Favourite joke, out of many, from Mike Leigh’s new film, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’:
‘Bear with me…’
‘Is there?’ (looks around)
It’s Mr Leigh’s ‘Pollyanna’. But with better jokes. And you can play Spot The London Location: Finsbury Park, Crouch End, Camden and so on. Early on in the film, the protagonist is seen dancing at Koko with her friends to Pulp’s ‘Common People’, then they stagger drunkenly across the bridge near the Market, as the sun comes up. A common experience indeed. Funny that Britpop tunes are now used to soundtrack the lives of nostalgic thirty-year-olds on a girls’ night out.
Nice detail that the driving instructor complains about a Britain covered in CCTV cameras – at the very moment he turns onto Holloway Road. The street is meant to have the most security cameras in the country: one for every 35 yards.
The film’s star Sally Hawkins also shines in another new favourite thing of mine, the excellent Radio 4 sitcom, ‘Ed Reardon’s Week’:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/edreardon.shtml
It’s a kind of Nathan Barley for the over-40s, or those of us who might as well be over 40. Ms Hawkins plays the titular scribe’s literary agent, the ultra-posh Ping. Or as Reardon refers to her, part of the ‘Cheltenham Ladies’ College Diaspora’.
Nice use of the latest youth slang for her character – or at least, the bits of youth slang employed by middle-class young women. In a recent episode, Ed is commissioned to write the history of his rich friend’s cottage in the Dordogne. Turns out Ping’s family are neighbours:
Ping: My parents’ve got a house on the other side of the valley, so we’ve known each other for, like, HUNDREDS of years (snorts).
Reardon: Yes, well I think that’s a slight exaggeration.
Ping: No, really. Our families had a battle in, like, 1640 or something. We won. Yay! Get in! Our cleaner was in the Resistance too. She’s BRILLIANT value…
***
Recent activity. To Hoxton and Shoreditch three days in a row. First to the Rich Mix cinema to see ‘Lars And The Real Girl’ with Ms Shanthi. Then to be photographed around the district by Ms Phoebe Allen for her degree course. Her project is a mock fashion shoot for a magazine, and I’ve agreed to be her model. Except her camera plays up, and we have to return the next day.
In Hoxton Square on a rather cold morning: I pose next to a very realistic-looking art exhibit comprising life-size manniquins in forensic white suits and masks, posed as if they’re combing a section of the square in the manner of a crime scene. Except the fluttering tape around them isn’t labelled ‘POLICE’, but ‘THE TELL-TALE HEART’. As in the Edgar Allen Poe story.
On the bench nearby sits a shivering lady with a clipboard and one of those handheld clicker-counters used to count visitors. She tells me it’s part of a Harland Miller show at the nearby White Cube gallery, influenced by Poe.
Shoreditch life: every single cafe is full of trendily-attired students on laptops. In fact, nine times out of ten their computers are all the same model. As opposed to Henry Ford on cars (‘Any colour as long as it’s black’), in the coffee shops of Brick Lane it’s any laptop as long as it’s a black MacBook.
