Today is Mum and Dad’s 42nd wedding anniversary. When dating in the 60s – or rather, courting (I’m all for bringing back that term), they used to meet outside the back entrance of the British Museum, by the stone lions.
And I’m in the British Museum today, in the sci-fi Great Court, having a cup of tea with Shanthi S. She’s been with her own beau for nearly fifteen years herself. It can still be done.
We’ve been to see the Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie En Rose, at Covent Garden Odeon. Excellent stuff. The actress playing her, Marion Cotillard, is the absolute spitting image of Piaf from 20 to 47, all sad eyes, stoop and quivering mouth.
The transformation is remarkable, not just with the age changes, but from Cotillard to Piaf in the first place. Cotillard is an extremely beautiful young woman in the flesh (playing Russell Crowe’s love interest in A Good Year), and certainly looks nothing at all like Edith Piaf. But in the younger age scenes, her face is convincingly sparrow-like (as per Piaf’s nickname) and ordinary-looking. Awards for her acting are indeed justified, but the hair and make-up designers should definitely be acknowledged for playing their part. See also Nicole Kidman in The Hours.
Signs of 2007 London: Shanthi and I arrange to meet via a combination of Facebook and mobile phone texting. On the way there, I overhear someone on Tottenham Court Road also mentioning what has become another kind of F-word. Were a time-traveller to alight now, wondering what year it was, the giveaway pointers would be conversations mentioning Facebook, white iPod headphone leads, and the huge amount of free newspapers littering the tubes and streets.
One cliche with stories about time-travellers is that they always find a discarded newspaper within seconds of arriving, and thus find out the date. For London 2007, finding an unwanted newspaper is now matter-of-fact. You can’t move for them.
