SHERINGHAM DIARY No 93 - Unpromising Weather

It's been a while since I last posted an apt shop name. This one Hubby found. Its a unisex barbers in the Farringdon area of London. Its called Barber Streisand, which is pure genius.

With the 1940's weekend now out of the way, we usually enter a period during the remains of September of a gradual slowing of sales. This pootles along till we reach October Half Term which marks the end of the tourist season. Christmas having never been a big feature on the retail calendar for us.

This year, however, the late summer season has come very abruptly to a halt. The last two weeks of September being similar in feel to the winter months. Earlier in the year we considered what the future options might be for our business. The time to decide is fast looming upon us. Both of us are pooped. Even the summer season, usually a time to relax and roll with the momentum, has been fraught with stress. Days so quiet you can hear despair whispering in your ear. Our really good days failing to shine with quite the same brilliance they once had. Nothing is how it was a couple of years ago. It then becomes a job of work to not let any of this get to you. Staying engaged, positive and responsive has become part of our everyday job of work. 

The thought of putting all that behind us, if only for a week, feels like a gift of pure bliss. So we are taking a well earned week's holiday in Whitby and North Yorkshire. We've booked a bungalow ten minutes from the town centre. Intending to avoid too much driving once we get there. The journey up alone will take us 4-5 hours. Its a place we have visited innumerable times, and we love it.

The shop, prevents us from taking holidays in the times where there is a greater chance of good weather. Consequently we've become accustomed to travelling hopefully, and making the most of whatever climate actually turns up. Having been remarkably fortunate in weather in a large number of our early Autumn or not yet Spring holidays. The possibility of inclemency has always to be met with equanimity. It maybe overcast, but there's no reason to respond in kind.

I think back quite a few years ago, to an earlier visit to Whitby. You'll find it somewhere in the back catalogue of Sheringham Diaries on the blog. Of a time when the entire North East Coast was plagued by dense freezing fog, seemingly unending. Whitby Abbey was one of the most thrilling atmospheric visits I have ever had to an ancient monument. It was a real highlight, that was completely unexpected. You never know what may come out of unpromising weather.

POEM - Preparing To Let Go

And on the hundredth blow

and on the two hundreth

and on and on and on and on and on

we have clung on

as if waiting for a sign

an oracle or a goddess

to turn up and say

its fine, you can let go now, of that thought,

of that ideal,

of that well polished desire now

hanging off an edge of cliff, well,

this is not a life strategy is it?

its survival of a sort

for which hope has no sustenance

the longer you cling

it reddens the face, its the whitener of knuckles,

the dangling of nethers

forestalling only what is inevitable

grim determination writing itself large

in scrawled handwriting across the forehead

'we are getting ready to let go, please give us sufficient time,

to adjust, to make clear plans ahead, to get our heads around

the possibilities, engage with our fear, and

to prepare for

the falling of failing'

to find for oneself, if we will have new feet

and firm ground beneath them

to locate where

the unmarked path of prophecy

may now be.

Written on 27th September 2023

by Stephen Lumb

LISTENING TO - Playing Robots Into Heaven by James Blake

Playing Robots Into Heaven is James Blake's sixth solo album. He tenaciously continues to explore a totally unique electronic style, both as a songwriter, composer and producer. Because his work is composed and ever so carefully constructed, it lulls you into a comforting sense of security, of thinking you know where you are. Then the beauty within it, suddenly erupts taking you completely by surprise.

Blake has achieved a reach and influence way beyond his top chart appearances, which are admittedly few. Whilst you could very easily accuse him of becoming his own cliche, he has also a remarkable facility for constant reinvention of his own musical form. Many pieces here start from such an unpromising points of departure, but sort of say 'bear with me' as they then develop a multi layered complexity and depth as they progress.

 

I've not fallen in love with absolutely everything he has released. There are, however, at least one or two tracks per album that have something fresh to communicate. If not on a musical level, then in his capacity to tap quite deeply into these veins of emotion. Because of this, I've never fully given up on him, or his music.

There was a time around his third album The Colour In Anything, where he gave the impression he could not edit or quality check his output anymore. It felt like he released everything. With seventeen sprawling tracks and a 76 plus minutes running time, I've never made it through the whole of The Colour in Anything. I tend to find myself desiring to pull the plug halfway. Which is not to say it hadn't stunning tracks on it liked, but there is a limit to how much gently voiced wallowing any person with better things to do, people to see, can safely digest.

This latest album Playing Robots Into Heaven marks a seemingly abrupt departure, a minor revolution in his approach. Perhaps its more of a rediscovery of rhythmic experimentation that propels the collisions of elements and themes. What distinguishes it is the bravery with which he is prepared to step beyond his comfort zone into the sonic unknown. You might find the results here a bit scatter gun at times, or wildly unfocused. I would say it greatly benefits from its adventurousness and a willingness not to reach for a convention or cliche in an attempt to resolve the dis-junctions he creates. He leaves them, at times, totally raw edged and unresolved if need be.

There are moments on a number of tracks where the sound of it literally seems to be breaking up, or veers off into atonality, dissolution or cacophony. The quality of Blake's voice is rarely given sufficient praise. It has a beautiful soulful cadence and melancholic turn of phrase. Here all sorts of treatments are applied to it to give it a wider tonal range - its altered in pitch, auto tuned, muffled, buried, echoed, double tracked, stretched and dragged out.

An immediate piece to highlight is Loading. Opening with a churchy organ. This track utilises a simple descending refrain -  Wherever I go, I'm only as good as my mind, which is only good if you're mine - conjuring up a feeling of transcendent wonder.- Where are my wings? They're loading. Then ending with a catastrophic descending wail of discordant synthetic, as though its the Icarus of love falling from the sky. Utterly brilliant stuff.

Tell Me has a madness, a hyped up druggy rush to it, driven forward by a bleepy game console type musical refrain. Those of you accustomed to Blake's more languid ballardry will have to reaccustom yourself to this inventive mastery of orchestrated rhythm. It flows on with seemless ingenuity from one track to the next.

 

Then comes He's Been Wonderful. Over a stridently repeated One, Two, Three, a soulful voice sings - He's really been, really, really been. An electro gospel vibe permeating through out. Big Hammer follows with its atonal rap over what sounds like an auto generated twitter of a game loop.

 

I Want You To Know, is an unusually crafted love song where a classic Blake vocal line clashes with a tumbling beat pattern and a delightfully oscillating backing vocal. It's almost as if he's wondered - what if I put this with this, what will come out of it? The album then let's you down gently with a final flourish of ambient like or mood orientated tracks.

This is far and away James Blakes most interesting release for many a year. Stretching the envelope of what he is capable of, without losing hold of his strengths as a songwriter/composer. It attempts -A lot. Goes all over the place, whilst remaining completely part of a cohesive creatively nuanced whole.

CARROT REVIEW  - 7/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 92 - Reversing Into The Future.

And so, the 1940's weekend has thankfully passed. Trade in the shop was good. It needed to be as the week before it was uniformly atrocious. I had the impression the town was exhibiting less enthusiasm to put a huge amount of energy into it. There was a lot more of the bare minimum being done. Likewise the dressing up, which there was also less of. If it has any value its as an exercise in nostalgia for qualities of community and togetherness we find hard to keep a hold on these days. It maybe sentimental, it maybe harmless dressing up, but its also a means of escape from reality. And in the time when a war is raging in Europe, its appropriateness has to be open to question.

All of which made the trend for folk turning up as Nazi's a further slap in the face, for those of us who just about tolerate 1940's weekend. As a gay man it has a particularly nasty flavour to it. Last year it was just a couple. This year it was a small platoon of people dressed in SS uniforms. North Norfolk Railway makes it clear in their publicity that folk dressed in 'axis' gear will not be allowed on trains or platforms. But for the more general event it's not made clear at all, nor is it policed. So this sort of thing I guess could happen. Hopefully, by next year they will have sorted out how best to communicate that this is not welcome, and how best to respond when it does. 

There was a lot of retrospective consternation on social media about it, but not a lot done about it on the ground during the event. One misguided event organiser thought it was totally OK. A fight broke out, apparently, and the Nazi's were eventually escorted away. Their defense was they were a re-enactment group, and they were not meant to be Germans, but Waffen SS, which is a distinction that is not in the least credible. They also say they raise money for charity, without saying for what. Though if true, it sounds like a bit of ethical whitewash to me. Fascists- make believe or not - can you trust a word they say?

I have been accustomed in life to having a cold once in a blue moon, every five - ten years of so. But since the 'cough perpetual' at the beginning of the year, which went on for months and really knocked my robustness for six, I've had two further boughts of cold. One of which I've been trying to see off recently. The previous one was short in duration, but quite intense, as my body marshaled all the energy available to see it off. The effect of leaving me feeling drained whilst that is going on, is now with me once more. I'm having to recognise that perhaps I'm a little more run down than I think. 

My new diet is progressing well. I have to be careful about 'mission creep' where my desire to keep,for instance, cake eating under control starts to look for exceptions to the new rules. Ditto portion controls and on cheese etc. But weight and cholesterol are not beaten in a day. It's ongoing and requires vigilance and constant renewal of commitments.

I've never liked Russell Brand, its not just the madness in the eyes, I've never found him funny. I always got the impression whilst watching him, that through giving him attention, I was merely feeding and servicing the needs of his massive ego. And, so it seems, also his libido. I can't, however, also escape the feeling that he has placed himself online as a somewhere he can be relatively untouchable. Protected by a cult of followers who've bought into his anti-establishment shtick. Attacks from traditional media merely reconfirming their preexisting conspiratorial views. Its the Trump effect, that makes them impervious to court rulings or disdain. What a perverted topsy-turvy world we inhabit. I really have no idea how, as a society, we get ourselves out of this circular feedback loop of barmy ideas. Or is this just how things end?

