Ealing where the films come from

I've just spent a week at my parents in Flamborough. Those who do not know the place, of which there are many, let us say that if you were a packet steamer captain in pre-motorway days, you would know Flamborough as the most North Easterly point of the UK. After you pass Flamborough Head, you take a westerly bearing to arrive at any of the ports along the north east coast of the UK. Not a lot of you were or are or even know what a packet steamer is but that should not stop you from seeking out the fish and chips of the village. They are among the very best of Britain. And I have no idea why. After all, what does a fish n' chip shop do but toss some fish and some potatoes into a deep fat fryer? There cannot be many variations in this process but for some reason, maybe atmospheric pressure, a north sea bluster, a peculiarity of the Vim used to wipe down the grease spatters, or the spit of a Flamborough Woman, the fish n' chips are in a quality all of their own. But I have now headed south and landed in Ealing, where friends reside and I shall use it as a base to meet up with a few of my old drinking partners and writing colleagues from London. After that I am heading off to Poole to start on what is most likely a foolish attempt to be a Film School Student. I shall try my best not to know everything and allow the tutors to get away with what may or may not be good advice. When you are a young stud you usually take great delight in proving one's teachers to be ignorant jaded failures, but since I've skirted with jaded failure, teaching, and developed a great admiration for the power of ignorance, I feel somewhat receptive to whatever innovation they may throw my way. And if they don't polish up my rough and ready approach, then they will at least confirm me in my suspicion that I'm doing the necessary.In the meantime I muse on the nature of Home. One is supposed to have an affinity for one's roots and eventually head back towards them. There is a superstitious belief in a circle of life story consisting of birth, venturing forth into the unknown and then returning home. Well, I just look at the UK and think, hmm, tidy and affluent though it is, it is even more mired in an unfair class system than ever before. A grumpy fat smokey tattooed underclass inhabit the favelas of the provinces and a generally disgruntled lower middle class, promised much but always disappointed, inhabits the rest of the place. And it does not take long before I become infected with the attitude and recall why I left. Which I suppose means that returning to this would only be possible for me if I became part of the moneyed classes immune to the credit crunches and patronising attitudes of old money. Which brings me back to why I'm doing a Zombie movie and finishing off the script here in Ealing, the centre of what was the British Film Industry. And industry now not so much defunct as debunked to Santa Monica and giving a touch of quality to what I am sure would otherwise be a Hollywood of stunt films and gross out films about your mother catching you cadging a blow job from a Cheer Leader.Whatever one says about the iniquities of Britain, one thing does remain constant and that is wit and humour. A long drive down the M1 listening to five or six hours of Radio 4 tunes up your English no end. Here you will have intelligent, witty, energetic conversations about art, religion, money, politics, science, history, gardening, language, and everything. Where in the world does one find anything comparable? Actually you find comparable services in Australia, where driving long distances encourages a good radio service.  Maybe you find it in Canada as well, but you definitely do not find it in the USA where the constantly shifting frequencies of the radio stations throw up tedium and characters just trying too hard to be interesting despite their congenital incompetence with the English language. Before one thinks I'm knocking the US, which is all too easy, may I express my dismay at the state of UK TV and point out that all the best TV series are written and produced in America nowadays. Why the UK's once proud "least worst TV" has just turned into a mess I have no idea. Perhaps flat screens and DVD box sets of first rate American shows have killed any economic base for the industry and so the goal is no longer to produce the best but rather the cheapest? Radio 4 though continues as the bedrock of English civilisation that truly speaks to me and reminds me that here the hinterland of my mental landscape resides and will always reside despite huge doses of exposure to Chinese culture, which in England is actually considered a positive thing. The English acceptance of foreign influences and ability to mull them over as damned interesting stuff, does warm the cockles of the heart.But then one looks for opportunity and begins seeing the doors slamming rapidly as one merely opens one's mouth and the wrong vowel sound comes out... And frankly, I'm a pretty posh talker, with only a hint of a long sojourn in the colonies. But even I can tell who is what and what is one of us from the merest fricative, a peculiarly English skill.