Thursday 29th April 2010 should have been a good day to remember for Prime Minister Gordon Brown and for Durham County Cricket club. The Prime Minister had been the most successful British Chancellor since World War 2, if not in he last 100 years, winning two General Elections for his political party and overseeing one of the most prolonged prosperous periods in British economic history. He had also gone a considerable way to convincing that he had made a substantial contribution to saving international capitalism and the British economy from meltdown and that his approach rather than that of the Tory opposition had been the most effective way of limiting the damage and commenced to edge his Party in the voting forecasting into a position where he or a colleague would form the next government with some form of agreement with the Liberal Democratic Party
On Thursday morning while sitting in the car park of an entertainment park in Leeds, I listened to BBC Radio play back what Gordon had to say having been asked to answer questions from a passing voter. She is reported to have expressed the usual concerns about the level of immigration and potential cuts and with his wireless microphone still on for the interview as he sat in the official Party car with his advisers, he complained about the interview and called the life long labour voter, a bigot.
Not having heard the interview I cannot say if the retired local government worked is a bigot or not. It would not have surprised if she had been as there are plenty of politically illiterates, educational morons and racist and other forms of bigots in the UK, as in all countries, but if you hope attain and retain power in a democracy you do say so in public and you will be wise to keep your own counsel in private. The big question is will such a gaff make a difference when it comes to voting? For Gordon to remain Prime Minister he has not only to retain the share of the vote but gain a point or two into polls while the Liberal democrats, continue to hold their position or marginally improve.
The political machine surrounding Gordon immediately realised this was likely to be a defining election losing moment so he was quick to apologise to the woman and to party loyalists as well as to the public at large. We had seen the real face of Gordon who has lived in the Ministerial and Prime Minister’s world for over a decade and who prefers the discipline and routine of office to living as the rest of us. The event will overshadow the third and final Leader’s debate and could foresee a haemorrhaging to the Labour vote especially in a situation when the Liberal Democrats could win the seat.
As it happens I was unable to see the first of two films planned for the afternoon having first mistaken the times and then my gift voucher was refused because the system could not cope with my paying the difference between the voucher and that for a 3 D film. I therefore went for a short car ride and returned to watch the Roman Polanski film about Prime Ministers and politics, called The Ghost Writer.
Over three decades ago Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to a sex charge involving a minor in a plea bargain to protect his anonymity although originally protesting his innocence. When the ploy did not work and he was given a custodial sentence he fled to France and became a citizen as the country did not recognise extradition to the USA. The Polish Director has an impressive record commencing with Knife in the Water, and Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Ninth Gate, The Pianist and Oliver Twist. Polanski was also the husband of Sharon Tate who was murdered by Charles Manson and his so called family.
Recently, presumably believing he was safe, the 77 year old travelled to Switzerland to receive an International award and was promptly served with an extradition arrest warrant and placed under House arrest from where he completed the editing on this film. Could this have been something to do with the subject of the film which follows the main theme of the 2007 novel by Robert Harris, which states that the CIA were involved in a plot to assassinate not one but two Ghost Writers who and uncover the truth about the political rise to power of none other than British Prime Minister Tony Blair, why he committed Britain to involvement in invading Iraq and regime change and became charged with War crimes for his involvement in the kidnapping (rendition) of terrorist suspects and their torture in friendly countries as well as at Guantanamo Bay.
The recently retired British Labour Prime Minister is played by Pierce Brosnan who has been writing his political memoirs at the beach house of his multi millionaire publisher on Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod. The setting is appropriate because it is the established haunt of celebrities, politicians and academics who like to holiday somewhere beautiful and secluded with a small resident population who are protective of the their own and visitor’s privacy. Nearby is Chappaquiddick Island infamous for the death of an assistant to the late Edward Kennedy.
Ewan McGregor as a successful international fiction writer is hired by the publisher on the recommendation of a senior executive friend to ghost write the completed memoirs following the alleged accidental drowning of the previous writer who had been a long term friend and associate of the British Prime Minister and his wife.
Within three days of arriving on the island McGregor finds himself involved in some form of international conspiracy and murder involving the CIA and where the truth of the story is signalled well in advance for those with the kind of mind who look out for clues and red herrings when they experience thrills in the cinema theatre.
The rewrite is overtaken by the news that action is being taken to prosecute the former Prime Minister for war crimes following the allegation that he was complicit in the rendition of terrorist suspects from one country to Guantanamo Bay where they have been tortured to secure confessions and information. The action is fuelled by a former cabinet Minister in the Prime Minister’s cabinet (I wonder who the author of the book had in mind). The former P.M effectively seeks sanctuary in the USA where he has the continuing support of the American Government and the majority of its people and who do not recognise the International Court.
