You’d think things might have improved over forty years.
Maybe in some respects but not on the trains. Forty years ago you could travel First Class in a cosy six seat compartment with curtains and overhead luggage racks. (The racks on French trains were so capacious, when I was a child I was put up on one to sleep when, as usual, I wasn’t feeling well.) Smoking was allowed. The dining car had stewards in short white coats (bum freezers) serving lunch. Of course I don’t remember any of this but I have just watched the opening scene in Get Carter. Michael Caine is taking the train to Newcastle for his brother’s funeral. He is reading Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. That’s one of RCs ripest.
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room. … It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” Farewell, My Lovely)
It would be a mundane clip, perhaps advertising fast, comfortable inter-city travel if it wasn’t for Michael Caine and Roy Budd’s menacing music – very repetitive, very Ennio Morricone. Michael Caine is good at that sort of thing – he switches off the alarm and makes a cup of rather weak coffee in his jim-jams in the opening scene of The Ipcress File with equally gripping music, this time by John Barry. Next time you watch look out for the recipe pinned on the wall. It is one of Len Deighton’s from his regular strip in The Observer.
I am reading Len Deighton at the moment – it was recommended and is a top tip. It is outside his spy genre; a family saga: Winter, A Berlin Family, 1899 – 1945. Tomorrow morning I’m breaking out of the M25 and reprising Jack Carter’s train journey – First Class to Durham.
And Michael Caines Ipcress character, Harry Palmer, the chippy Romeo was supposed, in his own eyes to be something of a gourmet. Weak coffee says it all about the days it was written in. The recent quite stylish mini series of Ipcress File is quite watchable. .
And remember the tinned mushrooms.
“Colonel Ross : [Inside a modern grocery store, picking up a can of mushrooms out of Palmer’s shopping cart] “Champignons”… You’re paying ten pence more for a fancy French label. If you want mushrooms, you’d get better value on the next shelf. Palmer : It’s not just the label.”
Actually I rather like tinned mushrooms.