Saturday, August 10, 2013

When Dolly Messiter Married a Person From Porlock

Try Pulling Your Eyelid Down and then Blowing Your Nose
We last went to Carnforth Station for a Brief Encounter visit before the children were born and it was grim. The station was poorly-maintained, the shops were shut and is was cold and windy. We returned today in decent British summer weather, the station has been refurbished and as you can see the Refreshment Room from the film has been restored to almost exactly the way it was in 1945. I half-expected to see Laura and Alec sitting at that little table in the corner reacting badly to Dolly Messiter's arrival. It was also buzzing with people - probably other BE fans - though of course it was only one among us who insisted on reenacting various scenes. The atmosphere was bolstered well by the regular yet sudden sounds of express trains screaming through the station on one side of the cafe and the gentle hum of bog units on the other. (I initially thought that the bell we kept hearing was like the one in the film which preceded the arrival of trains but bathetically it was actually how the kitchen called the counter staff.) I suppose I have to mention the food which was rather excellent - carrot and lentil soup for the ladies, Smoked Salmon Sandwiches for me and gourmet chips for the fussy eater who would rather run off an play with the typewriter on display in another room - I didn't pay enought attention to the captions to see if it was the actual machine that was used to write the screenplay.

There is however one small criticism. There is a decent mural high on the wall of the refreshment room. It describes various highlights of the nearby railways and valleys but as you can see below they seem to have cast Craig Charles and Commander Data in the film.

We'll always have Omicron Theta
Oh well. You can't have everything.

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