Even when friends deserted him over his decision to leave Julia, his wife of 34 years, for Lucie, he had a few reliable coping mechanisms. “For a long time, I was persona non grata,” he reflects. “I was left with a lot of very angry wives, and I wasn’t invited to much, if anything at all. I remember one Christmas Day, the best Christmas of my life in fairness, when I sat with a bottle of champagne, a can of tuna, and I watched The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone. Back-to-back-to-back. Three magnificent movies. Actually, I’ve wanted to do it many times since.”
There is a little known sequel to The Guns of Navarone. Unfortunately it was a total flop.
The Nuns of Gaborone follows a crack team of African Ursulines and Poor Claires who are dropped behind enemy lines. The group falls apart due to doctrinal differences, especially when to hold Vespers and they forget why they came…
I don’t know what effect theyll have on the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me!
Catch the prequel: The Devils (of Loudun).
I used to think it was a horrible tragedy for someone to be by themselves on Xmas day. I now realise that, for some people, that is their ideal Yuletide experience. My extended family all get along well and family get togethers are nice and convivial. I get chances for alone time during the rest of the year. It baffles me why families that don’t get along still feel the need to do a family Christmas when it’s obvious that everyone is going to hate it.
Seconded!
Thirded! I don’t do bonhomie.
I do do bonhomie but I am averse to having to be jolly at a time and place of someone else’s choosing. I prefer it to be spontaneous. So I’m not much interested in birthdays, anniversaries, Xmas, Hogmanay or whatever.
But an “I know, let’s go and do …” moment often appeals.
I remember one particular after-work jolly of four or five of us having a pint or three, because I came across one of the best bitters I’ve ever drunk. I’ve just checked: they don’t brew it any more. Shame!
“While Rayment’s beer is no longer brewed in its original location,… Originally from Furneux Pelham in Hertfordshire, the brand was acquired by Greene King and its primary brewery was closed in 1987″
Dear God, I remember a beer from 40 years ago. But it really was a cracker.
I remember Creamola Foam. That’s dates me.
Greene King have buggered up more beers from the breweries they’ve bought up than I’ve had hot toddies.
But I’ll tell you the best Hogmanay we’ve ever had. We were in a hotel restaurant in Hong Kong and a Gurkha Pipe Band marched in to play us some Scottish Country Dance music.
If only there had been a dance floor. Dancing the Dashing White Sergeant to a pipe band with a sergeant in charge would have been pretty good.
In Malaysia around new year 1990. Chinese schoolgirl choir on the TV singing ‘on Ilkla moor baht at’
I once witnessed a group of Chinese women line dancing to a Japanese duo performing Another Brick In The Wall.
In Penang on the peak train, three 8-yr old Chinese girls singing Jingle Bells at Easter
One thing I’ve always been pleased to get away from is the British Xmas. Thankfully here it just lasts a single day. Of course we have Semana Santa (Easter). An entire week of gratuitous God bothering which peaks today. But it’s glorious blue skies & the beach beckons.
“why families that don’t get along still feel the need to do a family Christmas”
Oh, but this time it will be different and we will learn to get along. Look at all the movies with just that theme…
“ obvious that everyone is going to hate it” and don’t forget the vicious row over the cooking of the turkey.
Favourite war movies – Battle of Britain, Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes, and I discovered only the other day that the latter two were directed by the same bloke…..
The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare, The Longest Day. If I must pick 3 WW2 action films. WW2 films that are a bit different: Downfall, Hope and Glory, Stalag 17.
Non-WW2: Apocalypse Now, The Battle of Algiers, Master and Commander, Last of the Mohicans. An Italian-Algerian movie in French and Arabic in black and white might sound boring, but it’s great. Some of the cast were ex-FLN and a lot of the writing came from accounts of tactics. But it also tries to be more of a documentary than propaganda.
WW2? The Cruel Sea. Pre-war, Waterloo. Post-war, a little-known film about the Aussie SAS in Vietnam, The Odd Angry Shot.
Another decent Aussie film about Viet Nam is Danger Close.
One of the surprises I learned when I saw The Great Escape was that Donald Pleasance, who played the mousy little forger, had been shot down during WW2 and held in a POW camp. How he must have shuddered on first seeing the set.
“Cool Hand Luke”?
Even after nearly 60 years, I seem to recall the car washing scene quite clearly. Can’t think why, now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpiHtOnXbrc
The Cruel Sea, Bridge over the River Kwai.
I consider the excellent Zulu more of a Western than a war film.
I agree that Master and Commander is tremendous. I have a soft spot for Ice Cold in Alex.
A film concerning the war: the Branagh piece about the Wannsee Conference. Conspiracy.
Bit biased as a former resident of Nijmegen, obviously, but I’d add “A Bridge Too Far” to that list.
Have you ever considered that you watch war films at Xmas because family Christmases are a war zone?
