Merry Christmas to one and all!

Meeting Daniel Radcliffe

Just recently, friends of mine introduced me to Daniel Radcliffe. Yes, the very man, of Harry Potter fame. "Please call me Dan, Mary" is the first thing that he said to me. "I will call you Dan", was my reply.

 Dan has a firm handshake and his sapphire-blue eyes are even more striking in real life, than they are on film. His current long-locks hairstyle is not his idea and not even his hair! He has had hair extensions for the part of Igor, the assistant to Dr. Frankenstein. Dan joked that his skin is naturally pale enough of the role, and that the make-up artists use a foundation on him called, 'rice-paper'.

The re-make of Mary Shelley's greatest work is being filmed in London at the moment. Mary Shelley, however never created the character of Igor. The hunchback helper of Dr Frankenstein makes no appearance in her horror story. Igor was the creation of film-makers and inserted into the script, as a companion to Dr Frankenstein, to make him seem a less lonely figure. But the deformed helper of Dr Frankenstein has evolved more and more to the point where in the current version, the story is told from the perspective of Igor.

I was quite impressed with Daniel Radcliffe, or 'Dan' as he prefers. People swarm around him all the time, and he remains unflappable, never reacts as though he's pestered and always is the thorough gentleman. I had kept hearing reports that Dan was polite and kind. And it was great to find out that this is true. One such fan is Raymond Arroyo. As a fellow actor, Raymond met up with Dan in June, and congratulated the young Brit on his stellar acting in The Cripple of Inishmaan. Raymond did his classical acting training under Stella Adler, and he esteems Daniel Radcliffe's considerable abilities.

Daniel Radcliffe does 'the Michael Fassbender test' when choosing film roles

Margaret Thatcher's romantic escapades when husband hunting

23 years ago, on November 22, 1990 Mrs Thatcher resigned. Daniel Hannan says that some of his colleague still refer bleakly to the anti-Thatcher Tory MPs as "the November criminals". 

While the details of how she was betrayed are doing the rounds, I'd like to unveil the romantic side of Thatcher, which may sound a contradiction in terms.  

She always said that there had been no man before Dennis, ‘that’s because in those days women had to guard their reputation very carefully’, said Charles Moore at a talk he gave at  Waterstones, High Street Kensington. This was part of the London History Festival, and Charles Moore was interviewed by Paul Lay on November 18th, who took the conversation deeper into Lady Thatcher’s husband hunting. 

Dennis was not her first love interest – my ears could scarcely believe it – when I heard that the young Miss Roberts had ‘various boyfriends’ and some real disappointments in the dating scene. Moore stressed that, ‘she needed a husband who understood her ambition’, and 'she would be seen through the prism of her husband'.

While Mrs Thatcher was keen that her travails as a singleton be veiled from public view, she did actually write the accounts of her dates and suitors – in her  letters to her sister Muriel.  Muriel entrusted Charles Moore with the stash of 150 letters. 

The missives detail a ‘complicated’ relationship that Miss Roberts had with a boyfriend while at Oxford University, but which came to nothing. 

The dynamic medic, Dr Robert Henderson held the attention of the young Miss Roberts, because he was a very skilled scientist who had developed the iron lung. She considered that being the wife of a notable doctor might be the right background for her rising star.  

But Henderson was twice her age, and when she was 24, he was 48. Knowing the long years of climbing to power that lay ahead, the then Miss Roberts knew that the age gap could become unbearable. So, she did not develop this dalliance. Had they married, he would have been 75 when Thatcher defeated Heath to become Leader of the Opposition in 1975. And he would have been an octogenarian in her first year as prime minister. 

Most amusing is the case of the 35 year-old Scottish farmer in Colchester who pursued her relentlessly, until she agreed to go to dinner with him. At the meal, he laid out all his credentials, including the fact that his farm was worth a small fortune (two million in today’s money). But she was not impressed that he gave a measly nine penny tip to the waiter. Remarking wryly on the evening to Muriel, the young Margaret said, ‘I’d rather like to see his farm as a matter of interest’. Knowing that he was not for her, the young Margaret introduced the farmer to Muriel, who was much more open to being a farmer’s wife, and later the two were married. 

Miss Robert’s first impression of Dennis Thatcher were not exactly the stuff of Mills and Boon, he was not a heart-throb. She described him as, ‘not a very attractive creature’ who had ‘plenty of money’. On that faithful night that he gave her a lift into London, he was candid that he didn’t like mixing with people and was timid. He had been married before, to another Margaret but his first wife had run off with a Baronet. 

In their very first meeting, the seeds of their lifelong relationship were sown – he would be the one to stand back, while she led, and he would be the one to encourage her without envying her success. 

You can read about her romantic escapades in much more detail in Charles Moore's biography Volume One: Not For Turning.

Michael Fassbender succeeds in making The Counsellor a success: his performance paints a portrait of hubris

As soon as The Counsellor opened in London, a Spanish friend and I sprinted over to the Fulham cinema. My friend has fellow Spaniard Penélope Cruz’s interests at heart. And I’m from Munster, so naturally I cheer for Michael Fassbender. He plays the leading role, the nameless counsellor who is overwhelmed by his love for his girlfriend (Cruz) and asks her hand with a costly engagement ring. The counsellor will pay for it with a one-time drug deal.

Fassbender’s counsellor has a rich variety of personal traits. He’s a man-in-love, his eyes liquefy when he beholds his fiancée, and he has an enraptured tone of voice when he whispers poetic sweet-nothings to her (‘you are a glory…you are a glorious woman’). 

In interviews, Fassbender has been quick to identify that the counsellor’s chief mistake is that he thinks himself cleverer than he is. He’s a conceited man who may be book-smart, but has little savvy and has the job of giving advice but paradoxically goes advice to avoid drug lords. He is also ‘a smart-ass’, which is the term of disaffection used for him by Ruth, a prisoner client of his.  

It’s the scene where he visits Ruth in a gaol cell that Fassbender proves his acting acumen. Fassbender has taken off the smiling mask that the counsellor uses for his fiancée, and we see a very self-satisfied individual, who thinks he’s too good for the imprisoned mother. Every tiny detail of Fassbender’s performance creates a portrait of hubris. 

In the way he throws down the box of cigarettes that he’s brought for her, the wolfish grin, the glinting eyes and the way that he won’t sit opposite her but stands over her. The mother entreats him to help her son, who has just been gaoled and needs $400 bail. With an even bigger smirk, he agrees to do it, doing so proves his higher station. He can help her son, she cannot. In return, the mother offers him a sexual favour, to which he replies sniggeringly that even if she gave it to him; she would still over him $380. 

Fassbender smoothly delivers those sickly smirks or the laughing tones of contempt in which he speaks to Ruth. He suffuses his voice with a barely-restrained laugh. Ruth is a figure of fun to him. You might want to strangle Fassbender’s counsellor, but he leaves the same bad taste in the mouth that these ‘smart-ass’ types do in real life.

Ruth’s son is a drug runner for the Mexican cartel with whom he is doing a deal. While motorcycling across America with a drugs parcel, the son is beheaded, his parcel stolen, and the cartel are convinced that since the counsellor sprung the drug-runner from gaol, that he is behind the whole counter operation. 

They think the condign punishment for the counsellor is that his loved one be slaughtered. Ironically, the counsellor and Ruth will both be reduced to the same level, they will both be torn by loss and grief. She has lost her son, he his beloved.  

The film’s failing is that we never *understand* why the counsellor is so profoundly in love with his intended. Sure, she is sweet-tempered and beautiful. And over this past weekend, two male friends have at pains to stress how ‘hot’ she looked lying on the towel in the spa. But, ultimately our knowledge of her is skin deep. We never see the layers of her character, her good deeds (or lack of them), would she be a friend in a time of need.  In simple terms, we never get to know her. We see the counsellor mourn a beautiful woman who has been butchered, but we don’t grieve with him because our rapport with her is the same as with a fashion model that we admire on the cover of a magazine. 

We may not understand why he loves her, but we believe he loves her. Why else would he grieve her so intensely? But we are dependent on Fassbender’s depiction of grief ripping through his body, causing his face to fracture in agony, for the film to make sense.

The film has more sparkle than substance. Yet it achieves its central objective: to be a morality tale about the hazard of hubris, and the mighty counsellor falls from a height of his own making. It’s Fassbender’s depiction of two opposing states of existence that make the film work; the glutted-with-hubris ‘smart-ass’ who risks everything for easy money, and then the grief-ridden and guilt-frenzied shaking wreck that he becomes.

The key to his success: Fassbender succeeds in authenticating these flawed characters, because he enters fully into the persona, body-language, tone of voice, without letting cares about how the real-life Michael Fassbender might be judged when cinema go-ers watch him act.

