Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Remember when this was all fields?

She was the only one to call him "Dave" and to the end of his life he loathed being called "Dave". He associated it, presumably, with being treated like a backward child. He was convinced he had a handicap and he retreated more and more into his private world of fantasy.
Not, as you might be expecting, an excerpt from my upcoming, totally unwarranted biography but taken from Kevin Brownlow's David Lean. It made me laugh out loud in bed last night. Published just over a decade ago in 1996; were "backward child" and "handicap" acceptable terms as recently as that?

Did a triflingly small amount of work on the play and then we headed for a walk through the park and up to t'mill where Joseph Rank was born, bought by his grandfather John in 1841. I took a few photographs of the three remaining sails that the wind hadn't removed before being told to scarper by the health and safety conscious landlord. Naturally, these aren't the original sails (I don't even think they have the capacity to turn - if they did they might have escaped damage) but reproductions that, I think, date back around 20 years. I have vague recollections, that may well be completely untrue, of this mill not having a top on it at all until the pub's owners brought the place back to life. All this is now at the side of a very busy dual carriageway and surrounded by cramped residential streets. Back in the day it was all fields. Some of those fields did, at least, become East Park, which we walked back through on the way home. We stood and stared in disbelief at deers, peacocks and squirrels and a man in a track suit with his off-lead pit bull terrier.

1 comment:

Bazza said...

Not acceptable in 1986 let alone 1996. During that period I worked in a residential home for people with learning disabilities. You've reminded me of my mother who always referred to the residents as the "inmates".