Bradford City of Film

 Bradford has a long connection with filmmaking; indeed it was the first UNESCO City of Film in the world. And of course the very first moving pictures ever were taken next door in Leeds. So lots of films have been made in this part of the world. I previously mentioned 'Ilkley: the movie', which was eventually released as 'Say Your Prayers'. Now, I have never seen it, and nor do I know anyone who has, from which I think we can deduce both that it had a very limited release and that it's rubbish. However, given the chance I would watch it because, you know, it's local.

In the meantime I have been to see 'Ali & Ava', also shot in Bradford, but this time in the inner city. It's a nice, warm-hearted watch with all the conflict and difficulties resolving themselves, mostly off camera and in ways not clearly explained. I did enjoy it though, and the physical Bradford shown in it is very much the real Bradford. For those who don't know the city it is perched on hills surrounding a central valley (*) and most views are across the centre to another piece of high ground, and that's faithfully reproduced here. In case anyone wonders about the sudden appearance  of an opulent bookshop among shots of gritty terraces and segregated housing estates, that's the Waterstones in the Wool Exchange, which is a lovely building. Wool of course was once the source of the city's wealth. 

I bet Heathcliffe and Cathy didn't go to Keighley first

Your bloggist is slowing down in his old age and therefore my companion was the same person that I went to see Belfast with recently. This new film contained such a glaring public transport solecism that I turned to her at the end expecting a tirade of "that would never happen". But with the contrariness of her sex, she shrugged her shoulders and said that she couldn't see anything wrong with it. So, it is left to me to point out that if one lived in central Bradford and wanted to go to Haworth for the weekend then one would just go there and not first head off in a different direction, stop at Keighley station and get on the KWVR. 

Not the National Gallery

And, while we're on the subject of public transport, like the proverbial bus a second film shot in Bradford has appeared immediately after the first one. 'The Duke' (**) is mostly set in Newcastle, but the terraced houses seen in the film are in Bradford and the scenes purporting to be the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square were actually shot in Cartwright Hall in Lister Park (***).  I recommend the film, which is very entertaining, and there are excellent performances from Helen Mirren and especially Jim Broadbent, although they're both a decade too old for the roles they play. I said in yesterday's post about Macbeth that great acting doesn't require speech and Mirren proves that again. She manages to express her disapproval of her husband's behaviour simply by the way she knits. As H.L. Mencken astutely observed: "A man may be a fool and not know it; but not if he is married". The annoying error in 'The Duke' is class related rather than anything to do with transport. Helen Mirren lays the table for tea (and that is correct: tea not dinner) and puts the dessert spoon to the right of the knife. Wrong! In a working class home of the early sixties the spoon would have been placed across the top. Don't they do any research?

* The football ground is called Valley Parade for a reason. Unusually for this part of the world there is no river at the bottom of the valley. The road that runs along it is called Canal Road, but there's no canal either. 

** This actually has a couple of tenuous wargaming connections, one of which is that the Duke in question is Wellington.

*** I was there a couple of weeks ago to see 'Island to Island', an exhibition of photographs of the West Indies. If you're in the area I recommend both it and the vegan chocolate cake in the café. 

Skirmishers etc etc

James and I finished the game which had been delayed last week by the sudden appearance of the mad cat and the mad cat woman. I checked their location early on the day and they were apparently just outside Haworth (*), so it seemed that my kitchen was unthreatened. Just to be on the safe side I turned all the lights out mid-afternoon and sat quietly in the dark until it was time to go out.

Anyway, the game continued to be most enjoyable and ended in a fairly comprehensive victory for the British despite them having lost the entire brigade in their centre. At one point they held all four town sections of Momio Cochinello, but by the end not only had all four battalions fled the table, but they had lost their commander killed in action and his replacement killed before he got anywhere near the action. No battle honours for them. Other than long range and ineffective artillery fire there was no fighting at all on the British right, so totes kudos goes to the left flank. I, possibly for the first time in my entire wargaming career, held my cavalry in reserve until the auspicious moment, moved them to the appropriate place, charged them at the correct target at precisely the right time and won the day. I can promise that it won't happen again.

