Bee, joue

This bijou of a picture shows Jeremy Irons X 4, two of the images facing forwards and two ready to walk off into the distance behind. The wistful look on his face is very poignant – he could be thinking “Christ I wish it was Saturday night so that I can go and get pissed” or remembering his first night at boarding school:

“As you get older, you look back and try to make sense of the sort of person you have become. And I think the most important thing that happened in my childhood was the first night I went to boarding school at the age of seven. I remember that night, and the loneliness. Also, my parents' marriage broke up when I was 15. But I think it was that first night at seven years old when I felt something had broken, and I've spent my life trying to get back to that feeling of home. It's the same sense of family that you find in the theatre and movies. In fact, I'm hoping to make a film about that very subject - the need for home. You don't really have a home until you have children. And that home is created by the children.”

As Valentin in Claude Lelouch's romantic comedy And now ladies and gentlemen please… Irons is casing a jeweller’s shop. He dresses in drag and makes off with a substantial haul from a bijouterie in Avenue Montaigne.

This week, with bling already in the news because Le Figaro newspaper drew attention to an expensive ring on Rachida Dati’s finger by removing it with an airbrush, four armed robbers, three of whom were dressed as women, stole jewellery worth 80 million euros from a store in … Avenue Montaigne.

The questions all these sparklers raise are endless, and include:

Will the Police call Lelouch in for questioning?
Who wrote the scenario?
Will the thieves be charged with breach of copyright?
Why did a newspaper try to hide the fact that the Minster for Justice owns a ring worth ten times the minimum salary? She is not a socialist…
What else do newspapers remove with airbrushes (President Sarkozy’s love handles, apparently, too...)
Is there really no system better than capitalism to regulate human society?
If more people went to the cinema, would the world be a better place?
...
…
...

Renewal and roots

These photographs were taken around my home town (? - home village doesn't sound right, but Catrine has always been a village and if anything is shrinking rather than growing) in Ayrshire at Christmas in 2004. The smoke in the bottom right-hand corner is from the lum of a waste disposal plant reeking on the very site of the coalmine my father worked in from the age of 15. The sun may start to set at 15:00, but before it does the light is quite special.

Coincidence or evidence of global warming, the scenery was a different colour this year, I mean in 2007. Zut, it’s already ‘last year’, projected into the past (so soon, so soon).

It took us 24 hours to get to Scotland and five hours to get back. We had a bonus night in Frankfurt as part of our trip, courtesy of fogbound London airports. British Airways put us up at the Sheraton hotel, but didn’t give us our bags. Reminds me of when Mary was visiting me in France from Glasgow and her flight was postponed so often the possible arrival times took a whole column on the kitchen whiteboard.

I went for a walk along the newly created River Ayr Way, a section of which starts at my parents' front door. I bumped into my brother, who had a real camera with him and took some pictures, including the close-ups of Sorn castle and the one below. I thoroughly enjoyed re-visiting my roots, but I don't know if I enjoyed it quite as much as Carly! I sincerely hope we can all get our paws off the gound this year!