Window at the top of the derelict cinema in the centre of Tunbridge Wells.
After a pint and a baguette in the sun outside the Crown in Groombridge, we wander across the field opposite the pub to Groombridge Place. This is a pretty 18th Century House with a moat and lake in front of it. all round the house, this afternoon, are vast scaffolds supporting floodlights and cameras. Thee are vans and cables everywhere. Apart from the occasional burst of machine gun fire, nothing seems to be happening. "They are making a TV film of the Day of the Triffids," a young man tells us, in between bites of a sandwich. I recall that scenes from the Peter Greenaway film, The Draughtsman's Contract, were shot in the gardens here. The Day of the Triffids, is a novel by John Wyndham about the world being over run by venomous vegetables that move around on legs, have frightful stings and live off rotting meat. We guess that the machine gun sounds must have had something to do with the destruction these vegetables, but there are no actors visible, no sign of action and, worse, no triffid in sight.
The high pressure, which brings us fine weather this week, seems to help in the production of vapour trails on a vast scale. The sky is criss-crossed with white lines broadening out into thin clouds. You can see silver insects drawing the lines behind them, decorating the sky like graffiti artists.
2 comments:
"The destruction of these vegetables." For many years hot water rather than machine guns were all Brits needed. Last night, in a remote Welsh restaurant (satnav essential), Mrs B and I were served with a transcendental form of bubble-and-squeak. A gentrified dish perhaps but, no matter.
You can't kill triffids with machine guns, it's salt water that makes them go squelchy, everyone knows that! Always seemed to me they weren't really very menacing if all you had to do was throw some brine at them...
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