Afternoon Films #1 - The Heroes of Telemark

In the days before football & cricket completely took over my life. I used to love watching the afternoon film. With cold rain crashing down outside and a warm fire inside, I'd lie on the floor and just disappear into the screen.

In 'The Heroes of Telemark', the Norwegian resistance sabotage the Vemork Norsk Hydro plant in the town of Rjukan in the county of Telemark, Norway, which the Nazis are using to produce heavy water to make a nuclear bomb.

Kirk Douglas plays Rolf Pedersen, a Norwegian physics professor, who, though originally content to wait out the war, is soon pulled into the struggle by local resistance leader Knut Straud (based on Knut Haukelid, portrayed by Richard Harris).

They are both smuggled to England to have microfilmed plans of the Hydro examined, and then return to Norway to plan a commando raid on the Hydro. When a force of Royal Engineers, who were to carry it out, are all killed, Petersen and Straud lead a small force of saboteurs into the plant. The raid is successful, but them cursed Germans quickly repair the equipment!

The Nazis then plan to ship tankers of heavy water to Germany. Petersen and Straud sabotage a ferry carrying the tankers, and it sinks in the deepest part of a fjord - Hurrah!

The skiing clips are the thing I remember most. I don't hink I'd ever seen it on film before and despite the fact they didn't use the formal Telemark style (as I subsequently found out when I travelled to Norway and actually learnt how to ski!) it still looked effortlessly cool to me.

Sunday lunchtime in the pub with the papers

It was a BC thing (Before Children). I would wake up late, yet early enough to stock up on the papers. If Chelsea won I'd buy as many as possible (more of a rarity those days and indeed these too!). Normally it would be The Observer & The IoS as staples and then others depending on the news, the mood, the amount I'd had to drink the night before.

Once armed with Fleet Street's finest tittle tattle, it would be a brief stroll, a gentle push and then the pub would be ours. A leisurely couple of hours supping, muttering, thundering or saying nothing. All in all, still the second best way to spend a Sunday.

Coughing fits in the middle of the night

Go to sleep fine, dream dark dreams until... the breath catches and then the coughing, wretching begins. It usually only lasts for a month or so, at springtime. No such thing as uninterrupted sleep.

Yeah, I miss that. Like hell I do.

Frosty mornings

The cold crunch
of boot on snap brittle grass
the skid slide
of brogue on pinkgrey pavement
the sharp gasp
of harsh first light
the raw gulp
of snarling winter air.

A trip to Twickenham

The roar of the Twickenham crowd is normally an unappetising mix of braying and guffawing. However, something different happened this weekend. Not only did the England rugby team turn in what must have been their best performance in over half a decade but the Twickenham crowd actually sounded exuberant! It was a truly wonderful thing to experience - albeit via an Australian telecast!

Normally a trip to HQ begins with a stuffy cramped crawl from Waterloo, surrounded by more Barbour jackets and punchable accents than is good for ones soul. After having spilled out of Twickenham station, the options are try and get a decent pint in any one of the ridiculously packed pubs, pay through the nose from one of the numerous little stands positioned in various, already rather wealthy, back gardens or battle your way past fifty chaps in ill fitting hooped jerseys with letters on their back and after their name.

Once inside the rather impressive ground, the ritual of passing the flask begins (unless you'd rocked up in the car park some 15 hours before for 'a bit of brekkie', then you would be more than familiar with the rather sickly mix of Port & Brandy). The game normally goes by in a blur of trips to the toilet, bar and the general sense that it was all rather nice but wouldn't be even better if England played properly & won.

And lo, it came to pass that England did manage to shrug off their more pragmatic shackles and ripped Australia to tiny pieces. They were magnificent. I only wished I could have been there to see the whole thing unfold and for the post match celebrations of course. I would have even joined in a quick chorus of 'Swing Low', before cramming myself back onto the late night train to town.

However, I was stuck here. In Sydney, Australia with only the rather pleasing prospect of teasing all my Aussie friends and/or colleagues mercilessly - well, at least until the Ashes begin...