They're remaking St Trinian's. Yep, you heard correctly, they are REMAKING ST TRINIAN'S. Not just remaking, either, "updating". St Trinian's will now be, apparently, a hive of drugs, prostitution and teenage pregnancies, because apparently "It is the spirit of St Trinian's to break taboos...and it should be as shocking today as it was in 1954."
Er...
Oh, and Rupert Everett is going to play Millicent Fritton, though to quote Everett: "My role as the headmistress is made difficult because of the fact that I have a very angular neck and nose."
Er, no, it's made difficult by the fact that you, Rupie, are not Alistair Sim, and he was (in my humble opinion) unmatchable when it comes to being a man in drag playing a headmistress.
They haven't dared say who they are going to have replace Joyce Grenfell. I await the news with cynical anticipation.
According to Everett, who is for reasons known only to him suddenly an expert on the subject, "However shocking it eventually proves to be, the decision to reprise the St Trinian's genre will delight fans of the original series."
I'm sorry,
delight??? Do I sound in the slightest bit delighted?? I'll have you know St Trinian's is already as updated as is necessary - available on DVD, in its original form. (And sitting in my DVD rack.) You just try and "reprise" it, you little tit, and I may even come to the premiere and bash you with a hockey stick.
* * * * *
To show you that I have, contrary to popular belief, been engaged in something remotely productive in between slagging off actors and sorting out visas, here is the latest offering from
Home.The Nursing Home
Kathleen O’Malley stared out of the window, perfectly content. Actually, it probably wasn’t the window she was staring out of as far as she was concerned, which was probably why gazing at a B-road and the cars that trundled down it could seemingly keep her amused for hours on end. Mind you, Catherine thought, as she came away with an empty chocolate box at the end of one of their regular visits, it was a moot point how far this was a recent innovation. Of course, the family could now put all of Kathleen’s eccentricities (and there were a lot of them) down to her deteriorating mental capacities, but in truth most had been perfectly evident before she went into St Francis’s. For it was Kathleen who had thrown the apples in the bin and made apple pie filled with the cores; it was Kathleen who had stayed up until ten o’clock one night to take something out of the oven, and when ten o’clock came she remembered it was at this point that she was due to go to bed, and went upstairs with the oven still on; it was Kathleen who thought that “that Maradonna” couldn’t sing, and when Francis explained that Maradonna was a footballer she seemed satisfied that this explained it; and it was Kathleen who had got on the coach to Bridlington knowing she’d forgotten something and only realising once she was half way there that this something was her six-year-old daughter. In that context it seemed entirely logical that Kathleen, once a care assistant herself, could only assume that her being in St Francis’s must mean she worked there, and her determination to continue this job as best she could was hindered not by the fact that she had forgotten any of her duties – which she hadn’t – but rather, in her belief that she was in her thirties, she had forgotten she could no longer walk. The nurses had tried to jog her memory by placing her zimmer frame directly in front of her chair, effectively imprisoning her there as though she was in a car on a fairground ride, in the hope that she would put two and two together on seeing it, remembering she couldn’t walk and thus by extension realising that she probably didn’t work there after all.
The O’Malley’s visited her every week, usually on a Saturday afternoon, though for some reason Kathleen was always absolutely confident it was Thursday. The nurses assured Francis that the rest of the week she had neither awareness nor interest as to what day it was, yet whenever Francis appeared in the doorway she would brighten and say “Of course! It’s Thursday!” Francis had given up trying to argue. He used to tell her what day it was and she would pat his hand gently and say “You always visit me on a Thursday,” and then, in case anyone hadn’t heard, she would announce to the assembled, “This is my son. He always visits me on a Thursday.” This created a lot of unnecessary confusion amongst the other residents, most of whom were blissfully ignorant even of what year it was. In particular, it caused not inconsiderable distress to her elderly neighbour who always had a table mat on his tray in front of him that announced “Today is SATURDAY,” which his wife had brought him so she didn’t have to tell him every time he visited. He had a whole collection, and the staff meticulously ensured that each day the right mat was produced. This gave him great satisfaction, and every now and again he would share this precious piece of information to everybody else so that they could know what day it was, too. Generally he was ignored.
His name was Mr Bentley, and Catherine felt sorry for his wife. She and her daughter visited him on occasional Saturdays, and in moments where conversation with Kathleen were either not forthcoming, or not comprehensible, Catherine’s ears would drift towards Mr Bentley’s little corner. Each week the conversation began:
“How are my parents?”
