Doctored

I went to see Dr Zhivago put on by the Aldeburgh Cinema Club yesterday afternoon. It had been made 50 years earlier, and the place was heaving with those of us who had seen it when it first came out. That made me 17, though I think I was 18 when I got to it. It remains the fourth highest box office success ever. The club president told us in advance that it had been filmed in Spain, not Russia, due to the mildly adverse political situation there in the 60s. The snow was fake, the figures huddled in furs and astrakhan were actually sweltering in temperatures of high 20s. The iced lake across which the dragoon charge took place was a dried up river bed covered in cast iron sheeting and sprinkled with marble powder to look like snow; the frozen house in the country was filled with frozen beeswax made to look like icicles. And on and on, information that might have been interesting after the film but not before. However, in the end it didn't matter. The wonderful love story between Yuri and Lara wove its magic around the aging audience, and in the intermission the talk was all of how old people had been in 1965, where they had seen it, how it had affected them. I remembered my own early response very well. I thought it was a model, a yardstick of what to hope for in terms of love, a grand passion that would sweep both parties off their feet and keep them locked in bliss for a lifetime, or at least until the revolution was over. It's over now.

When I got home I continued the cook-in that I'd started in the morning. Three boards contained a variety of chopped vegetables, and I'd already softened the onions. Thereafter it was easy to knock up a delicious cashew paella for my supper and at least another three, and a vegetable lasagne that will probably make four or five meals. Fish in cheese sauce will go into the freezer today, and I won't have to cook again for a couple of weeks, unless I fancy a simple roasted salmon cutlet with potatoes and greens to break up the routine. After I'd eaten, the kitchen was so cosy that I decided to spend the rest of the evening in there with my book and not bother lighting the wood-burner. I had an early night too, to be up bright and early for my first yoga class today. I feel better already, everything stretched out and eased. You can't put things off when you get to a certain age.You use it or lose it. As Barry Cryer said in I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue yesterday, " I'm so old I don't even buy green bananas anymore, just in case."