I read an article yesterday in, predictably, the Daily Mail about Kate Middleton and Prince William on an engagement in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the couple are idolised in doing even the simplest task of flipping a pancake on Pancake Day.
“both Prince William and Kate attempted the difficult flip for a charity fundraiser to mark Shrove Tuesday - Pancake Day. William tossed his pancake with aplomb leaving Kate under pressure to perform. The future princess mastered the art of the flip with a flick of the wrist and a little giggle, impressing the crowds - and Prince William - with her culinary trick.”
Nor does the article spare us the minutest details. We are even treated to:
“Relaxed Kate slipped into black boots and stood under an umbrella when their official visit took them to the countryside. She also poured herself a glass of water during a welcome break”.Gosh. Kate both flipped a pancake and poured herself a glass of water afterwards to relieve her of the strain. Such onerous tasks!
It begs the question as to whether what the royal family actually do all day can actually be classed as work. Normal people get up early, are in work by nine (if they are not working intensive shifts), work until lunch, which sometimes can last no more than half an hour, and then it’s back to the grindstone right up till 5 ... or in many, many cases, much later. And you can guarantee that your average worker will not come home to be greeted and pampered by a household of staff in a residence paid for by the British State. Most people come home, exhausted, and collapse into a chair to rest after a hard day’s work.
Not for this golden couple. For them, it’s a relaxed descent into a town of choice to walk around at leisure and perhaps exert themselves by flipping a pancake or two. Then perhaps some more strolling around, exchanging pleasantries, shaking hands, kissing the odd newborn baby on the forehead before being invited into an elegant dinner by the Lord Mayor and presented with a gift or three (in this case a book), then stopping to examine some flowers.
It beggars belief as to how any of this can be called work, which is the label given to it by hard-core monarchists (such as the one that wrote this article). None of it is strenuous, demanding or arduous. And the paycheque of the family of which they are part is enormous. Kate wore a £650 coat – a figure nearing some people’s monthly salary. William might well be a pilot in the RAF but I doubt he survives on that salary alone – it is more probably he receives money from his father Charles, who derives his mammoth £17m income from the Duchy of Cornwall (not owned by him – it’s ultimately State property). But as usual the media is all smiles with no awkward questions to mar the moment. It is perhaps a bit like entering Disneyland and forgetting that at the end of the day there is serious money behind the magic.
The Palace PR machine is in overdrive, because hopes of the monarchy surviving rest on William and in turn Kate. Times are-a-changing, and while polls indicate a majority support the monarchy, less and less people are enthused by the activities, or lack of, that this family do to justify the enormous wealth the receive courtesy of the tax-payer and ultimately State owned duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. Granted, there is interest in this couple, but with the passing of time more and more questions are raised as to the relevance of a system that has its origins in the way of thinking of a thousand years ago. Monarchists often point to this thousand year history as a badge of pride, but it is with good reason that the majority of society has changed for the better since then - the monarchy being one of the very few last bastions of that society, of belief that bloodline counts for more than anything else.
My advice to the couple would be to pull their thumb out and do some real work for a change. Yes, it’s all lovely seeing a fluffy-bunny scene of them laughing and joking whilst enjoying such capers as tossing pancakes and making small-talk with the people who turned out to see them, but behind it all is a very serious issue of money and morals relevant to the twenty-first century. It’s all very well to sweeten the image up until it has the substance of candyfloss, but it’s Joe Public who is paying a lot of money for this couple to flounce around at whim indulging in such flights of fancy.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Diego
Today I’m going to tell a little story about someone I once knew. It's all true.
Some years ago, in my early twenties, as part of my university degree course in Spanish, I spent an academic year in Spain. To be more specific, in Santiago de Compostela in North-west Spain, in Galicia.
Santiago is a beautiful little town, with all the charm of a sleepy village and simultaneously the vivacity of a bustling metropolis. It is very historic; the town is medieval in origin, and the Old Quarter still retains its beautiful winding and granite-clad streets and has been a centre of pilgrimage for hundreds of years – being the resting place of the relics of St James. Pilgrims still flock to pay homage to them, having walked many miles along the Way of St James. Santiago is the capital of the region of Galicia in the extreme North-west of Spain, and as such is a centre for culture and the arts. It is also a thriving student city, with over a third of the population being students. It seemed the perfect place to go and spend my year abroad – off-the beaten track, and not too touristy, because far from being lager-louts of the Costas in the South and East, all the tourists were pilgrims. It was safe and not industrial nor ugly by any means – quite the opposite. It was, and still is, a beautiful historic town set in the green hills of Galicia – the only drawback being that Galicia is extremely rainy, being right near the Atlantic coast.
I had been so excited about going to Santiago – after spending hours deliberating over whether I should go there, or to the sunnier South, I had finally settled on this out-of-the-way gem of a city. I set off with my Dad a day in mid-September, 2004, full of excitement. The minor snag was that we hadn’t found accommodation, because apparently the done thing was to look for it upon arrival. Apparently, it wouldn’t be hard to find.
Well, to cut a long story short, it WAS hard to find! Not that there wasn’t a lot of it – there was, but of varying value for money and standards of living. Not only that, but I was adamant I was to live with Spanish students, because that was the only way I would improve my Spanish, being surrounded by the language day in day out.
After seeing a lot of dud apartments – many of them filthy, looking out onto building sites, too expensive for what they were or living with international students, we stumbled upon a company that someone had recommended before leaving England. I hadn’t wanted to try it because it was quite pricey. Basically it was a privately run halls of residence. The company owned various residences around the city, usually no bigger than a normal sized flat, or a series of flats in the same building, where students would live, usually with a resident tutor. There was a central restaurant-diner where students would all congregate and eat three course meals twice a day (breakfast being biscuits and coffee a la Spanish way), so it functioned much like the halls of residences I had lived in back home. It seemed perfect, even more so when I was offered the chance to live with ten Spanish guys. Ten!! Surely, I thought, there has to be at least one amongst the ten that I get on with ....
So I moved into flat 1, 34 Rua San Pedro de Mezonzo. My room was opposite the communal lounge the students would share. I was the last to arrive, and instantly felt welcome. All the students were friendly, normal guys, who were interested in having an English guy coming to live with them. There was Miguel, David, Eladio, Daniel, Juan Benito, Jose Ignacio, Javier and one or two more that I can’t really remember the names of. But the one who left the biggest impression on me was Diego.
Diego was 18 at the time and just starting his first year at the University of Santiago. I was 20, but the Spanish aren’t so ageist like the English are, and so we didn’t notice any age gap at all. Diego was quite individual. He was friendly, but at the same time quite serious and pensive. He had slightly long hair and was very good looking, with quite serious big green eyes and a handsome face that always looked deep in thought. He reminded me of a king in a portrait, looking serious and majestic and thoughtful all at the same time.
Of all the people, it was Diego who I seemed to get on well with. The others were great people, but with Diego I had a personal connection. He, like me, was studying history, and found everything historical very interesting. He was a man of culture and of the arts, without being the least bit pretentious. He would always come and talk to me, and we’d chat amicably, despite the fact that my Spanish was barely beginner’s standard. Living with that amount of friendly Spaniards though, it was quickly improving. Diego and I would go out on short walks around the city, where he would point out things of interest and explain the Spanish way of life to me. I liked him from the moment I met him. It transpired we both loved music, and he invited me to come to a guitar and violin concert by the composer Boccherini, in an old church in the Old Town, which was really lovely. He invited me along to come out with friends of his that he knew, in the park where everybody congregated to drink alcohol. I never remember Diego drinking much alcohol, or doing anything that was wreckless. He was always thoughtful, serious and pensive, but friendly and open at the same time. I remember being in a restaurant on my own with my head in my hands, depressed beyond belief, a mixture of homesickness and struggling with my own personal problems, and Diego and Jose Ignacio approached me. “You know you can always knock on my door if you feel low”, Diego had said kindly, which was a lovely thing to hear in a time of hardship.
For reasons which I won’t go into here, I had to leave the flat I was in. It was absolute madness to have done so, looking back. I was having the time of my life there and my Spanish was literally rocketing up, with truly lovely people, meals taken care of ... it was bliss. Except for the fact that I suffered from acute Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and being in that flat – or rather, the fact there was a shop below the flat – was setting it off to an unbearable degree. I had to go. After just four weeks in my new home, I transferred to another. While the atmosphere of the first flat had been jubilant and celebratory, the second flat was an emotional desert. Three Spaniards who didn’t even bother to talk to me never mind to each other made it so that the place was practically deserted. My Spanish, which had been coming along in leaps and bounds, stopped. Aprubtly. Dead in its tracks. And to be honest, it didn’t improve much after that in the entire year abroad. I think back now what it would have been like had I stayed in the first flat, and how so very fluent I could have been had I stayed with that wonderful group of guys who had made me feel so welcome.
I still stayed in touch with Diego a fair amount. We met up from time to time, although the fact that I was no longer living in the same flat as him meant of course that we didn’t see as much of each other in comparison to the last. We still met up for the odd meal here and there, and caught up, and we were still good friends with each other.
He invited me to stay the weekend with his family in his home town of Santa Cruz, near La Coruna on the north coast. Such an offer from a Spaniard really is considered to be an honour – the home is sacred to the Spanish and inviting people into the close family circle is not taken lightly. Even more so from a Galician, whose reputation for being reserved and closed is famed throughout Spain.
We had agreed that I would come on the Saturday by train to La Coruna, and Diego and his dad would pick me up from the station (as he had already travelled back there on the Friday). I was quite excited to be seeing Spain from the inside out, as it were. A chance to see a proper Spanish family! I didn’t really know what to expect.
As it turned out, Diego’s family were every bit as lovely as I’d hoped, even more so. His father and he picked me up from La Coruna station and we drove to the centre of La Coruna, where his mother and sister were having dinner in a kind of glass marquee in the square – in any other place it would have been in the open air, but in Galicia, famed for its rain, you can’t really eat outside unless you want to get very wet! His mother welcomed me with open arms. She was a lovely, bubbly lady, very cuddly and maternal and very, very Spanish. “I’m Concha”, she smiled, “and this is my daughter Marta”. His father and mother asked me about my life and my family at home, and I had a lovely lunch with them there. His sister Marta was also very talkative, she was only fifteen at the time. When I came to pay my share of the bill, Concha’s hand steadied mine – “Oh no, please, leave that to us” she said kindly.
Later that day, Diego’s dad drove us to the Tower of Hercules, a kind of historic lighthouse in Coruna. Concha and Marta I think went back home, but we three walked along the coast of Coruna, a salty, wet and grey but delightful city, and walked up to the top of the tower. Diego was always very kindly, and I remember us standing by an information board inside the tower, where I was trying to decipher the Galician version into Spanish, with his hand moving along the text to help me. Galician is the local language of Galicia, a sort of mixture between Spanish and Portuguese, and all Galicians are bilingual in Galician and Spanish. Diego was Galician through and through, and from what I remember spoke Galician with his father but Spanish with his mother, who was from Andalusia. He always spoke Spanish to me in what I realise now is a very distinct dialect particular to Coruna.
My memory of that weekend is pretty patchy after all these years, so I can’t remember exactly what we did after that. I do remember that we arrived back home at his apartment, which was lovely like all Spanish apartments, and a true home. It was warm and friendly, just like Diego’s family. Artwork adorned the walls, including some paintings Concha had done of Diego and Marta and some scenery. Photographs of Concha as a toddler in Andalucia, and of Diego and Marta at their grandparents’ in Andalusia were on the shelves. I remember seeing a photograph of Concha in her graduation robes, and she had been very, very pretty. Diego had inherited her good looks.
