Another year - Mike Leigh's latest film

This was such an acute film, and beautifully made.

It is the story of a year in the life of a couple in their sixties, kind, happy and devoted to each other. Both are professionals and live in London, far from their Lancashire roots. They are extraordinarily kind to the more inadequate people around them, offering constant support and hospitality. They worry about their only son, a lawyer with Citizens Advice, as he seems to have no permanent relationship.

Everything changes when the son meets someone and brings her home. The friends suddenly become "pathetic" and "tragic" and the subject of rolling eyes and stage whispers. There is a breathless and anxious moment when the confident and feisty new girlfriend tells them about her own parents (her father is a postman) and then tells them that she herself is an occupational therapist.

The gap between generations is brilliantly portrayed, the friend in the middle a lost soul seeking for identity through acceptance as a girlish and helpless woman, at last in the final frame seeming to realise that this role is false, and her friends are adults for whom close family relationships will always come first. And that perhaps she herself has much greater value and strength than she had realised.

I interpret this film as a comment on contemporary Britain and its increasing inequalities, where family and aspiring middle class values become more important than recognising that we are ultimately all individuals with varying needs and levels of vulnerability and sensitiveness. A wider sense of community is lost, and many people fall through the gaps. Furthermore, since the credit squeeze, there is now a gap between aspiration and reality for almost everyone.

The film also touches on the way we sometimes mask our own needs by helping others, and on how destructive this can be.

Tuition fees - John Sutherland's views

Professor John Sutherland of University College London writes in Education Guardian about the confused or just plain wrong thinking behind the rise in the tuition fees to £9,000 per year.

He points out that cadets at Sandhurst actually get paid to attend because of course the army has a discernible political role. The same could be said for subjects such as medicine or science and degrees in these subjects. The financial investment in such subjects is almost certain to yield high returns.

This is not so obvious in the case of arts degrees, the benefits of which are more subtle and longer term. Rising fees will deter students, whatever the government claims. Also the more expensive a degree and the more commercial the approach to education, claims Sutherland, the more the nature of education is corroded. The student becomes a customer and demands a good degree rather than a good education.

The danger to underfunded and under-valued arts courses is that they will lose their rigour and educational value. Financial considerations will become paramount, and good academics will distance themselves from the teaching process in order to preserve any sense of meaning and integrity.

Human kindness

To continue the snow saga, it duly snowed early this morning and I did not know how I was going to get into Edinburgh. Snow too deep for my car, and I was wondering whether I could carry a large if empty suitcase a mile through snow to the station. By a miracle, a UPS driver appeared (on Sunday morning 8.30!) to deliver parcel to neighbours and he kindly took me down to the town.

Then a long wait, two hours, as I just missed one train, and the next one was an hour late. Much commiseration and exchanging of experiences among the stranded. People were concerned about missing connections, some gave up altogether and went home. Not an option for an extended Nigerian family who had come to Stirling to celebrate the graduation of a young woman (Master of Science) and accompany her back to Nigeria. I was interested to hear more about Nigeria and Lagos and about the new capital that has been built.

Managed to get to Edinburgh by 12.30, but all pretty quiet at the show due to dreadful state of city pavements in the snow. A friend agreed to take my stand home in her car once her husband had managed to get into town through 12" of snow in his village. I packed everything else in my trusty Poundstretcher maxi-case and headed for station.

There I managed to drop my return ticket under the train, but the train driver kindly gave me a reference both to the conductor and to the people on ticket barrier in Stirling, so I did not have to pay extra. How kind was that? Finally, my taxi driver, who had parked at the bottom of the little driveway here to avoid getting stuck in snow, carried my heavy suitcase right up to my front door, carefully placing in a dry place on the step.

So a mixed day. Mostly positive. I enjoyed being in my home patch after experiences in London and Newcastle, and catching up with friends and acquaintances.

This is not my usual blogging style, but the snow does something to me, creates a sense of helplessness and insecurity.

Back on home turf

To the cinema last night, to see "Winter's Bone", a film about a bleak backwoods community probably in Appalachians, USA. A young woman is threatened with the loss of her home and the care of her younger brother and sister (as well as her sick mother). She needs to contact her father or prove his death to avoid losing her property, and the story is about her search for him as she approaches members of the local community, most of them with a secret to hide.

I found the movie most inspiring because of the courage of the hero in the face of prejudice and bullying and powerful criminal vested interests and because of the respect she eventually gains.

When I left the cinema around 10 pm I was dismayed to find small ominous sparkly flakes of frosty snow falling. This usually indicates more serious stuff is on the way, and so it proved around midnight. I had to drive into the city this morning for a fair and spent most of the night awake wondering whether to repack my stock and take a taxi/train, or whether to hold on and drive in.

I did the latter, but I was in the minority. The motorway was restricted to one lane and for several miles I did not see another car. Everyone was doing around 50 mph, most unusual. In Edinburgh the pavements were slippery with ice.

But it was good to see the local craftworkers and have a blether. And I got home safely, though the back road up to my cottage was still covered with snow. I am now debating what to do tomorrow morning, as it is a two day show! Not a taxi to be had, so if forecast snow falls overnight I shall have to walk to station with empty suitcase and collect my things in that when show finishes.

Will power or inspiration?

Alan Bennett writing about Auden and Benjamin Britten in his play "The Habit of Art" discusses what this habit means - "the need to sit down and work every day, even the muse has gone walkabout". Bennett says that will power is more important than talent:
"Talent you can dispense with, but not will. Will is paramount, not joy, not delight, but grim application. Without grim application you get nowhere, but one would like to think one has more than that"

Comforting words. But I don't think there is anything wrong with like some joy and delight as well!

And more..

This weekend I was in outer London, near Kingston-upon-Thames, at the Landmark Christmas craft fair. A long way to go, but I wanted to explore a different part of the country. I knew the area slightly from teenage and early twenties, so many memories.

I travelled there with my stock on public transport, so it was a tight fit to get everything in and still reasonably portable. I used a basic concertina clothes drier for the display (this is just visible in the photo). It all worked well! I only forgot a mirror, but I found one in Kingston.

The fair was held in a old Victorian Gothic church (now an arts centre) near the Thames river at Teddington Lock.

Catching up

It has been an extremely busy time, much travelling to north of England and way beyond, and no time for blogging. Something like normal service resuming and today I was at Printmakers Studio in Edinburgh. Cleaned off my lithography stones but also need time to regroup in mind body and soul, so left it at that. Pleased to see that my two lithographs submitted were both in the Christmas exhibition. Pace my classical followers!

Pythia 1 Pythia 2