Bizarre

It does not happen often that my writing and my film teaching come together, but very recently they did – with a bizarre result. XaioXaio, a former film student from China, invited me to the launch of her new book, in a Chinese cocktail bar in London. I cannot tell you what the book is called as it is entirely in Chinese. I was surprised to see my photo in it and realise that I had a page to myself. Why? Peering at the page in the gloom of the bar I noticed among the Chinese script the following words in English; ‘(Regent’s Park) Primrose… Lewis Chess Set… Greenwich Naval Museum… Maida Vale… Ban Stretch Limos…….19’. Was this some kind of code? What complexity of the Chinese mind was connecting these translations? Then I realised that two years ago I had answered a questionnaire for XaioXaio and I remember saying that my wish for London was to ban stretch limos and my favourite museum exhibit was the Lewis Chess Set in the British Museum. But what the other questions were I have no idea. The only other non-Chinese guest was a glamorous cabaret singer, Lily Lowe Myers. She had answered the questionnaire too and included among her answers ‘Turbine hall’ and ‘Annie’s Vintage’?? On the way out I told her my wife and I were off to see the new film ‘Oranges and Sunshine’.  ‘Look out for my mother’, she said, ‘she’s a film star and has a good part in it’.  We were so overwhelmed by the film that we forgot to notice, but I thought on the bus home that these bizarre connections throughout the evening could only happen in London.