Movies

Last week I went to see two films. Firstly there was "Avatar" directed by James Cameron and then "A Prophet" directed by Jacques Audiard. What do you want from a movie? For me it is about being gripped so that you are lost in the film, unaware of time and uninterested in the kind of mental wanderings that accompany the viewing of poor films. Visually there is no denying that "Avatar" is a masterpiece - at times quite breathtaking. I had never seen a modern 3D film before so it was a novelty to sit there in the semi-dark with my 3D glasses on. When the main humanoid avatar is walking on high mossy tree limbs far above the ground you experience a vertiginous sense of distance and the danger of falling. However, the core storyline of this film is quite banal and predictable. The "awesome" shoot-em-up scenes near the end are yawn-making - by then the novelty of the 3D effect was starting to wear a little thin. However, I accept that in order to gross massive profits the film had to have mass appeal. Subtlety and courage in the storyline might not have gone down too well with generations raised on Sonic the Hedgehog, Armani Rice Krispies and reality TV shows.

"A Prophet" was always focused on the central character - Malik El Djebena played by Tahar Rahim - a rookie prisoner in a tough French jail, dominated not by the prison authorities but by different power factions within the prison such as the Corsican mafia and North African muslims. Gradually Malik finds out how to survive in jail as the power dial shifts to him. Delivered in French with English subtitles, this disturbing film is a long way from Hollywood schmaltz. It provides a view of prison life that is rough and impolite, a world in which "dog eat dog" and "watch your back"appear to be the inmates' guiding principles. I am not a fan of gratuitous violence in films but the swift moments of shuddering violence in this film are essential to the overall tapestry.
The other week I saw "The Road" - for me a five star film that held my attention throughout. "A Prophet" also creeps in to that five star category but I was rarely lost in "Avatar". The story was nothing new and surely that's what thinking movie goers are after - stories that enthrall you, that make you think, that get under your skin like a good novel. Generously, I award "Avatar" three stars - one for each of its three dimensions - but guess that it will be a big oscar winner at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on March 7th.

Inextricable

Rudolph Valentino in the 1922 film version of "Blood and Sand"

We may think that we are free. Independent people who can make up our own minds and take on the world but we're not, not really. Look in a mirror and what do you see? You see inherited genetic patterns. The shape of your eyes, the colour of your skin, your hair, your height. And if you listen to yourself you hear the accents of the adults who raised you - mostly parents. Their influence upon you is like the veins in Blue Stilton cheese - inextricable - no matter how much you may squirm and protest.

The spoken words that escape our lips are like signatures - personal and rather unique. They define us as much as our actions do. We think that we are in control of them. We think that we are choosing them as they tumble out of us in chains. In states of exasperation, annoyance, amazement or confusion, stock phrases or single words emerge to ease or to signify those moments. And very often these expressions will have been distilled from our childhoods. Heard expressions repeated. Echoes of the past.

One of my pet expressions is "Blood and sand!" I remember my mother using it but never consciously sought to imitate her and besides, how did she acquire it? I see Tony Blair playing games with the truth at the Iraq Inquiry - "Blood and sand!" I mutter. The car hits a pothole in the road following the recent Arctic weather - "Blood and sand!" On the TV they're going to have a celebrity dancing competition for disabled people in wheelchairs - "Blood and sand!"

But where did this odd expression come from? Apparently, it's the title of a Spanish novel about bullfighting published in 1909 by Vicente Blasco Ibánez (the Spanish title is "Sangre y Arena"). This story has been filmed several times, most famously starring Rudolph Valentino. I dimly recall my mum talking about Valentino. She remembered him from the movies of the early nineteen thirties but is that how she absorbed the expression? Indeed, does the expression predate the 1909 novel?

If only there were an archaeological "Time Team" for words.

The English language is brilliant at accepting new words, opening doors from other languages and recognising the innovations of youth and technology. But how open are we as individuals? Some people want their English to remain fixed in time like Roman ruins whereas others sponge up the latest words and expressions as gladly as seagulls chasing trawlers. It's complicated. The words we choose and why we choose them... but I think that in essence they are as much a part of our inheritance as the colour of our irises and the shape of our toes. Blood and sand! At one thirty in the morning...perhaps I'm talking tosh - whatever that is.

Chelsea

Gardner and Mouyokolo celebrate with Terry and Drogba behind.