The plot develops as McGregor find some photos tapped under a drawer of the dead predecessor when clearing the room of possessions which amazingly have been left as they were before the man suddenly took off in the guest car for the ferry and the mainland.
Then McGregor finds out that the death is suspicious(surprise surprise-no) and that a woman living in the area where the body was washed up had reported seeing lights on the beach area, had a fall at home and is in a coma.
With the former Prime Minister away in Washington, fixing his position, and McGregor reveals his concerns to the wife she pleads ignorance of what has been going on and jumps into his bed at the residence. McGregor knows this is not a good idea but he plays a character who is repeatedly stupid as well as amoral mercenary, doing the job because it is paying a quarter of million dollars for a month’s work, later reduced to two weeks when the Prime Minister is asked to cooperate with the War crime investigation. He reacts more like Gordon Brown last Thursday morning with impulsive temper losses and a reliance on the advice of other’s.
McGregor has worked out that the reason why the Ghost writer was killed is because the Prime Minister appears to have been recruited by a Rhodes Scholar CIA member when at Oxford. The Prime Minister explains why he suddenly went into politics having previously appeared to be only interested in acting, smoking pot and women when he met his future wife, then a Labour activist in the University. He discovers that in the Prime Minister had been a party member two years before meeting his future wife and was a friend with the Rhodes scholar who went on to become an influential Professor, director of a major arms company, involved with CIA and formed a top level secret org to influence governments. This therefore explains the Prime Minister’s sudden rise to power and his unswerving support for USA policy regardless of which President or Party was in power.
His first reaction to the situation is to run taking the manuscript with him and the guest car but cannot resist following the orders of the Sat navigation equipment which takes to him to the home of, guess who, the Professor who lives in isolated secured home on the mainland. The Professor denies any knowledge or being a close friend but we overhear the man’s wife alerting someone that Ewan has called upon them. Although the Professor denies being home when the killed ghost writer appears to have made arranged the visit he ahs already emphasised that he sees no one without an appointment.
We thus deduce that having arranged the visit the previous ghost writer had been killed before leaving the island and the Professor knowing he would have an alibi being away at a pre arranged event. After leaving the house Ewan is followed and attempts to get on the last ferry back to the Island after hiding with his vehicle in the woods. But his pursuers are able to hold up the ferry and get on board, they are the CIA black ops after all, but he manages to get off the ferry as it leaves and finds himself stranded at the ferry motel as there are no planes away until the morning. I am confused about the location of airports at that point.
At the motel he makes he rings a telephone number handwritten on the back of the key photo and this amazing appears to be a key British political figure who is able to visit within a short period of time and wants to se the manuscript. He explains that the previous ghost write had contacted and said that if anything happened to him he had placed information at the beginning of the manuscript. Ewan provides the information about the Prime Minister and the Professor and the CIA and is then persuaded to accept an invitation from the Prime Minister who is flying back from Washington to Martha’s Vineyard to be picked up, so that he can confront the man with what he has found and on the premise he will be safe as to kill the second ghost writer would arouse suspicion. The Prime Minister denies the accusations in a convincing way and by this time anyone who has been paying appropriate attention has worked out that the CIA contact and fixer was not the Prime Minister but his wife.
However Ewan is too stupid to work this out and when the Prime Minister is shot and killed he agrees to complete the book without any revelations and goes to the book launch at the invitation of the personal assistant rather than the wife. The personal assistant and the wife have clashed over influence on the man, McGregor‘s suspicions about the truth is finally aroused when he finds that the widow is being supported by the book launch by the Professor and follow student from Oxford days. The assistant has brought along a copy of the original manuscript as a souvenir and he re-examines and works out from coded information that it is the wife who worked for the CIA via the Professor and who obviously arranged the killing of his predecessor. Left open is did she also arrange the assassination on arrival back at the island airport, The culprit is presented as the aggrieved father of a boy killed in the Iraq war. He first appears as a suit middle aged man at the Island hotel where McGregor first stays until the War Crimes action is announced and he is moved into the private and secured residence. The man also appears to have entered and examined the contents of his room. It is never explained why he did this? The man then reappears in combat uniform at a Peace Camp type protest set up at the gates of the residence, but her and the other protestors then vanish when the Prime Minister goes to Washington. He then appears to be the assassin.
I enjoyed the film at the time of viewing but it flawed nonsense which is why Tony did not bother to sue. I look forward to learning what Dr Mark Kermode makes of the film if he decides to undertake a catch up and view.
The airport when I stayed is located on high ground at Yeadon above Leeds so that on the way into the city there are excellent views across the Aire valley. The airport appears small and is classified as the 17th in terms of customers in the UK, under 3 million passengers and 3700 flights a year, around 100 a day in and out. The main routes are to Spain, Ireland/Eire, Amsterdam and Paris and internally to London and Southampton. A ten to twenty year development plan has been approved increasing use to 5 million passengers by the mid century. The airport is now privately owned with the former local authority owners being paid £145 million.