But what of the rules, you ask? They are still a work in progress of course. One problem seems to be that poor units are really, really poor and run away very easily. Part of the issue is that many of the rules are ported from the Seven Years War and in that units get a benefit from being in a linear formation. Napoleonic units didn't fight in that way or therefore get those benefits. Probably the simplest thing is to give them better morale to start with; after all one assumes that's why they were able to move on from fighting in long lines. As for the skirmish rules, I'm frankly not sure we were playing what was written down anyway. And there is still something not right about the town fighting rules.

In other wargaming news:

• I have been doing some painting. You will recall that I have bought some Roman Auxiliary reinforcements and so you will not be surprised that what is on the painting table is a unit of Napoleonic Prussian infantry.  
• I have acquired some Hexon rough ground on eBay. Second hand Hexon is usually too expensive to be worth buying once you take postage into account, but this was a reasonable price and I wanted some more for use with Square Bashing.
• I have gained access to a laser cutter, been fully accredited to use it, and am going to attempt to make, initially at least, some town walls to my specific design. It will be ten days or so before I am able to have my first stab - I am going on a cultural excursion to a secret and exotic location next week - but I shall report back.
• It's the Fiasco show at the Royal Armouries in Leeds this Sunday. We shall be putting on a game with James' Peninsular figures and our 'make it up as you go along' rules. If you're there please stop by and speak to Peter or James about what's going on and maybe exchange a polite, but silent, nod with me.

* "I can say with sincerity that I like cats... A cat is an animal which has more human feelings than almost any other." - Emily Brontë

Hope was but a timid friend

Not that you would know from either James' blog or mine, but there has actually been some wargaming in the Lower Wharfe Valley. Two games in fact, very different in most ways, but what they shared was an eventual winner who had basically given up about two thirds of the way through and only carried on because there was plenty of time left.

The first was the blow the bridge scenario that we had played in the legendary wargames room two or three times a couple of years ago, and a very good game it gives. I was the Russians seeking to prevent said bridge being blown and, not remembering any details from the previous games, chose to bring the infantry on at the road entrance nearest to the bridge with the cavalry arriving later from one end of the table. When this was revealed there was much shaking of heads and sucking of teeth from Peter and James, with the strong consensus being that I'd got it all wrong. As it happens the gods of Piquet thought differently, because in the morale draw at the beginning I drew a Brilliant Leader card plus a Stratagem, which turned out to be basically another Brilliant Leader card for one command. The net effect was that that one infantry command stormed across the table and would actually have seized the bridge had I focussed on the important stuff rather than moving as many units as possible. If you ever play Piquet then that, dear reader, is the golden rule. The converse of having good cards in my deck was that I didn't have much morale. I failed major morale twice, ran out and actually started giving it to the Prussians. That basically means the game is over, but it was only about ten o'clock and my cavalry had just arrived so we carried on. The was nothing to do except act aggressively and damn the consequences; sure enough, from that point on it was a completely one sided affair and the Prussians fairly quickly succumbed.

The second game, in the less than legendary annexe, was the previously advertised Malesov. On this occasion the Imperialists gained an early advantage by immediately getting all their cavalry over the bridge - meant to be a bottleneck - and flanking the Hussites on both sides. With the warwagons' shooting achieving absolutely nothing, the Catholic crossbowmen advanced, fired and as luck would have it, killed Zizka himself; he not just being C-in-C, but also commander of the wagenburg. It didn't look good, but Peter - for it was he on this occasion - carried on because, well, the night was still young. And then, suddenly the wheels came off the Imperialists' caravan. They lost a couple of melees (although James did implausibly draw four tens in a row at one point), did very badly in the ensuing rout tests and, just like that, it was all over. The Hussites had won without moving anything off the table.

That last point does make me wonder about the quality of the scenario. James came up with a good sounding approach to force the crusaders to attack the warwagons front on, which of course is what they did at the time, but which no tabletop commander with any sense is going to voluntarily repeat. Details will be given in a future post along with those of one or two other changes to equipment that I am going to make to improve gameplay of TtS!. We are back to James' next week, but I think the next game in the annexe will be Varna, 1444. There are still warwagons, but it also gives me a chance to break out the Ottomans. And yes, I do have a Janissary marching band.