As we approach political party conference season, There's been a stepping up of the rhetoric which indicates we are entering the run up to a general election. The recent climbing down from previously rock hard commitments to net zero, is only the first of probably many policy adjustments to create the impression the Tories are on your side. When they really only think about their political survival. They are going to play very very dirty. The net zero changes included a few things they were not going to do, that no one has said were going to happen. The invention of non existent policy ideas just to scare the voters and con them into voting for them, because they're now not going to do what they were never going to do in the first place. 

Small Sticks Cafe

We've just had our first Sunday and Monday off in over two months. What a relief! Went nowhere near the shop, and were not in a rush to do anything. A visit to Siffkey Stores, and a meander around Blakeney, on one day. A walk, a cuppa and cake in Mundesley and lunch in Small Sticks Cafe in Eccles On Sea, the next. Soon we intend to plan our holiday. Probably the second week in October, as half term is right at the very end of the month. Both of us can't wait to get away, because my god we need it.

FILM CLUB - Upcoming Trilogy Season

The next Film Club Season will be an occasional one where film trilogies will pop up from time to time. In particular trilogies I have not seen before, seen only in part, or would like to see again. 

These films have to be real trilogies, ones that were mostly conceived as such and not an unplanned series of sequels featuring the same characters. Nor a franchise which was created simply to financially exploit the popularity of the first one. So, even though I have not seen The Back To The Future Trilogy, that falls well outside my remit.

The idea behind the trilogies should be that they explore and develop a thematic thread over three films, maybe in entirely different ways, even with entirely different places or characters. I envision that subjects for other Film Club seasons may spontaneously spring from this. I have a provisional list of trilogies to draw from. One that I may happily depart from if 'something comes up'. But the trilogy I'm starting with will be Ingmar Bergman's - Faith Trilogy, the first part being Through A Glass Darkly.

FINISHED READING - Out by Natsuo Kirino

Four women turn up for the night shift in a factory that packs Japanese ready meals. There is a co-dependent camaraderie amongst the four of them. Though they work the same production line together every evening, they only selectively reveal the true state of their lives. Outside of work, agency over their life at home is severely compromised by a loveless marriage, a husband who has recently walked out, one is stuck with an ailing dependent relative to care for, another a husband who having gambled away all their savings, is now physically abusing his wife

Their lives are sad, hand to mouth, existences. Borrowing money from each other to tide them over or pay for unexpected expenses. They work night shifts because it earns them better wages for shorter hours. Meshing better with their home life, it makes practical and emotional sense. They all get time away from situations that are slow burn torture. Then one night Yayoi, badly bruised, confesses to Masako that she has killed her husband. Masako decides to help her get rid of the body, and co-opts or coerces the other two friends to help in the disposal of it.

In the background, someone is accosting women from the factory on their way to or from home. An opportunistic loan shark is bearing down on a repayment schedule being kept to. And a dangerous yakuza who runs a brothel and gambling racket,who has a twisted sexual kink, finds himself drawn towards the four women. As the main characters steeply descend into this monsterous dark underbelly that their actions have opened up, it reveals more about their pasts and fundamental psychology of all of them.

Out is a compelling read, an unflinching portrayal of immoral consequences, with plot twists and turns that wrong foot your expectations. All the way through you suspect this is unlikely to turn out well. How it actually unravels is what keeps you reading. Kirino's strength is in the descriptive detail and appreciation for her characters lives, for a style of life you rarely read of in Japanese novels - the just about managing working class. These are severely constrained lives this quartet of central characters have to somehow exist within. Kirino is adept at maintaining some sort of sympathy for all of them, even in the desperation of their very worst unguarded behaviours. 

What happens to their friendships, their individual mindsets, as the gruesome consequences of their actions cranks up, is graphic and psychologically unsparing. Showing how an easy work based camaraderie quickly dissolves, and the petty jealousies, recriminations, carelessness and fundamental selfishness underneath kicks in and takes over.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - Sonorous Desert by Kim Haines- Eitzen

Sonorous Desert is subtitled - What deep listening taught early Christian monks - and what it can teach us. All of which made it appear a really interesting prospect to read. Does it achieve those two aims? Not quite, but could it ever do so? Is a book, as opposed to a lived experience, really the best medium for this? Its evocatively written, and all the QR codes linking you to some of her sound recordings in deserts is a cool thing. However colourful and atmospheric, I didn't find those recordings particularly illustrative in relation to the chapter I'd just read. But perhaps I wasn't listening deeply enough.

Sonorous Desert Soundcloud

What she does conjure up well is the conflicts within her own, and in monastic, expectations of what the desert would be like. What a desert will bring into being. T E Lawrence described the desert as being clean. And it is this experience of living a life shorn of anything extraneous that drew monastics to the Egyptian deserts. From St Anthony, as the hermit pioneer, through all the many Desert Fathers who were to follow. Each sought out the wilderness with misconceptions of what they would find there, experiential or spiritual.

Living in environments, often so close to the edge, turbulent wind storms, the barking and baying of animals and sudden unearthly sounds in the pitch black dead of night, became demonic, when luridly possessed by our imaginations. Anything could take on frightening proportions in one's mind when it intrudes into our solitude. I've experienced mild panic attacks whilst on solitary retreats, and that was in the UK. There is a sense of being doubly vulnerable in the desert to the wildness of the terrain and of one's own imagination.

Sounds in the desert become amplified, heightened by being surrounded by that hard unyielding sparseness. There is a whole chapter here on monastic encounters with echoes, and how this sense of something answering back, of your own reverberating presence, was an aspect of the growing intimacy between what was 'other' in the desert and a monastic's own life.

There is, beneath this book, a really absorbing subject matter, one that is existential in nature. Deserts strip us, they reveal us starkly and nakedly. The exposure of what was once concealed, laid bare for everyone to see, is what emerges whenever we are left alone with ourselves. When just for once we have to listen, and listen deeply, to the subterranean and fragile echo chambers of our inner being. Does the book fully flesh out its themes? No. It tries, if anything, to cover too much ground. But it points us in interesting directions to reflect on.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

CHURCH LARKING - Holt Parish Church

St Andrews is an ordinary, and not particularly remarkable church. Holt as a town is wealthy these days. But in the past it was definitely the poorer cousin to the coastal ports of Cley or Blakeney. Though there is a church noted in the Doomsday Book in 1066, not much of this survives bar a Norman font. What you see today is 14th-15th century in origin.

All of medieval Holt was wiped out in a fire in 1708. This was situated to the east of the present church. The church building was left pretty much gutted at that time. The present building is those ruins heavily restored in 1727 and the 19th century, as best they could. Whilst the Georgian buildings, for which Holt is now so renowned, were constructed off to the west of it.

The squat sturdy looking tower once featured a spire which has since been lost. The exterior of the nave walls look very patchy, appearing to have been rendered over at some point in order to hold them together. Indicating a period when substantial repairs were too costly, so a bodge of rendering was applied. This poverty seems not to be the case now, with a large well built modern hall and rooms built to one side in the 21st century.

The church interior is generally quite plain and largely shorn of embellishment. The wooden roof, though  is a rather splendid one, with pierced work echoing the window tracery pattern. There is a delicate, and likely original piscina and sediia. The extensive stained glass windows are all Victorian or later, but contains some rather fine examples. A lovely minimally decorated sacramental side Chapel, is framed by a decorative elongated arch. With a modern wood statue of St Andrew standing guard at its entrance.

As with many churches on the North Norfolk coast, Holt has a strong Anglo Catholic flavour to it. A small arched shrine just to the right of the Sacramental Chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham. And contemporary panels spaced out along both sides of the nave, house modernist interpretations of aspects of the Stations of the Cross. As a church Holt is frightfully neat but underwhelming. Apart from these modern panels, which are simply weird growths on a wall.

POEM - Listening With The Ear Of The Heart

And the toes 

shall they speak of it

in long and weary tones, the callused sentences 

hard like leather, moaning

at the endless search, the walking 

across sand and mud, the broken shells of sounds, 

fracturing coastal dunes,
demolishing the mountains 

of loves unfettered dreamscapes

I am in the heart, they said 

I am the soul of things, and the soul, shall

hear everything, bear witness to all expressions, 

of existences past and not yet past

and so, when I rub my ears, 

I taste the bitterness in things, in being,

and within the brief flutter of birds 

these consume my active hours. 

I eat nature for breakfast

the daily wittering, feeds on my flesh

I feel it, to the end of my fingertips, 

I touch wings mid flight across the open fields

the earthy granular matter of worms, insects 

and the love of snails, 

the slow whittling of my senses

from individuated loyalties 

to exchangeable impressions, 

qualities I can luxuriate in

I taste the touch, touch what I can hear

I hear the smells, smell what it tasted of

I see the sounds, the sound of what it felt like

I sense everything

simultaneously as colours,

music, a multiplicity of textures

interchangeable, as one feeds on and into another

aggregating into being all of them simultaneously 

in one singular drift, as though

a forethought of space and time 

I cannot exist for long, in inseparable sensations, 

from the indivisible then back again

to the isolate existence

if I am disconnected

am I no longer alive?

if I am not fluid

then what am I?

is what the cornfield confided

in a private memo.

Written September 2023
by Stephen Lumb

SHOPPING AROUND - A Man Knitting In Public

I come from a family of knitters. It wasn't, however, until the early 1980's that I decided to learn how to knit. I was working in an Art Shop in Barnet when a wool shop opened up next door. I bought a small introductory How To Knit booklet, needles and practice wool, then started to teach myself. This was in the days before You Tube tutorials, so you just had to get your head around how to do stitches from, frankly, not very helpful diagrams.

Once I'd begun, I found I instinctively knew how to do some of it. Having sat at my Grandma's knee, helped ball up skeins of wool, and watched her and my Mother knit. The first garment I finished was a truly gargantuan green mohair jumper ( it was the 80's ) This stayed stuffed in a bag in a wardrobe for years. I was so embarrassed by it I never wore it. The moths then got to - so I binned it. To this day, though I carefully do test swatches till my hands and eyes bleed,  I can never quite get my sizings exactly right. But I eventually did a passable Arran jumper, mastered a sleeveless bottle green cable jumper I wore endlessly for years, then progressed on to Fair Isle. 

In my lunchtime break I took to going to the nearest local park, found a quiet corner with a covered seating area, got out my needles and knitted. All went well the first few times. But then one lunch break a young urchin on a child's bike stopped and looked at me a perplexed. He said:-

'What you makin?'

'A scarf'

'Don't girls knit?

'Yes, but so do I'

'But your not a girl'

'Yes, that's true'

And with a

'Hmph'

he rode off

This was not to be the end of it. The young urchin may have left,  but only to find scruffier friends to tell them what he'd just seen, and return with them to witness 'a man knitting in public'. 

The gang was a mixture of ages, the young urchin being probably the baby of the outfit. There was also some sort of ranking, where the taller, older and grubbier one was. the higher up the leadership ladder one rose. The present leader approached me on his bicycle alternating between balancing on it and cycling backwards and forwards in a predatory manner, whilst he fired off questions at me.

'Why do you want to knit?"

'Because I enjoy it'

'Why do you want to do it here?'

'I come to the park to relax and have my lunch'

'But knitting is what girls do'

Oh here we go again, I thought, replying

'No it isn't, anyone can do it'

After a short pause for some thought, he found the question he'd really been searching for.

'Are you a poofter'

'Non of your business'

You are. Aren't you? You're a poofter. Poofters knit'

And as this descended into general sniveling, giggling and jeering from the rest of the group, I started to be nervous at the direction the conversation had now lurched. 

'Look, clear off and let me have my lunch in peace.'

'Your a poofter, cos you are knitting. A real man wouldn't knit.'

'Well, I do, so... fuck off'

I realised then that a sub group of older boys were pulling in closer and this wasn't so they could admire my amazing stitch tension. If I didn't make a move soon I'd be corralled by a phalanx of spotty teenagers on bicycles. I packed up my lunch box, made an intention to leave the park, and walked calmly away. Which I did. With the sound of them squealing:-

'Wanker' 'Poofter'  'Shirt Lifter' 'OOOwee'

as I walked away. I finished off my lunch on a bench near the High Street, without visible knitting. I never tried public knitting nor went to that park, or any park for that matter, to knit, ever again.

These days I knit in the shop quite openly. And most of the time that feels perfectly fine.  But there are days when couples wander into the Courtyard. Blokes give me the evil eye, when they see I'm knitting. Homosexual alert written across their eyebrows. I hear them mutter to their wives as they walk away:-

'Did you see that guy in there, he was knitting.'

Or aggressively pull their wife away from deep sniffing the wax melts, with a:-

'There's nothing we want from here Beryl'

Its as though male knitting were some strangely distasteful craft, like voodoo head shrinking. I've wondered how often folk don't come in the shop because they see a bloke knitting, sewing or doing crochet,and simply find that too challenging. One look at my yarn and needles, daggers are drawn, adjust their bandanna or Liverpool supporters football shirt. Hurrying the little woman along. Nothing to see here.

At other times a single women will come in and say

'It's good to see a man knitting'

Whilst I know they mean well, it does feel patronising, whilst not being clear why exactly it's 'good' to see a man knitting. They are just trying to be encouraging, and understand that a man kitting in public is still risking ridicule. Others more straightforwardly say:-

'It's unusual to see a man knitting.'

Which it is, but it shouldn't be. Men have always knitted, top designers knit, sportsmen knit, actors knit, fishermen used to knit and repair their Gansey's, men being seen knitting ought not to be thought that unusual. But it is. They say:-

'What is it you're knitting' 

'A facecloth'

And this for some reason prompts an outpouring of guilt, remorse and self recrimination about past or present failures.

'I don't get on with knitting, more a crochet person. Nothing too adventurous mind. I just don't have the patience. I can't find the time these days. But one day, you never know, I might have a surge.... of inspiration. Though I'm far too lazy really, no patience me'

One lady recently too a posed photo of me knitting, presumably to pass round their more  interesting friends.

'I found this very exotic animal working in a Sheringham shop, it was a man knitting. Very unusual. knitting a scrubbie, I think he called it, out of dishcloth cotton. Quite remarkable'

It is more than likely that they're taking the photo as encouragement to their husband- brother - son, whose a closet knitter, but really needs to get out more.

Come on Brothers! Lift up your needles in solidarity! Go Public! Break the Taboo.

FEATURE - Anton Walbrook

Powell & Pressburger's production company, The Archers, had its own informal acting company. A regular member was Anton Walbrook, who appeared in four of their films - 49th Parrallel - The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp -  The Red Shoes  - Oh Rosalinda!  In these he plays a wide range of characters from a manipulative impresario to a peasant farmer. Walbrook's work is not that widely known or appreciated these days. So who was he?

In all his film performances he appears calm, deliberated, emotionally expressive, way above the abilities of the contemporaries around him. It is significant that Walbrook was frequently given pivotal monologues, the one that gave voice to the central theme and beating heart of the movie. Pressburger, who shared a similar emigre state of mind, wrote these parts with Walbrook in mind. Often bringing in aspects of his own and Walbrooks character or experience for the parts he was to play. Knowing he would be able to make them shine.