Yeadon is an ancient town and developed as a clothing and mill town in the industrial revolution. An important aircraft factory was established just before World War II with 700 Lancaster bombers produced. I did not visit the town centre which includes the Town Hall building used in the Beiderbecke Tape series with James Bolam and Barbara Flynn. While the road into Leeds skirts the town the route passes one of the oldest Fish and Chip restaurants in the UK Murgatroyds, which I had heard off beforehand, and where there was a queue of people outside the door at the take away part as I went into town by bus on Thursday. This is expensive eating with the main fish dishes £11 to £13. It is all in the batter, they say! There is a basic three course menu of for Elders at £8.25.
A short distance from the airport into the city is the village of Rawdon which has an attractive village Green overlooked by an old attractive former primary school building now in the process of being converted into residential properties. There appear to be completed blocks of flat in the former school yard with the former school fenced off and for sale as part completed development. It occurred to me that the building and location would make an ideal site for a permanent Artman’s Arthouse although as with my previous choice locally I would have to win the lottery to purchase before it is sold.
On the Wednesday I travelled by car to the next important community on the way into Leeds city centre, Kirstall which has a population of 20000 and is home of Kirkstall Abbey . There are large wealthy houses in grounds on the road to the outer ring road but Kirkstall itself contains many Victorian back to back properties used as tenements in the days when this was an area of mills and factories. The Beiderbecke film series was primarily shot in Kirkstall. At the main cross road leading to a supermarket and small retail centre there is the new looking Leisure centre which includes a swimming pool.
A short distance further on there is Burley a traditional area of back to back terraced housing to one side of the river Aire and which was my destination on Wednesday for the Cardigan Fields Leisure development comprising the Vue Multiplex, 2000 seats, and Bowling (skittles arena), a Health centre(Virgin), a nightclub, and the usual range of restaurants including the Louisiana which combined Indian and Tex Mex food. The red brick tenements were used to represent Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the TV drama series Harry’s game, Melanie Brown-Scary Spice was raised in Burley. Before getting to Cardigan Fields there is a small roadway alongside the Iceland and Neto buildings which crosses the river and should lead to the nature reserve although I only found the inexpensive municipal golf course.
I also followed this route on midday Thursday taking 757 bus from the Airport into the City centre some 12 miles and an official bus time of 40 minutes. The city centre has been transformed since first visiting in the later 1960’s when I worked for the West Riding of Yorkshire Children’s department, located at Wakefield and lived at Lofthouse midway between Wakefield and Leeds. The main area of shops and recreation facilities lies either side of the Headrow from the Westgate station area to the Eastgate where there is the Bus station, the famous Kirkgate Markets, the BBC studios and the Leeds Playhouse.
The city centre is now dominated by some fine towering new office developments and hotels and a through pass which takes travellers to the Leeds City Football club with the now more successful Rugby League Club, the Rhinos, based on the same site as Yorkshire County Cricket Club at Headingley, now also the centre of student life.
The main purpose of the visit was the city centre Vue cinema, the only multiplex in the city centre and off the Headrow in a new tall arcade development of over 32000 square metres designed for high spending customers with 13 screens and 3000 seats, and middle class eating such as Browns and Cafe Rouge. There is a health club and a Radisson’s Hotel £65-£95 room rate a night. I had a good hour before the planned showing of Centurion so I first made my way to the Merrion Centre just behind the side exit of the Light and which is showing its age and is several notches below Eldon square and a generation below the latest transformation. On the way to see what was on at the Grand Theatre, the home of Opera North, I discovered the London style Blue Coyote Lap dancing club with London prices aimed at the business and student community, offering vintage champagne a private dancer for £60 for 15mins £250 an hour, or a single dancer in the main room from £10, according to the website. It boasts of being the only USA sport bar type of lap dancing club in the UK.
I then headed down to the area of Victorian arcades and crossed over to the famous Kirkgate markets, with the indoor refurbished in the early 1990’s. The market is vast with over 500 stalls indoors and 200 outside. Those outside have roofs. In butchers row I counted a dozen mini shops and the fish shops are vast. I spotted a South African home food stall, a Polish Russian and an Afro Caribbean. I was after a can of coke available at 20p in Azda and here the cold price was 85 to 90p. I settled for a can from a news agent opposite the Grand Theatre on the return journey for 65p. It was to be my only expenditure of the day with free bus, prepaid food, accommodation and car parking. I used the second of the Vue Vouchers which was to expire at the end of the week.
