Yesterday evening, I watched a DVD of 633 Squadron. It’s rated PG (Parental Guidance), although it struck me as quite different from other movies of that rating. We’re pretty well used to watching PG movies with our children, but where the action is somehow within boundaries. There is an expectation that the good people won’t suffer unduly. This film, however, attempts to portray wartime events, although in a fictionalised context.
The fate of one of the characters is especially tragic, but to some extent underplayed, thankfully. Flying Officer Bissell is the navigator of one of the Mosquito aircraft which feature in the film. We learn that he is an artist, crucially sketching a view of the target for those planning the raid which is central to the film’s story. Then we see him getting married. He volunteers to accompany the film’s central character on a dangerous mission. The aircraft sustains damage, and on its return crash lands, bursting into flames. Flying Officer Bissell has to be helped from the wreckage, and the last we see of him is in a stretcher being bundled into an ambulance.
Later, his wife briefly asks Wing Commander Grant (the central character) (I can’t remember the exact words), “What use is a man, blind, with no face?”
I do know that considerable efforts were made to help badly burned airmen – a brief Google search led me to this page, describing the career of Sir Archibald mcIndoe. Perhaps there is even a family connection, as our daughter is undergoing a series of operations on her face, the surgeon employing techniques which may have been pioneered by Sir Archibald …
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Took part in this year’s Stacey Stroll; thankful that it didn’t rain; took lots of photos – none particularly wonderful; this is one of them:
[I've hyperlinked the Stacey Stroll, by way of explanation ...]
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Thank you, for the kind comments! No visit to Whitby would be complete without a trip on the North York Moors Railway:
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Actually, I’ve missed more than a day. On the first Monday, led by the host and hostess, we took a bus to Robin Hood’s Bay:
and walked back to Whitby …
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A splendid experience, as we boarded the Specksioneer, to be transported by sea to the smugglers’ haunt (which reminds me, sadly, that I’ve missed a day) – glorious:
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Last night, I reckoned that the cat was looking too bright eyed to settle, so I gave him some food outside, expecting him to spend the night in the garden. Not long after, I looked out the kitchen window to see him sitting on the little wooden table which lives in the middle of the patio. I don’t know how to describe the expression on his face – perhaps puzzled, and a bit put out. Then I realised that a dark shape was tucking into the cat’s supper.
On closer inspection, I realised that the dark shape was a hedgehog. Fortunately, Mrs tiggyWinkle had chosen the cat food instead of the bowl of milk (which, my daughter informs me, gives hedgehogs diarrhoea). We all trooped out for a closer look, which probably precipitated the hedgehog’s decision to start legging it for the seclusion of a nearby flower bed.
The cat could have come indoors at this point, but he elected to stay on the patio. I wonder if we’ll see the hedgehog again …
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We hired bicycles (actually, two bikes and a tandem) – expensive, but it made for an unforgettable day – cycling along an old railway trackbed – quite an effort for our first day …
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We’ve been holidaying, in Whitby. And I was happy to see this on the evening of our arrival:
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