Walbrook had this unerring capacity to humanise, to reveal the emotional truth in the words he was given. His subtle vocal range, its light and shade, was able to suggest unspoken feeling and thought, often in an almost throw away manner or gesture. He was one of the most skilled actors of his generation.

Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbruck was born in Austria, the latest generation in a family of actors and performers. He studied with Max Reinhardt and had an extremely successful acting career in Austria and Germany. Handsome, suave and a bit of a dandy, he was considered a heart throb on stage and screen. 

By 1936, the Nazi regime's intentions were now crystal clear. Walbrook found himself in Hollywood doing over dubs on a German film, and decided not to return home. Sensibly he dropped Adolf as his first name, and as Anton Walbrook began his new career. The Americans at first were very suspicious, thinking he might be a spy. Asking him why it had taken him so long to come to his negative assessment of the Nazi's. The same question is asked of Theo in Life & Death of Colonel Blimp. We do not know how Walbrook himself responded. But in the speech Pressburger composed, he speaks of his love for the country of his birth, but hatred for the poisonous regime that had taken it over. He had, understandably, mixed feelings.

Apart from his work for The Archers he performed in many British films. An early version of Gaslight in 1940, and two films about Victoria & Albert playing opposite Anna Neagle, as Prince Albert. These sorts of roles, as 'the good German' or the vaguely continental Northern European foreigner, proved to be his bread and butter. Yet he frequently raised them to be considerably more substantial than that, because of his superlative acting ability.

His acting career spanned over forty years. And though he is best known for his films, he continued doing theatre work through out this period. Then, before the sixties arrived, he didn't so much retire but fade into the background. He only made appearances on German stage and TV later in life. His reasons for retreating from international fame in this way is not clear, and are as elusive to grasp as the personality of Walbrook itself is. There was a unique sophistication to him, but also an air of unknowable secrecy.  Did anyone understand who Anton Walbrook really was, even though they'd acted with him?

Moral Shearer who starred with him in The Red Shoes, said that on set he was a bit of a loner. He wore dark shades all the time and very consciously ate separately from everyone else. Which paints a picture of a quiet, reclusive, introverted man who needed time alone. Someone, perhaps, who would light up only when he performed. Maybe that legendary intensity and charisma he generated on screen, was part of a cathartic release, a mysterious alchemical element in him he needed to nurture. One that necessarily required solitude outside of that. Feeling himself to be an outsider wherever he was.

He'd chosen to leave Germany in 1936 because his family background was mixed race. His Mother, though a Catholic, was from a Jewish background and Walbrook himself was homosexual. His being distantly part Jewish might well have been overlooked, but persistent questioning about his sexuality was beginning to unsettle and frighten him. So doubly vulnerable to Nazi ideological purity he feared for his safety, and fled to settle in Britain whilst he still could.

With regards to his sexuality we are, of course, dealing with a very different era. In the 1930's - 40's being out, or even suggesting you were a gay man, just was not possible. Whether anyone who worked with him knew he was gay, few would think it proper to mention. There are stories of him regularly frequenting gay clubs in Berlin in the 20's and 30's, of affairs with a Norwegian painter, flings on set with Micheal Redgrave. were all rumoured. But none of this became public knowledge because everyone, including Walbrook himself, remained tight lipped. When he could have spilled the beans on his gay life on film sets, he chose not to. He was, either from habit or fear, an intensely private man.

Walbruck died in 1967 at the age of seventy. Though he'd mostly lived in Germany for the previous ten years, his body was returned to Hampstead Cemetery where it was interred. There had been rumours for a while, of an enduring decades long relationship with a local London florist Eugene Edwards. When Edwards died three years later, his body was interred with Walbrook's. The reason given at the time was in recognition of twenty three years of devoted secretarial service, which is a strange explanation. Perhaps this is a new euphemism. In some periods it seems, only in death, when buried three feet in the ground, could two gay men be seen together.

FILM CLUB - Powell & Pressburger Season - The Complete List

Having now finished my season of viewing and reviewing of Powell & Pressburger movies. Here they are all together, including Powell's Peeping Tom. These are their main films, made during the period where they were, for the most part, at their creative peak. 

Some I have had cause to reassess since watching them, as they have lived on visually in my imagination, and hence grown in my appreciation. If my 'carrot' score ratings are anything to go by - Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes & Black Narcissus are my personal favourites. But these could very well be adjusted in future, who knows. This series I've found one of the most enjoyable and rewarding of these movie seasons so far.

Powell & Pressburger Films 1939 - 57

1 - The Spy in Black (1939) - 5/8

2 - Contraband (1940) - 4/8

3 - 49th Parallel (1941) - 5/8

4 - One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) - 6/8

5 - The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) - 8/8

6 - A Canterbury Tale (1944) - 5/8

7 - I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) - 6/8

8 - A Matter of Life & Death (1946) - 6/8

9 - Black Narcissus (1947) - 8/8

10 - The Red Shoes (1948) - 8/8

11 - The Small Back Room (1949) - 7/8

12 - The Elusive Pimpernel (1950) - 2/8

13 - Gone to Earth (1950) - 3/8

14 - The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) - 4/8

15 - Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955) - 4/8

16 - The Battle of the River Plate (1956) - 6/8

17 - Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) - 4/8

Powell Only
Peeping Tom ( 1960 ) - 7/8

FILM CLUB - The Small Back Room

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1949

On the surface at least, the film is about a group of misfit boffins. Part of a scientific back room where ideas that may or may not have military application are tested and analysed. They also have practical duties to assess new weapons, defuse booby trap bombs, anything militarily a bit out of the usual. 

