It's always a pleasure to
follow motorway signs to The North, and this time was no
exception. As a family, we all chipped in to rent a holiday cottage just
outside Bamburgh on the Northumbrian coast so that we could spend Christmas
together: seven adults, two boys and a dog.
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| The Farne Islands, home to St. Cuthbert and Grace Darling |
Luckily, we had a week free
of snow though the weather was mild and windy, giving us days that were bleak,
dark and very short.
I always like to have some
sort of project on the go for times like this, and this year it was to look at
Lindisfarne/Holy Isle through the prism of Roman Polanski's 60's black comedy
thriller Cul-de-Sac. It was a film that made a great impression on me when I
first saw it back in 1966 at Lincoln Film Society, in the building in which I
now work.
As well as tide tables off
the Web, I got hold of the DVD from MovieMail. The night before our visit, the
lads and I sat down to watch it. Not having seen it for decades, I was struck
by its Samuel Beckettian quality — as a kind of riff on Waiting for Godot with bits of Pinter thrown in. Instead of
Godot, the characters wait out the non-appearance of Mr Katelbach from
Mablethorpe (a holiday town on the Lincolnshire coast). I was pleased to see this reading of it confirmed out by notes on the BFI website, where I found this nice
production still.
The most striking thing, on
visiting the place itself, was how Polanski played around with the geography, collapsing a landscape that stretched over several miles into a
compact, claustrophobic stage set-like location.
Weather, tides and daylight
hampered my attempts to get to grips with the island's essential character, so I came
away with only a few photographs to post to Flickr. Another visit clearly
beckons. Time and tourism have been very kind to the place and the run-down
castle environs and decrepit sheds are much smartened, thanks to the
ministrations of the National Trust.
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