The Toy Train

A few months ago I knew nothing. Now I feel I am somewhat of an expert.

My ignorance was cured by Son who went off to India. Unlike normal people, he mainly wanted to go on trains. The weirder the better. I mean, the lovelier and more interesting…

So he and Dodo travelled on the further away part of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway from Kurseong to Darjeeling. Apparently there has been a landslip cutting the railway into two.

I learned a bit from Son who kept us informed via facebook. Obviously. There were photos. And because I get easily carried away I went and got the Resident IT Consultant a DVD for his birthday, which we have now watched, ‘travelling’ the length of the line, pre-landslip.

It has loops, including an agony loop, and it has six reverses. The engines (at least the steam ones) have sandmen sitting at the front, sprinkling sand whenever necessary. It takes something like eight hours to travel the 55 miles. (I was surprised to find Son’s part trip lasted three hours, for what on the map seemed to be a fairly short journey.)

The DVD showed us the lovely Victor, Queen of the Himalayas, pulling for all she was worth. I was relieved to find Victor is a girl, or the title of Queen would have been embarrassing. Victor is a steam locomotive. So is Tusker, who was feeling a little unwell, but still pulled valiantly after a six-hour repair on the platform. (Maybe Virgin should learn to perform surgery from the platform?)

Very impressed by the engineering shed lady working wearing a sari. Perhaps all this nerdiness on my part comes from grandfather-of-witch who worked on the railways? He did lose a foot, but was probably responsible for a lifetime of me loving train travel. We have a railway line at the bottom of the garden, which just might have been the reason Son’s first word was train. In Swedish, naturally, and not very well enunciated, but train it still was.

Were it not for the snakes (the tigers are dead and the elephants are behind a fence) and how far away it all is, I’d be off for a train trip or two myself. But we’ll always have the DVD. And the tea. First Flush Moonbeam.

That’s disturbing

Let’s talk about bladders and other disturbing stuff! Are you sitting comfortably? Might be best to visit the toilet now, before we begin.

I was struck by the discussion about Bianca Jagger and whether or not she used flash to take photos at the opera. It doesn’t matter whether she’s famous. It’s neither more or less right for the famous to behave badly. And the way people use phone cameras or other digital cameras it’s often hard to tell if the bright light you see is flash, or simply the camera going about its business.

At the recent Joan Baez concert I went to, it said flash photography was not permitted, which I took to mean that photos without were fine, so I got my camera out. But after a while I felt the light visible when I used it was not acceptable to people sitting opposite me, so I put it away, and only got it out again at the end when absolutely everyone was taking pictures, with flash and everything.

Daughter has been known to agonise over the legality of taking pictures at concerts. It often says you mustn’t. But people still do. I don’t feel there should be any ‘rights’ to images of someone singing on a stage. (Different for theatre productions.) What I do feel is that people shouldn’t disturb others.

The Guardian’s theatre critic Lyn Gardner reckons ‘people’s bladders have quite clearly got weaker over the last 20 years,’ and I know what she means, but suspect the answer is that they haven’t. What has changed is people’s habit of drinking indiscriminately at all times, regardless of what they are about to do, like go to the theatre. And also that they have got neither the instinct to try and ‘hold it in’ nor the inclination not to keep leaving their seats from – usually – the middle of the row.

If I have to ‘go out’ mid performance I tend to wait for a suitable moment both for leaving and for returning. I was a bit disconcerted at the National Theatre to find that the usher hovered anxiously outside the Ladies until I emerged again, and checked I was all right. Very caring and sensible, but I’m glad I didn’t know until then.

Went to the MEN arena for an S Club concert many years ago. Was startled by how the audience kept popping out for food and drink in the middle of the show. I suppose it’s the sports arena mentality, coupled with the sheer noise level at these events.

The understanding of what disturbs others varies from country to country. During Roger Whittaker’s concert in Cologne I waited for a song to finish before returning to my seat, only to have the usher urging me to just go in. She clearly thought I was stark raving mad for thinking of others.

And speaking of Roger; I once sat next to a woman, who was happily singing along to every single song. Having exchanged pleasantries on arrival, I felt it would be rude to complain, even though she was ruining ‘my’ concert. I thought if I asked her to shut up, I would ruin her evening instead. I gritted my teeth, almost cheered when Roger got to a song she didn’t know, and after the interval I asked the Resident IT Consultant to swap seats with me.

It is not always the audience who has mishaps, either. I recall the tiny St Paul’s chorister who was sick on stage and had to be bundled out by an older ‘boy.’

To get back to the bladders, it all depends on how long you have to sit through something. Films are frequently dreadfully long these days, with the added pain of too many commercials and too many trailers. With no interval necessary as cinema equipment improves, we simply have to pop out mid-film. And seeing as they want us to buy buckets of fizzy drinks, how can they possibly mind the running in and out? Nor is popcorn terribly silent to eat, and not odour free, either.

At least films don’t talk back to the audience when they rustle their sweet wrappers a little too loudly. Perhaps they should.

Shiver me timbers?

‘Do you mean to tell me you have made it all the way here (Manchester airport railway station) from suburbia (my home station within Greater Manchester) without a ticket, and now you want to buy one?’ Yes, that was what I wanted, despite the incredulous tone (I’m being polite here) of the member of staff at the airport. ‘Why?’ he asked. I replied something along the lines of it being an offence to travel without a ticket. He sold me a ticket, while shaking his head in disbelief over my stupidity.

My ‘fare dodging’ doesn’t end there. I gave up volunteering to buy tickets on the train after a guard got annoyed with me for asking him to sell me one (before he was ready for it!). So with that attitude from rail staff, I only buy when the ticket office is open, or the guard is volunteering to take my money, or it is easy to get to some kind of ticket sales at my destination. I reckon any fares not paid for, roughly correspond to the times when I have been overcharged. (Yes, I am thinking of you, the vicious female guard on the East Midland train. And a few others. But you stand out in my memory.)

So, always having been scrupulously keen on paying my dues, I have relaxed slightly. But I still want to pay. It’s just that sometimes the payees are not clued up to what customers want.

As I was saying only the other day, we are many who want products and are willing to pay for them. Clothes for fat people will continue being a problem, because they don’t exist (in any great numbers). But music and films and television programmes have been made. They are just not available to all prospective customers.

I wouldn’t dream of stealing/downloading/or whatever else you want to call it, if things were there to be bought, irrespective of where I live. In fact, I’m so old that I haven’t quite got the hang of this thing about music being downloaded illegally, thereby removing income opportunities from the musicians. I buy a CD when I want music.

And I would love to buy certain old films on DVD, were it not for the fact that no one has deemed these old things worthy of DVD-ness, so there is none to buy. Younger people have hinted that you can download such items on the internet. Is that really stealing? When you want to buy, but can’t? If the elderly film in question had been shown on television, I could easily have recorded it. For free.

The same goes for the television series that are first shown in their country of origin. And only there. So, others can’t watch – yet – because they are in the wrong place. They are not even necessarily of the wrong nationality, just not in the country where the programme was made. People can wait and hope it will come to their part of the world. Often it does. Often after a long wait. Sometimes not at all.

You can buy the DVD, eventually. But possibly only the wrong region DVD. Clearly people must be punished for being in the wrong place with the wrong equipment. Except, there could be more money for those who made it, if they weren’t so blinkered.

Those in the ‘right’ country can record the programme and send it to friends in the wrong country. I don’t know if that’s illegal, if they don’t do it for money. How much more convenient to download. And how much more legal and pleasant for everyone if payment for this was accepted. You can often buy/download already broadcast episodes on amazon, without waiting for the season to end and the subsequent DVD. As long as you live in the right country.

If something is eventually going to end up ‘everywhere,’ why not do it all at the same time, everywhere? And if it isn’t destined for all corners of the world, why not?

I’ve been permitted to ‘like’ a popular American television series on Facebook, despite living in the wrong part of the world. However, when they post clips to whet fans’ appetites for the next episode or to offer cast interviews, you soon find out you’re a second class fan.

Take YouTube, where they keep removing stuff all the time. I wouldn’t dream of using it to replace music I could buy. But when searching for obscure things it’s quite handy. And it’s excellent for ‘illustrating’ blog posts about all manner of topics. Except as soon as a video is removed, my search is on for a replacement.

Piracy isn’t all about disreputable people wanting to cheat. It’s about fans who care tremendously about something they can’t get hold of ‘legally.’ Give us the goods, and we’ll give you the money!

Younger, thinner and whiter money

If I had a business – which I don’t – I would prefer to earn less money, as long as I could be sure that my income came primarily from young people, thin people and, … actually, I daren’t say anything about skin colour here.

Because I don’t mean what I just said. I’d be daft if I’d rather sell fewer products by limiting who I sold to. We are advertised at all the time. On television, in the cinema, on the sides of buses. And in case I’d missed something, people phone me up to try and relieve me of my money. So I’d say businesses are often in business to make money.

Except those who don’t seem to be, and I’m not thinking of ‘exclusive’ designer stuff which designers occasionally prefer only certain types of customers to buy.

I’m thinking cinemas and film makers. Isn’t it absolutely amazingly strange and weird and downright abnormal that older people want to watch films? They even want to do so in cinemas! It’s so odd and unthinkable, that when films for the 40+ age group are on offer they are generally predicted not to do well.

I just don’t get it. If Mamma Mia! and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are popular with the ‘wrong’ kind of customer, why not make more films like them? Why keep the oldies in their homes and pass up on those extra millions (trillions?) of pounds and dollars?

Cinemas. Don’t get me started. Our local one has almost stopped frisking customers who just might have something edible on them, not bought at the cinema. Setting aside the perfectly natural wish to avoid spending the kind of money on popcorn that the cinema charges, and assuming I’d be happy to pay £5 for a snack; why would I? When they only offer rubbish that might appeal to younger audiences, but not to me. Reasonable tea (or coffee, for the coffee drinkers) plus something nice to have with it. Scone. Croissant. Cake. Not rubbery sweets or Pringles.

Take clothes. Except it can be hard, when they don’t stock, or even make, them in your (larger) size. I have lost count of the perfectly nice and normal and attractive garments I haven’t bought. You go into shops; normal high street ones, and come out empty-handed. Or perhaps clutching a bag containing whatever inferior thing they had in your size, and you bought it because you had to have something. Not through greed, but because you needed to cover that unattractive body of yours.

Or take catalogues. 100 pages of women’s wear. ‘Normal’ sizes. And five pages of their branded ‘enormous’ collection. Uglier than the rest, as well as offering hardly any choice.

Wouldn’t that clothes company have wanted my money, too? Rather than doing their stern parental stuff and punishing me? Do they not realise that when I walk out of the shop or close the catalogue without ordering anything, that I have become a non-customer?

It seems something similar happened 80 or 90 years ago when American record companies suddenly discovered that black people bought their records when the music they offered was something they liked. The difference appears to be that they actually went on to make more records for this new audience. They just hadn’t realised before that black people also listen to music and might have the money to buy records.

It’s the girls they want

So, how often do people search for Chris O’Donnell? Here, not much at all. I won’t go so far as to say never, because that would probably be a lie. But I’m willing to bet that the bosses at CBS rate him higher than the ‘girls’ on NCIS: Los Angeles. I also imagine they pay him more.

Perhaps it’s time they realised how popular the ladies are. From L A most of my visitors want Renée Felice Smith. A few are after Daniela Ruah and occasionally it’s Linda Hunt they want to read about.

Sofie Gråbøl pops up occasionally and recently I’ve had some interest in Kate O’Mara, so presumably she’s ‘up to something.’

But for the most part my searches want Pam Dawber, with and without husband Mark Harmon. (Now CBS, him you can pay. People are always wanting him. Mark can almost be an honorary female on here.) They look for Pauley Perrette and her alter ego Abby. They look for her tattoos.

OK, I don’t know how much money Pam Dawber makes these days. Once, I’m certain she made more than her groom-to-be. I suspect that for all her fan following Pauley earns less than the men on NCIS do. And isn’t it interesting how few blog visitors look for Cote de Pablo?

As I’ve mentioned once or twice, I am getting impatient with Callen. Maybe I’m not the only one? They like showing off the pretty faces of Renée and Daniela, and don’t mind letting their characters get the better of the male characters. But do they rate them?

I remember the furore when it was discovered that the male presenters on Blue Peter were better paid than the female ones. It’s very hard justifying more money for a man jumping out of a plane than a woman doing the same. The effort of transforming an empty bottle of washing-up liquid can’t vary all that much between the sexes.

There is just that automatic assumption that men need more money. Are more deserving.

But I happened to start thinking about babies the other day. It’s great with a successful show on television. We fans like them. Another season – or five – is good news. The actresses have the advantage of a ‘secure’ job and the money – even for women – can’t be bad. But what about having babies? The first thing Sasha Alexander did when Kate was killed off was to get pregnant. Maybe Ziva and Abby and Nell and Kensi don’t want to be mothers. How would you choose? Leave a good series and leave the fans screaming, or go without children?

At least pay them more! And stop and think about how they might actually be more popular than Callen.

The Station Agent

Even the Resident IT Consultant couldn’t fault the sheer train-iness of The Station Agent. We couldn’t quite decide if it really counted as a comedy. Yes, it was amusing. But it was more reflective and quiet than funny. Though not so quiet when Joe kept talking non-stop.

But still nice and quiet. We would quite like to have our own little train depot like the one Finbar inherits in Newfoundland in New Jersey.

Fin had hoped to find a place where he could be alone and where no one would stare at him for being a dwarf. But he had barely settled down to sleep on his inherited couch before people came knocking on his door or offered him café con leche. Or doing their best to run him down when he’s out walking.

And sometimes you don’t want to be as alone as you thought. There can be new friendships and a new life where you least expect it. ‘Shit.’

Any film with quite so many trains and train activities and such a lovely – if dilapidated – ‘station shack’ with its own train coach parked outside, has to be good.

It was.

The Hunger Games

Our calculations were correct, and by hitting Cineworld before the end of school on Friday we avoided most of the noisy clientele you’d expect for The Hunger Games. It really is quite a film!

Not having read the books, I was looking forward to seeing the film, both as a shortcut to the story without the need to read, and also because it has actually been said to be a good film. That’s not the norm for YA novels, these days.

It’s refreshing to find an actress like Jennifer Lawrence whom I don’t dislike on first sight. She couldn’t have been more perfect for the part of Katniss, and many others were also really good choices. I’m still working on what I think of Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth as the boys who will get to fight to the bitter end over the lovely Katniss, but Woody Harrelson’s boozy mentor was great, and I even stopped hating Effie Trinket after a while.

Gushing show hosts are always off-putting and none more so than the sleazebag they had in for the Hunger Games, at opposite ends from Donald Sutherland’s president. But whatever anyone was there for, they seemed to be just right.

The premise of a competition between teenagers who have been forced to take part, where the winner is the one surviving until the end, is a disgusting one. But just as the competitors have to harden themselves, so the audience grows more callous, and you don’t seem to mind so much. The bad ones ‘deserve’ to die and the good ones who die do so for ‘the greater good,’ which is for Katniss to survive.

We know she has to. Not only because she is the main character, but because there are more books, and presumably more films to come.

It’s a glittering future dystopia, where the well-off fools rule the real people. The question is how long until we get there ourselves. Perhaps we’ll be all right. We’ve got our Mockingjay pin.