I remember Concha preparing for a big meal that evening, and she had invited some other English people round that the family knew, husband and wife Peter and Mary, although Mary it later transpired was Galician. I remember Concha bustling around getting the food ready, and chastising Diego for not doing anything, whilst he sat there a bit hacked off and embarrassed the way all teenagers do when they are told off by their mothers in company! Peter and Mary came round, both in the forties or so, and it was a relief to hear an English voice after attempting to speak so much Spanish! We had a good laugh in the living room talking about things English and languages in general – with Diego’s mum and dad joining in with gusto. Then we had dinner – a really delicious Galician fish dish. Or maybe that was the next day ... I can’t remember too well. Whatever it was it was delicious. I remember sitting round the table and a sort of Spanish nougat being passed around. At first I declined, but Diego insisted that I try it because it would be a shame not to try a great Spanish delicacy, and he physically shoved the nougat into my mouth and rammed my jaw shut, so I had no choice! As I said, Diego was a man of history and culture.
We were due to go out that night, as everybody does on a Saturday. “Diego, your friend is tired” said Concha to her son, seeing me yawning across the table – “maybe you should have an early night”. “Do you want to go?” said Diego. “It’s ok if you don’t, I’ll just tell them we can’t make it”. “Oh no, it’s fine” I reassured him. I didn’t want to spoil his evening and besides I was quite looking forward to experiencing his world.
Before then, we went to a bar to meet a friend of his, who turned up extremely late without telling Diego. Diego always took it in good humour though. I don’t think a lot of his friends treated him as well as he treated them, but he was never one to complain. At the gathering in Santiago a lot of his so-called friends had ignored him while he was there trying to talk to them. Perhaps I’m wrong. But this friend of his in Coruna ignored me for sure!
Then Diego took me to a famous castle on a small island connected by a bridge to the town where he lived. It was quite surreal really – only we were out at that time, when darkness had fallen and the town shone a burnished yellow from the streetlamps, while a fine rain blew with the gusts of wind across the beach. I remember walking with Diego along the pier-like bridge to the castle, and him looking pensively out to sea. He tended to do that. We walked round the castle and spent some time walking round the beach. I felt very lucky to be there and to have such an accommodating friend as Diego. He told me he rowed every weekend, and that’s why he came back to Santa Cruz every weekend (although most Spanish students do this). I remember him teaching me the words for “to row” and “sand”, which is “arena”, which also means the type of arena sports are held in. He drew an arena in the sand and told me of the Romans and what events they held in them. He was an interesting guy, Diego.
Then we went out on the town. I can’t really remember much of this – it’s all so long ago. But I do remember we met up with a few friends of his and went to a few bars in the centre of Coruna. I didn’t enjoy it much – I was tired and therefore feeling a bit grumpy. It was nice to see Coruna at night though – bustling with congregations of students who had the affinity to meet under the stars. We went to a club and I tried my hardest to engage but after a while I just gave up, my eyes were closing on me. “Can we go home?” I said to Diego. “Sure” he said, and motioned to his friends, who were girls, to give us a lift back, as one of them had their own car.
I remember driving back and one of the girls telling me she hoped to study in Bolivia, which interested me as I’ve always been interested in South America. I don’t even remember anything else about that journey, other than it was raining. I remember me and Diego arrived back at the door of his apartment block, and he was just about to put the key in the lock when he said “Are you tired?” “No” I answered, lying because I didn’t want to upset him. “Shall we go for a walk?” he said. “Sure” I responded, and we set out on a small walk round where he lived.
Santa Cruz, his village, was on the sea, so his house wasn’t far from the water. Rain was falling but being blown haphazardly by the wind, and it was quite a wild night. This was around 2 o’clock in the morning ... and Diego, ever pensive and thoughtful, led me on a small walk round near the coast. I remember walking through a park, and everything was silent for not a soul was about. He led the way, I followed him. We walked near the shoreline, on a rocky hill that jutted out into the sea, where the waves were crashing into the rocks below. Diego had a velvet black jacket that he wore and was very proud of, and he was wearing it now. He looked out to sea and picked up a few stones and threw them as far as he could out into the ocean. “I like a girl called Leti” he said. “I’m going pull out a rose from my jacket, present her with it and tell her I like her” he continued. “Oh”, I said, not knowing sufficient Spanish to respond properly.
I don’t remember much after that, only that we must’ve walked back after an age and gone back to bed. I had a pull-out bed next to his. I was worn-out by this point, but Diego was still quite awake. Lying in bed and trying to prop my eyes open, he asked me “What was your ex-girlfriend Laura, like?” I didn’t know enough Spanish to respond, so I just said “with a lot of fire and passion” ... I never even had had a girlfriend but I told him that so as not to lose face. With that I drifted off to sleep.
Diego’s dad had been due to take us on a walk the next morning, but we were both so exhausted that we overslept. I remember his Dad coming in and saying “It’s a bit late for a walk now eh!” before we got up. Then he drove us to a coastal fishing village where we ordered fresh Galician mussels ... something I wasn’t too keen on eating. They were gigantic, and Diego and his family ate them with gusto, but I declined. “All this food we’ve bought especially for you and you’re not eating it!” remarked his dad, half-joking, probably half serious. The Galicians are very proud of their fishing industry – it’s very prominent in Spain, since half of Spanish fish comes from Galicia. The coasts are all prime fishing spots in the wild waters of the Atlantic.
Then we went to a concert his mum was giving, because she played the mandolin. We went into a village hall and she came on with some other mandolin players. It was nice music and I enjoyed it. I remember sitting next to a family friend of theirs, who told me she had used to live in Barcelona. “You didn’t want to stay there?” I asked her. “I wanted to, but I had to come back to Galicia because of my family” she said, almost mournfully. I wondered if she would still rather be in the sun-drenched city rather than rain-drenched Galicia.
As soon as Diego’s mum had finished playing, we all left and went and had a drink in a nearby cafe. I remember Diego asked for a Cacaolat, which is a kind of cold chocolate milkshake, and very nice.
Then I don’t remember anything, except Concha taking my hands and saying it had been a pleasure having me stay with them and that I must come again soon. She was a lovely lady, Concha.
Then me and Diego were on the train back to Santiago. We passed a lot of the journey in silence, each with his own thoughts. I remember looking at him and thinking how kind he had been to me and how lovely his family were.
After that weekend, I saw Diego a few times more. I met up for dinner with him a couple of weeks before I was due to leave, and he gave me his address and email address. I never gave him mine, and I subsequently lost his details. He said he was going to move into a flat with Jose Ignacio the next year and we wished each other well.
I was never to see him again.
I had no way of contacting him once I got home to England. I had his phone number but gradually forgot the PIN and by the time I realised it was too late. I didn’t hear from any of my former flatmates, and I figured I had no way of finding them. I had no access to their numbers, and I didn’t know anything of their surnames or anything. It looked like they were consigned to the history books.
After a few years – three, to be precise, I decided I should get back in touch with Diego. He had been a good friend to me in Santiago and I was sad not to see him again. I had previously given up hope of ever finding him – I didn’t know his surname, address, or anything. But then I had a brainwave of emailing the company that owned the residence where I met him. I sent them an email asking if they knew of his number, and they sent one back saying they had rung his house and his sister remembered me and here was Diego’s mobile number!!
I was quite excited, getting back into contact with him after all these years. I even held out hope we could arrange a meeting. I excitedly messaged him and received a reply within the hour. He was surprised to hear from me, and asked how I was, and how I had got his number. He exchanged two texts with me before saying we would chat online when he had the chance.
I sent another couple of texts to him, but he didn’t reply. Eventually, he went online and sent me an email. A few, short, surprised but otherwise friendly lines. I sent a big long description of what I was up to, how my life was going and how he was etc. And my address should he need it. He sent another back saying we could chat on msn messenger when he was online. Again, just two emails.
So I chatted with him on messenger. I couldn’t contain my delight at having found him again, I was so pleased. He didn’t seem so pleased. He hadn’t been so forthcoming with his texts, or his emails. I didn’t sense the same feeling of excitement and gladness was reciprocated. It was as though me turning up out of the blue was a casual co-incidence, and not something that really bothered him too much. We chatted, and he said he’d look out for me if he came to England.
The next time he came online, I tried to start a conversation with him but he immediately went offline. I tried sending him some texts to see how he was, but with no reply. I tried again and again, but to no avail. No reply.
No matter, he’s probably busy, I thought. I tried again in a week. Then again in two. I tried emails, texts, everything. It was then I used a special program designed to show you who has blocked you on msn and it showed that he had blocked me.
Since then I’ve tried to contact him numerous times. Maybe too many times, but I was anxious to re-start that friendship I’d had with him those years ago. No reply. Not a sausage. I tried and tried and tried but to no avail. I must have sent him over twenty emails over the months, asking how he was and just wondering whether there was any reason why he wasn’t replying, and nothing ever came back. I tried calling his number – nothing.
After all this time, in an act of desperation, I tried to search for him on the internet. I knew I had his surname – Iglesias – so I figured I could somehow track him down. I did succeed in tracking his mum down, because I knew she was Concha Iglesias – it turned out she is a teacher in a high school in Galicia. I wrote her a letter, and enclosed a letter to Diego, and sent it off to the school. No reply.
I sent another letter to the school, all of this just explaining I wanted to get back into contact with Diego and still no reply.
Eventually, through facebook I managed to find his mum. I sent her an email basically saying what I’d said in the letters, and to my surprise, received a reply. Being the kindly lady she always was, she said she had told Diego about the letters I had sent, and wished me well. She didn’t shed any light onto as to why Diego wouldn’t contact me, she simply sent some kind words my way and said she hoped I was well. At first she said it was probably because he had been away in Europe, but then she avoided the subject altogether. She told me not to worry and that I was a nice person who she had enjoyed having in her house all those years ago. She sent me two messages, both lovely messages from the Concha I knew and liked.
I did find the guys I had been friends with from that flat, through facebook. All of them welcomed me back, so to speak, and told me what they were up to. Jose Ignacio, who had been closest to Diego, reacted the same way as Diego’s mum – and sent Diego a message saying I had been after him. Diego sent him a reply, but completely ignored the subject of me, and so Jose said he didn’t know what had happened ... and that was that.
I suppose I will never know what happened with Diego. More than anything, it makes me sad and disappointed. I had had a friend in him all those years ago, and from the way he has erased me from his life and ignored me it would seem he is a completely different person. I caught sight of a recent picture of him on msn just before he blocked me – and he had changed a bit. Instead of the long, floppy hair he had had, it was now shaved in a buzz cut. He had a tiny goatee, and wore a very stylish smart shirt in place of the velvet jacket. Maybe, just maybe, he discovered he was actually very good looking, and perhaps found that life was better if he used that to his advantage. I still don’t understand though. He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and seems now to have turned into one of the cruellest. You might say it was because I was trying to contact him so much, and maybe anybody would be freaked out by that. But he erased me out long before I sent him extensive emails and texts ... and only then I did it because I didn’t know if he was getting them, and because I didn’t want to lose contact with someone I had good times with.
More time has passed now.
I still think of Diego to this day. For me, the person I knew, the friendly and pensive and decent guy, who took me, a nervous and stammering foreigner, under his wing and invited me into the most intimate circles of his life, will remain shrouded in the depths of my memory. For all I know, that Diego may be gone forever and I will never see him again, but I can at least look back on the fond memories that I do have of him and smile, remembering the thoughtful, pensive and friendly guy who was to me a true friend.
Some years ago, in my early twenties, as part of my university degree course in Spanish, I spent an academic year in Spain. To be more specific, in Santiago de Compostela in North-west Spain, in Galicia.
Santiago is a beautiful little town, with all the charm of a sleepy village and simultaneously the vivacity of a bustling metropolis. It is very historic; the town is medieval in origin, and the Old Quarter still retains its beautiful winding and granite-clad streets and has been a centre of pilgrimage for hundreds of years – being the resting place of the relics of St James. Pilgrims still flock to pay homage to them, having walked many miles along the Way of St James. Santiago is the capital of the region of Galicia in the extreme North-west of Spain, and as such is a centre for culture and the arts. It is also a thriving student city, with over a third of the population being students. It seemed the perfect place to go and spend my year abroad – off-the beaten track, and not too touristy, because far from being lager-louts of the Costas in the South and East, all the tourists were pilgrims. It was safe and not industrial nor ugly by any means – quite the opposite. It was, and still is, a beautiful historic town set in the green hills of Galicia – the only drawback being that Galicia is extremely rainy, being right near the Atlantic coast.
