Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Go-Between, amarillys, bird-map

A dvd of The Go-Between, Joseph Losey's film (with screen play by Harold Pinter) of the novel by L. P Hartley, which came free with the Sunday Telegraph, is well worth the cost of the newspaper. It seems better than I remember it when I first saw it; and the story too, is something - a 12-year old boy's involvment in the carryings-on of grown ups, which he cannot understand a the time - which I can appreciate now more than when I first read the book. It is as though, like the narrator, who is recalling the episode in his childhood, I too have grown up.

A bunch of tall, dark-red amaryllis on thick stems which have, so far, supported the heavy flowers, without breaking under the strain as they sometimes do, is a rich and wondeful sight.

With this morning's Independent is a poster-sized map showing the long distances, which migrant birds fly to reach the British Isles every year. It reminds us that swallows will soon be arriving here. Some of them will have flown all the way from the southern tip of South Africa.

No comments: