Four Things

Thanks to Bun who tagged me to do this. I haven't linked to his blog, though I normally would, simply because he's asked me not to publicise his blog at the moment.

Four places I have been:

Inside my head. Not sure whether this counts but I've spent a lot of time there, usually on a beach, when the rest of me was in, say, double maths on a Friday afternoon at school, or doing a dull job.

On a beach: yes, a real one, just about any beach, especially one with biggish, yet swimmable waves and rock pools.

On a narrowboat: Lovely scenery in the countryside: fascinating history in the city: wildlife to watch: towpath to walk along: bacon sandwiches to eat. And I'll be going on one again fairly soon, hurrah!

Up in the hills, with sheep, and dry stone walls, and views across the valley.


Four jobs I've had:

Temporary job for six months as a clerk in the Civil Service Department of Customs and Excise in Cardiff in 1979. Mostly in my memory for lovely ex-policeman Bob, lovely clerk Julie, a never-ending card game, and the whole office singing "Oliver's Army" every afternoon with ice-cream every single day of a long, hot summer.

Television feet-putter-on for National Panasonic near Cardiff. I did it for six weeks. It was more boring than even my job as an envelope-stuffer in Cardiff, or a jeans-packer in Leeds. Notice how I snuck three jobs into this paragraph? And a question, too? - - sorry, two questions!

Teacher of English and Drama at various schools such as the one where Neil Walters - - ah, I'll never forget him, the little poppet - used to take an orange with razor-blades inside it to football matches at the weekends, or the one where David Jones used to set everything on fire.

Roleplayer and facilitator for the training and assessment of healthcare professionals of all kinds: I'm still doing that one, and I love it.

Four of my favourite foods:

Most kinds of fresh bread

Christmas Dinner (turkey, please)

Raspberries

Chicken with bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, preferably with fried rice, though I know it's bad for me so usually have boiled rice. This was the first Chinese dish I ever tried, at the old Man Fang restaurant in Leeds in the sixties, and I've loved it ever since.

Four scenes from movies that I wish I'd written and directed:

Now look, I've seen ridiculously few feature-length films. And, as I've probably said before, I don't know why not - - except that I always seem to be rushing about, so will watch a television programme that lasts half an hour or an hour, and yet not a film that lasts an hour and a half. But here goes:

The battle of Helm's Deep in the second of The Lord of the Rings films. I've never been in a battle like that, and hope I never will be, but I thought this was a wonderful evocation of it.

That scene at the end of The Railway Children where Jenny Agutter is standing on the platform and sees her father amidst the steam from the train, and cries out "My daddy! My daddy!" Makes me cry just thinking about it.

That scene in Alien where John Hurt is eating the beansprouts and the alien bursts out of his stomach. Splendid stuff.

I'm stuck now. Shows how many films I've seen - or rather, how many I haven't. So for my fourth one I'm going to cheat and mention Etre et Avoir, a wonderful French feature-length documentary about a year in a tiny, remote village school. There's a scene where a boy who lives on a farm is trying to do his maths homework and, one by one, all the family chip in with their different ideas on how to do it and what the answer is. I'd like to pick that scene: along with every other scene in the film, because it's just glorious although, as I said, it's cheating because it's a documentary.

Hey! But I've just remembered the football match with Brian Glover as the PE teacher in Kes which is one of my favourite films ever. Fantastic! So now I've got five scenes, but hey! it's just too bad.

Now I can't - as usual - tag anyone else to do this as I'm just too shy, in case they feel they have to, and they don't want to. But if you do want to do these four things on your blog, please let me know when you've done them.