The unit is approached by Sgt Taylor ( Micheal Gough ) about a new unknown style of bomb that's already killed three children. The unit head Prof Mair ( Milton Rosmer ) points them towards the intellectual brains behind bomb defusion Sammy Rice ( David Farrar) He has a false metal leg that is giving him constant pain, that indicates he has a past that has trauma within it. An extremely capable man who is broken, but kept together by the love for his work, and the love of others.

He's having a long standing affair with Sue ( Kathleen Byron ) the unit's secretary. She consistently prevents Sammy from falling completely off the rails. When she becomes exasperated with him, after confronting Sammy about his lack of career ambition, he starts to fall apart. Just as he has an extremely tricky diffusion of this new style bomb to execute.

The Small Back Room followed three of The Archer's very finest full Technicolour movies - A Matter of Life & Death - The Red Shoes - Black Narcissus.  David Farrar and Kathleen Byron both starred in the latter, and were frequent members of The Archer's pool of actors. In comparison to its predecessors The Small Back Room, could seem a much smaller scale movie, but it does not lack for ambition. Like many P&P movies it teeters close to the edge of imaginative overkill, but somehow manages to pull it off.

Filmed in black and white this is probably Powell and Pressburger's most bleakly noir and clearly expressionist film, all large dramatic shadows, acute diagonal camera angles and lit faces looming out of the pitch black. It also contains the famous 'paranoia nightmare ' sequence when Sammy begins to lose control of his mind. 

One striking scene is from after Sue has left him. A picture frame, emptied of her photograph, now all you can see is Sammy's reflection cutting across the empty space in the frame. This film is a master class in how to harness cinematography and sound to convey mood and unbalanced states of mind. For The Small Back Room is also a title that describes a place in Sammy's mind, where he tries to contain his self loathing in order to not completely lose it. Occasionally escaping its self imposed confinement.

There is a very affecting performance from The Archers stalwart Cyril Cusack as a back room boy with a nervous stutter, whose home life is teetering on the edge of collapse. Giving the sense that the work they all do in 'the small back room' comes at a cost to them personally and their wider relationships. Add in distinct cameo performances from the likes of Jack Hawkins, Sid James and Robert Morley and you have a really involving chamber piece, some of which is stylistically, psychologically and thematically way way ahead of its time. After this film, the quality of The Archer's output noticeably declines, with only occasional flurries when the old creative flair and daring return.

CARROT REVIEW- 7/8

ARTICLE - This May Be Clever - But Is It Wise?

Hubby and I sat down to watch a documentary in the Storyville series on the BBC I Player. Titled  I - Human, its about the development, purpose and future actuality of AI. We could barely watch more than half of its hour and a half running time. The world it was foretelling was so appalling and lacking in understanding of basic human needs for companionship, meaning and something creatively productive to do. 

We are already handing over control of projects to AI, something that has no ability to assess or question the morality of what it might want to do.  Currently we seem powerless to rein AI in.

A handful of tech companies ( you know who they are ) are pushing AI because of the financial gains it is already bringing them in, admittedly, revolutionary ideas. There certainly are benefits to be had, particularly in AI's superior operation in relation to human ingenuity, in their greater efficiency and profitability. But should they really have a health warning printed down the side - AI kills?

We have learnt to our cost, in recent times, that social media, and the firms that run them, possess no moral compass. Through algorithms they've created something that encourages extremism, because clickbait is a quick way to gain viewers. Its clever, but unwittingly or maybe knowingly, its feeding right wing authoritarian ideas into social media, that is extremely unwise. Doing this for such a shallow reason as keeping your 'attention' is positively immoral. 

The consequences of AI are, likewise, not neutral either, not an unbiased contributor. Its clever, but it is not wise. AI looks very likely to enable our human lives to be longer, whilst simultaneously impoverishing the quality  and meaning of them. At the very least alienate us still further from the world that surrounds and supports us.

Not much thought appears to be being given to how we could manage the huge social upheavals that could result. As bit by bit AI takes over yet more of the human workplaces. It throws up huge questions -  If people don't earn their living anymore, what do they live off? How do we prepare for when machines make humans redundant? How would humanity find new purpose in a largely workless environment? If we don't have anything purposeful to do, how do you think we will respond?  There could be huge riots, mass luddite destruction, we may face catastrophic social breakdown. If we think increases in depression and suicides are worryingly high now, wait til AI takes jobs and careers away from people.

AI is obviously an extremely clever innovation, but is it wise ?  Wisdom is holistic human quality, one that reflects on issues using the broadest perspective possible. It incorporates the intellect, but also experience, feelings, knowledge, reason, instinct and ethics. If you utilise and prioritise only one of those in your decision making - say just the intellect - you will inevitable end up creating a form of tyranny. AI, because it is so single focused, has that potential too.