Riding on a double decker bus from the "park and ride". It's full of pilgrims in black and amber. Scarves and bobble hats, replica shirts, manager's coats. Along Anlaby Road there are fans in pubs, fans queuing in kebab and fish and chip shops, fans just walking along to the game. Alighting the bus as usual there's the guy with dozens of shiny City lapel badges on a big felt board. £1.50 a shot.

Buy a programme. Skipper Anthony Gardner on the front. Buy a halftime draw ticket. Up to our turnstile - number thirty. Rip out the season ticket - number twenty. No bodysearches here as at Stalag Man City and I'm carrying a supermarket bag crammed with semtex, flares and a heat-seeking missile. Up the concrete stairs right to the top of the stadium. Up to our seats.

Soon the teams are out. Over the loudspeakers - "Tiger Tiger burning bright in the forests of the night". They line up. They shake hands. The whistle blows. We're off. We press. We look "up for it". England captain John Terry gets the ball. "Scandal Skipper". He's roundly booed. "Terry! Terry! Where's your wife? Terry! Where's your wife?" We get corners. Chelsea look subdued. Their captain made a laughing stock by the media. His cheated wife hiding in Dubai. This is not "Team Bridge". It's "Team Terry".

We sing. "Silverware? We don't care. We follow the City everywhere!" And then...and then another corner. For once Hunt hits the right spot and there's young Steven Mouyokolo - typical French name that. He meets the ball perfectly, beautifully and powers it pasts the hapless Peter Cech in his nancy boy scrum cap. What a wonderful header! The black and amber pilgrims go wild. Our cutprice, make-do team of minnows and maybes is beating the mighty Chelsea. Chelski. A Russian oligarch's plaything. And we deserve it. Deserve to be ahead.

Just before halftime. Just before halftime. We have been here before. A dubious free kick award on the edge of the box. Tony says - "Why don't they have a defender guarding that post?" And yes. Didier Drogba, just back from the African Nations Cup, manages to pierce the wall with his driven free kick. Sick. Sick. Chelski have equalised. It's undeserved.

After the break, we give as good as we get. We have chances. They have chances. Our lads look determined, together. Battling. Team spirit. Ashley Cole comes on so it's "Ashley! Ashley! Watch your wife!" In the final minute Sturridge closes in on goal from the left. Oh no! Not again! He hammers the ball but Myhill saves magnificently. "We are Ull! We are Ull! We are Ull!". The whistle blows. A point against Chelsea - the league leaders. We'll take a point but it should have been three.

Down the stairs. The black and amber army. Heading home. Proud of our lads. Mouyokolo and the new lad - teenager Tom Cairney. Real potential. On Radio Humberside as we drive the motorways home to Sheffield we hear the eloquent Dutchman - George Boateng sing Cairney's praises - "I'm telling you. He is a future England star". It was a great night. A wonderful night. And we all lived happily ever after... well till Saturday when we play Manchester City again. Team Bridge.

Stonehaven

Let me tell you a story, a true story.

As I recall it was late April 1977. I had a university pal called Zippy who looked like the bass guitarist out of The Bay City Rollers. He was a keen Glasgow Rangers fan. Someone had let him down so he asked me if I would like to travel up to Aberdeen with him to watch his team in an end of season match. Loving football and having never been to Aberdeen before, I agreed.

We went up by train on the Friday afternoon. It was one of those clear springtime weekends when the sky is as blue as a robin's egg and the sun sharp but slightly honeyed . We stayed in a student house near The Granite City's university.

At 3pm on Saturday afternoon, we were in Aberdeen's Pittodrie stadium along with several thousand Rangers supporters who both outsung and outnumbered the host club's fans. Many were steaming drunk. In Glasgow, football has always been a kind of religion. Downtrodden workers from the mean streets of Easterhouse, Maryhill and Clydebank look to football for escape, joy and the fulfilment of dreams. It's not just about watching twenty two men kick a leather ball around.

I remember little of that match except that Aberdeen won 2-1 and that Rangers had the great John Greig in defence and the almost equally great Derek Johnstone on the wing. Surrounded by seething, frothing Glaswegians, Zippy and I made our way back to the railway station, pleased that we wouldn't be on one of the notorious football specials. No, we would be taking the slow train - a service train that would eventually bring us to Stirling after numerous stops.