I did not enjoy the film Centurion, Directed by Neil Marshall with Michael Fassbinder as Quintus Dias a centurion who becomes the only survivor of the 3000 to 4000 men of the Ninth which for centuries was alleged to have disappeared to the north of Hadrian’s Wall. The film takes the view that the Legion was ordered north to capture the Pict leader Gorlacon as a political manoeuvre by the Roman governor anxious to achieve something which would earn him a recall home. The Legion General is given as his guide Etain, a ferocious and bloodthirsty Pict who is mute following the massacre of family by the Romans in which her mother was raped and she had her tongue cut out as child witness. Her other senses have been developed with the kind of tracking antennae usually associated with native Americans and Africans. She leads the Legion into a trap in which almost everyman is massacred. Among them is Quintus who at the opening of the film is the only survivor of a Pict attack on a fort and he manages to escape after being taken prisoner and we see him trying to out run his captors across snow covered mountains and then nearly being recaptured in a forest to be rescued by as Legion scouting party.
On learning that the Legion general has been captured the small band of survivors attempt to rescue him but fail, with one of them killing the son of the Pict Chief who with Etain sets of on a revenge mission to kill in as painful a way as possible everyone of the survivors.
Quintus and two others make their way south after going north and to the west and come across Arianne who has become a Pict Outcaste but has learnt to communicate with the Romans from another fort two days to the south. She helps one of the injured and provides food and shelter and a hide when the Pict revenge band arrives. The trio then make their way to the Fort to find it abandoned as the new policy is to retreat below Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, abandoning the intention to conquer and subdue Scotland. Here they manage to defeat their pursuers although one dies. They then find one of the two other survivors, the man responsible for the death of the child and who has also wounded a fellow soldier because he could run faster than pursuing wolves. In sight of a wall fort, Quintus as to deal with this renegade during which time his companion is mistaken for a Pict and killed by a Roman soldier on lookout. This leaves only Quintus who although welcomes and given food and drink finds that the Governor has decided to have him killed so that there is no evidence that the Ninth were sent across the border and were all killed. There will be no record of what they did, where they went or what happened to them. Quintus then decides to go back across the new border to live with Arianne with whom he had struck up a relationship.
I have been able to find that 50 years before the date when the film is set around117AD the Ninth was involved in a massacre in which it is believed about half its strength were killed by forces of Queen Boudica and the Legion was then commanded by someone called Quintus. The Cavalry were not involved and the rest of the force of 5000 men were elsewhere in forts and other duties. It is not known what happened to the Ninth because it does appear records were destroyed or lost. However there is dispute among historians that the Legion may have been deployed on other missions outside of the UK and that at some point it was disbanded with the men deciding either to settle or return to the lands of their origins.
I thought the film was too full of vivid violence however accurate, was cold and bleak and failed to engage. Dr Kermode liked it but mentioned it has reached only 13th in the British popularity by attendance list.
I and the other handful of the public in the theatre had to sit on one side as there was a roof leak. At Headingley there had also been a roof leak just above where I had chosen to sit on a sunny day. It was raining when I left the cinema and quickly made my way to the City Bus station on the other side of the outdoor market, where earlier I had been tempted by original Jazz Long Play records and some DVDs, but resisted. I had a long wait as having missed one bus and the driver of the next was delay because of a serious accident in the Headrow and we set off some 15 minutes late.
The following morning I decided to set off home before noon as it was evident that the match was destined for a draw with bad weather forecast for the afternoon, although it was warm and sunny when I set off taking the same road that had taken me into Leeds North where about the distance along I reached the pleasant North Yorkshire town of Harrogate with the Valley Gardens, the Greens and the antique Shops as well as Spa. I did not stop but continued to Ripon where I made lunch, stopping for a can of diet coke at a garage having to pay 90 pence.
I had enjoyed my visit although had only spent two sessions of the four days at the cricket. Durham had been confronted by a massive first innings of 610 for 6 with Rudolph going onto 228 and McGrath 105. Beckenstein had managed 12 overs for only 21 runs and Blackwell 43 overs for 105 runs. Even Coetzer and Smith had bowled a few overs. Di Venuti had led well from the front reaching 108 before having to retire with a back injury and only Beckenstein with 64 and Plunket who was massacred as a bowler scored over 50 with Smith making a pathetic 8. And the team were effectively all out for 330. They were 46 without loss when the rains came on the fourth day so it was a draw and are now in mid table one of four teams with one win. There are three teams with 2 wins with Nottingham 2 from 2 whereas Yorkshire who head the table are 2 and 2 draws.