I had been so excited about going to Santiago – after spending hours deliberating over whether I should go there, or to the sunnier South, I had finally settled on this out-of-the-way gem of a city. I set off with my Dad a day in mid-September, 2004, full of excitement. The minor snag was that we hadn’t found accommodation, because apparently the done thing was to look for it upon arrival. Apparently, it wouldn’t be hard to find.
Well, to cut a long story short, it WAS hard to find! Not that there wasn’t a lot of it – there was, but of varying value for money and standards of living. Not only that, but I was adamant I was to live with Spanish students, because that was the only way I would improve my Spanish, being surrounded by the language day in day out.
After seeing a lot of dud apartments – many of them filthy, looking out onto building sites, too expensive for what they were or living with international students, we stumbled upon a company that someone had recommended before leaving England. I hadn’t wanted to try it because it was quite pricey. Basically it was a privately run halls of residence. The company owned various residences around the city, usually no bigger than a normal sized flat, or a series of flats in the same building, where students would live, usually with a resident tutor. There was a central restaurant-diner where students would all congregate and eat three course meals twice a day (breakfast being biscuits and coffee a la Spanish way), so it functioned much like the halls of residences I had lived in back home. It seemed perfect, even more so when I was offered the chance to live with ten Spanish guys. Ten!! Surely, I thought, there has to be at least one amongst the ten that I get on with ....
So I moved into flat 1, 34 Rua San Pedro de Mezonzo. My room was opposite the communal lounge the students would share. I was the last to arrive, and instantly felt welcome. All the students were friendly, normal guys, who were interested in having an English guy coming to live with them. There was Miguel, David, Eladio, Daniel, Juan Benito, Jose Ignacio, Javier and one or two more that I can’t really remember the names of. But the one who left the biggest impression on me was Diego.
Diego was 18 at the time and just starting his first year at the University of Santiago. I was 20, but the Spanish aren’t so ageist like the English are, and so we didn’t notice any age gap at all. Diego was quite individual. He was friendly, but at the same time quite serious and pensive. He had slightly long hair and was very good looking, with quite serious big green eyes and a handsome face that always looked deep in thought. He reminded me of a king in a portrait, looking serious and majestic and thoughtful all at the same time.
Of all the people, it was Diego who I seemed to get on well with. The others were great people, but with Diego I had a personal connection. He, like me, was studying history, and found everything historical very interesting. He was a man of culture and of the arts, without being the least bit pretentious. He would always come and talk to me, and we’d chat amicably, despite the fact that my Spanish was barely beginner’s standard. Living with that amount of friendly Spaniards though, it was quickly improving. Diego and I would go out on short walks around the city, where he would point out things of interest and explain the Spanish way of life to me. I liked him from the moment I met him. It transpired we both loved music, and he invited me to come to a guitar and violin concert by the composer Boccherini, in an old church in the Old Town, which was really lovely. He invited me along to come out with friends of his that he knew, in the park where everybody congregated to drink alcohol. I never remember Diego drinking much alcohol, or doing anything that was wreckless. He was always thoughtful, serious and pensive, but friendly and open at the same time. I remember being in a restaurant on my own with my head in my hands, depressed beyond belief, a mixture of homesickness and struggling with my own personal problems, and Diego and Jose Ignacio approached me. “You know you can always knock on my door if you feel low”, Diego had said kindly, which was a lovely thing to hear in a time of hardship.
For reasons which I won’t go into here, I had to leave the flat I was in. It was absolute madness to have done so, looking back. I was having the time of my life there and my Spanish was literally rocketing up, with truly lovely people, meals taken care of ... it was bliss. Except for the fact that I suffered from acute Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and being in that flat – or rather, the fact there was a shop below the flat – was setting it off to an unbearable degree. I had to go. After just four weeks in my new home, I transferred to another. While the atmosphere of the first flat had been jubilant and celebratory, the second flat was an emotional desert. Three Spaniards who didn’t even bother to talk to me never mind to each other made it so that the place was practically deserted. My Spanish, which had been coming along in leaps and bounds, stopped. Aprubtly. Dead in its tracks. And to be honest, it didn’t improve much after that in the entire year abroad. I think back now what it would have been like had I stayed in the first flat, and how so very fluent I could have been had I stayed with that wonderful group of guys who had made me feel so welcome.
I still stayed in touch with Diego a fair amount. We met up from time to time, although the fact that I was no longer living in the same flat as him meant of course that we didn’t see as much of each other in comparison to the last. We still met up for the odd meal here and there, and caught up, and we were still good friends with each other.
He invited me to stay the weekend with his family in his home town of Santa Cruz, near La Coruna on the north coast. Such an offer from a Spaniard really is considered to be an honour – the home is sacred to the Spanish and inviting people into the close family circle is not taken lightly. Even more so from a Galician, whose reputation for being reserved and closed is famed throughout Spain.
We had agreed that I would come on the Saturday by train to La Coruna, and Diego and his dad would pick me up from the station (as he had already travelled back there on the Friday). I was quite excited to be seeing Spain from the inside out, as it were. A chance to see a proper Spanish family! I didn’t really know what to expect.
As it turned out, Diego’s family were every bit as lovely as I’d hoped, even more so. His father and he picked me up from La Coruna station and we drove to the centre of La Coruna, where his mother and sister were having dinner in a kind of glass marquee in the square – in any other place it would have been in the open air, but in Galicia, famed for its rain, you can’t really eat outside unless you want to get very wet! His mother welcomed me with open arms. She was a lovely, bubbly lady, very cuddly and maternal and very, very Spanish. “I’m Concha”, she smiled, “and this is my daughter Marta”. His father and mother asked me about my life and my family at home, and I had a lovely lunch with them there. His sister Marta was also very talkative, she was only fifteen at the time. When I came to pay my share of the bill, Concha’s hand steadied mine – “Oh no, please, leave that to us” she said kindly.
Later that day, Diego’s dad drove us to the Tower of Hercules, a kind of historic lighthouse in Coruna. Concha and Marta I think went back home, but we three walked along the coast of Coruna, a salty, wet and grey but delightful city, and walked up to the top of the tower. Diego was always very kindly, and I remember us standing by an information board inside the tower, where I was trying to decipher the Galician version into Spanish, with his hand moving along the text to help me. Galician is the local language of Galicia, a sort of mixture between Spanish and Portuguese, and all Galicians are bilingual in Galician and Spanish. Diego was Galician through and through, and from what I remember spoke Galician with his father but Spanish with his mother, who was from Andalusia. He always spoke Spanish to me in what I realise now is a very distinct dialect particular to Coruna.
My memory of that weekend is pretty patchy after all these years, so I can’t remember exactly what we did after that. I do remember that we arrived back home at his apartment, which was lovely like all Spanish apartments, and a true home. It was warm and friendly, just like Diego’s family. Artwork adorned the walls, including some paintings Concha had done of Diego and Marta and some scenery. Photographs of Concha as a toddler in Andalucia, and of Diego and Marta at their grandparents’ in Andalusia were on the shelves. I remember seeing a photograph of Concha in her graduation robes, and she had been very, very pretty. Diego had inherited her good looks.
I remember Concha preparing for a big meal that evening, and she had invited some other English people round that the family knew, husband and wife Peter and Mary, although Mary it later transpired was Galician. I remember Concha bustling around getting the food ready, and chastising Diego for not doing anything, whilst he sat there a bit hacked off and embarrassed the way all teenagers do when they are told off by their mothers in company! Peter and Mary came round, both in the forties or so, and it was a relief to hear an English voice after attempting to speak so much Spanish! We had a good laugh in the living room talking about things English and languages in general – with Diego’s mum and dad joining in with gusto. Then we had dinner – a really delicious Galician fish dish. Or maybe that was the next day ... I can’t remember too well. Whatever it was it was delicious. I remember sitting round the table and a sort of Spanish nougat being passed around. At first I declined, but Diego insisted that I try it because it would be a shame not to try a great Spanish delicacy, and he physically shoved the nougat into my mouth and rammed my jaw shut, so I had no choice! As I said, Diego was a man of history and culture.
We were due to go out that night, as everybody does on a Saturday. “Diego, your friend is tired” said Concha to her son, seeing me yawning across the table – “maybe you should have an early night”. “Do you want to go?” said Diego. “It’s ok if you don’t, I’ll just tell them we can’t make it”. “Oh no, it’s fine” I reassured him. I didn’t want to spoil his evening and besides I was quite looking forward to experiencing his world.
Before then, we went to a bar to meet a friend of his, who turned up extremely late without telling Diego. Diego always took it in good humour though. I don’t think a lot of his friends treated him as well as he treated them, but he was never one to complain. At the gathering in Santiago a lot of his so-called friends had ignored him while he was there trying to talk to them. Perhaps I’m wrong. But this friend of his in Coruna ignored me for sure!
Then Diego took me to a famous castle on a small island connected by a bridge to the town where he lived. It was quite surreal really – only we were out at that time, when darkness had fallen and the town shone a burnished yellow from the streetlamps, while a fine rain blew with the gusts of wind across the beach. I remember walking with Diego along the pier-like bridge to the castle, and him looking pensively out to sea. He tended to do that. We walked round the castle and spent some time walking round the beach. I felt very lucky to be there and to have such an accommodating friend as Diego. He told me he rowed every weekend, and that’s why he came back to Santa Cruz every weekend (although most Spanish students do this). I remember him teaching me the words for “to row” and “sand”, which is “arena”, which also means the type of arena sports are held in. He drew an arena in the sand and told me of the Romans and what events they held in them. He was an interesting guy, Diego.
Then we went out on the town. I can’t really remember much of this – it’s all so long ago. But I do remember we met up with a few friends of his and went to a few bars in the centre of Coruna. I didn’t enjoy it much – I was tired and therefore feeling a bit grumpy. It was nice to see Coruna at night though – bustling with congregations of students who had the affinity to meet under the stars. We went to a club and I tried my hardest to engage but after a while I just gave up, my eyes were closing on me. “Can we go home?” I said to Diego. “Sure” he said, and motioned to his friends, who were girls, to give us a lift back, as one of them had their own car.
I remember driving back and one of the girls telling me she hoped to study in Bolivia, which interested me as I’ve always been interested in South America. I don’t even remember anything else about that journey, other than it was raining. I remember me and Diego arrived back at the door of his apartment block, and he was just about to put the key in the lock when he said “Are you tired?” “No” I answered, lying because I didn’t want to upset him. “Shall we go for a walk?” he said. “Sure” I responded, and we set out on a small walk round where he lived.
Santa Cruz, his village, was on the sea, so his house wasn’t far from the water. Rain was falling but being blown haphazardly by the wind, and it was quite a wild night. This was around 2 o’clock in the morning ... and Diego, ever pensive and thoughtful, led me on a small walk round near the coast. I remember walking through a park, and everything was silent for not a soul was about. He led the way, I followed him. We walked near the shoreline, on a rocky hill that jutted out into the sea, where the waves were crashing into the rocks below. Diego had a velvet black jacket that he wore and was very proud of, and he was wearing it now. He looked out to sea and picked up a few stones and threw them as far as he could out into the ocean. “I like a girl called Leti” he said. “I’m going pull out a rose from my jacket, present her with it and tell her I like her” he continued. “Oh”, I said, not knowing sufficient Spanish to respond properly.
I don’t remember much after that, only that we must’ve walked back after an age and gone back to bed. I had a pull-out bed next to his. I was worn-out by this point, but Diego was still quite awake. Lying in bed and trying to prop my eyes open, he asked me “What was your ex-girlfriend Laura, like?” I didn’t know enough Spanish to respond, so I just said “with a lot of fire and passion” ... I never even had had a girlfriend but I told him that so as not to lose face. With that I drifted off to sleep.