Pot81pouri

Whilst the weather has thankfully cooled off a tad, and it has even rained a couple of times, nevertheless it's still too nice to do any wargaming related stuff. There may - or indeed may not - be a burst of activity in the annexe next week when the Casa Epictetus may - or indeed may not - be expecting a visitor. In the meantime Plastic Soldier Review have now reviewed the Red Box Burgundian Crossbowmen and agree with my spitfire comparison, although they seem to to find the handguns acceptable. Oh well, what do I know?

I have been lucky enough to see Earl Thomas perform again. The last time I saw him he was in full-on sex-on-a-stick mode and received a somewhat wild reception from the good women of Yorkshire, and from quite a few bad ones as well based on what they were shouting out. This time, possibly hoping to avoid all the catcalls (and sadly for those making them he's actually gay in any case), he went gospel. A more thorough review than I have room for can be found here, but I would like to point out that in well over forty years of gig going this is the first time I've ever seen a bagpipe solo; another item on the bucket list ticked off. Mentioning gigs makes me realise that there are a great number that I haven't reviewed; it also makes me realise that the moment has passed.

I do want to say something about "Withering Looks", a Brontë spoof by LipService Theatre, a company I have mentioned here before. As there were so many of them in the family one is never at a loss for a Brontë anniversary and as I live so close to Haworth Parsonage these are always celebrated enthusiastically hereabouts. This year being two hundred years after, well actually I forget after what precisely, this was the second such parody that I had seen recently, both pieces being two-handers. The first - which mainly seemed to draw on "Jane Eyre" - contained some excellent physical theatre, but had a badly underwritten script, and this latter one - with more of "Wuthering Heights" about it - was by some way the funnier. This may be because they interpreted the concept more loosely (their recreation of scenes from the 1939 film starring Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven was a joy) or possibly because Emily is intrinsically funnier than Charlotte.

A chap with a beard

Politics continues to amaze but not delight. And surely there is no one better to comment on the activities of the big orange turd than the inventor of the flush toilet:

          "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
            For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."

                                        - Sir John Harington

Gleams of sunshine

And so to the theatre. I have been to see Dyad Production's one woman play 'Jane Eyre: An Autobiography', which is, incidentally, the original name under which the novel was published. Rebecca Vaughan's performance is mesmerising. Dressed as the adult Jane she plays all the parts in the whole story with no props except a couch and a glass of brandy. Her Rochester is if anything better than her representation of his governess and the voices of all the other characters are distinctive and appropriate.

The story is, as it always has been, decidedly odd, which is a euphemism for unbelievable. It's not Miss Eyre's behaviour which is at issue (assuming that she is a reliable narrator;  a question which is outside my pay grade), but that of the master of Thornfield Hall. He behaves extremely badly to the woman he eventually claims to be in love with, including parading another, more beautiful and more suitable, woman in front of her, and dressing up as an old gypsy woman himself in order to trick her.

None of which comes close to the biggest of his problems which is (spoiler alert, but surely you already know this) that he's already wed to the madwoman that he keeps in the attic.

And yet, reader, she married him.

2016

At the beginning of the year I thought I'd be clever and keep track of things that happened in a draft blog posting, thus making the inevitable - assuming that the Lord spared me - year end review much easier. Obviously it was too clever for me, because at least twice I accidentally published the draft post before hurriedly taking it back down again. Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it as we've gone along, here are the highlights of the year:

Opera:  I've seen fifteen operas this year, which is possibly some kind of record for me. I'm going to nominate the one that wasn't really an opera as my favourite, namely 'Into the Woods'; it's my list and I shall do what I want. If one wants to be difficult and exclude it then I would go for 'Aida' in the amphitheatre at Verona; quite spectacular. The least effective moment for me was the title character's backside being flaunted in 'Suor Angelica; quite ridiculous.

Theatre: I've seen twenty seven plays, the best being the revival of 'An Inspector Calls', followed by the charming 'Simply Ballroom' and the RSC's 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'. Worst by some way was the execrable science fiction dramatisation of 'Villette'

Film of the year: I've seen ten of these, which is certainly a step up in number on previous years and, apart from the very average 'A Streetcat Named Bob' they were all excellent. I'm going to plump for Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' as the best with honourable mentions for Alan Bennett's 'The Lady in the Van' and Jane Austen's 'Love & Friendship'.