Interviewers and journalists always ask Fassbender if he is similar in any way to the characters that he plays. It always strikes me a rather silly line of questioning. The only way for him to go into role as these complicated personalities is to put his instinctive reactions to one side, and submerge himself in the character's mind and adopt their reflexes.
 

Aspects of how Fassbender prepares for a role are common knowledge, such as the way he may read a script 300 times. But were I to interview Fassbender, top of the list would be how he practises every detail of body language and tone of voice so as to ‘become’ a character. 

Oh, such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you...

Lou Reed's Perfect Day. 

                       

The Vatican led a tribute to Lou Reed when Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi tweeted lyrics from Perfect Day. The first tweet was, 'Oh, it's such a perfect day I'm glad I spend it with you Oh, such a perfect day You just keep me hanging on (Lou Reed)'.   This tweet was RT'd  969 times.

Taking lines from Lou Reed's classic song was a way for Cardinal Ravasi to segue into then tweeting the Bible verse, 'Be under no illusion: God will not be fooled. You're going to reap just what you sow (Galatians 6,7 and Lou Reed in Perfect Day)'.  This tweet was RT'd  54 times. 

I am a practising Catholic, but was not given Bible lessons as a child. The first time that I heard the verse, 'you're going to reap just what you sow', was when I heard the song, Perfect Day at age 11.

It's quite possible that had Perfect Day never been written, then I would not have heard the line from Galatians about reaping good crops if you do good works, and bad crops if you do bad works, until I was much older. 

Noel Harrison's The Windmills Of Your Mind

The recent death of Noel Harrison on October 19th called to my mind his most famous song, The Windmills Of Your Mind.  When I was going to school, circa 2001, I used listen to the song on old vinyl LPs or 'records' as they were called in their hey-day.

It was part of the soundtrack for The Thomas Crown Affair and won the Oscar for best song in 1968. At first, Noel Harrison did not realise the song's potential, "it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. I went to the studio one afternoon and sang it and pretty much forgot about it...I didn't realise until later what a timeless, beautiful piece Michel LeGrand and the Bergmans had written. It turned out to be my most notable piece of work."

Now, I'll have to watch the Steve McQueen Thomas Crown Affair, and see how the lyrics play into the story, 'like a carousel that turning running rings around the moon, like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face, And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space, like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind... Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own...'

 

Theresa Milstein guest blogs: How I met my husband

For the record, we were not high school sweethearts.

            Physical Education (PE) was never my favorite class. In my senior year, I found it that much more unbearable because it took place when my friends ate lunch. I skipped the class one or two more times more than I should have. The teacher made me make up the whole semester the spring before graduation.

            When I attended my first “Early Morning Gym,” another PE delinquent stood outside the door with a cup of coffee. I’d never seen him before, which wasn’t unusual since it was a large school. He looked kind of… mean in his t-shirt, flannel, and jeans. He reminded me of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club. I avoided staring at him while we waited for the PE teacher to show up.

            Later that week, a friend in my art class introduced me to PE guy, Stu. Turns out he wasn’t as mean as he looked. We began hanging out during Early Morning Gym. During the weight unit, he and I talked until the teacher came by, and then we’d half-heartedly do a few reps. During the tennis unit, we smoked cigarettes on the court (this was a long time ago). He made me laugh and in no time, we’d begun hanging out during our free periods and even after school.

            Although Stu wasn’t my type, I found myself sort of liking him. I tried to flirt, which may have been more annoying than alluring. But he seemed to like my best friend more than me. For prom weekend, the three of us held our own anti-prom at a hotel in the Hamptons. I’d hoped he’d ask me out then, but he didn’t.

            Just as we graduated, a boy who was a year older, and more my type (a musician), asked me out. That summer, I worked at a local traveling carnival with my PE friend while I dated my boyfriend.

            At the end of the summer, my boyfriend started his new college in New Orleans. Stu and I attended local colleges. We were both trying to be better students than we’d been in high school. Most of our friends had gone away to college, and we wound up relying on one another more. He set up a second desk in his bedroom so I could study with him. I kept dating the boyfriend long distance, but I found myself more connected with PE friend than my boyfriend.

            When my boyfriend transferred to his third school and wound up living near me, I realized he wasn’t The One. He drank too much and was tight with money except when it came to transferring colleges and purchasing music equipment. One time, my boyfriend surprised me by visiting the music store where I worked. Stu was already there. I told my boyfriend that nothing was going on between Stu and me, which was true. But I was lying to him and myself about how my feelings were changing. While my boyfriend made me frustrated and brought out the worst in me, Stu made me laugh and brought out the best in me.

