This Is This

I saw The Departed last week - it’s that new Martin Scorcese police film set in Boston, as the script kept reminding us.

There were lines like: “You don’t dump a body in Fenway Maaaahrsh where any old jogger from John Hancock is going to find it.”

Those of you with a slight knowledge of Boston will relate to that line and you’ll go: “Fenway. Fenway Park” and “John Hancock Tower” and you’ll know that these are genuine Massachusettetters Massachusetians Massachusettites New Englanders.

You get that a lot in films that are set somewhere. If there’s a movie that takes place in New Orleans, one character will chuck in a line like: “Eh, he’ll be halfway to Lake Pontchartrain by now, I guarantee.”

Or if it’s set in Staines, one of the characters will refer to an earlier incident in Eton Wick, Langley, Egham or Datchet.

Instead of adding an element of realism to the script, this makes it sound silly. For me at least. How often do two people from a place namecheck their own location. Apart from Liverpudlians.

Hardly ever. If two people are talking about something that happened to them, they won’t throw in the location for good measure. But in the movies they do.

“Remember that patrol in Karbala?”

“Of course I fucking do, I got shot.”

——————–
Three Word Story

“You don’t understand your power over the common man,” said Alistair Campbell.

The words seemed to echo endlessly around their cell. Digging a tunnel had proved fruitless and oddly phallic. Finding a vein had been the laborious task ahead, but they opted to forge ahead while singing “We Are The Champions”.

It wasn’t until they stopped singing that they realised they were never going to see Gdansk. In the dark, damp silence, the candles sputtered out. “Bugger,” said the slightly balder spelunker, “we need

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