The trip proved inexpensive with three nights accommodation for £29. petrol £31 Car Parking £15 Cricket entrance £10 and Food and drink - Bread rolls, £1 Sausage Rolls £1, Pain au chocolate £1.68, Pain Raisins 84p, Danish £2, Salami, £2.57 Cucumber 35p Coleslaw 40p and three cartons of Grapes £7.41 Diet coke 5 cans £2.60 Liquorice 64p, a total for food and drink of £21.65 and £106.65 for the four days. It is time to give Gordon Brown and his Manifesto his day.
On Thursday morning while sitting in the car park of an entertainment park in Leeds, I listened to BBC Radio play back what Gordon had to say having been asked to answer questions from a passing voter. She is reported to have expressed the usual concerns about the level of immigration and potential cuts and with his wireless microphone still on for the interview as he sat in the official Party car with his advisers, he complained about the interview and called the life long labour voter, a bigot.
Not having heard the interview I cannot say if the retired local government worked is a bigot or not. It would not have surprised if she had been as there are plenty of politically illiterates, educational morons and racist and other forms of bigots in the UK, as in all countries, but if you hope attain and retain power in a democracy you do say so in public and you will be wise to keep your own counsel in private. The big question is will such a gaff make a difference when it comes to voting? For Gordon to remain Prime Minister he has not only to retain the share of the vote but gain a point or two into polls while the Liberal democrats, continue to hold their position or marginally improve.
The political machine surrounding Gordon immediately realised this was likely to be a defining election losing moment so he was quick to apologise to the woman and to party loyalists as well as to the public at large. We had seen the real face of Gordon who has lived in the Ministerial and Prime Minister’s world for over a decade and who prefers the discipline and routine of office to living as the rest of us. The event will overshadow the third and final Leader’s debate and could foresee a haemorrhaging to the Labour vote especially in a situation when the Liberal Democrats could win the seat.
As it happens I was unable to see the first of two films planned for the afternoon having first mistaken the times and then my gift voucher was refused because the system could not cope with my paying the difference between the voucher and that for a 3 D film. I therefore went for a short car ride and returned to watch the Roman Polanski film about Prime Ministers and politics, called The Ghost Writer.
Over three decades ago Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to a sex charge involving a minor in a plea bargain to protect his anonymity although originally protesting his innocence. When the ploy did not work and he was given a custodial sentence he fled to France and became a citizen as the country did not recognise extradition to the USA. The Polish Director has an impressive record commencing with Knife in the Water, and Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Ninth Gate, The Pianist and Oliver Twist. Polanski was also the husband of Sharon Tate who was murdered by Charles Manson and his so called family.
Recently, presumably believing he was safe, the 77 year old travelled to Switzerland to receive an International award and was promptly served with an extradition arrest warrant and placed under House arrest from where he completed the editing on this film. Could this have been something to do with the subject of the film which follows the main theme of the 2007 novel by Robert Harris, which states that the CIA were involved in a plot to assassinate not one but two Ghost Writers who and uncover the truth about the political rise to power of none other than British Prime Minister Tony Blair, why he committed Britain to involvement in invading Iraq and regime change and became charged with War crimes for his involvement in the kidnapping (rendition) of terrorist suspects and their torture in friendly countries as well as at Guantanamo Bay.
The recently retired British Labour Prime Minister is played by Pierce Brosnan who has been writing his political memoirs at the beach house of his multi millionaire publisher on Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod. The setting is appropriate because it is the established haunt of celebrities, politicians and academics who like to holiday somewhere beautiful and secluded with a small resident population who are protective of the their own and visitor’s privacy. Nearby is Chappaquiddick Island infamous for the death of an assistant to the late Edward Kennedy.
Ewan McGregor as a successful international fiction writer is hired by the publisher on the recommendation of a senior executive friend to ghost write the completed memoirs following the alleged accidental drowning of the previous writer who had been a long term friend and associate of the British Prime Minister and his wife.
Within three days of arriving on the island McGregor finds himself involved in some form of international conspiracy and murder involving the CIA and where the truth of the story is signalled well in advance for those with the kind of mind who look out for clues and red herrings when they experience thrills in the cinema theatre.
The rewrite is overtaken by the news that action is being taken to prosecute the former Prime Minister for war crimes following the allegation that he was complicit in the rendition of terrorist suspects from one country to Guantanamo Bay where they have been tortured to secure confessions and information. The action is fuelled by a former cabinet Minister in the Prime Minister’s cabinet (I wonder who the author of the book had in mind). The former P.M effectively seeks sanctuary in the USA where he has the continuing support of the American Government and the majority of its people and who do not recognise the International Court.
The plot develops as McGregor find some photos tapped under a drawer of the dead predecessor when clearing the room of possessions which amazingly have been left as they were before the man suddenly took off in the guest car for the ferry and the mainland.
Then McGregor finds out that the death is suspicious(surprise surprise-no) and that a woman living in the area where the body was washed up had reported seeing lights on the beach area, had a fall at home and is in a coma.
