In each edition, a personal selection of things of value: we ask each contributor to nominate their favourite book, film, piece of music, work of art, restaurant or pub, and place. This week: journalist, Blue Badge tour guide and funeral celebrant, Barbara Millar
Favourite piece of music
Between the ages of 12 and 18 I scraped away on my violin (made in China, cost £6) on the second desk of the second violins as a member of the West Bromwich Youth Orchestra. I was never very good, but I loved it, and it gave me a huge appreciation for the classics. One of my favourites of the pieces we played was Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony No.8 in B Minor (unfinished, apparently, either because he was first displaying the symptoms of the syphilis that killed him at the age of 31, or because he was distracted by the inspiration for a piano solo piece, or possibly both).
From the first plaintive notes from the cello and bass, I found the piece thrilling. I recall it rather tested my ability too. And initial plaintive notes played on the cello have obviously remained my ‘thing’ as I absolutely adore Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto in E Minor’, preferably the Jacqueline du Pre version. Jackie was introduced to the cello concerto at the age of 13 – and had memorised it within four days. It became her signature piece and is still, in my opinion, the best ever interpretation of a sublime piece of music that was, back in 1919 when it was first performed in London, slated by a Times’ critic who said: ‘Not a work to create a great sensation’. Could not have been more wrong, pal.
As far as other music…cried my eyes out when Simon and Garfunkel split up, loved the fact that Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin was a fellow native of West Brom, and adored the music of Elvis. But please don’t think I mean Mr Presley. Elvis Costello may have re-invented himself dozens of times since the late 70s/early 80s but it is the music from this era with their clever lyrics and catchy beat – ‘Watching the Detectives’, ‘I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea’, ‘Alison’ – that I turn up ear-splittingly loud in the car, and sing along to every word.
Favourite film
A couple of years ago I went on a pilgrimage I had long wanted to make – to Pennan, one of the locations for the setting of my absolute favourite film of all time, Local Hero . I had my photo taken at the red phone box, where MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) shoved coins into the slot at a rate of knots while describing the colours of the Aurora Borealis to his boss in Texas, Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster). Sadly, just as I was having my private phone box moment, a Pennan native went past and told me it wasn’t the original.
It was a wonderful, gentle, utterly absorbing film which, somehow, has never seemed to age – well, apart from Peter Capaldi and Denis Lawson, who was then at his boyish best. Brilliantly directed by Bill Forsyth and brilliantly cast – who could ever forget Fulton Mackay as beachcomber Ben – and with the most glorious soundtrack by Mark Knopfler (and vocals by Gerry Rafferty). The only sad note was the fate of the rabbit, And, even to this day, if someone answers the phone to me with the words: ‘Thank you for calling’, I always want to add: ‘Knox Oil and Gas’.
Favourite place
So difficult even to come up with a short list…I love Amsterdam, have good friends there and have visited many times. I tried to learn Dutch, going to evening classes and reading Jip and Janneke (Dutch equivalent of Janet and John) but any attempt I ever made at communication when there was answered in perfect idiomatic English. So I gave up. I love where I have lived – London, Cambridge, Glasgow – and where I live now, the East Neuk of Fife. But the place I hold in the greatest affection is the Forest of Dean , on the Gloucestershire/Monmouthshire borders. This is all about rites of passage: it was there, with my youth club, that I first enjoyed holidays, from the age of 14, independent of my parents; it was there that I had my first under-age drink (lager and lime) in the local pub and it was there that I had my first proper kiss. No-one ever forgets their first kiss, nor the setting. For me, it was under the canopy of the forest, on a warm August evening in 1969, and it was remarkably chaste, but still utterly memorable.
Favourite work of art
There is something compelling about the still, quiet, interior world of Johannes Vermeer, with the wonderful quality of light he always achieved. The setting was usually his own house in Delft and his sitters were mostly women. I used to love ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ but since the eponymous film, every time I look at this painting, I always see Scarlet Johannson’s glossy film star looks super-imposed on the original, innocent young face. ‘The Little Street’ combines glorious 17th-century Dutch architecture, with gentle domestic labour – two women, one sewing, the other brushing the cobbles. The centuries are swept away, you could be there, observing.