Diego’s dad had been due to take us on a walk the next morning, but we were both so exhausted that we overslept. I remember his Dad coming in and saying “It’s a bit late for a walk now eh!” before we got up. Then he drove us to a coastal fishing village where we ordered fresh Galician mussels ... something I wasn’t too keen on eating. They were gigantic, and Diego and his family ate them with gusto, but I declined. “All this food we’ve bought especially for you and you’re not eating it!” remarked his dad, half-joking, probably half serious. The Galicians are very proud of their fishing industry – it’s very prominent in Spain, since half of Spanish fish comes from Galicia. The coasts are all prime fishing spots in the wild waters of the Atlantic.
Then we went to a concert his mum was giving, because she played the mandolin. We went into a village hall and she came on with some other mandolin players. It was nice music and I enjoyed it. I remember sitting next to a family friend of theirs, who told me she had used to live in Barcelona. “You didn’t want to stay there?” I asked her. “I wanted to, but I had to come back to Galicia because of my family” she said, almost mournfully. I wondered if she would still rather be in the sun-drenched city rather than rain-drenched Galicia.
As soon as Diego’s mum had finished playing, we all left and went and had a drink in a nearby cafe. I remember Diego asked for a Cacaolat, which is a kind of cold chocolate milkshake, and very nice.
Then I don’t remember anything, except Concha taking my hands and saying it had been a pleasure having me stay with them and that I must come again soon. She was a lovely lady, Concha.
Then me and Diego were on the train back to Santiago. We passed a lot of the journey in silence, each with his own thoughts. I remember looking at him and thinking how kind he had been to me and how lovely his family were.
After that weekend, I saw Diego a few times more. I met up for dinner with him a couple of weeks before I was due to leave, and he gave me his address and email address. I never gave him mine, and I subsequently lost his details. He said he was going to move into a flat with Jose Ignacio the next year and we wished each other well.
I was never to see him again.
I had no way of contacting him once I got home to England. I had his phone number but gradually forgot the PIN and by the time I realised it was too late. I didn’t hear from any of my former flatmates, and I figured I had no way of finding them. I had no access to their numbers, and I didn’t know anything of their surnames or anything. It looked like they were consigned to the history books.
After a few years – three, to be precise, I decided I should get back in touch with Diego. He had been a good friend to me in Santiago and I was sad not to see him again. I had previously given up hope of ever finding him – I didn’t know his surname, address, or anything. But then I had a brainwave of emailing the company that owned the residence where I met him. I sent them an email asking if they knew of his number, and they sent one back saying they had rung his house and his sister remembered me and here was Diego’s mobile number!!
I was quite excited, getting back into contact with him after all these years. I even held out hope we could arrange a meeting. I excitedly messaged him and received a reply within the hour. He was surprised to hear from me, and asked how I was, and how I had got his number. He exchanged two texts with me before saying we would chat online when he had the chance.
I sent another couple of texts to him, but he didn’t reply. Eventually, he went online and sent me an email. A few, short, surprised but otherwise friendly lines. I sent a big long description of what I was up to, how my life was going and how he was etc. And my address should he need it. He sent another back saying we could chat on msn messenger when he was online. Again, just two emails.
So I chatted with him on messenger. I couldn’t contain my delight at having found him again, I was so pleased. He didn’t seem so pleased. He hadn’t been so forthcoming with his texts, or his emails. I didn’t sense the same feeling of excitement and gladness was reciprocated. It was as though me turning up out of the blue was a casual co-incidence, and not something that really bothered him too much. We chatted, and he said he’d look out for me if he came to England.
The next time he came online, I tried to start a conversation with him but he immediately went offline. I tried sending him some texts to see how he was, but with no reply. I tried again and again, but to no avail. No reply.
No matter, he’s probably busy, I thought. I tried again in a week. Then again in two. I tried emails, texts, everything. It was then I used a special program designed to show you who has blocked you on msn and it showed that he had blocked me.
Since then I’ve tried to contact him numerous times. Maybe too many times, but I was anxious to re-start that friendship I’d had with him those years ago. No reply. Not a sausage. I tried and tried and tried but to no avail. I must have sent him over twenty emails over the months, asking how he was and just wondering whether there was any reason why he wasn’t replying, and nothing ever came back. I tried calling his number – nothing.
After all this time, in an act of desperation, I tried to search for him on the internet. I knew I had his surname – Iglesias – so I figured I could somehow track him down. I did succeed in tracking his mum down, because I knew she was Concha Iglesias – it turned out she is a teacher in a high school in Galicia. I wrote her a letter, and enclosed a letter to Diego, and sent it off to the school. No reply.
I sent another letter to the school, all of this just explaining I wanted to get back into contact with Diego and still no reply.
Eventually, through facebook I managed to find his mum. I sent her an email basically saying what I’d said in the letters, and to my surprise, received a reply. Being the kindly lady she always was, she said she had told Diego about the letters I had sent, and wished me well. She didn’t shed any light onto as to why Diego wouldn’t contact me, she simply sent some kind words my way and said she hoped I was well. At first she said it was probably because he had been away in Europe, but then she avoided the subject altogether. She told me not to worry and that I was a nice person who she had enjoyed having in her house all those years ago. She sent me two messages, both lovely messages from the Concha I knew and liked.
I did find the guys I had been friends with from that flat, through facebook. All of them welcomed me back, so to speak, and told me what they were up to. Jose Ignacio, who had been closest to Diego, reacted the same way as Diego’s mum – and sent Diego a message saying I had been after him. Diego sent him a reply, but completely ignored the subject of me, and so Jose said he didn’t know what had happened ... and that was that.
I suppose I will never know what happened with Diego. More than anything, it makes me sad and disappointed. I had had a friend in him all those years ago, and from the way he has erased me from his life and ignored me it would seem he is a completely different person. I caught sight of a recent picture of him on msn just before he blocked me – and he had changed a bit. Instead of the long, floppy hair he had had, it was now shaved in a buzz cut. He had a tiny goatee, and wore a very stylish smart shirt in place of the velvet jacket. Maybe, just maybe, he discovered he was actually very good looking, and perhaps found that life was better if he used that to his advantage. I still don’t understand though. He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and seems now to have turned into one of the cruellest. You might say it was because I was trying to contact him so much, and maybe anybody would be freaked out by that. But he erased me out long before I sent him extensive emails and texts ... and only then I did it because I didn’t know if he was getting them, and because I didn’t want to lose contact with someone I had good times with.
More time has passed now.
I still think of Diego to this day. For me, the person I knew, the friendly and pensive and decent guy, who took me, a nervous and stammering foreigner, under his wing and invited me into the most intimate circles of his life, will remain shrouded in the depths of my memory. For all I know, that Diego may be gone forever and I will never see him again, but I can at least look back on the fond memories that I do have of him and smile, remembering the thoughtful, pensive and friendly guy who was to me a true friend.
Saturday, 22 January 2011
The King's Speech
Last night I went to see a film I’d been wanting to see for a long time – the much acclaimed The King’s Speech. It has got rave reviews recently in the press and so I went for myself to see if the fuss being made was justified.
The King’s Speech charts the struggle of Bertie, Duke of York (Colin Firth), who was to later become George VI – for those of you not clued up on British monarchs, he was the present queen’s father. He reigned from 1936 to 1952, and was thus monarch throughout the Second World War.
The film starts a little earlier than I expected, when the duke was still a duke and had yet to become a king – still, I hardly think “The Duke-cum-King’s Speech” would’ve sounded as good on posters. It starts off when Bertie is already married to Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother, played by Helena Bonham Carter) and is suffering from a terrible stammer, which proves crippling in his very public role of making speeches and generally being in the spotlight. To remedy the problem, his wife has taken him through all the professionals possible, before screening a bit of a maverick speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) as a last resort at his weather-beaten rooms in Harley Street.
I did wonder how the film would evolve – after all, there’s only so much therapy you can spin out for around two hours. Rather than focussing on the therapy itself, the film focuses on Bertie’s relationship with Logue, set amongst the heavy backdrop of events of the time. The film moves from Bertie as Duke of York, with his father George V still alive, through to George V’s death, through the short reign of Edward VIII, his elder brother, who then abdicates, and through the first few years of Bertie’s reign as George VI, up to the point where Britain declares war on Nazi Germany – which, at the end of the film, is where the big speech mentioned in the title occurs.
The film is in short excellent, and its acclaim is fully justified. It’s hard to judge who is the greater star of the show, for the three main characters of Bertie, Elizabeth and Logue are all played with such magnificence that each outshines the other, nay, they interlock. Even though Firth, Bonham Carter and Rush are all such famous actors, they all actually became the characters they portrayed. Firth’s portrayal of George VI was of a bad-tempered and irritable but well-meaning man who simply wants to be rid of his problem and get on with things. I found Firth’s voice particularly charming ... both he and Bonham Carter carried off with aplomb that very upper-class plum-in-the-mouth tone and manner. Bonham Carter really shone as Elizabeth ... the strong yet pleasant and snobbish and arrogant lady who, like her husband, has no qualms about pulling rank or having airs all too well suited to their station. Firth and Bonham Carter really conveyed that feeling of a couple of which he was reputed to be the shy and ill-tempered, and she the "iron fist in a velvet glove". The way they carried themselves was exquisite, polite yet haughty, dutiful yet imperious with those accents down to a Tee. Rush too, excelled as the gentle-mannered yet focussed speech therapist who on no uncertain terms was on a mission to cure his patient, royalty or not. The chemistry between Bertie and Logue and Bertie and Elizabeth was breathtaking, with Bertie’s relationship with each as intimate but as different as can be. It would not be difficult to see the Oscars being awarded to the three leads for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively.
The sets were lavish, as expected of a production with such royal subject matter, with great substitutes for the royal palaces. Everything about the film was just right – tone, pacing, dialogue, all the pauses in the right place. It was engaging without being explosive, and was entertaining without being riotous.
It was, predictably, rather stereotypically monarchist. Certain facts were emphasised or ignored according to the film’s agenda, which I suppose is understandable, and the film was designed to portray George VI and his wife in a wholly sympathetic light; the idea of a man with a huge burden of kingship thrust upon him, a burden made all the harder to bear through it being unexpected, his character and his stammer. His ill temper was not portrayed as part of his character but as a result of frustration. The idea of Elizabeth being the power behind the throne, the doting and supportive wife so completely in love with her husband – even the fact that he proposed to her twice before she said yes being explained as not through a lack of love for him, but because she too doubted whether she could hack the "burden" of royal life. In short, we are given the stock version of the characters. No Nazi appeasement mentioned on anyone's part. No racism. Haughtiness, yes, but to an amusing degree, rather than inciting dislike towards Bertie and Elizabeth. The creation really was of the Poor Little Rich Boy Just Trying to Come Good, which numerous references and obvious name-dropping to former monarchs, British monarchical history and traditions ... it was quite a walking advert for the British monarchy.
In a lot of ways it mirrors another film with a similar theme: The Madness of King George, for which Nigel Hawthorne was nominated for an Oscar. It follows much the same pattern – the king’s duty is a burdensome one, he has a dutiful and loving queen by his side, the king has a problem (in George III’s case he went mad rather than stammered), a controversial therapist is sought for ... at first the king resists, but over time builds a trusting relationship with his practitioner, just in time for the problem to be solved. In fact, the two films chronicling the woes of both George’s are so remarkably similar that I wonder if historical events and character have not been ever so slightly bended if not by Hollywood then by the ages to please audiences who like a Happy Ending. It’s all a little too convenient that both stories run parallel to each other.
The film is tipped to win Oscars, and rightly so, because the acting is amazing, but I often wonder if in part it isn’t helped along by the “royal effect”. The Madness of King George, Elizabeth, Mrs Brown, The Queen and now The King’s Speech have all pulled in their fair share of Academy Award nominations or wins – and each time for an actor or actress playing the part of a king or queen. Perhaps The King’s Speech is part of this pattern. Hollywood loves chartering royalty, and no more so than when we are allowed a glimpse into their notoriously private lives. Perhaps through these royal films we create for ourselves a reproduction of what we perceive their world to be like – a world of riches, of palaces, of riches, of privileges, the social injustice of which is tempered by the millstone of “duty” which allegedly hangs round the royal necks. Perhaps it is that craving to see the royals as humans yet dare not believe that they be so, that drives the British and Americans alike to see these films about private royal lives. With royal films there is that desire to see the trials and tribulations, the headaches and woes of crowned heads, to prove to us that no-one has it all, and that apparently even the most exalted of society rest uneasy. Perhaps with these films we are creating what we wish to see, rather than what was actually there. If you are looking for this kind of feel-good injection, a very traditional view of a monarch and his era, along with genuinely superb acting, then with The King’s Speech you can’t go wrong.
