we are what we lost

Across Fleet Street from the Tipperary and up a narrow alley is Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. I’ve been set up in that pub before now too.

I’m old enough to remember it as a somewhat run-down labyrinth haunted by the last remaining hacks, before Fleet St was repopulated by accountants and bankers.  The Cheese was refurbished.  After that it was a principal hang-out for Goldman Sachs, whose European headquarters stands more or less next door.  Don’t get me wrong: I still liked it.

But my fondest memory of the Cheese is the first time I drank a porter beer: Samuel Smiths’ Taddy Porter, if I recall correctly, though it could easily have been their Imperial Stout. Just a half, mind you, with the Knackered Hackette, near the roaring fire in the quiet snug bar on the right, within sight of Dr Johnson’s favoured seat. We were on our way to see Jane Campion’s film The Piano.  It must have been 1993 when I was Knight-Ridder’s much-too-young London bureau chief. It was a dark winter’s evening, and somehow the beer, the pub, the piano, the days of print: everything was a kind of black and white.

Michael Nyman may not please everyone, but I liked the music to that film.  I have been flipping past the CD for the best part of 20 years until 12 months ago, when I started to listen to it again, and with enthusiasm.

Yesterday, courtesy of the independent journalism site Frontline via Twitter, I came across the following short film at the composer’s homepage.  Nyman is offering film-makers free music to accompany their creative efforts as part of a competition being run by Shooting People.  The prize is £750 of video training with Frontline.

The title of the film — We Are What We Lost – struck me hard; how better to define the process of delivery that is grief? When young, if we are lucky, we tend to think we are defined by our accomplishments or their symbols; when older, if we are lucky, we will eventually be disabused of such notions.

It’s an affecting film, so perhaps something really for home viewing, not the office.

The filmmaker, Srdjan Mitrovic, describes it thus:-

This short film is moving reconstruction of a specific personal experience within a given tradition to remind us of the constant interconnection between life, food and death.

Cheese sign photo credit teamaskins

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Tags: Dr Johnson, Fleet Street, Goldman Sachs, Jane Campion, Knight-Ridder, Michael Nyman, Taddy Porter, The Piano, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese