Blwyddyn Newydd Hapus
In my last blog post I was looking forward to a long productive holiday back at home in Wales, with everything I planned to write laid out ahead of me... oh dear.
I've spent the time reading... my childhood favourite Enid Blyton largely, just the school stories though, which has given me an idea for a short homage.
When I wasn't reading I went through a stack of VHS taped films... 'A Matter of Life and Death' I watched several times, as well as 'A Canterbury Tale' which showed me how much more I'd pinched for 'Midnight Angels' than I thought I had... and 'Passport To Pimlico' which is all over 'Nightingale' like a rash. I love the period and I've just frittered away this month's disposable income on DVD copies of these, and a few others.
Did I write anything? Well not what I planned... I worked out some storyline tweaks to 'Midnight Angels' and started an entirely new piece set in a 'place' very like my home village, and dealing with the intricacies of internecine Methodist warfare, choral singing, eisteddfodau and a sweet little coming of age / tg plot.
I'd better crack on :)
Comments
Internecine methodist warfare!
Sounds wonderful! I'm the only TG methodist in the village! (to misquote Little Britain).
Angharad
Angharad
I remember seeing 'A Matter of Life and Death' ...
... as a child, and not being able to make head nor tail of it. Hardly surprising really as I would have been well under 10 at the time I should think. I really would like to see it as an adult. Isn't 'Passport to Pimlico' a brilliant plot idea. I saw that too first time around but I'm sure I've seen it more recently. I particularly remember the heat wave ending and rain come pouring down as they announce that they've decided to become part of England again - a good use of cliche, I thought. My uncle owned several fleapit cinemas just after the war so I got to see quite a lot for free.
As someone whose childhood is the 40/50s I remember the period rather differently I guess. It was a time of rationing, a freezing cold house, going sledging in shorts (none of us had long trousers) and school. I always had my nose in a book - usually 'Biggles' or an Enid Blyton, but I quickly moved on to Leslie Charteris and Dornford Yates etc. Though I remember seeing women wearing the 'New Look', fashion and sophistication weren't part of my life.
Geoff
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
'A Matter of Life and Death' is one of the few permanent fixtures in my favourite films list. I first saw it when I was quite young on our black and white tv, which rather undermined one of the most striking things about the film. There's a direct quote from it in 'Midnight Angels' - the chess book Amanda borrows from Mac is the same one the hero of AMoLaD borrows from his doctor. I'm easily amused.
I do tend to romanticise the forties and fifties, partly I think because they were staples of films shown on television, and comics when I was young. During the war Dad had been a paratrooper, my uncle a Welsh Guard, Mr Rees across the road a Desert Rat - far more exciting than their humdrum civilian occupations in my eyes then. Dad was 41 when I was born, Mam 38 - by the time I came along they had already raised three children. My parents were middle aged, and although they doted on me I knew that they had settled down. I was effectively an only child, but one who was regaled with stories of their 'other family', postcards, holiday albums and family celebrations. These inherited memories merged with the books my sister left behind - Enid Blyton and such - and came to represent a golden age to me.
I suppose some have fond memories of the seventies and eighties in the same way, though I remember power cuts during the three day week, living on strike pay for long periods (nearly all my family worked for British Steel and some years were more out than in), and the economic golgotha South Wales went through in the eighties. Though as I've grown older I've realised how priveliged I was to grow up in a community like that.