But what really inspires me is Art Deco. I love the architecture – the Chrysler in New York, Burgh Island hotel in Devon, the former Beresford hotel in Glasgow…even, yes, the old Hoover building on the A40 in west London (immortalised in a song by Elvis Costello, see above) But ceramics are my particular joy. Pieces by Clarice Cliff, of course, and Susie Cooper, Keith Murray and Charlotte Rhead. But at the top of my list would be Shelley and at the top of my list of Shelley items would be its Vogue shape in Green Blocks. Fragile porcelain tea cups with impossible-to-hold solid triangular handles, boldly decorated in geometric blocks of green, black and silver. Sumptuous. When this modern, luxurious, glamorous style was first unveiled in the 1920s, after the stuffiness of Victorian design and the hell of the first world war, optimism was, briefly, tangible. I remain optimistic that, one day, someone will buy me a Shelley Vogue tea pot.
Favourite restaurant/pub
When I lived in London in the 70s and 80s, friends and I used to frequent a bar called Peppermint Park, just off St Martin’s Lane. We were very young and thought it so daring to order cocktails with exceedingly risqué names. How innocent were our pleasures. I used to eat out in London a lot when I was young. Hardly surprising then, that I had to re-mortgage my flat to pay my credit card bill.
When I first moved to Glasgow, again I went to lots of restaurants…and how wonderful it is to have a seductive meal in decadent Rogano’s. But my favourite pub, which I have only visited once, has to be Brown’s Hotel in Laugharne, Pembrokeshire. This was Dylan Thomas’s local. He used to give people the bar’s telephone number as his own. Go to Brown’s, he would instruct, buy a Felinfoel, and ask for me, they know where I live. He lived just up the road in the Boat House, bought for him and his family by Margaret Taylor, wife of historian A J P Taylor, who himself detested Thomas. The family – wife Caitlin and three children – often lived a hand-to-mouth existence, with Thomas spending far too much time and money in Brown’s. To go there is to feel such a strong connection with this crazy, charismatic poet.
Laugharne was allegedly the inspiration for Llareggub, immortalised in his masterpiece ‘Under Milk Wood’, although this claim is hotly disputed by New Quay. Laugharne was once described by Thomas as ‘the strangest town in Wales’. I would second that. On my visit I went into the local bookshop to discover it was run as a shrine by Thomas fan, author of books on Thomas and former Greater London Council housing policy committee chair, George Tremlett, who I used to have to write about when I was a journalist in London. Small – and strange – world indeed.
Favourite book
You can have the clothes off my back, you can have the money out of my wallet, but, no, I’m afraid I can’t lend you a book. Not even the trashiest airport novel picked up in desperation to endure a long flight. When, in the past, I have lent books and they have not been returned, I have harboured malevolent thoughts for years. This is not healthy. Better not to lend at all, I find. Books are the furniture in my home. Every single room in the house – including hall and landings – have bookcases in them, all full. I spend much of my time sourcing new bookshelves on the internet. This is not healthy either. So how on earth do I choose a favourite book?
Well, it has to be the books that have made me laugh on the London underground. You know the rules – no making eye-contact, no talking and, above all, absolutely the number one rule of rules – no laughing. Two books have caused me to break that rule during the couple of years when I faced a one-and-a-half hour commute, twice a day, from my home in Stepney to my work in Fulham. One was ‘The Golden Ass’, written by Apuleius and the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. It tells the hilarious story of Lucius who is accidentally turned into a donkey and has some incredible adventures. It is a laugh out loud funny, even some 2,000 years after it was written.
The other tickler on the tube is Three Men in a Boat by fellow Black Country compatriot Jerome K Jerome (from Walsall, a stone’s throw from West Brom). This comic travelogue, published in 1889, was inspired by his honeymoon and he started writing it as soon as he got home, replacing his new wife, Georgina, with a couple of real pals, George and Carl (called Harris in the book). The fox terrier – Montmorency – is entirely fictional but as Jerome himself later wrote, the hound ‘developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog’. Next time you want to misbehave on the underground, I recommend you read it.
By Barbara Millar | 6 July 2016