The King’s Speech charts the struggle of Bertie, Duke of York (Colin Firth), who was to later become George VI – for those of you not clued up on British monarchs, he was the present queen’s father. He reigned from 1936 to 1952, and was thus monarch throughout the Second World War.
The film starts a little earlier than I expected, when the duke was still a duke and had yet to become a king – still, I hardly think “The Duke-cum-King’s Speech” would’ve sounded as good on posters. It starts off when Bertie is already married to Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother, played by Helena Bonham Carter) and is suffering from a terrible stammer, which proves crippling in his very public role of making speeches and generally being in the spotlight. To remedy the problem, his wife has taken him through all the professionals possible, before screening a bit of a maverick speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) as a last resort at his weather-beaten rooms in Harley Street.
I did wonder how the film would evolve – after all, there’s only so much therapy you can spin out for around two hours. Rather than focussing on the therapy itself, the film focuses on Bertie’s relationship with Logue, set amongst the heavy backdrop of events of the time. The film moves from Bertie as Duke of York, with his father George V still alive, through to George V’s death, through the short reign of Edward VIII, his elder brother, who then abdicates, and through the first few years of Bertie’s reign as George VI, up to the point where Britain declares war on Nazi Germany – which, at the end of the film, is where the big speech mentioned in the title occurs.
The film is in short excellent, and its acclaim is fully justified. It’s hard to judge who is the greater star of the show, for the three main characters of Bertie, Elizabeth and Logue are all played with such magnificence that each outshines the other, nay, they interlock. Even though Firth, Bonham Carter and Rush are all such famous actors, they all actually became the characters they portrayed. Firth’s portrayal of George VI was of a bad-tempered and irritable but well-meaning man who simply wants to be rid of his problem and get on with things. I found Firth’s voice particularly charming ... both he and Bonham Carter carried off with aplomb that very upper-class plum-in-the-mouth tone and manner. Bonham Carter really shone as Elizabeth ... the strong yet pleasant and snobbish and arrogant lady who, like her husband, has no qualms about pulling rank or having airs all too well suited to their station. Firth and Bonham Carter really conveyed that feeling of a couple of which he was reputed to be the shy and ill-tempered, and she the "iron fist in a velvet glove". The way they carried themselves was exquisite, polite yet haughty, dutiful yet imperious with those accents down to a Tee. Rush too, excelled as the gentle-mannered yet focussed speech therapist who on no uncertain terms was on a mission to cure his patient, royalty or not. The chemistry between Bertie and Logue and Bertie and Elizabeth was breathtaking, with Bertie’s relationship with each as intimate but as different as can be. It would not be difficult to see the Oscars being awarded to the three leads for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively.
The sets were lavish, as expected of a production with such royal subject matter, with great substitutes for the royal palaces. Everything about the film was just right – tone, pacing, dialogue, all the pauses in the right place. It was engaging without being explosive, and was entertaining without being riotous.
It was, predictably, rather stereotypically monarchist. Certain facts were emphasised or ignored according to the film’s agenda, which I suppose is understandable, and the film was designed to portray George VI and his wife in a wholly sympathetic light; the idea of a man with a huge burden of kingship thrust upon him, a burden made all the harder to bear through it being unexpected, his character and his stammer. His ill temper was not portrayed as part of his character but as a result of frustration. The idea of Elizabeth being the power behind the throne, the doting and supportive wife so completely in love with her husband – even the fact that he proposed to her twice before she said yes being explained as not through a lack of love for him, but because she too doubted whether she could hack the "burden" of royal life. In short, we are given the stock version of the characters. No Nazi appeasement mentioned on anyone's part. No racism. Haughtiness, yes, but to an amusing degree, rather than inciting dislike towards Bertie and Elizabeth. The creation really was of the Poor Little Rich Boy Just Trying to Come Good, which numerous references and obvious name-dropping to former monarchs, British monarchical history and traditions ... it was quite a walking advert for the British monarchy.
In a lot of ways it mirrors another film with a similar theme: The Madness of King George, for which Nigel Hawthorne was nominated for an Oscar. It follows much the same pattern – the king’s duty is a burdensome one, he has a dutiful and loving queen by his side, the king has a problem (in George III’s case he went mad rather than stammered), a controversial therapist is sought for ... at first the king resists, but over time builds a trusting relationship with his practitioner, just in time for the problem to be solved. In fact, the two films chronicling the woes of both George’s are so remarkably similar that I wonder if historical events and character have not been ever so slightly bended if not by Hollywood then by the ages to please audiences who like a Happy Ending. It’s all a little too convenient that both stories run parallel to each other.
The film is tipped to win Oscars, and rightly so, because the acting is amazing, but I often wonder if in part it isn’t helped along by the “royal effect”. The Madness of King George, Elizabeth, Mrs Brown, The Queen and now The King’s Speech have all pulled in their fair share of Academy Award nominations or wins – and each time for an actor or actress playing the part of a king or queen. Perhaps The King’s Speech is part of this pattern. Hollywood loves chartering royalty, and no more so than when we are allowed a glimpse into their notoriously private lives. Perhaps through these royal films we create for ourselves a reproduction of what we perceive their world to be like – a world of riches, of palaces, of riches, of privileges, the social injustice of which is tempered by the millstone of “duty” which allegedly hangs round the royal necks. Perhaps it is that craving to see the royals as humans yet dare not believe that they be so, that drives the British and Americans alike to see these films about private royal lives. With royal films there is that desire to see the trials and tribulations, the headaches and woes of crowned heads, to prove to us that no-one has it all, and that apparently even the most exalted of society rest uneasy. Perhaps with these films we are creating what we wish to see, rather than what was actually there. If you are looking for this kind of feel-good injection, a very traditional view of a monarch and his era, along with genuinely superb acting, then with The King’s Speech you can’t go wrong.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Lights - Camera - ACTION!
Yesterday I was involved in something a bit out of the ordinary: I was an extra for a day.
I’ve always loved drama, and currently take acting classes and am avidly involved with my local theatre group. So when a mail came from the theatre group forwarded from a local production company asking if anybody wanted to be an – unpaid – extra, naturally I jumped at the chance!
I responded and was told by the production company that I would be needed on the Sunday (yesterday) and that I was to play a gang member. This made me feel a bit out of place, to be quite honest. Anybody who knows me knows that I’ve got the physique and demeanour of a gang member as much as Charles Hawtrey of Carry On fame! But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity and figured They Must Know What They’re Doing, so I was all set.
They rang me a few days before to confirm everything, and told me to turn up at 10:00am on Sunday for shooting in ... Trafford Park. I looked on the map and groaned, because Trafford Park is literally the other side of Manchester in the back of beyond from where I live. And I had to get there by public transport. And it was a Sunday. Fun.
I looked and looked at public transport options as much as I could, but it was impossible. Firstly, I could only find buses going to the Trafford Centre. Secondly, I couldn’t get those buses because they went from Stockport, and the buses TO Stockport didn’t depart until those buses had left. So I decided to fork out on a taxi, having got a reasonable estimate of £30 from a local company. I booked it for 8.30 on Sunday, and nervously went to bed.
The next morning I was all set – I got up early enough to have a shower and put on my garb (hoodie and jogging bottoms and trainers, as requested) and the taxi came early. I wasn’t sure whether they’d provide food on site so I stuck a piece of toast into a folder I had with the recording schedule I’d been instructed to bring.
After a nice little taxi ride, I was at the location at 9:00am. One hour ahead of schedule.
I presumed I’d only have an hour to wait ... but no. This, darlings, is the world of acting. There’s ENDLESS waiting around. There was a schedule, but they didn’t keep to it. The shooting sequence is so varied and changeable due to things like weather, some shots being shorter than others, changing the order around for what reason I don’t know, that the schedule basically goes to pot.
The actual thing being filmed was a documentary for a robbery of an airport warehouse. My scene, which I was to be involved in, was the robbers jumping out of a van and terrorising the workers, before themselves being unexpectedly ambushed by the police. I couldn’t really imagine what it’d be like as I’d never done this sort of thing before, so I was quite excited.
The actual location itself was a warehouse allright, and a grim one at that. We actors and extras waited in another equally grim warehouse round the corner. They looked deserted – they were completely empty, as was the business park, being a Sunday. The whole place felt rather sinister – disused warehouses in a grubby business park in the middle of nowhere, on a grey and relentlessly raining day. To say I felt stranded was the least of it, I felt positively marooned where we were, which rather effectively added to the feel that we were being taken hostage or in prison or something.
In the holding area (the second disused warehouse) there was absolutely nothing to do. The vast warehouse lay empty with bits of rubbish strewn here and there throughout the hall, with a small toilet, small kitchen and small empty office near the entrance. Working here full-time must have been depressing. There wasn’t even much to sit on, save for a few plastic boxes brought by the crew that held rations of chocolate and crisps. I suppose this was a sign that it was a smaller film company – a big one would’ve had lovely catering trucks and trailers, but we were a long way from Hollywood! I went into “make up”, which was basically two girls sat bundled-up and cross-legged on the floor of the small office of the abandoned warehouse. Very unglamorous. One of them, the make-up artist, had a kind of air pump machine that sprayed make up onto my face – about twenty seconds and it was done. It was quite uncomfortable because the jet of air went up my nose. It had looked very glamorous on the filming schedule we'd been sent. "Cast straight to make-up and wardrobe", it had said. Well there was very little make-up and certainly no wardrobe. Long way from Hollywood! No comfy trailers or dressing rooms here.
So myself and the other extras talked and talked until we had run out of things to talk about. Ten o’clock came and went, and we all got more and more bored. Thank goodness, though, that someone in the production team must’ve clapped eyes on me and instantly thought I’d make an awful robber. I had been getting worried about trying to act all macho and aggressive – in that I don’t think I would have been able to. The producer came up to me and looked me up and down and said “You’re going to be a worker at the warehouse that gets robbed, OK?” To which I nodded a grateful “yes”. “Do you have anything smarter on you?” she said, sizing me up again. “Er ... no” I replied (how was I supposed to know they’d change my role at the last minute! What was I supposed to do, bring some spare clothes along just in case? Lol). “Oh never mind” she said breezily. “We can work around that”. And I was promptly handed a fluorescent sort of waistcoat to go over my hoodie. To say I was relieved doesn’t exactly cut it. I noticed somebody else who had been destined to be a worker – a much, much more alpha male kinda guy – had been quietly swapped over to the gang of robbers. All of whom looked the part – built, aggressive, and ready to whack the nearest civilian on the head with a prop. Acting in role, of course! They had been given balaclavas to wear too, which made them look even more menacing, but I don’t think a balaclava would have helped me be a robber!
So we waited and waited some more in the scary warehouse. I spent the time imagining what it had been in a past life, and who owned it, and more significantly who on earth would pay good money just to be there, and perhaps even more significantly, what I was doing there, unpaid, with no reliable planned way of getting home. I resigned myself to just living for each hour and trying not to think about it.
I got talking to the other “workers” and it transpired some people had turned up at 7.30am ... and still not done anything. They’d been waiting four hours by that point. Other people, the actors and police extras and the robbers were coming and going, but we were just sat there, like lemons. And still waiting. They provided lunch for us, which were basically just ready meals hastily microwaved in the small warehouse kitchen. It wasn’t delicious. It was funny how they’d brought EVERYTHING with them to that abandoned place. Cutlery, microwaves, mugs, boxes or crisps, everything.
Then the producer came in. “Right, I need a worker” she said. She scanned round us until her eyes rested on me. “You’ll do!” she said, “come with me”. I followed her round the corner, through the derelict business park to the other warehouse, where filming was taking place. “You’ve got too nice a face to be a criminal, James” she said after asking me to remind her of my name, which I think was a lovely way to put that she thought me too shy and retiring to play an aggressive criminal. “Er yes, I had thought that” I said. “Are you the producer?” “Yes”, she replied “For my sins!”. I wondered if she really didn’t quite like her job or whether she was just saying that, the way a lot of people do when they’re perfectly happy but find solace in complaining with other people, as all the British do.
We arrived at the “set”, which was really just a warehouse with some very bright studio lights on the top of tall poles, and a sort of railway track opposite the large freight entrance on which the camera rolled (literally). A man who looked for all the world like Peter Jones off Dragons’ Den was shouting instructions, and I guessed he was the Director. He looked every inch the director, too, and by gum he knew exactly what he was doing, which shot went where, what everybody should be doing. He seemed a nice man, but very focussed and driven and intelligent.
“Right”, the producer said. She was a very well groomed and small lady, in around her late twenties, bundled up in stylish wools against the cold and the rain, and terribly polite ad well-spoken. “What we want you to do is go inside that warehouse, and when the van pulls up, you work the pulley that brings the door up. It’s really easy” she said, taking me inside the warehouse. “Look, you’d have to be a wimp to not be able to open that” she continued, as she opened the door a few centimetres. “OK!” Shouted the director. “When you hear a bang on the door, open the shutter!” So I took up position. I didn’t think I was quite the person for either the robbery or this macho thing either. I am skinny and a bit of a weakling and the last person to be relied upon to open a heavy chain-pulley operated metal shutter. But I waited anyhow, poised for action. After about two minutes, a loud bang resounded through the shutter. I heaved as hard as I could, and the producer had been right. It was easy to do. For a few centimetres. To do the whole thing though – and FAST, which the producer had quipped how they’d wanted it – was no mean feat. I did my best and huffed and puffed my way pulling the chain down and down so that the shutter slowly began to raise. I dallied a bit in the middle, at which point I wasn’t sure whether they were still filming or not because the director walked right across the shot, but I carried on anyhow. That chain nearly rubbed the skin of my hands, they felt extremely raw when I’d finished.
“OK that’s great.” Said the director. A small lorry was now pulled up, its backside facing the open door. “Now for the next shot, the driver will wave you goodbye, and you’ll give him a wave, and then you’ll let the shutter down. It’ll come down a lot faster than it went up. OK?” I nodded. “OK cool. Right then ...” I poised into position again. “Three, two one – ACTION!” I jumped, as I wasn’t really expecting it. It was the first time I’d been in front of a camera and someone had said that magic word!” I waved to the van driver, and he waved to me. The van began to pull off and I pulled the OTHER chain down as hard as I could. It seemed as though the harder I pulled, the slower the shutter came down. Again, they wanted it fast. This wasn’t easy – the shutter kept on tumbling down at intervals of its own momentum, which made the chain go insane, like a jumping snake, so it was hard to do it continuously. But I did it anyhow, and they said Thankyou, so I presumed that either what I’d done was OK, or that they were fed up and were going to cut it out of the whole thing.
Then it was back to waiting again. And waiting. And waiting. Conversation ran dry and we were all bored to tears. Some of the tougher guys had started a football match in the waiting room warehouse, and were kicking the ball around with all their might. I have to say I was impressed with their skills as footballers – they were doing all sorts of moves and tricks with the ball, which I wasn’t sure whether it was the norm for football games, since I don’t know as I don’t play football or watch it – or whether they were just showing off. I think they were just showing off. The moves got fancier and fancier and for a while the only sound that could be heard was polite chatter amongst those not playing and the slamming thud of the ball bouncing against the breeze block, grey walls of the warehouse.
After what seemed an age, the producer came in and said she wanted everyone on set. At last, the action was to begin! It was by now gone 4 o’clock. I’d felt like going home ages ago, and it showed signs of getting dark, but I wasn’t going to back out now. This is what I’d been waiting for!
We all went on set. It was a similar, abanonded warehouse, this time with the shutter opened and a van reversed into the warehouse itself ready to exit through the shutters. For this, my scene, were required the robbers and the workers. The scenario was that the workers, in their fluorescent jackets, were to be suddenly descended upon by the balaclava wearing robbers, all shouting and brandishing weapons, and thrown to the ground, while they found and started to load the gold bullion they were after into the back of their van.
We did a short rehearsal. I was a worker, along with the other four workers stationed in different places of the warehouse, going about his daily business when the robbers attacked. The director motioned to the robbers. “You, take this office worker here. You, take this one. Herd them over there. You – go after the bullion. All OK? Let's go.” As a short rehearsal, the men playing the robbers jumped out, clad in black with balaclavas, shouting and running towards us. It was quite scary and very realistic. They came up to us and stopped.“OK” said the director. “We’ll do that shot. Then we’ll stop, and we’ll pick up on the next shot where the police come in and in turn ambush the robbers. Get ready everyone...”
This was quite nerve-wracking. I got into position. I was stationed next to another guy playing a worker, none of us not knowing really what to expect. The three other works were placed elsewhere – two near the van, another not far away. The entire warehouse was loaded with islands of stacked cardboard boxes. The cameras were all inside the warehouse now, with the rest of the crew behind it like a hushed audience.
“OK, get ready!” shouted the director. My heart was racing. “Camera speed 300” Shouted the cameraman. “OK great” said the director. “Three, two, one ... and .... ACTION!”
Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. The van doors burst open, and the robbers swarmed out. We workers could not do anything but stare in a stupefied silence as their aggressive black figures lunged themselves at us, shouting and swearing and brandishing weapons. “GET THE FUCK DOWN THERE”, they yelled, and grabbed each of us roughly and threw us to the ground. The place was chaos.“KEEP YOUR FUCKING HEAD DOWN OR WE’LL BREAK YOUR FUCKING NECK! GET DOWN! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!” I was thrown roughly to the floor, into a heap with two other workers, where I kept my head as body as close to ground as possible. “YOU FUCKING LOOK UP I’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS OUT!” “ GET THE FUCK DOWN, DOWN!”. It didn’t feel like acting at that point. It felt totally and completely real, and just as frightening. I was no longer James. I was a warehouse worker being taken hostage. My head was against the cold and wet and muddy cement floor, and someone was piled on top of me. I didn’t know what was happening. I could only see the grey of the floor and the wood of some crates, and all I could hear was the yelling and the shouting and the swearing of the robbers. The commotion was raging. Then I heard more shouting, more swearing. "FUCKING GET DOWN! DON'T MOVE! FUCKING GET DOWN I TELL YA!" "NOBODY MOVE! GET DOWN!" It was as though a battle was raging. The hand that had been pushing me roughly to the ground was lifted, and I peeked up. There was still shouting, but the robbers were no longer terrorising us. They were lying on the floor, helpless. Policemen, who had appeared out of nowhere, stood pointing weapons at them. The robbers were at the mercy of the police who were now threatening them with machine guns. Still the havoc. Shouting and swearing ran amock, from police and robbers alike. The police had them cornered.
“And CUT!” shouted the director. “Fantastic!! That’s absolutely brilliant!” he said, with a big grin on his face. Everyone stood up straight, and the warehouse was civilised once more. Everyone was a different person to the one they had been a few minutes ago. The director had been extremely clever. He had told the robbers that they would cut when they had taken the workers hostage, and that they would film the police ambush separately. But what he had actually done was keep rolling and the police had come in on the same shot, taking the actors playing the robbers completely by surprise. The actors, like their robber characters, were completely unaware the police were to ambush them, and the clever director had got their looks of surprise all on film. It must have worked a treat.
“Now I want different shots”, said the director. We did around four more takes, not of the robbers jumping out of the van, but of them ambushing us, the workers, and throwing them roughly to the floor. I had been nervous at the start, but all that had quickly vanished, and I was now thoroughly enjoying myself. It was exciting being there, in a realistic location, being a part of the action. I completely forgot the cameras and the crew were on the other side of the room, I was so absorbed by what was going on. It was totally realistic, from the moment the director yelled ACTION! Perhaps a little too realistic at one point. During one take, as I was being pushed to the ground, I raised my head. I’d been asked to do this by one of the robbers, because then it gave them something to shout at us about. A robber pushed down on the back of my head hard, and slammed my nose against the concrete ground. I felt a crunch, and then a shooting pain, but carried on with the rest of the scene, where a police officer then drags us to safety. My eyes began to water and my nose was hurting as though someone had smashed it to pieces with a hammer, which for all I knew at the time wasn’t far off the mark. “And CUT!” Yelled the director. “Are you allright”? He said to me, my nose and forehead all muddy from the floor. “Erm, I think so” I said. “One of the robbers pushed my head down too hard and it struck the floor – is it bleeding?” “Oh dear, you’d better come and have a sit down” said the director kindly. “Don’t worry, it’s not bleeding – are you feeling ok?” “Yes, I’m fine, I’m sure it’ll stop hurting in a minute. I don’t think it’s broken or anything like that”, I said. I went to sit down behind the cameras, where the producer and members of the crew started fussing around me in a rather pleasant way. However, I’m pretty sure they were more concerned about getting sued for accidental injury than anything! “You poor thing!” Said the producer. “Are you ok?” “Yeah I’m fine, it’s starting to hurt less now” I said, but she asked me if I was allright another five times and scanned my face to check I really was ok and not going to faint on the spot or anything.
After a few minutes the pain subsided, and I noticed they were doing a scene without me. “Can I go back and be in the scene?” I asked the producer. “Sure” she said, and away I went into position again. The robber who had done it was also very apologetic – it was so strange seeing someone in then out of character in such a short space of time! Far from being an aggressive, bloodthirsty gang member, he was a really nice guy. “Don’t worry about it” I assured him “It was an accident and it doesn’t hurt now!”.
We did a few more scenes of the robbers being un-masked, which the director joked was very “Scooby-Doo”, and of the robbers being literally dragged kicking and screaming by the police, and then it was over, and they only had one more scene to shoot which didn’t involve us. “You guys are free to go now”, the director smiled at us – “thankyou for your time”. “Thankyou for yours,” I said, and shook his hand. I took off my fluorescent jacket, and with the other workers, stepped out of the brightly stuido-lit warehouse into the black and rainy outside. My filming adventure was over.
I’ve always loved drama, and currently take acting classes and am avidly involved with my local theatre group. So when a mail came from the theatre group forwarded from a local production company asking if anybody wanted to be an – unpaid – extra, naturally I jumped at the chance!
I responded and was told by the production company that I would be needed on the Sunday (yesterday) and that I was to play a gang member. This made me feel a bit out of place, to be quite honest. Anybody who knows me knows that I’ve got the physique and demeanour of a gang member as much as Charles Hawtrey of Carry On fame! But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity and figured They Must Know What They’re Doing, so I was all set.
They rang me a few days before to confirm everything, and told me to turn up at 10:00am on Sunday for shooting in ... Trafford Park. I looked on the map and groaned, because Trafford Park is literally the other side of Manchester in the back of beyond from where I live. And I had to get there by public transport. And it was a Sunday. Fun.
I looked and looked at public transport options as much as I could, but it was impossible. Firstly, I could only find buses going to the Trafford Centre. Secondly, I couldn’t get those buses because they went from Stockport, and the buses TO Stockport didn’t depart until those buses had left. So I decided to fork out on a taxi, having got a reasonable estimate of £30 from a local company. I booked it for 8.30 on Sunday, and nervously went to bed.
The next morning I was all set – I got up early enough to have a shower and put on my garb (hoodie and jogging bottoms and trainers, as requested) and the taxi came early. I wasn’t sure whether they’d provide food on site so I stuck a piece of toast into a folder I had with the recording schedule I’d been instructed to bring.
After a nice little taxi ride, I was at the location at 9:00am. One hour ahead of schedule.
I presumed I’d only have an hour to wait ... but no. This, darlings, is the world of acting. There’s ENDLESS waiting around. There was a schedule, but they didn’t keep to it. The shooting sequence is so varied and changeable due to things like weather, some shots being shorter than others, changing the order around for what reason I don’t know, that the schedule basically goes to pot.
