One door closes……

….another opens.

A suitable subtitle for this post might be “the importance of checking the calendar”. Another would be “Serendipity”.

A correspondent of this bloggist asked whether I would be attending SELWG on 15th October. Sunday just gone. “No”, said this bloggist. “I’m taking the oldest of the 17 year olds to a Uni open day.” Despite said open day being on SATURDAY 14th and not Saturday 15th. Other plans were made for Sunday 15th, thinking it was going to be the 16th. Confused? Welcome to my mind.

When I figured out (thanks to various other bloggers) that SELWG was on Sunday it was too late. Getting this wrong was obviously the ‘door closing’. The ‘door opening’ was spending the time in the company of the Margravina. My regular reader will have noted how uxorious I can be. The plan was to park up in or near a place called Petersham (a picturesque’village’ between the Upon-Thameses of Kingston and Richmond) then walk into Richmond to purchase one pair boots, walking, Margravina, for the use of.

Superfluous, gratuitous shot of a boat that almost looks like one of the bateaux of North America.

We walked along the river until we got to Water Lane and headed towards the main shopping street where the aforementioned footwear could be purchased. 100 paces up Water Lane stands a branch of the Curzon cinema chain. For non-UK readers, Curzon is a chain of picture houses that tends to show films on the slightly more ‘art house’ side of the range. The programme for Sunday included The Great Escaper, 45 minutes after we passed the cinema. As this was a film I’d planned to look out for we bought tickets, nipped up the road to complete the planned purchase, drink a coffee and return to watch the film.

And what a cracking film it was. Based on a true story of a 90 year old veteran of Overlord who, in 2014 having missed the chance to go on an organised trip, made his own way to Normandy for the 70th anniversary commemorations. In the course of this he had “15 minutes of fame”. The script, the acting (Michael Caine and the late Glenda Jackson in their last film, and the supporting actors*), the cinematography were all great. Flashbacks sensitively handled. Those of you into WWII, and in particular the work of James Holland, will be pleased by the appearance of the Sherwood Rangers in the D-Day flashbacks. It was at that intersection of the Venn Diagram of this bloggist’s interests and those of his spouse. Perfect. I don’t normally do this, but I will in this case……go to see it. And if you do, take someone whose hand you can hold.

* including John Stride

Despite all that, walking back along the river I couldn’t resist pointing out that ‘the bus to Dover was heading the wrong way along Hove seafront’. Not a single button was counted in that moment of pedantry.

Postscript:

Look it's not just me saying this. James Holland and Al Murray raved about this film in a recent episode of We Have Ways of Making You Talk. They also had an interesting talk with the director and writer, which gives you more of a clue as to what was real and what was imagined in the plot. https://wehavewayspod.com/episodes/