One of the first things you’ll notice strolling around Edinburgh is the collection of private schools that seem to have dropped out of context and out of the sky. Pudgily gothic Fettes. The ersatz Red Square on the Thames of Stewart’s-Melville.
![Not Tommy Connery: the *real* one.](http://www.apoplectic.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Fettes-300x221.jpg)
Last week, I was wandering along Lauriston Place, heading in a roundabout sort of way towards Cockburn Street to see if the t-shirt shop had replenished its stock of John and Yokos. Heading east along the street, I was distracted from George Heriot’s School looming from an Edinburghian distance by the sounds of Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review on BBC Radio Five Live.
[The apoplectic.me Tiny Letter distribution usually riffs off in a different direction from the week’s post. Check it out here.]
It’s nice to be able to flip on the radio and hear Mark and Simon steer Flagship Wittertainment through Friday afternoon. Yes, it’s easily available through podcast and on the interwebz, but there’s something nice for this thousand-year-old-man in being able to listen to the show at the same time as the like-minded unseen.
![Big, flappy hands not shown](http://www.apoplectic.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kermode-300x300.jpg)
Even better, this week, Mark was talking about the couple who kind of haunt this blog, Edwyn Collins and Grace Maxwell. A quick search of apoplectic.me for Edwyn’s name will show what I’m talking about. The recent history of Edwyn and Grace, and particularly the aftermath of Edwyn’s stroke, are recounted in the new movie, The Possibilities Are Endless. Pop along to this link for a list of screenings and a link to the movie’s iTunes page.
I’m debating whether to try to convince Longsufferingcaregiveroftheblogbeth to pop over to The West for a screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre, or just do the iTunes thing at home. Grace Maxwell’s incredible book, Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins, alternately has me laughing like a drain and crying like a skinned toddler in a bag of salt, and I fear that watching The Possibilities Are Endless in the movie theatre may break the Kermodean Code of Conduct.
I’m particularly interested to see how the movie kind of replicates the experience of what Edwyn went through. The Guardian describes a “day-dreamy form… attempt[ing] a tour of the singer-songwriter’s mind as he revisits his past (childhood locales, fragmentary memories) in search of the future.”
Also, it’s a story of the redemptive power of love.
Gord! I’m getting emotional already. Must be the stroke.
This isn’t the only unusually framed biopic of sorts doing the rounds at the moment. Tony Benn: Will & Testament is out, too. Again, you can find screenings and an iTunes link at the movie’s website, here. It’s not possible to summarise the ages of Benn in a short blog post. A prolific diarist, his published diaries reach eight volumes. But for all his political activism and achievements and failures, this is the sentiment that takes centre stage in the trailer for Will & Testament:
My wife, she’s been the most powerful influence in my life, without a doubt. She taught me how to live and how to die. And you can’t ask for anything more than that.
As a teenager, I won the Stewart’s-Melville school prize for economics. It seemed like an appropriately teenage act of rebellion to use my book certificates to arrange for the first two volumes of Benn’s diaries to be presented to me in the big old assembly hall that was originally intended, on a larger scale, to house the debating chamber of the House of Commons. Y’know, in defiance of the prevailing wisdom, man.
![Igor! Answer the door, you fool!](http://www.apoplectic.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/DSMC-300x201.jpg)
So it is that the once Viscount Stansgate’s wife had an afterlife in Mr Benn, and he has an afterlife in the mind of the old man who was once a wee boy. As this review notes,
If, Gord forbid, Edwyn Collins hadn’t emerged from his stroke, it seems clear that his impish sense of humour and other qualities would have lived on in the memory of Grace Maxwell and their son. Longsufferingphonefinderoftheblogbeth and I often found ourselves having a good laugh together reading Falling and Laughing, and Mark Kermode’s recollection of seeing Orange Juice live captures something that strikes a chord, too.