With the former Prime Minister away in Washington, fixing his position, and McGregor reveals his concerns to the wife she pleads ignorance of what has been going on and jumps into his bed at the residence. McGregor knows this is not a good idea but he plays a character who is repeatedly stupid as well as amoral mercenary, doing the job because it is paying a quarter of million dollars for a month’s work, later reduced to two weeks when the Prime Minister is asked to cooperate with the War crime investigation. He reacts more like Gordon Brown last Thursday morning with impulsive temper losses and a reliance on the advice of other’s.
McGregor has worked out that the reason why the Ghost writer was killed is because the Prime Minister appears to have been recruited by a Rhodes Scholar CIA member when at Oxford. The Prime Minister explains why he suddenly went into politics having previously appeared to be only interested in acting, smoking pot and women when he met his future wife, then a Labour activist in the University. He discovers that in the Prime Minister had been a party member two years before meeting his future wife and was a friend with the Rhodes scholar who went on to become an influential Professor, director of a major arms company, involved with CIA and formed a top level secret org to influence governments. This therefore explains the Prime Minister’s sudden rise to power and his unswerving support for USA policy regardless of which President or Party was in power.
His first reaction to the situation is to run taking the manuscript with him and the guest car but cannot resist following the orders of the Sat navigation equipment which takes to him to the home of, guess who, the Professor who lives in isolated secured home on the mainland. The Professor denies any knowledge or being a close friend but we overhear the man’s wife alerting someone that Ewan has called upon them. Although the Professor denies being home when the killed ghost writer appears to have made arranged the visit he ahs already emphasised that he sees no one without an appointment.
We thus deduce that having arranged the visit the previous ghost writer had been killed before leaving the island and the Professor knowing he would have an alibi being away at a pre arranged event. After leaving the house Ewan is followed and attempts to get on the last ferry back to the Island after hiding with his vehicle in the woods. But his pursuers are able to hold up the ferry and get on board, they are the CIA black ops after all, but he manages to get off the ferry as it leaves and finds himself stranded at the ferry motel as there are no planes away until the morning. I am confused about the location of airports at that point.
At the motel he makes he rings a telephone number handwritten on the back of the key photo and this amazing appears to be a key British political figure who is able to visit within a short period of time and wants to se the manuscript. He explains that the previous ghost write had contacted and said that if anything happened to him he had placed information at the beginning of the manuscript. Ewan provides the information about the Prime Minister and the Professor and the CIA and is then persuaded to accept an invitation from the Prime Minister who is flying back from Washington to Martha’s Vineyard to be picked up, so that he can confront the man with what he has found and on the premise he will be safe as to kill the second ghost writer would arouse suspicion. The Prime Minister denies the accusations in a convincing way and by this time anyone who has been paying appropriate attention has worked out that the CIA contact and fixer was not the Prime Minister but his wife.
However Ewan is too stupid to work this out and when the Prime Minister is shot and killed he agrees to complete the book without any revelations and goes to the book launch at the invitation of the personal assistant rather than the wife. The personal assistant and the wife have clashed over influence on the man, McGregor‘s suspicions about the truth is finally aroused when he finds that the widow is being supported by the book launch by the Professor and follow student from Oxford days. The assistant has brought along a copy of the original manuscript as a souvenir and he re-examines and works out from coded information that it is the wife who worked for the CIA via the Professor and who obviously arranged the killing of his predecessor. Left open is did she also arrange the assassination on arrival back at the island airport, The culprit is presented as the aggrieved father of a boy killed in the Iraq war. He first appears as a suit middle aged man at the Island hotel where McGregor first stays until the War Crimes action is announced and he is moved into the private and secured residence. The man also appears to have entered and examined the contents of his room. It is never explained why he did this? The man then reappears in combat uniform at a Peace Camp type protest set up at the gates of the residence, but her and the other protestors then vanish when the Prime Minister goes to Washington. He then appears to be the assassin.
I enjoyed the film at the time of viewing but it flawed nonsense which is why Tony did not bother to sue. I look forward to learning what Dr Mark Kermode makes of the film if he decides to undertake a catch up and view.
The airport when I stayed is located on high ground at Yeadon above Leeds so that on the way into the city there are excellent views across the Aire valley. The airport appears small and is classified as the 17th in terms of customers in the UK, under 3 million passengers and 3700 flights a year, around 100 a day in and out. The main routes are to Spain, Ireland/Eire, Amsterdam and Paris and internally to London and Southampton. A ten to twenty year development plan has been approved increasing use to 5 million passengers by the mid century. The airport is now privately owned with the former local authority owners being paid £145 million.
