Days without alcohol 20
Firstly I'd just like to than Osama Bin Laden for a) kindly eluding capture until
That Was Then This Is Now's final episode was broadcast and b) having the decency not to commit a major outrage this week, so there was no danger of us being taken off air. You are showing a new kind of thoughtfulness Osama, that bodes well for the future and I hope that this maturity will carry on into the rest of 2008. Hopefully my stance against alcohol has both pleased you because of your Muslamic beliefs and shown you that it is possible to change your ways. I am not saying I have saved the world through my actions, that is for other people to say.
You can hear the final episode of TWTTIN
on Radio 2's listen again feature. What do you mean you didn't hear the first five? What were you thinking?
An article in the Guardian this week had reminded me of another childhood story. It mentioned a Salador Dali and Luis Bunuel film
"Un Chein Andalou" and I realised from the description that this was the film that I had seen clips of at a very early age on "Open University" or some schools programme.
I must have seen it on a day off from school due to illness when I was about five or six. In those days there was not much on TV during the day, but a sneaky skivey day off meant I got to watch Crown Court and Pipkins, whilst eating Heinz chicken soup - which was the univeral medicine that could cure all childhood ailments.
This wasn't the first time that I had seen something not intended for a young child's eyes. I remember seeing another school's programme about human fertilisation, which showed a magnified film of sperm heading for the egg and consequently explained to my parents that I knew all about where babies came from and that it was all to do with tadpoles. It was the start of a lifetime obsession with sex and in fact seeing both of these programmes has probably had untold psychological impact on me.
But seeing the clips of "Un Chien Andalou" was probably a more frightening and unsettling experience. I don't know how much of it they showed, but what I remember is, of course, the naughty bit. My memory of it is of a scary eyed man chasing a woman through a house. He then catches the woman, fondles her breasts through her clothes and then through the magic of cinema her clothes disappear and he is fondling her naked breast. Then her clothes reappear and she runs away and he chases her, she shuts his hand in the door and his hand is seen to be crawling with ants. It is a vivid memory and one that came back to me many times during my youth, both to eroticise and terrify me. But even at the time I knew I had seen something naughty and that thrilled me, even if I could have had little idea about what it was all actually about.
Anyway, thanks to YouTube I have been able
to watch the film again and it probably makes less sense now than it did to as a child. Perhaps a six year old is less likely to question the non-sequitir surrealism. I don't recall any of the stuff with the eye being cut open or the dead donkeys and the priests, but the two images of the fondled breasts and the hand of ants are there almost as I remember. Though in my mind the man was a lot scarier looking and dirtier, like a Frankingstein and had ants on his hands all the time. But in the moment where he is fondling the breast with his eyes rolling up into his sockets and saliva dribbling down his chin then that is a lot closer to what is in my mind's eye. I think all in all it is something you didn't really want to see on your own when you were six and yet it still evokes such strong reactions from me that I am seriously wondering what influence this may have had.Maybe it is the reason that I need a woman to be covered in ants for me to be able to get an erection.
No, that's probably unconnected.
