An air of disaster lingered in the stunned streets – of cuckoldry, or grief. There was something shameful to it, like defeated virtue, and also something confidential, because people were so in need of consolation they turned to each other with all their private burdens of ecstasy and despair. There was at that time a run of extraordinary weather – as if the blank blue sky, the unshaded sun and the minor, pleasurable breeze had all been arranged by the movie people. The weather lasted for the duration of the filming and then began to turn, so that within a few weeks of the close of production, a stiff, mineral wind had swept television aerials from roofs and disorganised the fragile root systems of more recently imported shrubbery. My main sense of this time is as a period of collective mourning in which the townspeople began to wear the clothes they had adopted as film extras and meet disconsolately on street corners to re-enact their past happiness. I didn’t participate. I was happy the movie people had left.
What do You think about Something Special, Something Rare?
