I want to live in Bedford Falls
Don’t get me wrong, I know just how lucky I am. Where I live we have a mini-supermarket, we have a great little hardware store, we have a bakery, a butchers and we have a newsagent. We don’t have a bookstore but we do have a wine merchants. And a timber merchants. We have broadband and mains water and electricity and gas. To the people of 50 years ago we’d have looked like we live in the lap of luxury. To the people of 100 years ago it would make us look like gentry. To the people of 200 years ago it would make us look like witches.
Modern life in the west is amazing. If the people that stitch together our training shoes and cheap jeans could lift their heads up long enough to actually see just how much great fucking stuff we have, then let’s face it, anywhere where the economy is based on things with hooves would be empty as everyone got the first bus, train, mule or pig north.
And after a few months, they’d probably be as frustrated as the rest of us – welcome to civilization.
That’s why when we escape, we don’t do it on a donkey, we do it through a camera lens. And that’s why I’ve been thinking about where I’d live if not right here right now. Bedford Falls seems like a pretty sweet place.
But there are other places to visit. Fort instance – for dinner, I fancy ‘O’Reilleys’, the Irish Italian restaurant in the film ‘return to me’. Apparently it’s a real place, called the Two Anchors – a restaurant in Chicago. But no matter how good the food, it would be a let down if you didn’t get true love for desert. Just as it would be grim if you didn’t get contentment with your coffee at the diner that Bill Murray eats at in ‘Groundhog Day’, when he has a moment of self-realisation. That’s why, as a diner, it edges the other great movie diners – from ‘Superman II’, ‘Midnight Run’ and ‘Diner’.
Of course, the best place to stop on the road for something to eat was a layby café I visited many years ago, or a little chef on the road out from Aberystwyth. Probably not even there any more, it’s not preserved on film, just in my memory. That, and a place in Italy where, as a child, I had my first glass of wine. I’ve been trying to recapture that feeling for a long time now – in my experience the wine near the bottom of the bottle tastes the most like how wine used to taste – must be the sediment.
Other places that only exist on film that one should visit? Rick’s Café American obviously for cocktails (although the hotel in ‘to have and to have not’ is a close second). As for beaches – it should be the one Bo Derrick runs along in ‘10’ except that the beach at Monterey is better and the beach at Holkham is better still.
Let’s face it – unless you live somewhere where armed men ride around in the back of pick up trucks, you are probably in a pretty decent part of the world. If you do, however, see the brand ‘toyota’ and ‘AK47’ more than three times a day, jump on the next hog out of town and start acquiring a resentment of kids on scooters – it’ll save time for when you eventually have the energy for petty resentments.
Modern life in the west is amazing. If the people that stitch together our training shoes and cheap jeans could lift their heads up long enough to actually see just how much great fucking stuff we have, then let’s face it, anywhere where the economy is based on things with hooves would be empty as everyone got the first bus, train, mule or pig north.
And after a few months, they’d probably be as frustrated as the rest of us – welcome to civilization.
That’s why when we escape, we don’t do it on a donkey, we do it through a camera lens. And that’s why I’ve been thinking about where I’d live if not right here right now. Bedford Falls seems like a pretty sweet place.
But there are other places to visit. Fort instance – for dinner, I fancy ‘O’Reilleys’, the Irish Italian restaurant in the film ‘return to me’. Apparently it’s a real place, called the Two Anchors – a restaurant in Chicago. But no matter how good the food, it would be a let down if you didn’t get true love for desert. Just as it would be grim if you didn’t get contentment with your coffee at the diner that Bill Murray eats at in ‘Groundhog Day’, when he has a moment of self-realisation. That’s why, as a diner, it edges the other great movie diners – from ‘Superman II’, ‘Midnight Run’ and ‘Diner’.
Of course, the best place to stop on the road for something to eat was a layby café I visited many years ago, or a little chef on the road out from Aberystwyth. Probably not even there any more, it’s not preserved on film, just in my memory. That, and a place in Italy where, as a child, I had my first glass of wine. I’ve been trying to recapture that feeling for a long time now – in my experience the wine near the bottom of the bottle tastes the most like how wine used to taste – must be the sediment.
Other places that only exist on film that one should visit? Rick’s Café American obviously for cocktails (although the hotel in ‘to have and to have not’ is a close second). As for beaches – it should be the one Bo Derrick runs along in ‘10’ except that the beach at Monterey is better and the beach at Holkham is better still.
Let’s face it – unless you live somewhere where armed men ride around in the back of pick up trucks, you are probably in a pretty decent part of the world. If you do, however, see the brand ‘toyota’ and ‘AK47’ more than three times a day, jump on the next hog out of town and start acquiring a resentment of kids on scooters – it’ll save time for when you eventually have the energy for petty resentments.
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