tones of Scarlett Johansson. 

Now I'm a long way from falling for my SatNav (but you do get a higher class of SatNav with a Mercedes and she always says "please" when she tells me where to go), but maybe ten years in the future programming will be more intelligent and start to answer back when I curse her for taking me down a dead end. If you are home alone and your computer is capable of holding a genuine conversation it's not far removed from the voice at the end of a help line or maybe a sex line and if it were that convincing it's not that difficult to believe that a vulnerable person could become dependent and form a relationship. So, although the premise of Her is ,on the face of it, ludicrous we found the film quite believable and quite touching too. 

We've got a quiet week now before we head off to Fife to see the family so I've been putting a few more bits and pieces up for sale on eBay. After last week's £100ish profit I hope that this week's half dozen offerings do a little bit better. I've got high hopes for this beautiful French cup, French porcelain box and 230 year old Worcester saucer that I found on eBay.

This Santander 1-2-3 Account Is A No Brainer

I'm not in the habit of using my blog to push a bank account but the Santander 1-2-3 account seems too good to be true. And despite the old adage that if something looks too good to be true it probably is, I've been through all the fine print and it still looks a pretty amazing deal to me compared to what I've had with my Barclays account for the last forty years. You would have to have been a castaway on a desert island for six months to be unaware of the account as the advertising using that young Irish golfer Rory, the racing driver who isn't Hamilton and a woman I assume to be an athlete has been everywhere. 

During 2012 we had quite large sums in our Barclays savings account for much of the year due to selling our house and holding funds for the renovation of the new house. We earned almost nothing on it due to an interest rate well below 1%. Yet the Santander account will pay us no less than 3% on sums between £3,000 and £20,000 and between 1% and 2% on lower balances. In addition they will pay us cashback of between 1% and 3% on a wide variety of expenses including payments to rates and water rates, gas and electric and phones and TV. Against these positives there is the negative of a small monthly fee.

So, after forty years with Barclays we're off. We're not closing the Barclays account in case there's something we've missed but for the time being I reckon we'll be the best part of £20 A WEEK better off with this account. And that's certainly incentive enough to get me to switch.

Meanwhile, in other news, we went to The Riverside in Woodbridge yesterday to see Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. Cate Blanchett is outstanding in her portrayal of a woman whose life goes downhill when her and her husband's millionaire lifestyle proves to have been built on deception. She is left with just her working class sister to fall back on. Blanchett is totally convincing in the role as she spirals downward from shopping in Park Avenue to talking to herself on a park bench. Although it is at times funny it is a serious study of a breakdown within a disfunctional  marriage and is much darker than Allen's 2011 offering Midnight In Paris.

If we go to the cinema next week we'll aim for something a bit lighter. We're gearing up for the visit of our Ormskirk friends Dave and Jane Haworth who are coming to stay for three nights. I spent today cooking so that we've got a freezer full when they arrive and we can entertain them without too much fuss (don't worry Jane there's no rabbit). We've also been planning days and evenings out. I suggested Scaresville Haunted Village but Marion felt that our guests wouldn't be too keen on being scared out of their skin - they'll have enough of that when they meet the locals - (just kidding Framlingham). We've plenty of ideas so it promises to be a great week.

Before Midnight Before Teatime

The weather has remained glorious for another week. It hasn't exactly been cinema weather but we tend to get withdrawal symptoms when we go too long without our regular movie fix. There are quite a few films that we want to see on release at the moment  so we opted for the matinee at the shortest drive which is the Riverside in Woodbridge.

With the temperature on the dashboard reading at 29.5 C we left ourselves plenty of time to explore the riverside harbour. The famous tide mill looked fabulous beneath a cloudless sky.

And we walked along the river bank to the quayside cottage that Paul and Josephine rented a few years ago long before we had any plans to relocate here.

We bought a few bits and pieces for the kitchen in a fantastic kitchenware shop  (The Woodbridge Kitchen Company at 7 Thoroughfare) and then enjoyed an ice cream at The Riverside before the film. If you are in Suffolk and serious about cooking you should check the shop out - it had everything that we were looking for and plenty more besides. It's good to see an independent retailer holding its own on a high street.