The actual thing being filmed was a documentary for a robbery of an airport warehouse. My scene, which I was to be involved in, was the robbers jumping out of a van and terrorising the workers, before themselves being unexpectedly ambushed by the police. I couldn’t really imagine what it’d be like as I’d never done this sort of thing before, so I was quite excited.
The actual location itself was a warehouse allright, and a grim one at that. We actors and extras waited in another equally grim warehouse round the corner. They looked deserted – they were completely empty, as was the business park, being a Sunday. The whole place felt rather sinister – disused warehouses in a grubby business park in the middle of nowhere, on a grey and relentlessly raining day. To say I felt stranded was the least of it, I felt positively marooned where we were, which rather effectively added to the feel that we were being taken hostage or in prison or something.
In the holding area (the second disused warehouse) there was absolutely nothing to do. The vast warehouse lay empty with bits of rubbish strewn here and there throughout the hall, with a small toilet, small kitchen and small empty office near the entrance. Working here full-time must have been depressing. There wasn’t even much to sit on, save for a few plastic boxes brought by the crew that held rations of chocolate and crisps. I suppose this was a sign that it was a smaller film company – a big one would’ve had lovely catering trucks and trailers, but we were a long way from Hollywood! I went into “make up”, which was basically two girls sat bundled-up and cross-legged on the floor of the small office of the abandoned warehouse. Very unglamorous. One of them, the make-up artist, had a kind of air pump machine that sprayed make up onto my face – about twenty seconds and it was done. It was quite uncomfortable because the jet of air went up my nose. It had looked very glamorous on the filming schedule we'd been sent. "Cast straight to make-up and wardrobe", it had said. Well there was very little make-up and certainly no wardrobe. Long way from Hollywood! No comfy trailers or dressing rooms here.
So myself and the other extras talked and talked until we had run out of things to talk about. Ten o’clock came and went, and we all got more and more bored. Thank goodness, though, that someone in the production team must’ve clapped eyes on me and instantly thought I’d make an awful robber. I had been getting worried about trying to act all macho and aggressive – in that I don’t think I would have been able to. The producer came up to me and looked me up and down and said “You’re going to be a worker at the warehouse that gets robbed, OK?” To which I nodded a grateful “yes”. “Do you have anything smarter on you?” she said, sizing me up again. “Er ... no” I replied (how was I supposed to know they’d change my role at the last minute! What was I supposed to do, bring some spare clothes along just in case? Lol). “Oh never mind” she said breezily. “We can work around that”. And I was promptly handed a fluorescent sort of waistcoat to go over my hoodie. To say I was relieved doesn’t exactly cut it. I noticed somebody else who had been destined to be a worker – a much, much more alpha male kinda guy – had been quietly swapped over to the gang of robbers. All of whom looked the part – built, aggressive, and ready to whack the nearest civilian on the head with a prop. Acting in role, of course! They had been given balaclavas to wear too, which made them look even more menacing, but I don’t think a balaclava would have helped me be a robber!
So we waited and waited some more in the scary warehouse. I spent the time imagining what it had been in a past life, and who owned it, and more significantly who on earth would pay good money just to be there, and perhaps even more significantly, what I was doing there, unpaid, with no reliable planned way of getting home. I resigned myself to just living for each hour and trying not to think about it.
I got talking to the other “workers” and it transpired some people had turned up at 7.30am ... and still not done anything. They’d been waiting four hours by that point. Other people, the actors and police extras and the robbers were coming and going, but we were just sat there, like lemons. And still waiting. They provided lunch for us, which were basically just ready meals hastily microwaved in the small warehouse kitchen. It wasn’t delicious. It was funny how they’d brought EVERYTHING with them to that abandoned place. Cutlery, microwaves, mugs, boxes or crisps, everything.
Then the producer came in. “Right, I need a worker” she said. She scanned round us until her eyes rested on me. “You’ll do!” she said, “come with me”. I followed her round the corner, through the derelict business park to the other warehouse, where filming was taking place. “You’ve got too nice a face to be a criminal, James” she said after asking me to remind her of my name, which I think was a lovely way to put that she thought me too shy and retiring to play an aggressive criminal. “Er yes, I had thought that” I said. “Are you the producer?” “Yes”, she replied “For my sins!”. I wondered if she really didn’t quite like her job or whether she was just saying that, the way a lot of people do when they’re perfectly happy but find solace in complaining with other people, as all the British do.
We arrived at the “set”, which was really just a warehouse with some very bright studio lights on the top of tall poles, and a sort of railway track opposite the large freight entrance on which the camera rolled (literally). A man who looked for all the world like Peter Jones off Dragons’ Den was shouting instructions, and I guessed he was the Director. He looked every inch the director, too, and by gum he knew exactly what he was doing, which shot went where, what everybody should be doing. He seemed a nice man, but very focussed and driven and intelligent.
“Right”, the producer said. She was a very well groomed and small lady, in around her late twenties, bundled up in stylish wools against the cold and the rain, and terribly polite ad well-spoken. “What we want you to do is go inside that warehouse, and when the van pulls up, you work the pulley that brings the door up. It’s really easy” she said, taking me inside the warehouse. “Look, you’d have to be a wimp to not be able to open that” she continued, as she opened the door a few centimetres. “OK!” Shouted the director. “When you hear a bang on the door, open the shutter!” So I took up position. I didn’t think I was quite the person for either the robbery or this macho thing either. I am skinny and a bit of a weakling and the last person to be relied upon to open a heavy chain-pulley operated metal shutter. But I waited anyhow, poised for action. After about two minutes, a loud bang resounded through the shutter. I heaved as hard as I could, and the producer had been right. It was easy to do. For a few centimetres. To do the whole thing though – and FAST, which the producer had quipped how they’d wanted it – was no mean feat. I did my best and huffed and puffed my way pulling the chain down and down so that the shutter slowly began to raise. I dallied a bit in the middle, at which point I wasn’t sure whether they were still filming or not because the director walked right across the shot, but I carried on anyhow. That chain nearly rubbed the skin of my hands, they felt extremely raw when I’d finished.
“OK that’s great.” Said the director. A small lorry was now pulled up, its backside facing the open door. “Now for the next shot, the driver will wave you goodbye, and you’ll give him a wave, and then you’ll let the shutter down. It’ll come down a lot faster than it went up. OK?” I nodded. “OK cool. Right then ...” I poised into position again. “Three, two one – ACTION!” I jumped, as I wasn’t really expecting it. It was the first time I’d been in front of a camera and someone had said that magic word!” I waved to the van driver, and he waved to me. The van began to pull off and I pulled the OTHER chain down as hard as I could. It seemed as though the harder I pulled, the slower the shutter came down. Again, they wanted it fast. This wasn’t easy – the shutter kept on tumbling down at intervals of its own momentum, which made the chain go insane, like a jumping snake, so it was hard to do it continuously. But I did it anyhow, and they said Thankyou, so I presumed that either what I’d done was OK, or that they were fed up and were going to cut it out of the whole thing.
Then it was back to waiting again. And waiting. And waiting. Conversation ran dry and we were all bored to tears. Some of the tougher guys had started a football match in the waiting room warehouse, and were kicking the ball around with all their might. I have to say I was impressed with their skills as footballers – they were doing all sorts of moves and tricks with the ball, which I wasn’t sure whether it was the norm for football games, since I don’t know as I don’t play football or watch it – or whether they were just showing off. I think they were just showing off. The moves got fancier and fancier and for a while the only sound that could be heard was polite chatter amongst those not playing and the slamming thud of the ball bouncing against the breeze block, grey walls of the warehouse.
After what seemed an age, the producer came in and said she wanted everyone on set. At last, the action was to begin! It was by now gone 4 o’clock. I’d felt like going home ages ago, and it showed signs of getting dark, but I wasn’t going to back out now. This is what I’d been waiting for!
We all went on set. It was a similar, abanonded warehouse, this time with the shutter opened and a van reversed into the warehouse itself ready to exit through the shutters. For this, my scene, were required the robbers and the workers. The scenario was that the workers, in their fluorescent jackets, were to be suddenly descended upon by the balaclava wearing robbers, all shouting and brandishing weapons, and thrown to the ground, while they found and started to load the gold bullion they were after into the back of their van.
We did a short rehearsal. I was a worker, along with the other four workers stationed in different places of the warehouse, going about his daily business when the robbers attacked. The director motioned to the robbers. “You, take this office worker here. You, take this one. Herd them over there. You – go after the bullion. All OK? Let's go.” As a short rehearsal, the men playing the robbers jumped out, clad in black with balaclavas, shouting and running towards us. It was quite scary and very realistic. They came up to us and stopped.“OK” said the director. “We’ll do that shot. Then we’ll stop, and we’ll pick up on the next shot where the police come in and in turn ambush the robbers. Get ready everyone...”
This was quite nerve-wracking. I got into position. I was stationed next to another guy playing a worker, none of us not knowing really what to expect. The three other works were placed elsewhere – two near the van, another not far away. The entire warehouse was loaded with islands of stacked cardboard boxes. The cameras were all inside the warehouse now, with the rest of the crew behind it like a hushed audience.
“OK, get ready!” shouted the director. My heart was racing. “Camera speed 300” Shouted the cameraman. “OK great” said the director. “Three, two, one ... and .... ACTION!”
Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. The van doors burst open, and the robbers swarmed out. We workers could not do anything but stare in a stupefied silence as their aggressive black figures lunged themselves at us, shouting and swearing and brandishing weapons. “GET THE FUCK DOWN THERE”, they yelled, and grabbed each of us roughly and threw us to the ground. The place was chaos.“KEEP YOUR FUCKING HEAD DOWN OR WE’LL BREAK YOUR FUCKING NECK! GET DOWN! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!” I was thrown roughly to the floor, into a heap with two other workers, where I kept my head as body as close to ground as possible. “YOU FUCKING LOOK UP I’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS OUT!” “ GET THE FUCK DOWN, DOWN!”. It didn’t feel like acting at that point. It felt totally and completely real, and just as frightening. I was no longer James. I was a warehouse worker being taken hostage. My head was against the cold and wet and muddy cement floor, and someone was piled on top of me. I didn’t know what was happening. I could only see the grey of the floor and the wood of some crates, and all I could hear was the yelling and the shouting and the swearing of the robbers. The commotion was raging. Then I heard more shouting, more swearing. "FUCKING GET DOWN! DON'T MOVE! FUCKING GET DOWN I TELL YA!" "NOBODY MOVE! GET DOWN!" It was as though a battle was raging. The hand that had been pushing me roughly to the ground was lifted, and I peeked up. There was still shouting, but the robbers were no longer terrorising us. They were lying on the floor, helpless. Policemen, who had appeared out of nowhere, stood pointing weapons at them. The robbers were at the mercy of the police who were now threatening them with machine guns. Still the havoc. Shouting and swearing ran amock, from police and robbers alike. The police had them cornered.
“And CUT!” shouted the director. “Fantastic!! That’s absolutely brilliant!” he said, with a big grin on his face. Everyone stood up straight, and the warehouse was civilised once more. Everyone was a different person to the one they had been a few minutes ago. The director had been extremely clever. He had told the robbers that they would cut when they had taken the workers hostage, and that they would film the police ambush separately. But what he had actually done was keep rolling and the police had come in on the same shot, taking the actors playing the robbers completely by surprise. The actors, like their robber characters, were completely unaware the police were to ambush them, and the clever director had got their looks of surprise all on film. It must have worked a treat.