Yes, along the way, it might be beneficial - find the cure for old age, sickness and death. But at what broader cost to the stability of human society and quality of life? For if its not primarily for the benefit, purpose and furtherance of the quality of human life, then what would AI be for?  To increase corporate profits?

One tech guy in the programme  is shown bragging about how AI can study facial shapes and structures and seemed confident these can tell you if someone is gay, a criminal or a pedophile from shape and bone structure. The idea is frightening, whilst also being totally ludicrous. It reminded me of the 19th century obsession with phrenology, and how bumps on your cranium were supposed to reveal what type of person you were, ditto graphology and hand writing analysis. Would it be good, even if we could do this? Is this at all wise?

The Internet seemed fine and increased freedom of expression, until the tech companies began to monetise it. Once the algorithms were set to glue our attention to screens for as long as possible, they could sell that degree of attention to advertisers. And the great fuck up of democratic society began. 

Since then multimillionaire tech giants have emerged as poor moral arbiters of an inherently immoral system. Elon Musk thinks he should not interfere, citing freedom of speech. But to interfere or not to interfere are both moral choices when a computer algorithm is inherently biased in what it highlights. It's programmed to make choices, though it cannot feel, understand or consider the moral or political consequences of them on actual human beings. Human beings have to do that.

AI is already proving itself quite blind to when it has entered the 'fucking up humanity' arena. One hope is that the prospect of widespread AI will force us to really address what sort of society it is we want and for whose benefit, rather than we end up being given this as a fait accompli. Humanity cannot go passively into this, or it really will be doomed. And considering what else is going wrong at the moment, time is already running down on our chances of future survival. 

If we were to tell AI to find a solution to climate change, it will quickly discover that eradicating humanity is the quickest, simplest and cheapest way to solve most problems. 

FILM CLUB - Oh Rosalinda!

Powell & Pressburger Season -1955

The war has been over ten years. The world in general is beginning to move on from processing the legacy of wartime conflict. Osbourne's ground breaking play Look Back In Anger would be first staged next year in 1956, and a new style of working class realism would be born. 

Powell and Pressburger's style honed over the war years, was by comparison less pointedly direct in its social analysis, veering towards the fantastical, mystical and gently whimsical in sentiment. By the time the Archers entered the 1950's they were in the habit of returning to aspects of their successful period during the war for further film ideas. Most likely because they found that was their remaining USP. The films themselves, however, were getting harder to get commissioned and produced, with diminishing success financially, creatively and critically.

On paper Oh Rosalinda! sounds marvellous. It was a light operetta film adaption, in the mode of Tales of Hoffman. This time it was a modern update of Strauss's Die Fledermaus. Its filmed in glorious Techicolour with Cine Scope, sumptuous costumes, in a painterly stylised and stagey set designed by the Archer's stalwart since the Red Shoes - Hein Heckroth.

They decided to translate the setting to modern day post war Vienna. Where Brits. ,American, Russians and French take it in turns to watch over an occupied Austria. Rosalinda is the wife of a French Captain (Micheal Redgrave) who takes advantage of Dr Falke (Anton Walbrook) when he has passed out drunk, to make him look a fool, by leaving him embarrassingly prostrate across a Russian statue. Falke constructs an elaborate plan of revenge involving Rosalinda, masked balls and mistaken identities.

One thing that is ground breaking about the film is that it's a precursor of politically updating classic drama for film or theatre. Like most such resettings, purists will hate it regardless, finding the contemporary theme and libretto rewrite shallow. The test of any such update is whether it is just a stylistic affectation or it genuinely brings a fresh and pertinent dimension to it. However, for a Powell and Pressburger film, Oh Rosalinda! this is one that is noticeably lacking in adventurous staging and striking use of imagery, aspects they'd been previously renowned for. It also contains some distinctly hackneyed conventions regarding gender relations, married men having affairs is OK but the woman is a whore if she does that etc

Oh Rosalinda! sets up a clash of styles that it never quite gels successfully. The frothy, farcical insubstantial milieu of Die Fledermaus, you could almost erect a proscenium arch around its so theatrical, against this is the serious backdrop of a contentious allied presence hanging over a post war city in occupied Europe. 

Anton Walbrook Camping It Up

It's also present in the acting performance styles. Walbrook, it seems to me, is the only one who strikes the correct tone, an archly bemused and playfully camp sarcasm. He is a complete joy to watch in every scene he is in. Everyone else treats it as if this is either a light bedroom farce or a musical rom com. And it can be either of those things, but not all three of them at once.

I found the operetta itself bafflingly trite, alternating between losing engagement and my comprehension, because its plot seems so preposterously insubstantial and bubbly. I can see why it might have missed finding its audience. Its a lot of froth to swallow in one sitting. 

Walbrook delivers, yet again, a wonderful monologue near the end about, how its been nice having you guys around, but can you go home now, leave us to get on with our lives unhindered. 

Yes, we all feel like that after having held a house party. And also after watching this film.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8