“They’re dead,” one of the women would reply shortly. Mr Bentley didn’t look very happy about this, in fact he looked considerably put out.
“Nobody ever tells me these things,” he grumbled.
“You did know. You organised the funeral.”
He brightened.
“Did I? Ah. Good.”
He looked a little more satisfied and for the next minute or so focussed his attention on the intricate detail on the top of his custard cream, before replacing it, uneaten, on the tray.
“How old am I?”
“You’re eighty-two.”
“Ah.”
He closed his eyes in deep thought as he processed this information. Eventually he said,
“Yes. Well, I suppose they must be dead. Otherwise they’d be…” he tried to do the calculation, then gave up and made do with, “well, very old.”
Kathleen was rather dismissive of Mr Bentley. On the other side of her was Marge, who had been there for a long time and was tacitly in charge. Where everybody would eventually tell Mr Bentley to be quiet, nobody would dare say that to Kathleen, what with Marge’s watchful eyes on her. Kathleen would announce to the room, “This is my son. Doesn’t he have a lovely knew coat?” And those who understood enough to forge any meaning out of her utterance nodded in concurrence that it was indeed a lovely new coat. In return, Kathleen ensured that Marge, who didn’t have any visitors of her own, was kept well stocked with Murray mints and chocolates, and the two spent many a happy hour working through a brief repertoire of well-practised conversation.
In an attempt to make the home as “normal” as possible, the staff of St Francis’s seemed to have succeeded in emphasising quite how abnormal it is to spend your final years in a lounge with ten other elderly people who think it is some time around 1947. Today they had planned a tea party and invited everybody who had ever signed the guest book to come and “join the fun”.
The “fun”, it seemed, consisted mainly of three helium balloons tied to cupboard handles on opposite sides of the room, and paper party hats which the staff carefully yet firmly placed on the heads of all the residents. This was a bad idea, as at best it caused the residents some confusion, and in other cases, uninhibited delight. Mr Bentley simply seemed intrigued, and after ten minutes of pulling the elastic that was holding it to his head as far out as possible and letting it snap back, eliciting an angry “OW!” on each occasion, they took it off him again. Too late, however, did they realise that Mrs Byrne had eaten hers (and evidently quite enjoyed it), and they noted in their evaluation later not to include hats next year.
The staff had intended to allow for a bit of conversation between the residents and guests before bringing out the food, but as conversation was not especially forthcoming they brought it forward and handed round an array of little triangular sandwiches and fairycakes whilst ensuring that everyone was kept happy with copious supplies of luke-warm, weak tea.
“Would you like a fairy cake, Kathy?” a nurse was saying in sing-songy tones at Francis’s shoulder, leaning, he felt rather too close to the old lady so their faces were almost touching. “I think you would,” she continued, dangling one in the air as though Kathleen was a puppy and was being encouraged to bite it out of her hand. “There you go. Isn’t that nice? We like fairycakes, don’t we, Kathy?”
“So do we,” Francis said shortly, whipping two off her tray before she had a chance to try such a routine on him. It upset him that, even with the best of intentions, this woman would yap on at his gentle mother like she was an imbecile, while she sat docile, smiling encouragingly and never complaining. He watched as the staff member went through the same custom with the woman in front. He wondered if it was worth her bothering since, to all intents and purposes, the woman appeared to be dead. Her eyes were almost closed and her head lolled to one side. The fingers of her right hand seemed to be loosening their grip around the handle of her plastic teacup, which was lolling perilously towards her lap and threatening to spill its contents there at any moment.
“We like fairycakes, don’t we, Doris?” the staff member was saying, despite it being clear to everyone else that her charge didn’t have an opinion on the subject.
“Now,” another member of staff with exactly the same tone of voice chanted, once the food had been handed out and the residents were in various stages of trying to decide what one should do with it, “We’re very lucky today, because we’re going to have some music! Yes, we are! We’re very lucky to be able to welcome Father Peter, who it turns out is a bit of a dab hand on the piano. Aren’t you, Father?” she intoned encouragingly, evidently mistaking the priest for one of her charges. “So, let’s all give father Peter a big clap to welcome him to St Francis’s!”
Clapping proved difficult with tea and party food, and the young staff member who would have to clean the floor afterwards looked annoyed.
