And Finally

A blog follower called Joan messaged me this photo ...
She said ( in her world kindly) that she thought if I was a dog, this is the dog I would be

Hey ho! 

Mama

This will break your heart

Beast

Jessie Buckey as Moll and Jonney Flynn as Pascal

I took myself off to theatr Clwyd last night and thankfully there were an actual film showing.
So I went to see the Film Beast -a debut slow burn thriller by British filmmaker Michael Pearce.

Set in a rather foreboding and moody Jersey we find twenty something Moll (Jessie Buckley) still living a claustrophobic life at home with her parents. Moll is the part time carer to her father who is suffering from Alzheimer's and is very much under the thumb of her mother (Geraldine James) who favours Moll's siblings in a controlled passive-aggressive kind of way.
After a disastrous birthday party Moll bumps into Pascal ( Jonney Flynn) a scruffy , uncouth poacher and petty criminal who strangely seems to understand the sadness within her  and the two embark on a relationship against the backdrop of fear and mistrust as the wider community copes with recent disappearance of murder of several Island teenage girls.

Pearce has crafted a complicated and rather clever narrative here. Very slowly we find out that Moll is not quite what she seems. Instead of just finding peace and a happiness from her icy family home within her new, rather sweet relationship, Moll's past (a moment of teenage violence) is uncovered and revisited and the story then descends into a much darker piece indeed.

As Pascal becomes one of the suspects in the local murders the couple's pasts come to haunt them both and what started as a haunting love story evolves into who is the real baddie here?  kind of thriller.

Buckley carries the film quite magnificently. With her delicate looks, and doe eyed expression that can morph from Victim to " villain" in a heartbeat , she captures perfectly, the ambiguous backstory within Moll and she dominates the film in a powerhouse performance.

It's a dark, moody piece, beautifully shot in an oppressive Jersey most would not recognise .

8/10

Wild Flowers

Winnie lay in full sun as I was collecting wild flowers .
There was shade in the garden but she just could not be arsed moving
Subsequently she overheated and became a little unresponsive and panting as old bulldogs can do.
I lifted all 26 kilos of her and lay her nippledown on the cold concrete of the back patio then doused her with cold water.
20 minutes later she had strength enough to eat a cold cocktail sausage 

A Blog Conversation

I was going to do a film review tonight but after washing my face, donning one of my neat birthday shirts and driving to Theatre Clwyd 
I found out that I'd got the date wrong and the place was silent except for a noisy kids production set up in a big inflatable globe!
I came home again and put on my pyjama bottoms
Hey ho

This is a subsequent blog conversation between three friends

John Gray5 June 2018 at 21:57

I once fell asleep on a bus with a mini pork pie in my mouth 

ReplyDelete

Replies

1. 
   Rachel Phillips5 June 2018 at 22:05

   If I'd been there I might have drawn a sketch of you. I have a sketch of a man asleep with his mouth open and a woman stuffing her face on a train. 
2. 
   Tom Stephenson5 June 2018 at 22:08

   I fell asleep whilst shagging once. The relationship didn't last very long.
3. 
   Rachel Phillips5 June 2018 at 22:10

   I read a book at the same time once. That one didn't last long either.

Arsehole

I was too busy listening to this piece of music yesterday and almost got knocked off my feet by a woman riding her bike down Lower Bridge Street in Chester .
She called me an arsehole
( well I lip read that she called me an arsehole)
Arsehole is a great put down
Especially when uttered in an English accent
Arrrrrssssssseeeeeee.............hoooooooollllllll

By The River Dee

I am sat by the River Dee in Chester.  It' a glorious afternoon. In half an hour I shall meet up with an old friend. He has organised a detour on his way home to Manchester to meet me.
Recently my old friends have been a godsend. You touch base with them and years of love and friendship and mutual support rekindle and all becomes right in the world even though it isn' t really alright at all.
I'm lucky. I have a lot of friends
Human bubblewrap 

Daily Dog Protest

I was sat in the Churchyard on the bench by the Porch door when I fell into conversation with a very Welsh couple from Babell.
I explained just why Winnie and Mary was with me and informed them that like minded Trelawnyd-ites were going to bring their dogs to the churchyard in protest to the new signage..they nodded in that solemn way many older Welsh people do when they are being polite but uninterested .
They wanted to know who looked after the new cemetery as it was so tidy and as they droned on a memory popped into my mind out of nowhere.
A silly memory of a childhood pet tortoise called Achilles.
You could buy tortoises from pet shops then when I was eleven
And I bought a lovely one with black button eyes
I'd only had it for 24 hours when our fat family Dalmatian called Tina, who had taken a sudden dislike of everything reptilian, ripped its head off after a prolonged bout of chewing.
My father, who was incredibly weak where gore was involved, came across Achilles' corpse whilst out with the petrol mower and the whole bloody mess was too much for him and he fainted clean away .
My mother found him slumped next to Achilles' body when she went out to investigate why the mower was roaring away in the privet hedge.

Funny what you remember