The film, Before Midnight, is the third so far in Richard Linklater's series of films charting the love affair between Jake (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) who met almost two decades ago in Before Sunrise. In that film the pair roamed the streets of Vienna after meeting on a train. In Before Sunset we met up with them again and now we find them in Greece. Jake is seeing off his son by his failed marriage on the plane home to the USA after six weeks staying with him and Celine at the idyllic home of a famous novelist. 

After leaving the airport the couple chat briefly about a job that Celine has been offered. They are not married but have twin daughters. Celine wants to take the job in Paris; Jake is interested in spending more time with his son in Chicago. 

There are only five real scenes in the film: the airport , the drive back, a garden conversation,  a dinner party and then the scene that makes the film - the couple has been given a night in a swish hotel as a leaving gift. The hosts are to look after the twins and Jake and Celine are alone together for the remainder of the film. It echoes those earlier films as they set off from the dinner party villa and walk together past ancient ruins and via a chapel to the room. It is so well done that it almost feels as if it is one take. We've been together for longer than Jake and Celine and we both found the conversation very real. There's romance - "will you still love me when I'm 97" , and there's conflict - the job versus the son. And it all works beautifully. The couple have real magic together and the dialogue is funny, sometimes sexy, often romantic and always very very sharp. 

Although I felt that the garden and dinner party scenes somewhat padded out the film unnecessarily as perhaps one hors d'oeuvre too many, it is well worth waiting for the main course. It's an excellent finale. Do try and see it.   

On Populaire, A Hijacking And A New Car

Before we moved we used to try and see a film at the cinema every week. Sometimes we would travel to FACT in Liverpool and see two on the same day. But, due to the hectic times we've had recently, our cinema going has been curtailed of late. So we decided to try and put that right. After all, the weather we've had this spring hasn't exactly been perfect for our cycling or gardening. So, having enjoyed the thundering Man Of Steel at IMAX on Wednesday, we thought we'd have something a little more sedate on Saturday and headed back to Ipswich to the super IFTT and a showing of Summer in February starring Downton's Dan Stevens alongside Emily Browning.

Unfortunately IFTT had a glitch with their digital projector. It seems that when they get a film to show they get a number of codes with it to prevent piracy and allow them to show it only the number of times that they have paid for. The code somehow didn't work and the projectionist had to come and explain to a pretty full house of old codgers like us that he could show us a vampire movie or the French rom-com Populaire. Most of the audience filed out and went for a refund. No-one was keen on the vampires but others asked what Populaire was about. The usher didn't have her glasses so Marion read the synopsis to the few of us remaining and we stayed for the event worrying that the overrun would lead to a parking fine but not wanting a wasted journey to Ipswich.

Set in 1958, Populaire turned out to be a sugary sweet comedy with two charismatic leads in the beautiful Deborah Francois and the handsome Romain Duris. Duris needs a new secretary and Francois gets the job. She turns out to be amazingly fast on the keyboard and her boss trains her to enter speed typing competitions - and yes they do exist (although whether crowds were ever glued to their radios in excitement listening to commentaries on them is questionable). It's a very nice little film. It will never win any awards for subtlety or unpredictability but if you like a bit of happy romance (I do), this is one for you.

There wasn't much happiness or romance in Danish offering Kapringen or A Hijacking. As Denmark seems to have a very small pool of actors it was (like in Borgen) another case of trying to spot characters from Forbrydelsen ( The Killing - do keep up). Soren Malling stars as the boss of a shipping company whose cargo vessel is hijacked by pirates somewhere en route to Mumbai. Pilou Asbaek plays the ship's cook who, due to the captain's sickness, becomes the main go-between in the negotiations between the captors and the business. It's extremely tense, brilliantly acted by the two leads and keeps you on the edge of your seat.  The director used a real negotiator rather than an actor to play the company's negotiations advisor and filmed on a ship that was once actually hijacked. In addition the director kept the actors locked in the shipping company office never knowing when a call from the ship was going to come in and on the ship kept some of the cast locked up in dire conditions.This gave the film a tremendous sense of reality and, though it's unlikely to be playing in the multiplexes it's well worth seeking it out. We went to The Riverside at Woodbridge and took advantage of their excellent fish and flicks offer of £15 each for the film and some great food in their super restaurant.

