A trip to the Farne Islands

The Farnes are a group of small islands off the coast of north Northumberland.  There are 28 islands and about 16 can be viewed at high tide.  They are in the care of the National Trust and are well known as being used by St Cuthbert for meditation in the 7th century.

Inner Farne from Bamburgh beach

Longstone lighthouse on one of the Staple islands was home to local heroine Grace Darling.  She was the daughter of the lighthousekeeper at Longstone and helped saved 7 people from a shipwreck in the early nineteenth century.  She died from tuberculosis only 4 years later aged 27 and is buried at nearby Bamburgh.

The Farnes can be seen from the coast near Bamburgh and boat crossings leave from nearby Seahouses harbour.

Despite being born in Northumberland I had never visited the Farne islands until this week.  My sister Ann is a keen birder and had been to the Farnes for the first time last year and was very keen for me to go with her.

Our boat was the 'Glad Tidings' and we left Seahouses harbour at 9.30 am on a beautiful sunny day which considering the almost autumnal weather we've had in June was a lovely surprise.  The boat holds 65 people and was pretty packed.  Most of the passengers were photographers and there was some serious kit on display!

Grey seals

The first thing of note that we saw was some grey seals on the rocks approaching Staple island.  There is a colony of 3-4000 seals on the Farne islands and around 1000 pups are born each autumn.  The Farnes is one of the best places in the UK to see these seals and underwater diving trips are available.

The main reason why most people visit the Farnes during early summer is to see the colonies of nesting seabirds which come to the islands to breed each year.  There are thousands of puffins, kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots and shags.

Longstone lighthouse from Staple Island

Our first stop was on Staple island.  The red and white Longstone lighthouse is visible from here.  The lichen covered rocks make up the bulk of the terrain and every inch of the cliffs are colonised by the birds.

There are no terns on Staple island - they were to come on Inner Farne.  We saw thousands of guillemots and kittiwakes including numerous chicks.  The shag young were almost as big as their parents.  Puffin burrows were everywhere.

After a trip around Staple island to see the impressive Pinnacle rock stacks we then headed for Inner Farne which is the largest island.  There is a chapel, information centre, Pele tower and lighthouse with cottage.  Inner Farne also has more vegetation, including docks and bladder campion.

Inner Farne lighthouse with flowering dock and terns

The highlight of the trip for me were the puffins.  You couldn't see these birds other than here during the breeding season as they simply don't come onto land.  They seemed unfazed by all the visitors and just went about their business going back and forward collecting sand eels which they take back to the burrows to feed their chicks.

Puffin

The shags similarly were nesting very close to where people were walking by.  The terns on the other hand were very aggressive and a hat was essential!  The birds had eggs and chicks very close to the boardwalk path and were dive-bombing visitors constantly.

We decided to stay on Inner Farne for an extra hour and got back to Seahouses at 5 pm.  It really was an unforgettable day!

West Indies in the summer of 76

I was 15 in 1976.  One of the hottest summers in living memory in Britain, the temperature hit 90F four days in a row in June.

I vividly remember the summer holidays that year, my twin sister & I were from a coal mining town and our parents didn't have a car so we were used to being around the house most of the time.  What kept me indoors that year was the West Indian cricket tour of England.

How wonderful it is these days to have Youtube and DVDs of films like Fire In Babylon.  I've been reliving that summer of cricket and reading a book called Grovel by David Tossell, named after Tony Greig's infamous remark that he would make the West Indians grovel.  By the end of the series which West Indies won 3-0 it was the England batsmen who were doing the grovelling.

This Test series began my life long love of Test match cricket.  I started with the best, I don't think I'll see the likes of Gordon Greenidge, Vivian Richards and Michael Holding again.

The Conformist

I rented Il Conformista from Lovefilm recently. 

It's the story of Clerici (played by the wonderful Jean Louis Trintignant), a repressed official who agrees to assassinate his former anti-fascist professor to conform in the Fascist society he belongs to.  The story is told in a series of flashbacks depicting Marcello's memories which have led him to the journey he takes towards the assassination of the dissident professor and his wife Anna.  From his morphine addicted mother to his father who is in an asylum to his relationship with a blind friend and his vacuous fiancee who he uses to plan a honeymoon in Paris so he can carry out his assignment under the watchful eye of Manganiello who is played by Gastone Moschin who Coppola would later use as Fanucci in The Godfather Part II.

The Conformist has just been released on DVD and I was looking forward to seeing it again.  I first saw it in June 1979 when I was 18 years old. Watching it again (several times), I'm amazed at how much it has influenced a generation of filmmakers.  Coppola and Scorsese and particularly the Coen brothers.

Miller's Crossing has long been one of my top ten films and the influence that Bertolucci's film has on it is really remarkable.  Not merely the 30's setting, but the costumes, set decoration, lighting and in some cases direct lifts from the film are referenced by the Coens. They surely are heavily influenced by 'the hat' here!

The cinematography in this film is simply fabulous, the huge buildings with cavernous interiors, the room in Guila's house  where the light through venetian blinds is copied in the various stripes in the scene, Guila's dress, the radiator, the sofa.  The use of colour is notable too - the warm tones and bright colours in the scenes with Quadri the professor and his wife (played with assurance by the 18 year old Dominique Sanda) which contrast with the cold blue tones of Marcello's memories of his honeymoon in Paris.

There is so much to admire in this film and it's brilliantly directed by Bertolucci.  The performances are first class, Trintignant plays the repellent Marcello with a coldness but also with touches of surreal comedy.  The two women in his life, his "all bed and kitchen" wife Guila played by Stefania Sandrelli, and the Professor's sexually ambiguous wife Anna played by Sanda are both equally as good.  The themes of identity, conformism, blindness and betrayal have never been portrayed better than here.  A masterpiece.