Made in Britain

I had a frantic email from Nicktor at the end of last week to tell me that Dawn was booked out on Tuesday night this week. His concern, obviously, was that we’d miss out on our regular Nicktor Night. Easy fixed, I emailed him back, how’s Monday for you?

And so, unusually, we had a Nicktor Night tonight. I bought pizzas for dinner and Nicktor dropped off at the Flowerpots brewery at Cheriton for a few milk bottles of their glorious ale. We love the Flowerpots beer. It’s rapidly becoming our favourite tipple.

Following a chat about his work day, we settled back and watched Tim Roth’s début film, Made in Britain, a dismal, though brilliantly acted film about anarchy in Britain during the 1980’s.

The film is about a skinhead called Trevor and how he doesn’t fit in with the rules and regulations of normal society. He is aggressive and defiant. He does not want to conform and would rather be locked up and beaten than to toe the line. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a sympathetic character.

The one thing it does supply is a main character who is actually intelligent. He can read and create cogent arguments as opposed to the normal view of skinheads as being thick and kicking out at a world that doesn’t understand them. Trevor just doesn’t care, wanting to live a life that he wants and to hell with everyone else.

The film doesn’t supply any answers or ask any penetrating questions. It is filmed in a documentary style which gives it a raw edge.

The performances by everyone in the film are superb, particularly Tim Roth. In fact, the acting, direction, camera work, the whole style of the film are the only reasons for watching it.

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Even so, we thoroughly enjoyed it.

What we also enjoyed was the final episodes of Goodnight Sweetheart. It’s been six series but finally it ended. We now have to find a new sitcom to start watching. I’m thinking of Ever Decreasing Circles, which I’ve never seen and Nicktor says was very good.

So, another enjoyable and late to bed Nicktor Night.

The weather continues icy cold – we’ve had clouds for nearly two weeks with little chance of a change until after Easter. It’s getting monotonous now.