Yeadon is an ancient town and developed as a clothing and mill town in the industrial revolution. An important aircraft factory was established just before World War II with 700 Lancaster bombers produced. I did not visit the town centre which includes the Town Hall building used in the Beiderbecke Tape series with James Bolam and Barbara Flynn. While the road into Leeds skirts the town the route passes one of the oldest Fish and Chip restaurants in the UK Murgatroyds, which I had heard off beforehand, and where there was a queue of people outside the door at the take away part as I went into town by bus on Thursday. This is expensive eating with the main fish dishes £11 to £13. It is all in the batter, they say! There is a basic three course menu of for Elders at £8.25.
A short distance from the airport into the city is the village of Rawdon which has an attractive village Green overlooked by an old attractive former primary school building now in the process of being converted into residential properties. There appear to be completed blocks of flat in the former school yard with the former school fenced off and for sale as part completed development. It occurred to me that the building and location would make an ideal site for a permanent Artman’s Arthouse although as with my previous choice locally I would have to win the lottery to purchase before it is sold.
On the Wednesday I travelled by car to the next important community on the way into Leeds city centre, Kirstall which has a population of 20000 and is home of Kirkstall Abbey . There are large wealthy houses in grounds on the road to the outer ring road but Kirkstall itself contains many Victorian back to back properties used as tenements in the days when this was an area of mills and factories. The Beiderbecke film series was primarily shot in Kirkstall. At the main cross road leading to a supermarket and small retail centre there is the new looking Leisure centre which includes a swimming pool.
A short distance further on there is Burley a traditional area of back to back terraced housing to one side of the river Aire and which was my destination on Wednesday for the Cardigan Fields Leisure development comprising the Vue Multiplex, 2000 seats, and Bowling (skittles arena), a Health centre(Virgin), a nightclub, and the usual range of restaurants including the Louisiana which combined Indian and Tex Mex food. The red brick tenements were used to represent Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the TV drama series Harry’s game, Melanie Brown-Scary Spice was raised in Burley. Before getting to Cardigan Fields there is a small roadway alongside the Iceland and Neto buildings which crosses the river and should lead to the nature reserve although I only found the inexpensive municipal golf course.
I also followed this route on midday Thursday taking 757 bus from the Airport into the City centre some 12 miles and an official bus time of 40 minutes. The city centre has been transformed since first visiting in the later 1960’s when I worked for the West Riding of Yorkshire Children’s department, located at Wakefield and lived at Lofthouse midway between Wakefield and Leeds. The main area of shops and recreation facilities lies either side of the Headrow from the Westgate station area to the Eastgate where there is the Bus station, the famous Kirkgate Markets, the BBC studios and the Leeds Playhouse.
The city centre is now dominated by some fine towering new office developments and hotels and a through pass which takes travellers to the Leeds City Football club with the now more successful Rugby League Club, the Rhinos, based on the same site as Yorkshire County Cricket Club at Headingley, now also the centre of student life.
The main purpose of the visit was the city centre Vue cinema, the only multiplex in the city centre and off the Headrow in a new tall arcade development of over 32000 square metres designed for high spending customers with 13 screens and 3000 seats, and middle class eating such as Browns and Cafe Rouge. There is a health club and a Radisson’s Hotel £65-£95 room rate a night. I had a good hour before the planned showing of Centurion so I first made my way to the Merrion Centre just behind the side exit of the Light and which is showing its age and is several notches below Eldon square and a generation below the latest transformation. On the way to see what was on at the Grand Theatre, the home of Opera North, I discovered the London style Blue Coyote Lap dancing club with London prices aimed at the business and student community, offering vintage champagne a private dancer for £60 for 15mins £250 an hour, or a single dancer in the main room from £10, according to the website. It boasts of being the only USA sport bar type of lap dancing club in the UK.
I then headed down to the area of Victorian arcades and crossed over to the famous Kirkgate markets, with the indoor refurbished in the early 1990’s. The market is vast with over 500 stalls indoors and 200 outside. Those outside have roofs. In butchers row I counted a dozen mini shops and the fish shops are vast. I spotted a South African home food stall, a Polish Russian and an Afro Caribbean. I was after a can of coke available at 20p in Azda and here the cold price was 85 to 90p. I settled for a can from a news agent opposite the Grand Theatre on the return journey for 65p. It was to be my only expenditure of the day with free bus, prepaid food, accommodation and car parking. I used the second of the Vue Vouchers which was to expire at the end of the week.
I did not enjoy the film Centurion, Directed by Neil Marshall with Michael Fassbinder as Quintus Dias a centurion who becomes the only survivor of the 3000 to 4000 men of the Ninth which for centuries was alleged to have disappeared to the north of Hadrian’s Wall. The film takes the view that the Legion was ordered north to capture the Pict leader Gorlacon as a political manoeuvre by the Roman governor anxious to achieve something which would earn him a recall home. The Legion General is given as his guide Etain, a ferocious and bloodthirsty Pict who is mute following the massacre of family by the Romans in which her mother was raped and she had her tongue cut out as child witness. Her other senses have been developed with the kind of tracking antennae usually associated with native Americans and Africans. She leads the Legion into a trap in which almost everyman is massacred. Among them is Quintus who at the opening of the film is the only survivor of a Pict attack on a fort and he manages to escape after being taken prisoner and we see him trying to out run his captors across snow covered mountains and then nearly being recaptured in a forest to be rescued by as Legion scouting party.
On learning that the Legion general has been captured the small band of survivors attempt to rescue him but fail, with one of them killing the son of the Pict Chief who with Etain sets of on a revenge mission to kill in as painful a way as possible everyone of the survivors.
Quintus and two others make their way south after going north and to the west and come across Arianne who has become a Pict Outcaste but has learnt to communicate with the Romans from another fort two days to the south. She helps one of the injured and provides food and shelter and a hide when the Pict revenge band arrives. The trio then make their way to the Fort to find it abandoned as the new policy is to retreat below Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, abandoning the intention to conquer and subdue Scotland. Here they manage to defeat their pursuers although one dies. They then find one of the two other survivors, the man responsible for the death of the child and who has also wounded a fellow soldier because he could run faster than pursuing wolves. In sight of a wall fort, Quintus as to deal with this renegade during which time his companion is mistaken for a Pict and killed by a Roman soldier on lookout. This leaves only Quintus who although welcomes and given food and drink finds that the Governor has decided to have him killed so that there is no evidence that the Ninth were sent across the border and were all killed. There will be no record of what they did, where they went or what happened to them. Quintus then decides to go back across the new border to live with Arianne with whom he had struck up a relationship.
I have been able to find that 50 years before the date when the film is set around117AD the Ninth was involved in a massacre in which it is believed about half its strength were killed by forces of Queen Boudica and the Legion was then commanded by someone called Quintus. The Cavalry were not involved and the rest of the force of 5000 men were elsewhere in forts and other duties. It is not known what happened to the Ninth because it does appear records were destroyed or lost. However there is dispute among historians that the Legion may have been deployed on other missions outside of the UK and that at some point it was disbanded with the men deciding either to settle or return to the lands of their origins.
I thought the film was too full of vivid violence however accurate, was cold and bleak and failed to engage. Dr Kermode liked it but mentioned it has reached only 13th in the British popularity by attendance list.
I and the other handful of the public in the theatre had to sit on one side as there was a roof leak. At Headingley there had also been a roof leak just above where I had chosen to sit on a sunny day. It was raining when I left the cinema and quickly made my way to the City Bus station on the other side of the outdoor market, where earlier I had been tempted by original Jazz Long Play records and some DVDs, but resisted. I had a long wait as having missed one bus and the driver of the next was delay because of a serious accident in the Headrow and we set off some 15 minutes late.
The following morning I decided to set off home before noon as it was evident that the match was destined for a draw with bad weather forecast for the afternoon, although it was warm and sunny when I set off taking the same road that had taken me into Leeds North where about the distance along I reached the pleasant North Yorkshire town of Harrogate with the Valley Gardens, the Greens and the antique Shops as well as Spa. I did not stop but continued to Ripon where I made lunch, stopping for a can of diet coke at a garage having to pay 90 pence.
I had enjoyed my visit although had only spent two sessions of the four days at the cricket. Durham had been confronted by a massive first innings of 610 for 6 with Rudolph going onto 228 and McGrath 105. Beckenstein had managed 12 overs for only 21 runs and Blackwell 43 overs for 105 runs. Even Coetzer and Smith had bowled a few overs. Di Venuti had led well from the front reaching 108 before having to retire with a back injury and only Beckenstein with 64 and Plunket who was massacred as a bowler scored over 50 with Smith making a pathetic 8. And the team were effectively all out for 330. They were 46 without loss when the rains came on the fourth day so it was a draw and are now in mid table one of four teams with one win. There are three teams with 2 wins with Nottingham 2 from 2 whereas Yorkshire who head the table are 2 and 2 draws.
The trip proved inexpensive with three nights accommodation for £29. petrol £31 Car Parking £15 Cricket entrance £10 and Food and drink - Bread rolls, £1 Sausage Rolls £1, Pain au chocolate £1.68, Pain Raisins 84p, Danish £2, Salami, £2.57 Cucumber 35p Coleslaw 40p and three cartons of Grapes £7.41 Diet coke 5 cans £2.60 Liquorice 64p, a total for food and drink of £21.65 and £106.65 for the four days. It is time to give Gordon Brown and his Manifesto his day.
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