When You Sense the Day will be Wonderful

I got up on the Tuesday of April 19th 2016. It was a glorious morning and as I looked out from my front drive across the fields, I decided that I should get a photo on the mobile camera. As one can see the morning mist on the Fen, there was a promise of a fine day because the dew is already rising. Or at least that is what I like to believe. Tuesdays are also wonderful days at work. We go out into these far flung fields and empty the bins. We make our way into two small villages right on the Lincolnshire boarder.

One hamlet is called Newton and the other is Tydd St Giles. Both are very tranquil English villages - quiet and modest nestled amid the farmlands of the Fens.

As the day went along it got better with the sun climbing towards the afternoon zenith. The birds were tweeting away and there was a light breeze. We loaded bins for about four hours following the lorry as it slowly moved along the country lanes. We stopped by an old church in Newton for a cup of tea and a sandwich. I walked around and took a few more shots on the mobile. 

Afterwards we worked our way along the country lanes where fields of rapeseed were brilliant yellow. Gradually we edged closer to the little village of Tydd St Giles. I had to stop here and take a few more shots of their old church too. We moved on and finally finished just outside of the village. The lorry was full and we took a last brake before returning to the town of March where the rubbish tip is.

Newton's Church

Tydd St Giles Church

British Cinema Matinee - Light Up the Sky

Some of the old British retro movies from the 1950s and the early 1960s had a grand feel good factor about them. Light up the Sky was one of those afternoon matinees that came on t.v. during the mid-week afternoon in the late 60s early 70s. 

I remember catching it completely by surprise and finding it a very charming, enjoyable, and rather moving story. I was just a kid when I first saw the film and could not recognise the actors as being anyone special. I knew Tommy Steele because he was rather famous back then. I did not recognise the Young Benny Hill (Benny Hill Show) or Dick Emery (Dick Emery Show) at the time.

There was also the actor Johnny Briggs of Coronation Street and Ian Carmichael too. Plus a host of many other, soon to become, t.v. stars.

The film was about an air gun crew stationed in a field in Kent with the code name Agincourt. They work a search light and try to shoot German bombers during the night time raids in the war. As war goes the group of men seem to be having it all fairly cushy compered to many who are overseas fighting the war in far off places.

Our group of characters are arguing and joking during the day in the usual camaraderie way. A group of lads doing their thing. Ian Carmichael plays the officer who rides around on a motorcycle inspecting the various air gun crews and Agincourt is one of his inspection points. 

The film develops nicely as we learn of the men's little personnel problems. Tommy Steele and Benny Hill are brothers who want to go on stage and do a comedy double act with singing too. It is one of the most charming movies I have seen and is a story with wonderful moving themes. The backdrop of the war and the blitz make the story all the more insular for our little gun crew stationed in a filed in Kent. Marvellous movie and sad because they don't make them like this anymore. It is a basic and very simple little story that moves anyone.