Lobby

Just outside Formby on the bank of the River Alt there is a World War 2 pillbox. It's an ugly concrete structure standing on a triangular wedge of ground cut off from the main field by a branch of the river. Some time ago (he says 12 years) a local man , an ex TA soldier moved in to the pillbox. It was full of rubbish as you can imagine and infested with rats. The ex soldier cleaned it up, got rid of the rats and turned it into a fairly serviceable home. A friend fitted windows and a door. The local paper ran a feature on him and his unconventional domicile last week. The pictures made it look very nice indeed. The walls were whitewashed; it was furnished with what looked like cane garden chairs and Lobby, as the man is known, looked really happy there. (See picture which is courtesy of The Formby Times so I hope they don’t mind me reproducing it) He caught rabbits, fish and eels to sustain him and claimed no state benefits at all. It's not a life many would choose for themselves I know but as far as I can see he wasn't causing any harm to anyone.
That didn't stop the owner of the land, Lord Leverhulme, from seeking a court order to evict Lobby.
OK, I know the land didn't belong to Lobby but I didn't see the good Lord aching to use it for anything either. Even if he argued that he wanted to grow crops or whatever in the main field the pillbox is, as I said above, physically cut of from it, effectively on an island. Why couldn't he let the poor guy stay there? It strikes me as just bullying. I wondered whether the paper was going to run a campaign, it might have made a nice human interest story and I was looking forward to this week's issue. Just this evening as I drove past the spot on the way to a meeting at my son's school I noticed that the windows were smashed, the frames ripped out and the place looked abandoned.
This morning I took a walk up there for a closer look and yep, he’s definitely gone and he’s torched the place-or rather the place has been torched – so no-one else can use it... I don’t know why but this case has really bugged me. Why was the land so desperately needed after Lobby’d been living there undisturbed for 12 years?

Hurray for Hollywood

Do you like movies? Now I mean really really like them. Do you watch them or do you live them?. Do you enter their world completely for their two hour length? I get very affected by films, always have done. Even trailers, hell, especially trailers. When we go en famille to the local multiplex the kids and the present Mrs Tomlinson (like Terry Wogan I like to refer to her in that way to keep her on her toes) turn to watch me when they show the trailers. I can't help it. They get to me. It's the quick cuts, the striking images, the stirring language. They're designed to grab the viewer and make him want to watch the whole film aren't they? Well they grab me. My eyes fill up with slow fat tears and my breathing grows short. Sometimes (and I'm whispering this) I make involuntary squeaking noises or giggles. It's embarrassing to be mocked by a seven year old for getting too excited in the pictures.
It's not as if it gets better with age.
I remember when I was about eight and I was watching the John Wayne version of 'Stagecoach' on TV. It's a great western, a great movie really. A disparate band of travellers forced together to make a journey. Their secrets are slowly revealed and always in the background there's the lurking threat of the Indians. (Now I should just say this was a long time ago and I was unsophisticated and I was terrified of Indians. Of all the movie villains they always seemed so implacable and savage. Thanks Hollywood for your history lessons)
Anyway the whole film culminates in an attack by the aforementioned indians upon the eponymous stagecoach as it plunges across the desert (probably Monument Valley where all those Wile E Coyote rock formations are). You will maybe have seen the famous stunt performed by Yakima Canutt as he goes underneath the speeding stage and clings on to the back. The point is it's exciting Ok? The music, the editing, the threat to these characters you've followed for a couple of hours. It's just great. The Indians look as if they're going to win, the good guys are low on ammunition, some have been killed. The Indians are whooping and hollering and catching up!
Who can save our heroes?
Well, as corny as it sounds, the Cavalry arrive. yep, it's that cliched. You hear the raucous bugle call sounding the charge and the camera cuts to a troop of cavalrymen, sabres drawn, pennons flying, Springfield rifles at the ready and you know that everyone's going to be OK.
I had to be carried away from the television and held and soothed until the hyperventilation calmed and I stopped shaking and laughing and crying.
Now you may say, well, you were just a kid. OK, I was but do you know what? Just writing that last paragraph my eyes filled , my breathing quickened and my throat tightened up. It's still there, I've just learned to keep a better lid on it.

While it's embarrasing it's also kind of fun too. I feel like I'm getting my money's worth from a film, experiencing it just a bit more fully than most. There are movie moments that set up the reaction even when they are divorced from the rest of the film. Hell even snatches of music will do it. You play me the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme, just the 'Dan der dan dan dan der dan!' and I'm a jelly. I checked the website for the new Indy film and just the sight of the hat and the whip on a packing case had me choking. The Star Destroyer flying over your head at the beginning of Star Wars just after you've watched Leia's ship do so and thought that was pretty special
Han Solo coming back at the end and helping Luke 'Come on kid let's blow this thing and go home'
ET pointing his geeky glowing finger at his heart and saying 'Ouch!'
The gunshot in Bambi
Sam carrying Frodo up the unforgiving slopes of Mount Doom
The Rohirrim charging down the hill at Helms Deep with the rising sun behind them
'Yippe Ki Ay muddyfunster' (or something) in Die Hard
'You can't handle the truth!' in A Few Good Men,
Chief wrenching up that water thingie in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Buzz and Woodie 'falling with style' into the car.....
Oh dear God the list is endless. I can't even remember what was the point I was trying to make so distracted and excited have I become by the memories.
Hmm? maybe that's enough of a point.
Hurray for Hollywood.

A lot of it about

There seems to be an awful lot of grisly murder about just lately. We've had Steve Wright in Norwich and now this Levy Bellfield in London. On top of their killings there's a grisly case opening up on Jersey of all places with sniffer dogs indicating more possible human remains in bricked up cellars. All very Edgar Allen Poe.

It begins...

Did you ever do something just because it was there to be done? I'm not talking conquering Everest I'm much more downscale than that. I'm talking about this , this blog!
What have I got to say in a blog that anybody but I might want to read? Surely it's the height of vanity to want to commit one's maunderings and mental doodles to the information superhighway (unless you're Oscar Wilde of course)
So what can any poor benighted travellers who happen upon this space expect to find? Well, I may be moved to post some of my stories here, there'll be comment on the issues of the day, family stuff, jokes. Nothing to concern you and nothing I fear to keep you long either.
It was just there and I did it.
Who am I?

Mark Tomlinson, I'm 49, a father of four and currently unemployed but Job Seeking (you have to capitalize those words, job seeking is so much more noble sounding than on the dole). I was in the Civil Service for almost 30 years and while I can do almost anything I haven't got any bits of paper that say so. So, expect the odd update on the employment front too.
There. That's broken the back of it. I reckon I'll post this now and if I remember how to get back onto this bloody thing I'll be back to add more.