It was an old train with compartments and side corridors that ambled along the coast towards Dundee before cutting inland bound for Stirling and finally Glasgow. To our disquiet, there were lots of Rangers fans aboard - singing and shouting, intimidating other passengers and generally being yobbish. With no empty seats visible and conscious of my English accent that could have easily been like a red rag to a bull to these neanderthals, Zippy and I stood in the rear corridor of our carriage next to the window - aiming to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Two stops down the line at Stonehaven, we noticed a few people on the platform, naturally oblivious to the fact that their usually quiet coastal service had been turned into an unofficial football special. The yobs were yelling their obscenities, beating on the windows, singing their tribal chants. The bespectacled old guard, nearing his retirement had already made a creditable but hopeless effort to control the hooligans before retreating to a safer part of the train.

In my mind's eye I can see her again now - as clear as that blue sky day though it was over thirty years ago. She was about sixteen - maybe seventeen. Perhaps she'd been into Stonehaven for a Saturday afternoon treat - a little shopping, perhaps meeting friends. She was of medium height with shoulder length ash blonde hair. Her skin was clean and unblemished. Her tidy coat was camel hair coloured and she was holding a black shopping bag. This girl, somebody's daughter, conveyed an air of innocence mingled with self -assurance - the sort of girl who comes from a "good family" and does well in school.

Realising the train was full, she stood on the opposite side of the corridor looking out of the window as the train set off again. Glancing her from the first compartment, a couple of the hooligans came out to her and in spite of her protestations insisted that she take a seat in their already crowded compartment. Finally, they literally pulled her in. At first, there was salacious laughter, hoots and yells with the girl's protesting voice no doubt being quelled by stolen kisses.

The train was going clackety clack on its way to Montrose and then the terror properly begun. We could hear the girl's protests turning to primeval screams of terror as the laughing yobs sexually assaulted her. We asked each other what we should do and realised that we could do nothing. If we entered the compartment we would be dead meat and the same would happen if we pulled the emergency cord. They would know that we had pulled it.

I can still hear that girl's futile, agonised cries. At times they have haunted me, tormented me - made me wonder what I might have done, made me wish that I had had superhuman powers - as in the movies whereby I'd have hurled each of the miserable predators off that train and saved that poor girl's innocence, ensuring she wouldn't have to live each succeeding year with the horror of what happened that early evening in April.

At Montrose, fifteen or twenty minutes down the line, they released her, tears streaming down her face, her hair dishevelled, her bag gone. Traumatised and speechless, she was standing on the platform as the train continued its journey. Raucously, the animals congratulated each other before gradually quietening - no doubt excess of alcohol was taking its toll.

Of course we reported the incident to an official at Stirling railway station. He took our names and addresses and a few other details but that was the last we heard about it. And we never saw the pretty girl from Stonehaven again but if by some remote chance she is reading this I would like to say how very sorry I am that I didn't do something to protect you and also how sad I am that your adult life has undoubtedly been blighted by your memory of that terrible journey.

Stonehaven station

Tuamotu

Toppled moai

Tuamotu

Lying nose down
In the dirt

For what...two hundred years?

This was the effigy

Of Tuamotu, he the stardreamer

Whose word in Poike was revered.

He who traced his blood back

To Hotu Matu'a

And the disembarkment at Anakena

He was our lord.

We hauled his likeness here from Rano Raraku

All the able men of Poike

To the beat of a drum

Day by day

Inch by inch...

But he was Tuamotu

What would we not have given

To honour his memory?

Day by day we hauled

With womenfolk and children

Bringing mud and leaves

To slide him along the moai road

Till before two moons had passed

We brought him back to our beloved Poike

And raised him

Inch by inch

Sinew by sinew

The old ones chanting,

Advising, applauding

Inch by inch we pulled

Stones and sand wedged him

Till there he stood

Tuamotu - on his ahu at last

Lord of Poike

Surveying his people

Again.

We made him tall and strong

So that he would endure

Long into eternity

Like the stars he dreamed of

And the west wind

Rushing over the cliffs of Orongo

But there he lies

Nose in the dirt

Kissing the land that he loved

But with his back

To the stars

He dreamed of

Poike peninsula

Glossary

Hotu Matu'a - The legendary founder of the island race who came from the west

Anakena - the sandy bay where the first settlers reputedly landed.

Rano Raraku - A crater where 95% of the moai were created

Poike - The mysterious peninsula in the north east of the island.

Sorry

Sorry. I bet regular visitors to this blog will have imagined that I had ceased harping on about Easter Island. Wrong. It's still in my thoughts a lot and I am currently reading "The Enigmas of Easter Island"(2003) by John Flenley and Paul Bahn. Fascinating new speculations rooted in available evidence.