Father Peter didn’t feel he really needed a welcome, since he went to St Francis’s every couple of days to give the residents one sacrament or another, but he smiled and nodded to his audience in thanks and sat down at the piano.
As he prepared with all the passion of a concert pianist to rest his fingers on the dusty keys, Mr Bentley caught sight of the sign in front of him and decided to share the ecstatic news with those around him that today was Saturday. Father Peter briefly closed his eyes and tried again.
“You’re not paid to sit around!” an old woman shouted, apparently at him. Her daughter implored her to be quite, but she was having none of it, shouting, “No wonder the post never gets delivered, with you just sitting around like this all day!”
Father Peter looked down at his dog collar, frowning slightly. Her daughter, all too aware she now had an audience herself, explained as quietly as she could who father Peter was, and her mother replied, triumphantly, “So, he’s been sacked, has he? No wonder he was sacked, sitting around like that!” She turned and addressed the room at large. “Four days I waited for a first class letter from Coventry!” she cried. “Four days!”
Father Peter decided that if he waited for silence he would never play, so he launched into “Danny Boy”. The piano was wildly off key, but his choice of song seemed to calm his largely Irish audience, and the fact that it was out of tune soon didn’t matter as residents and guests joined in each in their own keys. Relieved and somewhat buoyed up by their response, he tried a bit of Mozart on them. At this they were less enthusiastic but still fairly passive. In an attempt to brighten everyone’s spirits a little, he followed this up with a rousing chorus of “The Sun Has Got His Hat On”, encouraging them to sing along.
A fairycake hit him in the back of the head, leaving icing on his bald patch and taking him quite by surprise.
“Hey!” Marge shrieked at the woman who had thrown it, who turned out to be the same resident who had accused Father Peter of being a postman. She picked up a sausage roll and threw it back.
“Now there’s no need for that!” Her daughter was irate, leaping up and not looking half so mouse-like now she was at her full height.
The staff, unfortunately, chose to appeal for calm by employing what they thought to be soothing tones, stating “Now, that wasn’t very nice, now, Margey, was it? We don’t throw things, do we?”
Marge, who had been in the home three years because of a heart condition and not, like many of her contemporaries, because of senility, snapped.
“You might not,” she retorted, “but I rather enjoyed it.”
She tossed half a scone in the woman’s direction, but unfortunately she ducked and it hit Mr Bentley in the face instead, who announced as a sort of reflex that it was Tuesday before responding with a cucumber sandwich. Those who had been asleep were now very much awake and evidently thought this looked like fun, particularly Annie Donnelly, who had been at boarding school in the 1920s and, waking to find a food fight in full swing, assumed she must still be there and joined in enthusiastically.
Catherine was aware that this was funny as she watched her mother-in-law’s face break into a delighted smile as she started to unwrap and eat the cherry-topped cake that had landed on her lap, but nevertheless she sought cover behind a chair with an older gentleman who had been visiting his mother.
“This is certainly better than last year,” he said by way of introduction.
“I didn’t come last year,” Catherine said.
“Oh. Well, it wasn’t like this last year.”
“No. I don’t expect it was.”
Like a true professional, Father Peter played on very deliberately until “The Sun Had Got His Hat On” reached its natural conclusion. He then wiped the jam and cream off the keys with his pocket handkerchief, replaced the lid, and quietly retreated.
When the residents (and those guests that had surreptitiously joined in) had run out of food to hurl at one another things gradually calmed down and most residents, exhausted by their efforts, went back to sleep, with the exception of Doris, who appeared not to have woken up and to have missed the whole thing, except for the half of cucumber sandwich on her shoulder and jam on her forehead, which had the odd effect of making her look as though she was wearing a bindi.
Now the visitors were either complaining or making their excuses and leaving. The daughter who was largely responsible for the whole thing was brushing her mother down briskly and saying in slightly overly upbeat tones, “Well, it’s been lovely to see you, Mother. I’ll bring the kids down next week.”
Catherine and Francis, having reassured themselves that Kathleen was not only unharmed, but having the time of her life, rose to leave too.
As they reached the door Doris, who still appeared to be asleep, gave a slight flick of her wrist so that her cup was momentarily horizontal. A wave of tea shot several feet across the room and hit Mr Bentley on the cheek.
“It’s Thursday!” he shrieked in angry retaliation. Goodness, if they only listened to him he wouldn’t have to keep repeating it!
