Famous for fifteen minutes

Ah, the fleeting nature of fame!

Spotted this in Tower Bridge Road, London at the weekend. (I could have done without the American spelling of 'cancelled' - but perhaps I'm too fussy!)

Help - I've been tagged!

I’ve been tagged by Jonathan to choose my favourite French films. Help! I can’t really remember any, as I’m not really a film buff; I’m happy to watch a film once, and that’s that.

As for French films - well I remember the usual stuff, ‘Jean de Florette’, 'The Red Balloon ' etc.
However, one I particularly remember is ‘Blanche’ : this was directed by a Pole, Walerian Borowczyk, (1971) but I suppose it counts as it was filmed in French, in France.

It was an atmospheric tale set in a 13th century court, where the King’s young wife was seduced by the wrong man. The outcome was pretty savage; her lover being drawn behind horses until he was a ‘bleeding piece of earth’ and Blanche herself suffering the dreadful fate of being bricked up. So not what you’d call a jolly film!

But it was filmed beautifully; slowly, the camera allowed to linger. The period setting was meticulously realized, and the music, played on original instruments was authentic and moving. I like that fact that many foreign films are so static and unrushed, refusing to bow to the Hollywood requirement to dash about hither and thither at great head-spinning speed. After all, life is not a series of ‘edited highlights’.

I have no problem with subtitles - in fact if a film is dubbed, I won’t watch it. Dubbing drains all the atmosphere from a film; the sound of the language -whether you understand it or not - is essential to the ‘spirit of place‘
So - not a list I’m afraid, but the best I can do!

Spot the Dog

As though to prove its rural credentials, where other publications might run a ‘Spot the Ball’ competition (which for those unfamiliar with the idea is a photograph of a football game where the ball has been removed; the competitors have to gauge from the position and the demeanour of the players, where the ball is likely to be) our local newspaper, the Westmorland Gazette runs a weekly ‘Spot the Dog’ competition.

Here we have a rural scene of a sheepdog herding a flock of sheep - and yes, the dog has been removed from the photo.the competitors mark with a cross the place where they estimate the dog should be. It is actually quite good fun. A knowledge of the behaviour of sheep is an advantage.

This week's competition photo is at the top of this page; go on, have a go - spot the dog!

Here is the newspaper’s cartoonist Colin Shelbourn’s spin on the topic:

8 August 2003
Major national news: Britain has a hot summer.
Even the Lake District gets a bit hot.

Due to the weather,
this week's ‘Spot The Dog’ competition
has been replaced with ‘Spot The Camel.’

A Cottage by the Sea

A Cottage by the Sea. 1. '3 The Hill'

Some time in the late 1940s my Grandfather bought a small cottage at the seaside. It was in a long, straggling, faded village called Allonby on the Solway coast. The village had been a popular bathing resort in the Victorian era and still had some elegant building, one known as The Baths, and a Reading Room donated by the local Quakers.

Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins visited the village in the1850s when they were touring, ostensibly researching for their joint story ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices’ (which eventually appeared in 5 parts in Household Words in 1857)
Their characters arrive at the village:

' 'A watering-place,' retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable sharpness of an invalid, 'can't be five gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and a boy's legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy's body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey running away. What are you talking about?'

'Allonby, gentlemen,' said the most comfortable of landladies as she opened one door of the carriage;

'Allonby, gentlemen,' said the most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other. '

The cottage’s address was 3 The Hill - but if it was indeed a hill it must have been only 2 or 3 inches above the surrounding terrain. This was no picture-postcard 'second-home', more a ramshackle make-do-and-mend sort of place.

We were part of a higgledy-piggledy block of back-to-back houses in the middle of a grassy area only a matter of yards from the beach. (the small white block on the left at the top of the picture, between the beck and the beach) They were literally ‘back-to-back’ as number 3 had neither windows nor a door at the rear. We faced onto the green where the Beck ran the length of the village crossed by several white-painted bridges.

On the corner of the block was the Riding School (presided over by Lenny - the heart-throb of many a small girl) - a hanging-out spot for my sister and most of the other visiting children. (I was reluctant as I was afraid of horses!)

The layout of our little house was difficult; the second bedroom led off the first. The ‘bathroom’ had no bath, just a kitchen-style deep enamel sink together with a loo behind a partition. In a recess in the wall was a pile of ancient ‘Tit-Bits’ magazines (left behind by the previous owner) the like of which we had never seen before , and which we children found very amusing. The kitchen was no more than an under-stairs cupboard which had two electric rings on a shelf.

In spite of these limitations we happily spent many weekends, Easter fortnights and long, lazy summer holidays there for several years.

The Idle Apprentices again:

‘The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea, and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into the brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which always hit some of the children who were upside down on the public buildings, and made their lamentations louder. This donkey was the public excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense. ‘

Old postcard. The Hill is on the far left

'There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver and gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views - on fine days - of the Scottish coast. But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from…’