“Now I want different shots”, said the director. We did around four more takes, not of the robbers jumping out of the van, but of them ambushing us, the workers, and throwing them roughly to the floor. I had been nervous at the start, but all that had quickly vanished, and I was now thoroughly enjoying myself. It was exciting being there, in a realistic location, being a part of the action. I completely forgot the cameras and the crew were on the other side of the room, I was so absorbed by what was going on. It was totally realistic, from the moment the director yelled ACTION! Perhaps a little too realistic at one point. During one take, as I was being pushed to the ground, I raised my head. I’d been asked to do this by one of the robbers, because then it gave them something to shout at us about. A robber pushed down on the back of my head hard, and slammed my nose against the concrete ground. I felt a crunch, and then a shooting pain, but carried on with the rest of the scene, where a police officer then drags us to safety. My eyes began to water and my nose was hurting as though someone had smashed it to pieces with a hammer, which for all I knew at the time wasn’t far off the mark. “And CUT!” Yelled the director. “Are you allright”? He said to me, my nose and forehead all muddy from the floor. “Erm, I think so” I said. “One of the robbers pushed my head down too hard and it struck the floor – is it bleeding?” “Oh dear, you’d better come and have a sit down” said the director kindly. “Don’t worry, it’s not bleeding – are you feeling ok?” “Yes, I’m fine, I’m sure it’ll stop hurting in a minute. I don’t think it’s broken or anything like that”, I said. I went to sit down behind the cameras, where the producer and members of the crew started fussing around me in a rather pleasant way. However, I’m pretty sure they were more concerned about getting sued for accidental injury than anything! “You poor thing!” Said the producer. “Are you ok?” “Yeah I’m fine, it’s starting to hurt less now” I said, but she asked me if I was allright another five times and scanned my face to check I really was ok and not going to faint on the spot or anything.
After a few minutes the pain subsided, and I noticed they were doing a scene without me. “Can I go back and be in the scene?” I asked the producer. “Sure” she said, and away I went into position again. The robber who had done it was also very apologetic – it was so strange seeing someone in then out of character in such a short space of time! Far from being an aggressive, bloodthirsty gang member, he was a really nice guy. “Don’t worry about it” I assured him “It was an accident and it doesn’t hurt now!”.
We did a few more scenes of the robbers being un-masked, which the director joked was very “Scooby-Doo”, and of the robbers being literally dragged kicking and screaming by the police, and then it was over, and they only had one more scene to shoot which didn’t involve us. “You guys are free to go now”, the director smiled at us – “thankyou for your time”. “Thankyou for yours,” I said, and shook his hand. I took off my fluorescent jacket, and with the other workers, stepped out of the brightly stuido-lit warehouse into the black and rainy outside. My filming adventure was over.
Monday, 1 November 2010
One Advantage
This surely is getting ridiculous now ...
Today One Direction were spotted leaving Sony HQ after a meeting with Simon Cowell. Speculation is rife that he is bagging the band for himself before the competition has even reached halfway through the finals.
Is the X Factor even a competition anymore? I appreciate One Direction are insanely popular (ask any teenage girl and they will confirm this!), but to give them the prize before they've even won??
Not only is this unfair full stop, it's also unfair on the other acts. None of them are going to get offered a record deal by the by, because the whole point of people competing in the X Factor is that the prize is one. Simon is basically saying to the band "You will probably win, but just in case you don't, I'll make you an equal offer myself of the prize". So much for the impartiality of being a judge, eh? I guess we can't rely on him both as their future boss, current mentor and current judge to give an objective view when needed come Saturday night.
Not that being a mentor really matters. Look at Belle Amie. Despite waxing lyrical today that they did not feel second best to One Direction, it's pretty obvious they're only saying that in the hope that Cowell will on the offchance offer them a record deal too. You're wasting your time, girls! He's already chosen his favourites! Louis Walsh was probably right - Simon has been spending all his time with OD as oppsed to BA. He had it written all over his face when he dodged the question when Louis asked him on the Xtra Factor.
I'm not opposed to people being successful, and if One Direction are going to be that's their business. But for Simon to publicly favour them like this - and bringing real money and contracts into it - before the competition's finals have even really got going is just plain unfair.
One Direction should do the decent thing and withdraw from the competition.
Today One Direction were spotted leaving Sony HQ after a meeting with Simon Cowell. Speculation is rife that he is bagging the band for himself before the competition has even reached halfway through the finals.
Is the X Factor even a competition anymore? I appreciate One Direction are insanely popular (ask any teenage girl and they will confirm this!), but to give them the prize before they've even won??
Not only is this unfair full stop, it's also unfair on the other acts. None of them are going to get offered a record deal by the by, because the whole point of people competing in the X Factor is that the prize is one. Simon is basically saying to the band "You will probably win, but just in case you don't, I'll make you an equal offer myself of the prize". So much for the impartiality of being a judge, eh? I guess we can't rely on him both as their future boss, current mentor and current judge to give an objective view when needed come Saturday night.
Not that being a mentor really matters. Look at Belle Amie. Despite waxing lyrical today that they did not feel second best to One Direction, it's pretty obvious they're only saying that in the hope that Cowell will on the offchance offer them a record deal too. You're wasting your time, girls! He's already chosen his favourites! Louis Walsh was probably right - Simon has been spending all his time with OD as oppsed to BA. He had it written all over his face when he dodged the question when Louis asked him on the Xtra Factor.
I'm not opposed to people being successful, and if One Direction are going to be that's their business. But for Simon to publicly favour them like this - and bringing real money and contracts into it - before the competition's finals have even really got going is just plain unfair.
One Direction should do the decent thing and withdraw from the competition.
Friday, 29 October 2010
Katie & Cher - The Unpopulars?
There's been a lot of talk going round recently that X Factor hopefuls Katie Waissel and Cher Lloyd are pretty much hated by the general public - fellow finalist Matt Cardle is said today to have branded Katie a "fame hungry t***" (or something of the kind), whilst Cher has been booed out in public.
From what I see, both girls are fame-hungry and ambitious, and will stop at nothing to become the next Big Thing. And for that I applaud them.
Why is it in this country we are so ready to knock people down that want to be successful? You know, of all the X Factor contestants, Katie and Cher are the ones that I see true star quality in - they're confident, confident, confident, and you need that to survive in showbiz. It's a quality found in abundance in Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, the other Cher - you name it, they all have the same qualities as Cher Lloyd and Katie. They're ambitious, and they want their dream badly.
I'd be quite worried if they weren't fame hungry! If that were the case then they're definitely on the wrong show. If there's anybody on the X Factor who isn't seeking fame (Matt Cardle included), then they're lying. If any of them wanted to sing professionally to lots of people, they do not have to be on the X Factor to do that. They could quite easily do live gigs up and down the country, in Butlins for example. But it's quite obvious they all want fame and fortune, without exception. Katie and Cher just happen to have a lot more ambition over the rest of them, which they are probably jealous of.
I don't particularly favour Cher or Katie over any other, but they don't deserve the stick they are getting. They want to be rich, famous and successful, and who can blame them! Good for Katie for being fame-seeking - at least she has the guts to go for her dream full throttle. If I'm paying good money to go to someone's concert, I want to go and see someone who I know is enjoying the performance as much as I am, who is completely confident in themselves and will 100% deliver a good show and know it. That's what all successful artists do. That's what makes a popstar.
Hitch your wagon to a star, girls, and don't settle for anything less.
Vive ambition!
From what I see, both girls are fame-hungry and ambitious, and will stop at nothing to become the next Big Thing. And for that I applaud them.
Why is it in this country we are so ready to knock people down that want to be successful? You know, of all the X Factor contestants, Katie and Cher are the ones that I see true star quality in - they're confident, confident, confident, and you need that to survive in showbiz. It's a quality found in abundance in Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, the other Cher - you name it, they all have the same qualities as Cher Lloyd and Katie. They're ambitious, and they want their dream badly.
I'd be quite worried if they weren't fame hungry! If that were the case then they're definitely on the wrong show. If there's anybody on the X Factor who isn't seeking fame (Matt Cardle included), then they're lying. If any of them wanted to sing professionally to lots of people, they do not have to be on the X Factor to do that. They could quite easily do live gigs up and down the country, in Butlins for example. But it's quite obvious they all want fame and fortune, without exception. Katie and Cher just happen to have a lot more ambition over the rest of them, which they are probably jealous of.
I don't particularly favour Cher or Katie over any other, but they don't deserve the stick they are getting. They want to be rich, famous and successful, and who can blame them! Good for Katie for being fame-seeking - at least she has the guts to go for her dream full throttle. If I'm paying good money to go to someone's concert, I want to go and see someone who I know is enjoying the performance as much as I am, who is completely confident in themselves and will 100% deliver a good show and know it. That's what all successful artists do. That's what makes a popstar.
Hitch your wagon to a star, girls, and don't settle for anything less.
Vive ambition!
Thursday, 28 October 2010
One Direction? That Direction is Up
I've read somewhere that Simon Cowell is going to give One Direction a record deal whether they win the X Factor or not.
From what I see, hear and read, this new boyband are seriously popular. As I've said before, I can see why - they're very young (closer to teenage girls' age than say, The Wanted), they're cheeky, they're wild, they're alpha males, and they can sound out a pretty ok tune together ...
But isn't this just turning into a farce now? Why not just proclaim them winners right here and now? Or if they're that popular, have them withdraw from the competition and have their record deal without going through the formality of winning?
Whatever the situation, these guys are seriously lucky. Good enough to make it to bootcamp, but not good enough to continue, but not bad enough to be dropped, what were the chances they would have even dreamed of being thrown together in a boyband with four other strangers, the chances that they'd actually get on, or sound well together, or the chances that they've grabbed the public's imagination like they have ...?
Perhaps I'm a bit bitter here. Life is a bit too easy for these boys. Sure, they might work hard at what they do - but who doesn't work hard? It all just seems a lot that not only are they insanely popular but are now even immune to the competition of winning the show, because they may as well have won it already. What value does winning the show have now, if people are assured of having won something equivalent already?
That world of showbiz is too cruel. We have Simon Cowell practically shoving a contract in One Direction's hand, whilst the other finalists are still left nervously waiting as to what their future will be ... and it all depends on the X Factor.
But now One Direction have gotten so big that they no longer need the very show that has made them, whilst Diva Fever, John Adeleye, Nicolo Festa and Storm will all probably have it as the highlight of their careers. Yet for One Direction, it's just the beginning (and they don't even need to win it).
One final rant. I've nothing against the boys. But one of them, Zayn, threw a paddy at bootcamp and refused to take part in the dancing task for fear of looking stupid. Now safely in the band, I'm of the opinion he should've been eliminated for throwing the paddy, so that his place could have been given to someone who would have gladly done anything that is thrown at them.
I guess that's what they call Showbiz.
That's showbiz.
From what I see, hear and read, this new boyband are seriously popular. As I've said before, I can see why - they're very young (closer to teenage girls' age than say, The Wanted), they're cheeky, they're wild, they're alpha males, and they can sound out a pretty ok tune together ...
But isn't this just turning into a farce now? Why not just proclaim them winners right here and now? Or if they're that popular, have them withdraw from the competition and have their record deal without going through the formality of winning?
Whatever the situation, these guys are seriously lucky. Good enough to make it to bootcamp, but not good enough to continue, but not bad enough to be dropped, what were the chances they would have even dreamed of being thrown together in a boyband with four other strangers, the chances that they'd actually get on, or sound well together, or the chances that they've grabbed the public's imagination like they have ...?
Perhaps I'm a bit bitter here. Life is a bit too easy for these boys. Sure, they might work hard at what they do - but who doesn't work hard? It all just seems a lot that not only are they insanely popular but are now even immune to the competition of winning the show, because they may as well have won it already. What value does winning the show have now, if people are assured of having won something equivalent already?
That world of showbiz is too cruel. We have Simon Cowell practically shoving a contract in One Direction's hand, whilst the other finalists are still left nervously waiting as to what their future will be ... and it all depends on the X Factor.
But now One Direction have gotten so big that they no longer need the very show that has made them, whilst Diva Fever, John Adeleye, Nicolo Festa and Storm will all probably have it as the highlight of their careers. Yet for One Direction, it's just the beginning (and they don't even need to win it).
One final rant. I've nothing against the boys. But one of them, Zayn, threw a paddy at bootcamp and refused to take part in the dancing task for fear of looking stupid. Now safely in the band, I'm of the opinion he should've been eliminated for throwing the paddy, so that his place could have been given to someone who would have gladly done anything that is thrown at them.
I guess that's what they call Showbiz.
That's showbiz.
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