Yesterday we picked up the new car. It extremely comfortable and I love its style. Today we're doing a spot of babysitting in Rochester but we left the new car at home as the Prius was damaged while parked here the last time we came and I don't want to risk it just now as we've got a long journey to Scotland planned for the weekend.

I Suppose It Was Inevitable Really

After driving over seventeen thousand miles since leaving Southport in July I suppose that it was inevitable that we'd eventually hit a snag with the Prius. But, excepting for the time when someone reversed into the car in  Leuchars Station car park, we have had a problem free time. Until this morning that is. As we drove out of the Chantry Park Premier Inn with the prospect of a carefree morning in the Suffolk countryside we noticed a loud grating noise. The car has been regularly serviced and only passed its MOT a couple of weeks ago but this sounded like a brake problem that we had about twenty thousand miles ago.

We phoned our Southport Toyota dealer contact and asked for details of an Ipswich agent. We keyed the post code they gave us into the SatNav and headed towards them. I phoned about a mile before we were due to arrive only to find that they were a Ford garage (thank you Johnsons Southport good to know you're keeping up to date). The Ford garage gave us the Toyota number and we headed off in their direction. Again we phoned en route only to find their service department trying to persuade us that the (by now much louder) grating was probably just a bit of corrosion that had appeared overnight - hmm. Anyway, helpful Mr Toyota Ipswich was fully booked and, my pleas for help seeing that we were due to head to St Andrews in the morning fell on stony ground and elicited scant sympathy with the best he could offer a reluctant "I suppose you could bring it in some time this afternoon and we will see if we have time to have a look."

SIngularly unimpressed I hastily rescheduled the meeting that we had with the landscape gardener in Framlingham and headed there. I drove very cautiously with as little use of the brakes as I could. While I drove, Marion looked up  garages in Framlingham and we phoned John Grose Ford. Like Toyota, they too were fully booked, but they could not have been more helpful and  offered to squeeze us in. To cut a long story short they checked over the car, found a worn brake pad and have arranged to fix it before we head back to Scotland in the morning. They also loaned us a very nice car to get back to the hotel in. So hats off and thank you to John Grose and a very big thumbs down to Lancaster Toyota of Ipswich for their lack of interest in our plight and frankly ridiculous diagnosis of the potential problem. Little things like this can have a big impact. We sold Marion's car in July with the intention of replacing it when we moved to Suffolk. Which of those two dealers is more likely to get our business?

Meanwhile, back at the house, the kitchen fitters, John and Wayne from Orwells, are making progress. We're still some time away from completion but the appliances are mostly in place and we've even got one cupboard door in. The work top has been templated and will be with us in a couple of weeks. After that we just have to have the glass splash backs made and we'll be finished.

The wardrobe fitters from Langtry Fitted Furniture in Ely arrived yesterday and just over thirty hours later, the dressing room was finished. It was great to see this job run so smoothly. The wardrobes and dressing table look good and blend in beautifully with the wallpaper. That's our bedroom almost finished now. Just the carpet to arrive on Wednesday and upstairs will be virtually complete.

The meeting with the landscape designer and landscaper went well and they are set to start on Monday. We've got a meeting with Gill from Orwells in the morning and then (car brakes permitting) it's the long slog back to St Andrews for the last time until March.  

One final word about our three days in Suffolk. Regular readers know that we love cinema. After an exciting screening of The Hobbit at Ipswich Cineworld IMAX on Wednesday, we tried The Riverside in Woodbridge yesterday. How's this for cinema food? - Yes I did take a bite out of the mini fish and chips before I decided to take the photo. It's their take on Tapas - absolutely delicious. After that we went to see Quartet. Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut is funny, but also poignantly sad and, watching it in a screen full of grey haired viewers, we both ended the afternoon reaching for the tissues and wondering if we should go for something a little further from home that won't remind us too much of our own mortality next time. Wonderful cinema though.