The Best Exotic Marigold film ever

Better late than never. We were afraid we’d be too late (although not in the meaning of being dead) for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, but I suppose it’s a sign of its popularity that it’s still hanging on in cinemas, and even ones near us.

I often find films amusing, but according to Daughter I’ve not laughed this much for a very long time. So thank you to Dev Patel for his inept hotel manager, and to Maggie Smith and Co for being such marvellous old people, and airing their prejudices and overcoming a few. (The thing is I am beginning to feel very close to needing an Exotic Marigold myself.)

In the early days someone described this film in not terribly flattering words, but conceded it would probably be popular with old people. I’m thinking it must have been along the lines of those (men) who reckoned Mamma Mia! the movie was a bit of a loser. Marigold (as I’ve been calling it for some time) is a tremendously wonderful film!

Almost found myself wanting a hip replacement if I could have Maggie Smith’s lovely doctor. Not sure you’d be in a wheelchair for that amount of time afterwards, however. Being able to tell a call centre where they are going wrong strikes me as irresistible.

Wrinkly oldies are attractive. Almost dropping dead, or actually dying isn’t so nice, but better this way than through needless violence. Going abroad for your old age is not necessarily a good idea, but then staying put in the UK didn’t appear to be much better.

As others have said before me, this is a film that is near perfect.

Hermano

It struck me that it’s not in every country you can pick up an abandoned baby on a rubbish dump, and simply keep it as your own. But that’s what the young Venezuelan mother and her little son did in the film Hermano. That means brother, and that is what the abandoned baby became to the young boy.

This was the second Venezuelan film for me in this year’s ¡Viva! film festival at Cornerhouse. There are many similarities between Hermano and La Hora Cero; the poor quarters where life is cheap and gun crimes and other violence are of the everyday kind. Where the young start out much as other young people do, only to find that too much is against them and they stand very little chance of getting out successfully, or of living to an old age.

Hermano is also an incredibly good film, but with an ending which took me by surprise and I am certain it was meant to, because of the way it was done. If not, we’d have been more aware of how the penultimate scene played out, and the element of surprise would have failed.

So, it was sad, and although much of the film was sad, there was hope for most of it, too. The foundling, who turned out not to be a cat after all, went by the nickname Gato, and he and his brother Julio (who really wanted a cat) are top football players in their barrio division, about to play in the final. They are discovered by a talent scout and have hopes of signing with Caracas.

Julio deals in drugs, while Gato is an innocent, who doesn’t even quite understand how the girl he’s in love with ended up pregnant (by someone else). Their mother works hard looking after them and she helps them live and breathe football.

And then disaster strikes, and the question is how this will affect them. Because it is fiction and a film, you expect that something will work out, despite all the signs to the contrary. It does, but not as you imagine it.

Wonderful for the football, and a wonderful film. Sad, but scary, when you consider the very real reality of life in Venezuela when you are poor.

I’ll Remember April

This is a lovely film, about the shameful period in US history when they forced US citizens of Japanese extraction to live in internment camps. It’s something I didn’t know much about at all, and where I expected a mediocre film, I felt I got a charming and instructive story about what might have been a brief part of American history, but so very traumatic for those involved.

In 1942 four boys discover an injured Japanese submariner on the beach where they live in California. They are scared, and don’t know whether to kill him or report him or help him. One of the boys, Duke, has a brother in the war, another is a Japanese American and about to be interned.

It’s both funny and touching as you see their fear and the excitement, and the frenzy whipped up in their little town when the FBI arrive. Duke’s parents are normal upright people who stand up for their Japanese neighbours, and worry about their soldier son as well as the father working double shifts because there is a war on. So different from other war time films where we are made to believe that the American way of life never changed because they didn’t fight ‘at home.’

Things turn bad, as they have to, but the film ends on a hopeful note.

For a fairly unknown little film, there were some good performances from all involved, including Pam Dawber and Mark Harmon as Duke’s parents, and especially from Pat Morita as their elderly Japanese neighbour. I could watch this again. It was cute, but the seriousness of the politics counterbalance this perfectly.