Cafés

Writing about cafés is a bit of a problem because I don’t really know where to start. There are so many places I love going to and a few I wouldn’t go within two hundred metres of again (especially that one in Middlesborough).

So as I said choosing one particular café for this blog seemed a bit unfair to all my other favourite cafés. Then I had an idea. I could choose one that I can visit at any time and why not make an actual visit today. So I strolled up to the station and got the 0903 to Carnforth, or Milford Junction, as it is known in Brief Encounter. I have visited the café, or Refreshment Room, by way of the film many times over the years. I have also had many a cheese scone or bun there in person as well.

Milford Junction today

I presume most people have seen Brief Encounter but here are a few reminders:

The 1945 film stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in lead roles, alongside Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond, Everley Gregg and Margaret Barton. It tells the story of two married strangers living in pre-World War II England, whose chance meeting at a railway station leads to a brief yet intense emotional affair disrupting their otherwise conventional lives.

It received three nominations at the 19th Academy Awards for Best Director (Lean), Best Actress (Johnson) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Many critics, historians, and scholars consider Brief Encounter as one of the greatest films of all time. In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it the second-greatest British film of all time. (The Third Man was the greatest and I’m not arguing with that).

Much of the film was shot at Carnforth railway station on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. Although it was a busy station, it was far enough away from major cities to avoid the blackout for film purposes, allowing shooting to take place in early 1945 before World War II had ended. At two points in the film, platform signs indicate local destinations such as Leeds, Bradford, Morecambe and Lancaster, even though Milford is intended to be in the home counties. Noël Coward provided the station announcements in the film.

The role of the Refreshment Room is key to the film as it’s where the couple share tea, conversation, and hidden moments. It represents a safe, yet public, space often contrasted with the mundane chatter of other passengers or the intrusive interruptions of acquaintances and that room is both the emotional beginning and final separation of the couple.

Carnforth station retains many of the period features from the time of filming and has become a place of pilgrimage for fans of the film. When I was there today it was packed and by chance a steam train was passing through when I was having a cup of tea. It was wonderful.

It has to be said that the Refreshment Room was recreated in a studio but it really does look like the real thing.

the Refreshment Room (studio recreation)

That place of pilgrimage now houses an award-winning Heritage Centre and the volunteers were just finishing off extensive refurbishment work ready for opening again the next day. It houses various exhibitions, a vintage mini Cinema (mainly playing Brief Encounter for free), a gift shop and a curios and railway collectables shop.

By the way, I actually think it is a happy ending.

As previously stated I have been going to Carnforth Station for ages.

Carnforth Station

Putting my gloves on the table
I was glad I’d made time for tea
The half past five’s always crowded
And not quite the right company
The bookshop in town was quiet
I spent more than I really should
But there’s just enough left over
For those buns that Ann says are good
There’s a nice couple sat in the corner
I think that I’ve seen them before
When suddenly out of nowhere
A steam train roars by the door
But the girl behind the counter
Just smiles as she gives me my tray
And didn’t mention memories
Which is worth the tip when I pay.

(First published in Purple Patch, 2007)

Stanley Holloway and Myrtle Bagot in Brief Encounter

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Movie Stills

In 1937 Tom Harrisson founded the Mass-Observation Project. He had previously conducted anthropological research in Sarawak using a variety of observational methods, noting everything that he saw or heard, to form what we might today call a data base from which he could go on to hypothesise and write up his research. On his return to Britain he suggested that the same methods might be used to record and study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. He chose to base his work in the north of England industrial town of Bolton, renaming it “Worktown” for the study. Harrisson’s team of unpaid, untrained volunteer observers kept diaries, distributed open-ended questionnaires and anonymously recorded people's conversations. They considered behaviour during family life, at work, on the street and on various public occasions, including public meetings, leisure activities, holidays, sporting and religious events. The Project was brought to an end because of the Second World War. However a vast amount of material was gathered, some of which was published at the time.

In “The Town that Vanished” (2018 Worktown Publishing) Ian Robinson brought the study up to date. However the subtitle of the book, “The Rise and Fall of Lancashire’s Biggest Mill Town” speaks for itself. If the Worktown team were recording Bolton at its zenith, Robinson’s book chronicles its nadir.

The first chapter is a study of the town’s cinemas in the late thirties. In 1938 the Mass Observation Team recorded that there were a staggering 47 cinemas within a five radius of the town centre. This was a time before television. Most working class people went to cinema twice a week since the programme was changed mid-week and another film shown. It seems that there was a pecking order of cinemas. The most prestigious were known as first run cinemas which got to show the latest films on release. Other films were shown but after a three or four week period the film returned for a second run. There were then third, fourth and even five run cinemas that would screen films that had been shown around the town several times already. The prices in the lower tiers were reduced as the films moved around the town. 

Bolton Odeon

The site and seating capacity of all cinemas was recorded. The premier was “The Odeon” (above) which had 2500 seats. Working its way down the list eventually the catalogue gets to that it calls unexceptional picture houses in the outlying districts. This group of cinemas were unfalteringly called flea pits or bug huts by local people since they were allegedly infested. “The Empire” on Howard Street, “The Ritz” on Fletcher Street, “The Carlton” on Mount Street, always called “The Mount” by locals. In 1959 as a ten year old boy I lived on Mount Street.

Mount Street was the archetypal “two up, two down” street of terraced houses. No hot water and outside loo. The opening sequence of “Coronation Street” always reminds me of it. It was a long street, winding down from St Matthew’s Church at the top to “The Mount” at the bottom with St Matthew’s School on the left in the middle. I lived at Number 77 opposite the School.

To a little boy the inside of the cinema and what it showed on its silver screen seemed wonderful. I very rarely got to see films at night with my mum and dad but what I did get was Saturday morning “flicks”. Film shows just for kids. Cowboy movies. Hopalong Cassidy. Dale Arden dressed in tight space suits enough to arouse sexual feeling in little boys before they were supposed to get them.

During the film you could feel movement under your feet. It wasn’t the bugs. Seats at the front were cheaper than those at the back and so during the film you got kids, who had paid peanuts to get in, crawling under your seats to get to those at the back that offered a better view. When the film broke down, as it frequently, did the juvenile audience booed and hissed. The doors were flung open and usherettes started hoofing kids out onto the street. Wonderful indeed.

But what was more wonderful for me were the movie stills displayed in glass cases outside the cinema. These were shots taken from the films themselves often showing the highlights. There could be up to a dozen in each case. The stills in the early years of cinema were black and white with pinpoint focus and superb depth of field in a quality that a mobile phone camera can never hope to achieve. Film Noire particularly lent itself to these style shots. Black and white. Shadow and light. Evoking poignant atmosphere of dozens of exotic and secret places. On the other hand they could be scenes in down to earth locations from the Bowery to the Bronx. They all whisked you away to somewhere else.

movie stills on the foyer wall

By the late fifties most of the stills in the cases were in colour. A colour palette that looked like nothing else. Vibrant and unrealistic in contrast to the vivacity of black and white stills. Nevertheless still enticing for a little boy.

The concept “Movie Stills” is a tremendous contraction in itself. Caught on camera something that is moving and making the meaning still. Captured in the millionth of second to stand still and be evocative for all time. It has often struck me that this is what poems are. Ideas formed into words and caught to stand still and be evocative for all time.

The cinema was at its height as a place for a night out at the end of the Second World War in the late forties. I have written a drama sequence of poetry, song and dialogue for four readers which chronicle my mum’s time in and after the War. In one set of lyrics I have tried to capture some of the sensation of going to the cinema. It is in the style of the Andrews Sisters, one of the original all girl, all spice, groups. It takes place where a man, and his brother invite my mum and her friend out. They ask the girls where they would like to go. The reply comes………

Take us to the pictures,
A place where we can dream.
Take us to the movies
to watch the silver screen.

Ride us to the place where cowboys roam the range.
Red Indians live in tepees all the across the plains.
Drums beat along the river, tomahawks and the rest.
Pow wow wow and digger de dog we love the Wild West.

Chorus

Fly us to Casablanca or down to Marrakech.
Smoke rings rising from foreign cigarettes.
Film noir in the shadows as Peter Lorre stares,
shuddering in the darkness on the edge of our chairs.

Chorus

Middle Eight

Girls with ice cream trays slide down the aisles.
One movie ends and another one begins.
Frozen choc or orange pop
and off we go again.

Put us on the dance floor with Ginger and Fred Astaire.
Long legs, swirling dresses, Busby Berkeley stairs.
Champagne breakfasts, Deco nights, Hollywood glamour (more).
Handsome heroes, beautiful women, give us more, more, more.

Chorus

They must have enjoyed the film because the man later married my mum and became my dad.

So finally onto a favourite film. Well almost. But first a poem.

Afternoon Theatre

Made up and dressed as walk-ons to look fine and fancy free,
they arranged to bump into each other from time to time.
Lingering on corners until the other came into view
only then daring to reach out, touch hands and peck cheeks.

With every day as regular as well hung wall paper,
their own marriage lines were too well rehearsed to forget.
Missing their cues, waiting in the wings, they had met too late
to step out of well-worn characters and audition for new parts.

Stars in each other’s eyes for a while, albeit in their own,
for the duration of drinking tea or smoking a cigarette.
Sitting outside, making giddy conversation across the table
to find something meaningful to patch their threadbare years.

Too scared to reach for freedom, take chances or improvise,
needing to watch the clock in what was their own golden time.
Knowing type casting brought security but repetition caused pain
prompts called them back to the parts they had played for life.

When they left the stage without curtain calls or encores,
there were no keepsakes, nor ovations, nor flowers.
He caught the bus and she drove home in a round-a-bout way
not even imagining there might be others just like them. 

People have said about my poem how clever it is to incorporate all the theatrical elements and terms that it does. This was, of course, very kind of them. That was always my intention. What no one has ever said is that it seems like a rewrite of “Brief Encounter” on stage rather than on film. That wasn’t my intention but every time I read the poem now I can’t help but recall the film and that rather large clock that still stands on Carnforth Station where some of it was shot. And look at the poster below. Movie stills indeed, capturing all and everything, just like poems.

Brief Encounter Poster

Thanks for reading,

Bill Allison

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Still Life?

For fact fans,  Brief Encounter  - the theme of today's blog - most famous for being a 1945 David Lean film starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard with a screenplay written by Noel Coward, was actually based upon a pre-war one-act play by Coward called Still Life.

Still Life was about an illicit and ultimately doomed love affair between a suburban housewife and a married doctor, whose brief encounters took place mainly in the waiting-room/café of a railway station over a period of several months. As I recall it (maybe inaccurately), it played out the impact on two decent people of the conflict and guilt that arises when a good thing is also a bad thing (strong mutual attraction versus social mores); this in contrast to the easier-going liaison between a male and female worker on the station staff.

The film screenplay expanded the cast of characters and the story line, in particular Laura's staid relationship with her husband. It put me in mind of the opening lines from Joni Mitchell's reflective song 'Chinese Cafe' (on Wild Things Run Fast ): "Caught in the middle/ Carol, we're middle class/ We're middle aged/ Nothing lasts for long...I wonder where the time goes". Both Alec and Laura had thought they were happy with their respective lives until their paths crossed in that railway station refreshment room. Ultimately, despite what they felt for each other, decorum and destiny decreed that they must part forever. (For the movie, the station used was Carnforth in Lancashire - still worth a visit today.)

I always read the title of Coward's play ambiguously. Whether he intended it or not, I don't know (but I suppose he did). On one level, the brief encounter makes the middle-aged Laura and Alec realise there is still life in them yet, as their meeting triggers passions that maybe they have never felt before or possibly never expected they would feel again. On a second level, still life symbolises the staid and unexciting married lives of those protagonists (seemingly sterile in Laura's case). Of course, the play as portrait of Alec and Laura's affair is a still life in the third sense of it being a depiction. Finally, I read a fourth layer into its meaning: a recognition that although the lovers concede they cannot be together, still life goes on and they will treasure what they feel for each other as a submerged but sustaining force in their otherwise routine existence.

Before we go there, here's a bit of a random insert: I have to tell you about a brief encounter I had this week, all the more exciting for it being unexpected (often the case with brief encounters). I was in Fleetwood quite early on Wednesday morning when I saw my first swallow of the season perched on one of the overhead tram cables near the seafront - clearly a harbinger of the unusually warm Easter week-end we are all enjoying.


Swallow on a Fleetwood tram cable

I take it as a sign we are going to enjoy a long, hot summer in the shimmering jewel of the north. I hope so. Anyway, it was a lovely surprise and one I thought worth capturing.

Okay, back to the main thread of the blog, a brief encounter and its more enduring aftermath, when common sense, convention, decency, lack of nerve, past loyalties, self-preservation, a sense of duty or whatever combination of factors has made one or both parties step away from the liaison.

Still Life?

There are almost always consequences. I don't know how many of you have been there and I'm not asking, for that's your own private business; but if you have, or know someone who has, you might recognise some of what I've tried to encapsulate in this latest product of the imaginarium.

Afterwords
Seeking the distraction or protection
of a busy coffee-shop, you faced me down
over untouched cups of froth;
frowning, took my hand in yours
one last time and said
we should not, could not meet again,
much as it pained you to say.

By then I was drowning,
your phrases washing over me
with a sense of their finality...
distraught at the thought of being caught,
unable to bear the consequences
of losing what you already had,
heart-broken at us having to part
but time we came to our senses...

Didn't I agree? Mutely I stared,
panic and pain contending,
searching your face for I knew not what,
comprehending only
that this was to be the end.

And then there came the coda:
Think of it this way, my darling Rose -
that though we may not have each other,
we will always have what might have been...

I let you walk away that day
because I loved you and still do
but as I sit here quietly reading,
silently grieving not one loss but two,
I'm thinking
if only you knew...

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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A Brief Encounter with Sadie Trotter

Whenever I hear the words, ‘Brief Encounter,’ my mind leaps (like many others’ I’m sure) to the film of the same name.  A railway station cafe, a meeting of soulmates, the impossibility of a relationship, the parting of ways.  A bittersweet and poignant tale.  

