"Ah, Mister Bond..."...

On a whim I went to see Spectre at the multiplex in Barrow. It was showing on so many screens that you could see it throughout the evening at half-hour intervals. The film had been feted by the critics, so I was looking forward to thrills and spills and putting my brain into neutral for a couple of hours.

It’s many years since I’ve seen a Bond film. The franchise goes back such a long way; as a late developer I was fast-tracked through puberty by watching Ursula Andress striding out of the surf in her white bikini. I remember Shirley Eaton painted gold from head to toe, Sean Connery’s sauve one-liners and Roger Moore acting with his eyebrows.

The plot of Spectre is paper-thin and preposterous, of course. But it starts at a good lick, with Daniel Craig bringing the house down during Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico. He has a brief dalliance with a woman old enough to be a Bond girl’s mother. Her age is a big deal, apparently, even though, in strict chronological terms, Ian Fleming’s Bond would be about 95 by now. Having changed the course of cinema history, simply by being a women in film who’s past the first flush of youth, she makes no further appearance.

Bond then hooks up with the daughter of a guy he went to kill (though the guy pre-empts the assassination attempt by blowing his own brains out). The girl, Dr Madeleine Swann, is a bit miffed about that, but not for long, and she and Bond remain ‘an item’ for the rest of the film. The sex is entirely off-screen, with an unacceptable nipple count of nil. The girl shows she can dismantle a handgun, shoot a few baddies and keep her clothes on… but she sashays sexily down a train corridor in a silky dress. Daniel Craig’s facial expression may not change from start to finish, but the outfits do. Even in the middle of the Moroccan desert, Bond and Dr Swann can lay their hands on neatly-pressed leisurewear.

The film boasts the usual rosta of chases - cars, speedboats, planes, helicopters - and a surprisingly low-key finale. I had to look away when Bond’s jaw is punctured by remotely controlled drill-bits, and there are three or four moments in the film when I jumped out of my seat. But on the whole it’s ‘business as usual’ for Bond, and my brain was still in neutral as I sat by the fire in the pub in Biggar village, on Walney Island…

Langdale slate...

 “Someone’s happy”, says the guy relieving himself at the far urinal. I hum to myself without even realising it, but at least I’m aware of the urinal etiquette. Men never talk about it; it’s just a behaviour we learn. When confronted by a row of urinals, most men will use the one on the far left or far right, which gives the next guy the opportunity to use the urinal on the other end. With more guys, things get more complicated, as this website indicates…

There is one rule that over-rides all others: don’t invade the invisible ‘buffer zone’. So if there’s just one guy using a urinal, you must never, ever use the one next to him. It can only end badly…

Trying to find pictures in gloomy light: silver birches growing out of the slate quarrying spoil heaps, in Langdale...

The River Brathay...

Windermere...

It’s not so bad getting old (and definitely better than the alternative, as Woody Allen used to say). I meet a lot of people on my travels, and first impressions count. So it’s gratifying to find that people are, on the whole, very friendly. With age I think I’ve reached a plateau. Men don’t find me a threat, so it’s handshakes all round, not raised fists. I can get away with saying a lot of things that might have got me into bother thirty years ago. Women don’t see me as a source of either pleasure or pain, and are happy to chat.

I drove from Cockermouth to Windermere this morning, through heavy rain all the way. There were ‘white horses’ on Thirlmere, and Bassenthwaite Lake looked gloomy; it’s definitely not sailing weather. With poor visibility, the hills disappeared into the mist, but there was still something special about the autumn colours. The weather’s supposed to improve about lunchtime, so I may get some pix. In the meantime I’m parked up, proof-reading…

I made a classic mistake this morning. I read, on the Guardian website, that a 16-year-old schoolboy, Daniel Stroud, is being held by police in connection with the stabbing of fellow pupil, Bailey Gwynne. At the top of the article was an unflattering photograph of a teenager, which I immediately assumed to be Daniel Stroud. “Yes”, I thought, “he looks like a bit of a bully”. Then I read the caption and realised it was the boy who died. How quickly we make baseless assumptions about people…

Candlestick...

Drove to Cockermouth today, having spent the night in Workington. I like Cockermouth (and not just for the enticing proximity of ‘cock’ and ‘mouth’). When it rains, locals must get nervous, because the town was flooded out in 2009. The shops in the broad main street have all re-opened, and many of them look even smarter than they did before the flood.

Years ago I photographed the ‘Candlestick’, overlooking Whitehaven harbour. I put the camera on the tripod as the light fell, and took a series of pix, every few minutes, for about an hour… until the ambient light was a deep royal blue, almost black. Though the illumination from the floodlights didn’t change, it seemed to get brighter as the ambient light receded. I re-did the shot last night. Not everyone would enjoy standing around, taking pictures in the gathering gloom, but it suits me…

Carlisle Castle...

Encounters...

Encounters tend to be brief, as I go from place to place, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re trivial. Met a guy this morning, in Bitts Park, Carlisle, who was walking two lively spaniel dogs. He got the dog when he lost his job, he said, and walks it every day. Today he was walking his neighbour’s dog too, and trying to keep their leads untangled. He had to hold both leads in one hand; he held out the other hand, which had stitches from the palm almost to the elbow. “Tendonitis”, he said, and hoped we’d meet again.

Ten minutes later, a man approached me, very hesitantly, on the street. “Could you…”, he said, and his voice trailed away. I gave him a pound, and he burst into tears. “I just wanted 60p”, he said. “I need to phone my dad, and I don’t have a mobile. It costs 60p to make the call, and everybody I’ve asked has just walked away”. He collapsed against the wall, and sobbed. I stayed there, in case he wanted to talk, but, after a minute, I shook his hand and walked away…

Moral dilemmas...

The nomadic life is full of moral dilemmas. When I filled up the Romahome this morning, I saw that by buying a copy of the Mail on Sunday, I could get a reduction on my fuel of 5p per litre. 50 litres @ 5p = £2.50. So I bought the newspaper, and came out of the deal about £1 ahead… though the transaction was so confusing to the lady behind the counter (and to me) that she needed to use her pocket calculator. It was rather too early on a Sunday morning for such high finance.

So far, so good… except I was now the owner of a copy of Britain’s worst newspaper. I couldn’t even give it away to another customer - and I tried - so I put it back in the rack with all the other papers. Owning a copy of the Daily Mail, even just for five minutes, made me feel a bit grubby.
  
Buying books from charity shops doesn’t usually create much moral conflict. Except for last week when I bought a book about birds from a charity shop run by the Cat Protection League. I also bought a book by Christopher Hitchins (with one of the all-time great titles: God is not Great) from a Christian charity bookshop. I’m conflicted. I wouldn’t normally give money to Cats or Christians if someone was shaking a tin…

The church at Greystoke is very big, but the congregation, these days, is very small. Small... and cold. So the vicar has installed a small marquee, in the south aisle, which can be kept toasty warm, throughout the winter months, with a couple of electric fan heaters at either end. The marquee will stay until the weather warms up next spring.

There are, I think, about 13,000 parish churches in the country, with most of them facing similar problems. I love old churches - the smaller the better - but, on the whole, they're surplus to requirements. I wonder how many churches will still be 'open for business' in fifty years time?