But that’s when they schedule them. I thought the British network film offerings last Christmas were pretty rubbish really, though I did watch The Great Escape, again. Al Beeb seem to have completely lost the plot on films. Just today they are showing ‘Evil Under the Sun’ again for what must be the 10th or so time in a couple of years.
They schedule them because they’re popular at Xmas.
I’m thinking back to my UK Christmases. I always used to throw a party Christmas Day night. I’d invite people but mostly they’d say they’d “love to come but it’s Christmas & family, you know. I really can’t”. I’d buy several hundred quids worth of booze of assorted varieties anyway. Not much in the way of food, there’s never much call for it. Then sit back & wait. First ones would start trickling in about 10PM, by 1AM the house would be seething & would continue to be so right through to the morning. It was a public service I provided. A refuge from the aunts, the in-laws, other people’s kids & effin Santa..
I was talking with mrs llamas and we agreed the best Christmas Day we ever had together was the day she was voluntold by her work to deliver meals-on-wheels to shut-ins in the Northern Detroit suburbs. The joy and happiness on those folks’ faces when we showed up with hot turkey and all the fixings made every minute worthwhile.
The best was one old dear who lived by herself in her family home near 14-Mile and Farmington. I smoked in those days, and she saw my Salems in my shirt pocket. And she said ‘can I have one of those? I’m dying for a smoke, and nobody else will let me have one.’ So I gave her the pack, and my Zippo, and I walked down to the Amoco station and bought her a carton of Salem Slim Light 100’s and a BIC lighter, and went back, and we enjoyed two or three together until mrs llamas picked me up again. The unalloyed happiness and comfort I was able to give her for $15 (shows how long ago it was) has never been matched by any Christmas gift I have ever given or received, before or since. Every time I drive by that house, we remind ourselves of that day. She’s long gone, of course, but the memory will happify us forever. True spirit of Christmas.
llater,
llamas
They schedule them because they’re popular at Xmas.
And they are popular at Xmas because the BBC schedules them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymFSzyTqfe0
Keys along with Andy Gray was shabbily treated by Sky (see also Matt Le Tissier, Rodney Marsh and going forward any white male pundit who ventures away from “The Message” as Critical Drinker would put it ) for making pretty accurate comments about female officials.
Nearly 20 years ago my mum, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, had a panic attack literally as we drew up at my brothers for Christmas lunch after an hours drive.
Nothing to do except take her back home and put her to bed. Dad and I dined on whatever we could find in the freezer and spent the day quietly talking and reflecting on the really important things in life.
They’re both long gone now. RIP.
Joni Mitchel had a great line which is sadly all too true: You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone.
I also rather like Shakespeare’s Sister.
“Life is a strange thing.
Just when you think you learned how to use it,
it’s gone”.
Gamecock has lived alone for 30 years.
I see people project their persona on me. There is a hint of it here, people thinking what it would be like for THEM to be alone on Christmas. Journalists often do it. Indeed, this article is really about what it be like for Oliver Brown to have lived this. Not a dig on Brown. Brown can’t help telling the story from his perspective, as if it were him.
What people don’t know is that when you live alone, the loneliness disappears. Usually quickly. After a few weeks or months. AND it can become the desirable state. In fact, my married golfing buddies sometimes envy me.
I have never felt so lonely as when I was married to my 2nd wife.
When you read stories about people who live alone, you are getting the WRITER’S view.
Lived alone for nigh on 20 years, including 7 retired and have felt ‘bored’ maybe half a dozen times.
Tom Hardy said something like ‘living alone is dangerous – you get to relish the peace and tranquility’……………
I’ve lived alone for 25 years since my wife died, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Being a MN Officer for 49 years helps because that’s a mainly lonely experience. I have very few arguments, and when I do I always win.
When I was married, the boredom wasn’t caused by idleness such as the constraints of being a male living to mainly female rules to keep the peace. Since the former Mrs. Souter skipped off into the sunset I’ve lived life according to how I (as a man) wish to live it and I’ve never been bored since. If the urge takes me to walk the highland trail, I pack up and go do it. How can life be boring with such joys and freedom?
“when you live alone, the loneliness disappears” I lived alone for 10 months in 2003, very quickly got used to answering to nobody but the cat, and his demands were simple and reasonable. The house was quiet so I could hear the cat moving about, always knew which room he would be in.
The Cruel Sea. Twice.
Then Master and Commander. Twice.
Realism that none of the others can match. It happens that I am acquaint with the guys whose C18 cannons provided the sound effects for M&C – the lengths they went to to obtain realism, without resort to CGI or ILM, show in every frame. I understand that The Cruel Sea was shot on a real corvette in real storms with real seasickness and real broken bones.
