Random Harvest and Roadrage

My late mother adored a darn good film and was generally a lot of fun to watch a movie with. I went to the pictures with her often when I was a boy, and I recall she always got caught up in the action on screen very easily. Sometimes (as children are strangely wont to do!) I’d cringe with embarrassment at her cinema antics, like the time when we were watching Where Eagles Dare and at the moment when it looked certain that Richard Burton was a Nazi spy, Mam muttered loud enough for me and a few nearby rows to hear, “Ooo, you wicked bugger!” I momentarily shrank in my seat, and by the time the interval arrived (RB wasn’t, it turned out, a baddie, and yes, long movies had intermissions back in 1968!) Mam looked round at me, her eyes dancing with excitment and exclaimed, “It’s very exciting, Mart, isn’t it? Shall we have an ice-cream?”

Last weekend Judith and I watched a favourite film of Mam’s from her wartime days, which we’d bought on DVD. My Dad, her fiancé, was by this time (1942/3) far away in India, and Mam was at home alone, just a lovelorn girl of eighteen or nineteen. The film Random Harvest was based on the James Hilton bestseller of the same name and starred Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson. It’s about a young man who has lost his memory after he is discovered injured in No Man’s Land during World War One. Believe you me - this film helps you arrive at a fully comprehensive understanding of the term ‘tear-jerker’! I’d never watched it before, but Mam, who had seen it at the Rex Cinema in Aberdare, and had gone to every single evening performance over the week it played, had given me a scene by scene description many times throughout my childhood years. Yes, it’s sentimental, but so what, we had a box of tissues leftover from the last time we watched It’s a Wonderful Life! The performances, despite the era when it was made, are subtle and understated, and the script is always convincing, even if the overall premise may be a little far-fetched. Anyway, it was great to watch, not least because it was in some way like being able to share the experience with Mam. Definitely got the thumbs-up from me and Judith.
Last week I announced that Niedermayer & Hart was on a Kindle Coundown offer - however, this offer only applied to US readers. A similar deal starts today on Amazon.Com for my psychological thriller Roadrage, which will kick off at only 99 cents (before rising incrementally every 40 hours to its normal price of $4.99) - so if you’d like to read a copy, get in fast! UK readers will have their own opportunity to purchase both books through a similar offer from the end of next week.