T2; first there is an opportunity, then there is betrayal.

Back in the early 1980's I was working for The Co-Operative Wholesale Society's Meat group just off Smithfield Market. Part of my job involved travelling up to Scotland to try and encourage the Co-Op's up there to order more of our Poultry products.

I'd visit Edinburgh, missing out on the historic centre where the tourists go, instead I visited Co-Op stores in areas that had once been prosperous working class districts and watched people come into the stores to buy a single egg and one rasher of bacon for breakfast; which is all they could afford.

If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have believed it.

I'd crunch on hypodermic needles, thrown down in the streets; where once there had been great industries now there was only heroin.

Once I needed to go from Edinburgh to Glasgow and missed the fast 'InterCity' train; I took the slow train instead. Two hours and over 20 stops. As I passed through the outskirts of Glasgow there were whole estates that seemed like warzones, only the war was being waged on the people who lived there.

Glasgow had been a thriving city of skilled shipbuilders; proud men of many trades. When I was there many of the old tenement buildings (which should have been restored and improved) had been demolished. This left a stark grid pattern of streets with just the foundations of the buildings that had once been there. The residents had been rehoused into great and anonymous tower blocks.

The appearance was as if an atomic bomb had flattened all the homes leaving just the street patterns and, left behind at the end of each street, a single storey flat roofed bar.

I visited some - the residents of the vanished houses used to come back to their old bars to see their friends. There would be lines of elderly men all drinking 'Boilermakers' - a half pint with a whiskey chaser.

I never saw such poverty - at least not until the Miners Strike.

So when 'Trainspotting' came out in 1996, it was like going back in time for me - full of memories.

The film followed four friends and their unsuccessful battles with heroin addiction, set amongst the collapsed world of Leith - Edinburgh's former port and industrial area.

It was brutally realistic, sad and very funny too.

Now, 20 years later, there's a sequel; T2. As I said to Robyn, if it hadn't been directed by Danny Boyle, I never would have gone to see it - I've never been keen on sequels.

The great Tower blocks are in the process of being demolished, there's a whole new Scotland growing up based on massive debt and government grants.

In fact it isn't 'Trainspotting' at all. It has the same characters but it's a very different film; less horrific, less desperate - it even has a happy ending of sorts.

I'm not going to give away the plot so I can only say that while the years have changed Mark Renton, they had less effect on the other three, so this is very much a story of regret and missed opportunities.

It's also belly laughingly funny and poignantly sad too - usually within seconds. Danny Boyle did not disappoint.

I laughed a lot and got very upset too.

Unmissable, a truly great film.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

  

Trainspotting 2.

"Choose Life.

Choose a job.

Choose a career.

Choose a family.

Choose a f**king big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.

Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance.

Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments.

Choose a starter home.

Choose your friends.

Choose leisurewear and matching luggage.

Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of f**king fabrics.

Choose DIY and wondering who the f**k you are on Sunday morning.

Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f**king junk food into your mouth.

Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f**ked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves.

Choose your future.

Choose life…

.....But why would I want to do a thing like that?

I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”  

                                 ----------//----------

That, of course is the opening sequence of 'Trainspotting', Irvine Welsh's novel and Danny Boyle's movie from 1993.

If you've never seen it - here's a link;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC5zRvqnRm8

Amazingly, at the time, politicians lined up to condemn it as glamourising drugs. 

Now recognised as a masterpiece, this week sees the release of a sequel 24 years later.

I can't wait!

Although I am slightly worried that it won't be as good as the original.

A lot has changed since 1993; the start of Britpop - great music, of false optimism and anticipation that the Tories would be kicked out of government once and for all. And that everything would be different.

And now 20+ years later?

I'm guessing/hoping that's what the film will be about.  

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com