For playwright Michael Cameron it began on a rail journey to Portrush. For me it began over lunch a couple of months ago.
It was then that Michael told me a story which was powerful. A man got into the train at Belfast and sat opposite him, The man was drunk, loud and disruptive, armed with a bag of beer cans and a lot of conversation. As the older man gets going, the two strike up a friendship even as far as Antrim where the young man lived, the older man travelled on to Ballymoney where he thought he lived. It’s a tale of serendipity. The young Michael had just had a row with his girlfriend, the older man an amorous liaison with a woman in a bar and just wanted to get home for tea. But why had he turned to drink and a lifestyle that labelled him an undesirable?
Eventually he comes to the heart of his story and begins to speak of his son, about the same age as his fellow passenger and similar in looks. The story that followed effected Michael Cameron so much that he wrote it down as a short story, now that short story as became a film script which has been taken up by NI Screen, co-producers with Michael’s company Little Willow Productions.
Action at Whitehead
Last week in the waiting room at the Whitehead Railway Museum I was updated on the story. The old fashioned area was transformed into an office for production staff to study angles and talk logistics, for props and equipment, for cameraman Dwayne Douglas to set up his menu of shots, for makeup artist Hannah Davison to begin putting years on actor James Doran who plays the older man, next is Conor O’Donnell the younger man. Colm G. Doran is director and kindly gets me a cup of tea and gestures to a table loaded down with apples, bananas, biscuits and nutritious bars of fruit and nut, not quite Brief Encounter but close! Co-producer Anna Callan isn’t there as she’s filming in Italy but her production colleague Caoilfhionn MacEoin-Manus is bent over a computer examining dear knows what. Most of the crew work in film and television during the week but such is their love for the industry they take on short films when they get the chance.
On hand are two museum volunteers, Ryan Downey, Rachael Harris and staff member Adam Lottoff. They tell me about the train which features in the film but mostly they talk about the steam trains that will soon be in action with excursions as far apart at Portrush and Dublin; they loved the fact that when I lived in Lambeg I’d carry a bucket of coal onto the platform to help the steam train get to Dublin on time then, some years later, the effect a trip to Potrush on a seven year old grandson, even now he’s grown up and working in London, that excitement, the huge plumbs of steam and the rhythm of the wheels on the track still gets talked about.
On the platform outside sits the 1963 Class 141 engine with Mark 2 1970 carriages waiting for action but a squally rain shower descends with a vengeance and 1st assistant director Tim Lyons swings through the door to announce that outdoor shooting is on hold, instead rehearsal in the carriage please. As the crew, actors and extra leave the waiting room to clamber into the train I follow suit and sit at the back well out of shot, as Tim shouts ACTION, I’m transfixed as the two actors recount their stories. There isn’t a sound but for their voices, their words holding the audience as I’m sure they will when the film Long Shadows premieres later this year.
PLANE SAILING?
The plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda seems to be in disarray. I’ve been to that beautiful country the year after the genocide, despite the beauty it was a terrible place with a broken people. I was with Concern charity and their offices in the capital Kigali overlooked the prison where hundreds of men walked round and round the compound in their pink boiler suits. Who knows what awaits the immigrants if, and when, they arrive at huge cost. Huge is an understatement. How is it all playing out at the moment and where do we come into the picture.
Former taoiseach Micheal Martin said: “I believe the Rwanda effect is impacting on Ireland and that didn’t happen today or yesterday. It’s been growing since the first iteration and publication of that strategy.
“They’re leaving the UK and they are taking opportunities to come to Ireland, crossing the border to get sanctuary here and within the European Union as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda.”
Reports from Dublin has say 80 per cent of recent asylum seekers in the country had arrived across the land border with Northern Ireland and that more than 140,000 immigrants arrived in Ireland in the year up to last April – a 16-year high. Where is it all going to end and when?
SINCE this handsome and winsome man announced his resignation from Liverpool football club they seem to have gone to pieces. He is the darling of so many and I guess his players are miffed that he is moving on and can’t get their act together. Like when someone you have loved and respected dumps you, life changes and it’s hard to pick up the pieces. His final year should be one of winning and wonderful happiness and I’m sad that he won’t have the memories he deserves.
The Post Office enquiry is riveting. The characters in this drama are varied and it’s fascinating listening to the lawyers and their forensic examination and the reaction of the ‘contestants’ , one youngish man who kept giggling in his embarrassment and the tight-lipped Mrs. Angela van den Bogard. it keeps you glued to the screen. Best of all for me is Sir Wyn Williams the high court judge who intervenes with gentle questions which sort everyone out, he doesn’t miss a trick! I’m not surprised this will take years to sort out, all the research, the recording of proceedings and then the sifting through all the paperwork to come to some conclusion. If you have the time, this is live coverage, or catchup, which holds the attention and there is a lot more to come.