Wednesday November 12th 2025 "Have YOU witnessed any acts of 'quiet heroism' today?"

Yes, Friends, have you witnessed any acts of quiet heroism today? It can be truly inspiring, like this story, featured prominently in this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire - just turn to page 94 - its sheer courage will give you the collywobbles, no question!

Kudos, that man! Because a lot of us just chicken out, don't we, if we're asked to save multiple seats for friends, sometimes simultaneously, at more than one cinema, in more than one town - which is "a step too far" for Yours Truly - call me a 'wuss' if you like haha!!!

The story, however, brings a bit of a warm flush to the cheeks of me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois this morning, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, because we've booked a back-row sofa at our local "flea-pit" (!) for the 10 am "Old Codgers Screening". And we're hoping to see evidence of more heroism and "derring-do", but of a totally different kind, in Yorkshire-born writer Alan Bennett's 2025 "The Choral" blockbuster!

my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me:

an old-to-moderately recent picture

Today is quite an adventure for us, because we don't normally go to the cinema - or "go to the pictures" as we used to say in our long-gone youth (!). We work out today that it's getting on for 10 years since we last "indulged" - on one of our trips to Australia to see our daughter Sarah and family, when we saw the New Zealand epic, "Hunt for the Wilderpeople".

flashback to 2016: we have something to eat at the Red Retro cafe, 

before seeing a film at Grand Cinemas in the northern Perth suburb of 

Currambine, Western Australia - happy days!!!

The cinema we're going to today, is called "The Living Room", located in a building converted a few years ago from the town's seedy old Anchor Garage, smack in the centre of Liphook. 

When the cinema was first opened, back in 2022, the official ceremony was graced by TV's Hugh Bonneville and Anglo-American actress Elizabeth McGovern, who both attended the ceremony - a.k.a. Downton Abbey's Lord Grantham and Countess Crawley.

flashback to 2022: Liphook's cinema, "The Living Room", after being officially opened:

(left to right) Simon Curtis, Elizabeth McGovern, Claire Beswick and Hugh Bonneville -

filmmaker Simon is McGovern's husband, and Claire Beswick is the cinema's founder and CEO

Liphook's Living Room Cinema as it looks today

For Lois and me, however, this morning's outing starts out looking as if it's going to be a bit of a disaster, because I misremember the starting time  - most morning appointments Lois and I have tend to be at 10:30am, and I had forgotten that a typical Living Room Cinema "Old Codgers Screening" starts at a 10 o'clock sharp - what madness !!!!

It's the kind of incident that makes me wonder if I'm starting to suffer from "late onset dementia" - well, I will be turning 80 in 4 months' time - yikes !!!!! It's always a bit of a worry when you get to my age, as you wonder if the screws are starting to drop out of your brain's screw-sockets. Certainly a few years ago, I wouldn't have got the starting time wrong, like I do today. My phone calendar had clearly indicated a 10am start. Oh dear!!!

It's all slightly embarrassing, because, although they let us inside, they don't have usherettes with torches these days, so we have to stumble alone up the stairs to the back row sofas, mostly in almost total darkness, and I half-fall all over a couple in the next sofa to the one Lois and I had booked. I choose to break my fall on them, rather than tumble down the stairs again, which I still say was the safer option. And we could have had a lot of fun with that couple, into the bargain, if we'd all decided to forget about the film (!). 

But what madness (again) !!!! [That's enough madness! - Ed]

We've come to see "The Choral" by writer Alan Bennett, all about a small Yorkshire town in 1916, where the young lads are all waiting excitedly to be called up for the Army and sail off to France, and the town's choirmaster is worrying because he can't get enough male voices for his choir, because of all the menfolk going off to war.

The choirmaster, played by Ralph Fiennes, is regarded with suspicion in the town because he spent some years in Germany, and also he likes German composers like Bach, Beethoven, Brahms etc - so obviously an enemy agent (!). 

There are also one or two "saucy" bits in the film - the town turns out to have its own local "sex-worker", the accommodating Mrs Bishop, played by Lyndsey Marshall, who provides some light relief - no pun intended!!! And there's a lot about the young lads not wanting to go to war before they've "done it".

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!! 

in this scene a woman hands out white feathers to some of the local lads, calling

them cowards for not being in France, when they're actually not old enough for it anyway

the town's sex-worker, the accommodating Mrs Bishop, who also offers complimentary 

cups of tea, ever willing to satisfy some of the young lads' ambitions to "do it" 

before going off to France, in case they never come back

Overall, we would say it's a moving and enjoyable film, with good dialogue, as you'd expect from writer Alan Bennett. My only slight quibble is that there are too many individual stories, and too many characters, many of them looking similar to other characters in the cast, which is one of my famous 'bugbears' (!), and I have to keep whispering "Who's that man?" in Lois's ear, which is a pity!

us having lunch and a coffee at the nearby Number One cafe

after the show, where Lois fills me in about points in the film

I hadn't understood, or had slept through - poor old devil haha !!!

20:00 It's been a bit of a cinematic day for us, unusually, so what better way to finish the evening but with a documentary about Welsh-born Hollywood film-star Richard Burton, on BBC2 tonight.

To me, the most interesting part of Burton's life is his early years, in a small, poverty-stricken, Welsh mining town, where people didn't even speak English. It's all about the total lack of probability that little Richard Jenkins (his real name) would end up as a world-famous Hollywood star married to Elizabeth Taylor. 

It's totally mad, isn't it!!!!

Tonight, marking the centenary of Burton's birth in Pontrhydyfen, South Wales, a town name that most English speakers wouldn't even know how to pronounce (!), we hear about the great man from some of his surviving family, and from some of his fellow Welsh actors like Michael Sheen, Sian Phillips etc.

And the culture in that little Welsh town, especially as regards the men, was a hard-drinking world, to put it mildly!

There was also the poverty, and in later years when Burton paid visits to his family in South Wales, the contrast between him and his parents and former schoolmates couldn't have been more striking, as fellow actor Michael Sheen recalls. Especially the contrast with Burton's old dad, a tiny, shrivelled figure of a miner, not much more than half Burton's size, as shown by this picture:

When did Burton's parents first realise that the lad maybe had a bit of talent? Well, it was apparently on the weekly visits to the local chapel, where the typical local preacher would be shouting at the congregation, warning them about the horrors of hellfire etc etc, because after the services, little Richard would mimic the preachers voices mercilessly.

However, the chances that little Richard would make it as an actor were still pretty slim, living in that small, poor Welsh-speaking town, as he did. And his later success on stage was mainly thanks to his charismatic English teacher, Philip Burton, who became his mentor, and also was the man from whom little Richard later borrowed his future stage name.

There was still the language problem, and the accent problem, to overcome, however.

Needs must, however. I don't think Hollywood would have been very interested in him, if he'd spoken Shakespeare with a Welsh lilt, or, say, ended all his lines with a "See?" or a "Look You", do you?

I wonder.....!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!