When I was on the island, I began scribbling a journal which until today I hadn't looked at since I got back. After years of battering away at computer keyboards, I had almost forgotten the rather different and somehow more intimate process of handwriting at length. I filled a notebook hardbound with a Jacquard silk design that a science teacher in my old school had given me on the day I left. Thank you Barbara.

And another apology. Regular visitors may recall that occasionally I will break out into poetry. I have seen several psychoanalysts about this, even tried electric shock therapy but it's an urge I just can't control. I successfully suppress it for weeks and then it floats back to the surface like a rubber duck in a bubble bath. The trip to Easter Island - Te Pito te Henua (The Navel of the World) - inspired me to scribble several poems in my journal and here's one of them. I wrote it on the five hour LAN flight back to Chile:-

Hanga Roa

In Hanga Roa panting dogs

Pursue a bitch in season

By the supermercado

And Tavake's bar

As a moped whines past

Pursued by a silver-starlight four by four

Made in Japan

Once the moai makers

Walked here

Marveling at the dying of days

And these vast night skies

Pricked with uncountable

Platinum peepholes

To the other world

By fires of toromiro branches

They respun old stories

Of their island-world and

Of the endless sea and the enveloping sky

As the moai cast

Elongated moonlight shadows

Over their ancient ahu

Those dogs scurry off

Behind the Hotel Orongo

You can hear the Kare Kare dancers

From Tahiti

Their harmonies tangling

With the pack's expectant barking

As lights from the east

Predict another LAN arrival

From Chile faraway.

Mataveri airport

Glossary:-
Hanga Roa - main settlement on Easter Island whose primary source of income is now tourism
moai - the familiar stone giants
toromiro - the island's native tree, now virtually extinct
ahu - the stone platform on which moai were erected
Hotel Orongo - named after the ceremonial "birdman" village to the south west of the island
LAN - Chile's national airline

Hymns

Yesterday, a murky rain-soaked Friday, we went to a funeral. It was for Shirley's Uncle Arthur who had just passed his eighty third birthday. This man lived and worked all his life in the north Nottinghamshire village of Misterton, apart from a brief period between 1949/51 when he completed his National Service - travelling to such faraway places as Jordan, Egypt and Palestine. He was a machine fitter and gave forty eight years of his working life to the same small engineering company during which time he and his late wife Madge raised a family of five daughters.

There were three phases to the funeral. Firstly, the cremation at the Woodlands Crematorium in Scunthorpe, then a memorial service at Misterton's imposing Methodist church and finally a social gathering or wake in the social club attached to Arthur's old engineering works. A poignant discovery was that Arthur's wake would be the very last event to be held in the social club which is due for demolition next week. He had been there at its inception and for many years was the club's secretary and chief steward.

Misterton Methodist Church

At the crematorium we sang the rousing "Abide With Me" by Henry Francis Lyte (1793 - 1947), a hymn which is always sung on FA Cup Final day followed by "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah" by William Williams (1717-91) with the familiar first verse ending:-

Bread of heaven, bread of heaven

Feed me now and evermore

Feed me now and evermore

Two emotional and memorable hymns that everybody felt comfortable singing. Then on through the January gloom to Misterton.

In the chapel, the grim reverend preacher was dressed like a vicar from Dickens. His loud and superior enunciation cut you like a knife as he gazed superciliously over his horn-rims. The prayers and the blessing were delivered without any illumination from the light of the Lord but like bitter instructions to a firing squad. During one of the hymns, he seemed utterly detached even bored, polishing his spectacles then adjusting his microphone while peering from his wooden Victorian pulpit under the organist's even loftier perch. However, the hymns were once again worth singing - old and familiar.

Praise my soul the King of heaven!
To his feet his tribute bring.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven
Who like me his praise should sing?
Praise him! Praise him!
Praise him! Praise him!
Praise the everlasting King! (again by Henry Lyte)

And the final hymn by John Ellerton (1826-1893) - "The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended":-

The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren 'neath the western sky
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high

The hymns were well-chosen for singing goodbye to Arthur. A couple of them I hadn't sung since, at the age of fourteen, I resigned as a choirboy from our local church. Strange how the tunes came back to me straightaway - as if they were imprinted in my genetic program. Those hymns emerged from a God-fearing world in which churches were filled on Sundays and few doubted the creed that said there was a better world beyond this if you could just learn to be good and live a pious life. But Arthur will know no other life. His heaven was here on earth with his wife, daughters, grandchildren, friends and workmates. Why would you want it any other way?