![Shambling Scottish stagecraft, pre-Nerd Bait](http://www.apoplectic.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/orange-juice-300x213.jpg)
George Heriot and Daniel Stewart, I don’t remember much about. Even though the goldsmith and the former Macer to the Court of the Exchequer left large slabs of wealth — equal to tens of millions of today’s pounds — created in India and within the British royal family, respectively, to create “hospitals” for Edinburgh’s needy boys.
John Fowles, whose The French Lieutenant’s Woman I read last week, suffered a stroke in 1988. His first wife, Elizabeth, died two years later, a week after being diagnosed with cancer. Fowles, who never gave up his deep conviction that there is no afterlife, suffered his stroke at 62. A year later, this interview was published in The Paris Review:
This stroke has made me feel time is running out; in other words, much more aware of death, my own and that of the one other human being I love most—and whose ghost, in one form or another, has lain close behind all those female heroines we mentioned earlier. I can imagine my own real death, but not that of Elizabeth, my wife.
And yes, of course we strive. “[S]omething drives one on; man—and woman—is profoundly self-reflexive.” But as one of Fowles’s characters reflects, our afterlives — such as they are — are short, limited to the memories of generation or two.
![Nope. The door's been bewitched, Harry!](http://www.apoplectic.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/heriots-300x204.jpg)
For Mum.
I’m coming to think I don’t like anything except aggravating modern fiction, unlistenable composed music, and doctor who, so I don’t have a biopic pick but in the spirit of “follow people you don’t agree with on Twitter” for my politics feed, try the Streep thatcher, which I watched on a plane once after 4 glasses of wine.
As to who: I liked the finale a lot. The Danny uses the power of love was very moffat but missi was great and I was sad to see bow tie girl not be the next companion, because if I never see Clara again that’s fine. My complaints (missi was too killed) and the obvious tribute to pertwee were not as strong as liking it
Finally I am going to buy 20 rush tour shirts so I can start throwing out tee shirts in solidarity
Ha! Much as Kaite just said “Hello, Ricky!” to her screen while reading the TinyLetter, I just applauded your tee shirt tactic. Not sure if you heard it.
You know, I should watch Streepcher. Maybe in a confusing double bill with The French Lieutenant’s Woman (which doesn’t entirely reflect the book’s aggravating modern fiction, I hear.) I know not having dead bodies pile up in the street is a good thing. You’ve just gotta know when to stop. Just as Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth will have to be on hand to stop me at four glasses of wine for that one.
Missy was good. Though why does Ainley seem to be the template for all Masters now? Particularly when we’re meant to be all Pert. I think in some ways, last season was more Pert-wy. The submarine one, certainly. This weekend was more RTD than anything else, I think. Maybe if/when I get this M.Sc., I’ll start insisting I be called The Master. But in a Delgado stylee.
Bow Tie Girl would have been good. Honestly, I’m still grieving for Lynda with a Y.
You should get journey tshirts to throw out.
<more applause> Hello, Phonefinder General!
Favorite t-shirts. Yes, I wear them until they disintegrate. And also favorite pants. I think mrsstrokebloke may remember my “velvet pants”.
I also once had a beloved pair of blue and black striped polyester thrift store pants that I’m hoping still exists in storage somewhere stateside. Every once in a while I think wistfully about them.
I have a hard time imagining you being wistful.
And I do remember your velvet pants. Which reminds me of the Romanian lawyer that showed up in our office from corporate last week in a velvet pantsuit and studded high heels. You would have loved her.
She sounds dreamy.365
Polyester thrift store pants. Are you sure you should be wearing such flammable pants, Ron?
One of the most man-made items of clothing I ever owned was a fantastic 199…7…? era, kinda stretchy, silver velveteen button-down clubbin’ shirt. I liked to think it made me look like skinny-Trainspotting Ewan McGregor. But more pasty and ill-looking. And less skinny.
After spending about 15 years looking for a new one — Gord knows what happened to the first — we finally found a replacement. Although it’s 100% cotton, it looks like it’s from Mondas.