1917 – greatest generation?

Grandad (front, 3 from right) and his section

1917 – the year they didn’t get the biggest Oscars. 1917 – The year Jerry didn’t get my grandfather.  1944, the year Jerry didn’t get my father-in-law.  2019 – the year the Final Call-up got my father-in-law, the last of that generation in our family.  Those two-war generations were moulded the traumas of their youth.  They were what the Americans like to call “The Greatest Generation”.  Certainly, in our family alone, our members lived through two world war, two civil wars (on different continents), survived several imprisonments, refugee status and homelessness, two death sentences, multiple exiles, mixing with real terrorists, real spies, enforced labour, racial discrimination, hunger, on top of real combat.

On Chesil Beach

Another grenade thrown into the current gender wars?  Another poke at sexual repression?  On Chesil Beach – the book – is not this. I see the book by Ian McEwan, and the new film, are being misused for these polemic purposes.  Pity, because here is something worthwhile and relevant, 55 years after it was set.

In placing the drama in 1962, McEwan is deliberate.  It is a direct reference to Phillip Larkin’s Annus Mirabilis, the year sexual intercourse “began”.  McEwan describes well the times.  I am old enough, just, to remember some of this, CND, Macmillan, colonies getting independence, etc.  Now, reviewers sneer at the effective evocations, “melon boat for starters? Ha ha.”  After year and years of rationing, that was exotic. Even using onions was not universal.

Star Snores? The Yawns Awaken.

After sitting though a marathon 25 minutes of product advertising, followed by 20 minutes of dismal film ads, we finally got to the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Like so many blockbusters, the film is derivative.  The Force Awakens is a rerun of the original 1977 Star Wars: A New Hope.  Sure, Jurassic World 2015 recycles Jurassic Park 1997.  And dear old Spectre 2015, is reconstituted flesh from any number of prior incarnations.   But the flavour or the taste in