Gig of the Year : I've lost count of the gigs that I've been to, and can only say with any certainty that it's more than thirty five. Van Morrison was the best with a shout out for the Jon Palmer Acoustic Band supported by Yan Tan Tether (the night they recorded their live album not the night they sang all the Christmas songs) and also the Jar Family. On a less happy note, for the second year in succession I had a ticket to see Graham Parker and didn't make it.

Book of the Year: The least surprising category of the lot. If you hadn't worked out that it was going to be Heretic Dawn, the third volume of Robert Merle's Fortunes of France series, then you haven't been paying attention.

Walk of the Year: As the big bouncy woman and I didn't get to walk anywhere this year - and how sad is that? - I'm going for a visit to Buckden, Cray and Hubberholme that the elder Miss Epictetus and I made shortly before the onset of adult life proper took her away from me. A Ramblers walk to Crummockdale also sticks in the memory.

Event of the Year: There were many candidates, quite a few revolving around ambulance trips to A&E; the first CT scan that I had was a very odd experience as well. The great base fire deserves a mention as does the time that the kettle exploded; nothing much resulted on either occasion, but they were very disconcerting. The training day before May half term was a real highlight, not least because the rest of the year was crammed with things getting in the way. However, I'm going to choose my 60th birthday when my daughters took me to Whitby for the day, and didn't we have a lovely time.

I should have read the reviews

"Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation"

 - Charlotte Brontë

 The quote comes from Villette, Charlotte's last novel, written after the deaths of her sisters. The West Yorkshire Playhouse have staged a play based on the book as part of their Brontë season, which in turn marks the 200th anniversary of Charlotte's birth. (For those not familiar with the geography, Haworth is local enough to Leeds for this to be a big deal; attentive readers may remember that a walk to Top Withens was my favourite event of 2015.) I'd marked this as something that I wanted to see and throughout my illness I have fretted that I would miss it; in the event I caught one of its last performances.

Unfortunately, I had worried unnecessarily because it was crap. I was aware that it was a 'reimagining', but hadn't anticipated a science fiction version concerned mainly with the ethics of cloning. Whatever the novel is about - and to some that might be emotional growth or female emancipation or to others (perhaps those of us with a Marxian bent) it might be the search for economic independence - it isn't concerned with the humanity or otherwise of those conceived in vitro. But even if one allows that this is a stand alone play that only borrows the characters and the bare bones of plot outline it still fails on its own terms. It was boring, confused and uninvolving and I left during the interval; something that I haven't done for years.

Anyway, all that aside, it does give me  chance to trot out one of the best quotes from the book: "Happiness is not a potato".  It's really hard to argue with that.

Brontëblog

“I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.” - Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

I have been walking again. Today, in the most delightful company, it was Top Withens, supposedly the model for Wuthering Heights. It was a typical English, late-August summer's day, but thankfully the hail storm was brief if rather heavy. But, never mind that, it was a terrific day out; and did I mention that the company was delightful? Yesterday wasn't bad either, with ten miles or so up Round Hill and along to the Bronze Age cairn on Beamsley Beacon. The view from Old Pike:

You will be wondering how last night's game went. It was entirely representative of wargames at the Casa Epictetus in that a good time was had by all and we got the rules completely wrong. I normally have no shame, but even I am embarrassed by how quickly I had forgotten how missile fire worked. Notwithstanding that, Chris claimed that he enjoyed it and is keen to have a repeat. I think that another run through of 'To the Strongest!' is required before we hopefully move on to something else, preferably after re-reading and digesting the rules first. Interestingly he expressed an interest in naval wargaming, an area where my own involvement has so far stalled at painting the tabletop in the wargaming annexe a mid-blue colour.


Back to Haworth parsonage:

“I love the silent hour of night,

For blissful dreams may then arise,

Revealing to my charmed sight

What may not bless my waking eyes.”

― Anne Brontë

"Flirting is a woman's trade, one must keep in practice." - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!” - Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights