Film is about time and space. The experiments that we see in the Soviet Cinema demonstrate how the continuous strip of film is able to create in our minds, not just the persistence of vision necessary to understand that 24 frames a second simulates movement but the film competence to know that shot-reverse-shot means that the people are talking to each other and that a certain kind of fade means we have gone back a couple of decades. What we are doing when we make a film is messing with time and space – putting events, places and people together in a chronological order we have constructed from quite disparate events, places and people. My teacher called drumming: “F***ing with Time”; In film we do the same thing but with time and space. We create a new time and space continuum from the images and sounds we have constructed and recorded. So we should know a thing about time and space, philosophically speaking.
But in our every day lives there is another dimension to time and space because the world keeps on turning however much we might yell at it to stop while we just write it down! That other dimension is the one that gives the writer (in this case me) time and space to do their work. A piece of writing takes a certain number of hours work. You have to commit the time to do the work. And, as I mentioned last time, you need a space which is clean and safe and not too quiet and not too noisy.
And that’s why Costa is one of my go-to favourites. The one near me has great wi-fi, friendly staff and plenty of people like me sit there for hours over a single cup of coffee and nobody seems to mind. Most importantly, it has the most comfortable chairs of any café in the High Street which, if you are going to be there a couple of hours, is a real bonus.
So, this morning started out pretty good. I got to the library just after ten and managed to get my favourite table out of sight of everyone and as far from the toddlers as possible. They were in, of course, but they were being kept under a reasonably close watch by their handlers. I did some good work developing my treatment for Stone Cold Sober, which is my East End Gangster screenplay. Later this afternoon I am going to have my first one-to-one on the course and we are going to talk about my treatment for a short film, Ranjit and Rita which I am very excited about. So, I go to Costa and buy a coffee and a prawn mayonnaise sandwich (£7.85) and settle down to read through the treatment in preparation for my tutorial. I go to the loo, leaving my laptop on the table. Normal, right? And when I come back it’s still there; that’s not the story.
So, I am sitting there quite content and pleased that I have managed to be so good at time and space management, that I have actually got to the library just after it opened, that I have focussed on some good work and that I am looking forward to my tutor telling me how brilliant I am when this homeless guy comes in and walks to the back of the café where I am sitting. He goes up to the school girls at the next table and offers them some leaflets for a theme park. They shrug and take one. He comes over to me, he fans out these leaflets and mouths something at me, as if he can’t speak. He leans into me, but keeps looking over my shoulder like he wants me to look behind. I tell him to go away. I try to be firm but polite because he was a bit scary to be honest. He leaves and I go back to my work. And a few minutes I go to use my phone and, you guessed it, it’s gone. I realize in retrospect that he had covered my phone with the leaflets and then scooped the phone up with the leaflets when he went. The kids at the next table are really sweet and say they thought the guy was really creepy. The people who work in Costa seem completely unbothered by the fact that someone has just been robbed in their shop. One of them goes into the office and talks on the phone -- I imagine to the police. Will they send a squad car squealing down the road? Will they tell everyone to be on the look out for thieves? Will they apologise to me and offer me free coffee for the rest of my life as compensation for their negligence in letting thieves just wander into their store?
Not really. The woman ambles out of the office to tell me that she has been told by her manager not to call the police and that it is my responsibility to do so. But I don’t have a phone. So I say, OK, I’ll go home and call the police. When I get home I realize I’ve lost my cash card, also. By now I was not in a good mental state to do any more work. I spent the whole afternoon making a police report, contacting the bank and the phone company. My tutor was very sweet and I have rescheduled our meeting for next week – I’ll keep you posted on how I get on with Ranjit and Rita.
But time and space, guys -- it doesn’t always work out like you have it in the diary. Just when you think you’re on a roll… well, never mind. Maybe I will make a film about it one day. Meanwhile, I am looking for a new café with comfy seats and friendly staff. But I won’t be going back to Costa anytime soon, maybe I will give the Bungalow another visit…
Hello Jane. Many Commiserations. But making the best of a bad job, could it be the basis of a short film?