            Just about a year after the relationship started, I broke up with my boyfriend. I’d hoped Stu liked me too, so I looked for signs. His ex-girlfriend asked him out. He said no. Good sign. But if he was looking for good signs from me, I kept blowing them. He brought me a teddy bear from the carnival with a heart. I blurted that I didn’t like stuffed animals with hearts. Stupid me. We got tickets to see a concert. I left the bag with the tickets at home. Stupider me.

            A week later on a perfect July night, we took a walk in the park while a band played music in the background. Stu told me he liked me as more than a friend. I told him I felt the same way. He kissed me. The band stop playing and the audience applauded.

            Stu became my boyfriend.

            The next morning, flowers arrived at my house. I went from elation to disappointment. The flowers were from my ex. When he called, I had to tell him that six weeks after we’d broken up, I’d already moved on with the guy he’d been threatened by all that time. A couple of years later, the three of us wound up at the same university. Ex and I attended the same history class. No hard feelings.

            Stu and I did well in school. He majored in Biology and then earned

his PhD in Biology. Thanks to him, I was able to pass Calculus. Even though he’s my husband, we kept our friendship. He still makes me laugh. 25 years after we met, I feel lucky to wake up next to him every morning, and share a home and two children with him.

Sometimes we bring up that first year. Stu admits to not being that interested in me in the beginning, but he won’t say when his feelings changed. I can’t pinpoint a specific time either. But at some point it happened for both of us.

            And I’m glad it did.

 

Stu and Theresa Milstein

Thank you so much, Theresa for a beautifully written account of how you met Stu.

Keep up to date with all Theresa's writing adventures, by reading her blog, Theresa's Tales of Teaching Tribulation and Typing Teen Texts.

I'm delighted to announce that the first 'How-I-Met-My-Husband' post will be published on Sunday October 20th

To get the ball rolling, I wrote a post where I invited people to share their stories of how they met their husband or wife.  Theresa Milstein rose to the challenge and will be the first contributor. 

Theresa blogs at Theresa's Tales of Teaching Tribulations and Typing Teen Texts  and I very much enjoyed the excerpt from Theresa's story Saving Danger, which is in the contemporary fantasy genre.

In less than two days time, you can read Theresa's extremely well-written account of how she met her husband and how they became a couple here on Love for Beginners.

Teasers:  Theresa and her husband met in High School, but Theresa makes clear that,  "we were not high school sweethearts".

Their mutual dislike for Physical Education (PE) is integral to how they first met. 

They were long-term friends before becoming romantically involved.

There is one reference to a character in the cult-classic film The Breakfast Club.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

Reluctance by Robert Frost

The perfect time of year to read Robert Frost's poem Reluctance, as we travel reluctantly into winter. You might want to watch this video on full screen, the lines of the poem are in a dark font.

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost's poem October

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

 Robert Frost

Antonio Vivaldi Autumn

A fine poem on Autumn by John Clare: "the ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread...and the rivers we're eyeing burn to gold as they run"

Richard Burton recites John Clare's celebration of Autumn. Best to watch this video on full screen, as the lyrics are too small to be read on the smaller screen.

Ben Whishaw's recital of Keats' To Autumn. The best recital of this poem ever!

Always something there to remind me...

While the sound quality is annoying to our modern ears, the performance by Sandie Shaw is still daringly original. The way that Shaw uses her body language is not that of a hyper pop singer, but true to the lyrics of the song. Her studied reserve, folded arms, vacant face, avoidance of smiling and her sad, heavy eyes, betray the true and deeper meaning of Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s lovely-but-lonely lines. There is a failure to get over a former lover and her irrepressible-and-irritating memory dredges up thoughts of their love affair; “I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me, and every step I take recalls how much in love we used to be…how can I forget you?”

The tightly folded arms let us know that she is trying to contain the memories, control herself and her emotions while resenting that she still wants to be with her old boyfriend. But even though the relationship is in the past tense, she admits her current feelings, “I was born to love you”, and clings to a hope that the fire of their love will be rekindled, “if you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share, then come back…”

The song spent three weeks at #1 in November 1964.

For a version of the song with much better sound quality:

First Book Cover for Love for Beginners

This was the earliest book cover for Love for Beginners. Designed by Chiara Castagna. 

The best blog on Agatha Christie's Poirot that you'll ever find

While looking up crime writer Sophie Hannah, who has been given the go-ahead from the Christie estate to write the new Poirot novel, I found this gem of a blog, Investigating Agatha Christie's Poirot.  It's a must read for all Christie fans.


Eiric writes this blog and does a fine job of assessing the TV adaptions of Poirot. As I am a TV producer, I find his assessment of the TV versions to be very insightful.

Here is an excerpt from Eiric's take on the episode Taken at the Flood: 

Setting a distinclty 1940s novel in the 1930s isn't easy. Guy Andrews makes a series of major and minor changes to Christie's story... First, Andrews adds a subplot involving malicious phone calls to Rosaleen that was not in the novel. Second, Lionel the doctor becomes a morphine addict, and David Hunter has made Rosaleen/Eileen an addict, too. Lionel steals some of her morphine, and consequently prevents an (added) attempted suicide from her part. Third, and most importantly, Hunter deliberately impregnated Rosaleen and forced her to have an abortion. As a 'simple Catholic girl' (in Poirot's words), she was so traumatised that she would do anything he said to make it right again. Fourth, Andrews adds a suggestion of dynamite to the denouement scene (a result of making David an engineer, which I will come back to shortly). Finally, an execution scene is added, in which David Hunter is hanged while reciting 'Your Baby Has Gone Down the Plughole'....
Some of these changes are a result of the fact that the episode has been set pre-war rather than during WW2. Consequently, the script writer has tried to come up with ways of explaining the crime (in the book, the explosion was blamed on an air raid - here, it is said to be an accident, a gas explosion) and the title ('Taken at the Flood', a quotation from Shakespeare) is supposed to refer to the opportunity the air raids provide for covering up the crime...

Perhaps would-be producers of an Agatha Christie TV series, should take serious note of Eiric's reviews!

You don't have to say you love me

Another Dusty Springfield classic that I discovered on You-Tube. This song is credited with causing Dusty's star to rise, it was a #1 hit in the UK.

Will you still love me tomorrow?

The first in a re-discovery of old love songs to be posted on this blog. Performed by Dusty Springfield, the song was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

How did you meet your husband? How did you meet your wife?

When I was four-years-old, and pestering my father about how he met my mother, he would always recount the same humourous yarn: "I was a timid university student, and walking along some trees one day, when suddenly, a woman clad in bear furs jumped down from a branch and hit me over the head with a club. She knocked me unconscious and then dragged me away..."

It was some years before I learned that my parents did not meet that way.  But I'm still fascinated by how couples first met.

I want to begin a series of posts, each post will be dedicated to one couple and their unique story. Firstly, it can be told from the point of view of the woman (ladies first) and then from the point of view of the man.

Would you be interested in doing an interview on how you met your husband or wife?   If the idea tickles your fancy, then leave me a comment and include your e-mail. You'll hear from me very shortly. You never know - maybe your story could inspire someone and help them meet their husband / wife.

Each couple would visit this blog, share a photo of themselves, and answer 3 - 4 questions.

Where, when and why did you meet your wife/husband?

What was your first impression of your wife/husband?  What attracted you to him/her?

When you were first talking to each other, did you have any false impression of your wife/husband?

Did you make any mistakes that you thought were unforgivable?

After they have visited my blog, they may post the story on their own blogs and post a link to this post and the Love for Beginners blog on their blogs.

The Sunday Times short story competition offers you the chance to win £30,000

The world's richest prize for a single short story

At this time of blogging, you have about two and a half weeks. Your word count is 6,000 words or under. You don’t need to be Irish or British, and the competition is open to everyone from every corner of the world. But, you must have been published in the UK first.

“The SundayTimes EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is a determinedly international prize that aims to celebrate the finest in short fiction, and is open to any writer from around the world with a record of literary publication in the UK.”

Entries must be in English.  

*Dead*lion is 27 September 2013

This year the judges are David Baddiel, Sarah Hall, Matthew Evans, Professor John Carey and Elif Shafak.

Prize: The best short story will garner you a cool £30,000. The five runners up will get £1,000 and their short stories will be published online.

The longlist will be out in February 2014.
The winner will be announced in April 2014

Last year Junot Diaz won, his short story was entitled Miss Lora. The competition has a reputation as a magnet for attracting literary heavyweights. Hilary Mantel and Emma Donoghue previously entered this competition. 

Personal note: I’m quite sure that I would never win this competition, but ode to be on the longlist! That would be amazing, and not to sound too corny, but like a dream coming true in itself. 

The Judges

of the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award