The others are good in their way, The Battle of Britain impresses with the sheer number of genuine aircraft that they brought into play. But they still look like movies, with deft makeup and stagecraft. But Russell Crowe and Jack Hawkins both look like they slept in their clothes for a month, and the attention to the most trivial detail is far-more convincing than any amount of applied pancake.
llater,
llamas
Das Boot is, my sundodging friends tell me, unsettlingly realistic
Apparently the cast were kept out of daylight for weeks so they would get the right skin pallor
Das Boot is amazing for what I assume is a pretty realistic portrayal of life in a U- boat – the damp, the stink, the claustrophobia.
A few years ago I visited Pearl Harbor, and there is a WWII US submarine on display there. Although it’s clean, airy and not underwater, the contrast with a U-boat is Black Hole of Calcutta to a sunny green meadow.
20 or more years ago there was an old Soviet diesel sub parked up at Greenwich for a while and I wandered round that. That looked like it would be pretty grim too on patrol.
I’d forgotten Das Boot. I saw it when it was a mini-series on TV. I hear that version is better than the one they cut into a movie-length film. Inside submarines is scary, but I’ve only been in a very spacious Gato boat in Battleship Cove in Massachusetts. Can’t imagine a U-boat setting out full of stores, the floor* lined with cans. or rturning full of stinking sailors.
*Yes, I say floor. When I was embarked troops on Intrepid I got fed up with being corrected. Deck, overhead, bulkhead. Bloody nonsense. Couldn’t wait to get off at the Orkneys, which we invaded successfully.
U-475 (USSR Foxtrot class diesel sub) is privately owned and currently ‘parked’ at Strood awaiting restoration (which it has been for several years).
If interested in subject, Michael Gannon’s “Operation Drumbeat (Paukenschlag)”
is a good read.
I recently saw again The Blue Max. No great shakes as far as acting goes, but it’s worth it just for the airplanes.
I’d also give 12 O’Clock High a nod and Passchendaele about Canadian troops in WW1.
Hear him. Hear him. Huzza!
I enjoyed M&C, but was never convinced by Russell Crowe as Aubrey. Of course he was competing with my Jack Aubrey, based on three or four readings of all the books and more of the early ones.
Must watch it again.
Nor me. Stephen Maturin probably ought to be Rowan Atkinson, and Jack Aubrey a younger Jeremy Clarkson. Also, they are chasing an American privateer, not a Frenchie.
What a wanker.
It still bugs me that a WWII German dispatch rider was riding a 1961 Triumph.
That’s what I mean about realism. Careless touches like that burst the bubble of disbelief, and it’s never the same after that.
I understand that in the scene in Master and Commander where Captain Aubrey gives Mishipman Blakeney a book about Nelson to read, it was an actual, 200-year-old copy of a real book. It’s on screen for maybe a second, but details like that make the whole piece.
llater,
llamas
Think of all the western with hundred shot six shooters.
Cartridge revolvers in Good, Bad and Ugly. Set in Civil War. Before cartridge revolvers.
“Good, Bad and Ugly” three hours of man’s inhumanity to man, a tale of greed and violence. There’s a scene where Clint give the dying young man a drag on his cheroot so it’s not all grim.
And modern detective movies where the empty automatic goes click..click.
There’s a bit in the Nolan Dunkirk, where the rescued soldiers are on a train. Not even as an expert, I recognised it as an early 1960s BR carriage.
Rather spoilt what was otherwise an excellent film ( oh and Tom Hardy’s magic gliding Spitfire ).
I looked it up for the Spit. Had a glide rate of 1:13. So from 10,000 ft over Dunkerque, could jt have made the Kent coast. But up over the beaches trying to intercept Stukas they’d be at about 5000. Lose the engine, could land anywhere from Ostend to Calais & inland might just make the field opposite my place. Be in the air about 12 minutes from loss of power.
I did have a joy ride in a two-seater Spit. Some of it, flying it. At low speeds they’re remarkably well behaved. Trimmed right, you could take your hands off & it will fly itself.
But would it have been 200 years old at the time of the movie?
Not to mention the helicopter in Where Eagles Dare.
The first Star Wars movie, starfleet fighters using Phantom F4 boarding ladders.
Ben Hur, a charioteer with a wristwatch.
I can get with a christmas that involves sitting in the armchair in front of the tele in my underpants watching war films with a bottle of whiskey. Sounds fine.
War and Remembrance (and its prequel) has to be The epic war film. But if you watch it all at once you’ll probably kill yourself. Definitely not an upbeat Christmas flick.
Best Christmas Day movies if you live alone? Gamecock recommends:
Outlaw Josey Wales
Once Upon a Time in the West
Godfather
Casablanca
Chinatown
2001: A Space Odyssey
Raiders of the Lost Ark
A Clockwork Orange
Just kidding.
Goldfinger
You Only Live Twice
Diamonds Are Forever