ONE OF THOSE BELLS...

I was sorry to learn  of the passing of Diana Rigg, or to give her full title Dame Diana Rigg, DBE, who passed away at the age of 82 following a battle with cancer.  Of course, it is always sorrowful when someone who has been part of the landscape for so many years is no longer with us but the news got me wondering about a couple of things.

She was born on 20th July 1938 - a day short of a year before me, which is a little unnerving - and each time I hear of someone leaving us in their 80s it makes me yet more aware of my own mortality;  I hope I`m not tempting fate when I say that I really, really am nowhere near calling it a day just yet.  So much to live for and hopefully not so little time.

On a lighter note, Dame Diana has always been one of those distant icons that light up the world and without characterising her in any disrespectful way, seeing her her face in the photo above sparked off one of those bells that now and then rings and my mind went back, curiously and perhaps a little mischievously, to that time 60 years ago now, when I was doing my National Service in the green hell of BFPO 16 in what was then West Germany.  As a National Service conscript my weekly pay was something like £2.50, which didn`t go far and so to help out I got myself a job, along with a fellow conscript, as projectionist in the AKC (Army Kinema Corporation) Cinema on the army garrison where we were stationed.

When I started this blog all those years ago some of my early tentative posts tried to capture those times working in the cinema, which for then was state of the art affair with cinema scope screen, stereo sound, fancy lighting and all the trimmings of a `proper` night at the movies.  One of the jobs was that when the film programme for the week drew to a close was to pack it away for transmission on to the next cinema in the chain.  But we developed a penchant for snipping bits of films - just a few frames - to keep for ourselves.  Of course, with the enthusiasm of youthful soldiering, those snippets tended to be of film actresses that lit up the silver screen  and as the snippets grew into quite a collection, we would splice them together and enjoy them a privately once the cinema had closed for the evening.

There were a number of actresses who qualified for our collection - I remember in particular a crush we developed for Yvette Mimieux, the French actress who played Meena in `The Time Machine`along with Rod Taylor - but there were others for whom we felt something of an `attraction.`   Now I`m not sure Dame Diana Rigg was around too much in those far off cinema days but there`s little question that, had she been, then she would have undoubtedly qualified for inclusion in our exclusive collection.   That might just be the best compliment I can pay her in expressing my sorrow that she is no longer here.