My own brief encounters have been nowhere near as romantic or tear jerking as the original.  However, there have been several of these encounters over the years, some more newsworthy than others. 

Three or four years ago I was about to cross the prom near my house when I noticed an elderly lady, standing on the edge of the kerb, her head turning rapidly back and forth as she waited for a gap in the traffic. I approached her and asked if she’d like help crossing the road. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘but I’ll help you.’  I laughed and we linked arms and crossed the road. For an old lady she was pretty nippy, and we only slowed down when we reached my house.  ‘This is me,’ I said, turning to go. However, I hadn’t reckoned on this lady’s ability to chat. I don’t think I’d ever met anybody who could match me.  

I’m ‘Sadie,’ she said, then, like 007, added, ‘Sadie Trotter.’ 

‘Jill,’ I replied. 

She started to tell me how she’d lived in the house next door when she’d first moved to Blackpool with her husband and children.  After a few months, her husband had died of a brain tumour and she’d been forced to move back in with her mother.  It seemed to me that this lady was suffering from some form of dementia as she talked very lucidly about the past, but struggled to remember where she lived now.  I listened for a while longer, the whole time time watching her with my photographer’s eye. I’d been out taking pictures of the sea, and my camera was slung round my neck. I could feel my fingers twitching to press the shutter and capture Sadie’s animated face. She was talking so quickly now, that her false teeth kept dropping down from her upper gums. Periodically she sucked the teeth back up, and hardly pausing for breath, would continue with her memories.  Her son had also died, many years later, another brain tumour.  She had looked after her mother when she became senile, whilst holding down a job at a local bank.  She was eighty nine and all she had left now was a daughter, who lived in Manchester and rarely visited.  This was one sad tale but Sadie didn’t tell it that way.  Looking back seemed to make her happy.

She laughed when I asked if I could take her picture.  ‘You don’t want a picture of me,’ she said, looking coy, and I could see a glimpse of her younger self.  She adjusted her hat and her teeth and gave me a smile.  I took a few quick shots, and told her I’d print one out and post it through her letterbox - once we’d established where she lived.  She seemed to know which direction to take so I offered to walk her home, we linked arms again and she set off at a brisk pace.

I printed out the picture, put it in a frame and called round a few days later.  With hindsight, I suppose Sadie was pretty trusting to let me into her home just like that.  She made me weak tea, produced a plate with neat slices of Battenberg, and continued to tell me her life story.  Her husband had been a vicar, and Sadie was obviously still very religious.  As I got up to go, she grabbed my hands, motioned for me to sit down again, closed her eyes and began to pray.  To an atheist this was a somewhat surreal experience.  

I called every few weeks after that.  Each time would follow a similar pattern:  Sadie would answer the door, comment on my purple hair, make me tea, offer me cake, and continue (or recap) on her life story.  Sadie sat before me, frail and weak, toothless and almost hairless.  The teeth apparently only appeared on special occasions, and although she enjoyed my visits, these obviously didn’t quite cut it.  The photographs on every shelf and filling every bit of wall space told their own story:  A plump, coiffed Sadie hanging onto her very own vicar’s arm and smiling shyly at their wedding nearly seventy years before; a motherly Sadie with two young children on the beach;  Grandma Sadie standing proudly next to a grandson in cap and gown.  And of course, a tiny, smiling Sadie, hanging onto her hat and her teeth in the wind outside my house.  Over the next eighteen months I continued to visit, sometimes taking the grandchildren, who had to be bribed with the promise of chocolate biscuits and very strong cordial.  Sadie loved to see the children and always went out of her way to play with them, but as time went by I realised her health was failing, both physically and mentally.  The children became harder to persuade to come with me, so I went back to visiting alone.

One day there was no answer when I rang the bell.  The neighbour informed me that Sadie was in hospital, and promised to phone me when she was home.  Or if she didn’t return…..  

I felt incredibly sad.  I never saw Sadie Trotter again, despite calling several times, and I never heard from the neighbours.  A couple of months ago I spotted a ‘For Sale’ sign in Sadie’s front garden. 

Our ‘brief encounter’ hadn’t had a lot of romance but it did end up a bit of a tear jerker.  

RIP Sadie Trotter, you were a lovely friend for a short time.

A Life by Jill Reidy

Cluttered room, a tray of tea

Cake arranged in tiny squares

Heating and hopes high

A lifetime on walls and shelves

Births, marriages and deaths 

And everything in between

Sadie talks

I sip weak tea, take a bite of cake and listen

It's a long tale

Ninety years of ups and downs

Joy and sadness

Disappointment and despair

Rheumy eyes plead with me to stay

A visitor 

A listener

A friend

Sadie suddenly looks solemn

Takes my hands, lowers eyelids

Says a prayer

I focus on her wedding ring

And ponder the unfairness of life

Thanks for reading…….. Jill 

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