Be Llŷrious

Today, it is two years since my best friend Llŷr died.

Since he passed, as I’ve tried to cope with, understand and process what has happened, I’ve read many articles offering advice on the subject of grief and loss. Some of them have helped, some…not so much. But I thought that posting a pertinent quote for each year that has passed since he left us seemed a good way to mark the anniversary.

So here goes:

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved.

But this is also the good news.

They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up.

And you come through.

It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” – Anne Lamott

Whilst I think that every word of that is true, I wanted the second quote to be something a little more personal, something which I hadn’t gone looking for, and for a good while I was struggling to come up with anything. Obvious things, like the lyrics to Cliff’s Wired for Sound or Phil’s Sussudio, didn’t seem appropriate, somehow.

But then the other day I caught the end of The Shawshank Redemption, a film I’m sure you’re all very familiar with (if not: spoiler alert!).

It was not a film that Llŷr and I watched together, but one monologue by Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, made me think about my departed friend, and it reminded me that a memory of him will often appear from nowhere, just when I’m least expecting it.

And once I’ve wiped the inevitable tear away, I can smile at the memory, even though I wish there could be more moments to add to it:

“Those of us who knew him best talk about him often.

I swear, the stuff he pulled. It always makes us laugh.

Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice…but still, the place you live is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone.

I guess I just miss my friend.”

*****

Whenever I write one of the posts in this series, I try to take a step back, and I think: Am I doing him a dis-service by trying to remember him this way? It helps me to be able to write about him, but is that enough of a reason to keep doing them?

And then I read the compassionate, caring comments that these posts tend to generate, and my doubts dissipate. And I think of something my boss – and friend – Kay said to me: “I never knew Llŷr, but I feel as if I do because of what you’ve written.”

That’s all I want really; for those who knew him to never forget him, and for those that didn’t to understand, well, they were unlucky. Had they known him, then they would have loved him just as much as we all did.

*****

Of all the hundreds, no thousands, no millions of tunes Llŷr loved, this, I believe, was his favourite, and I will wager there’s not one person who knew him that doesn’t think of him whenever they hear it:

Energy 52 – Café Del Mar 98 (Three ‘n One Remix)

Miss you, dude.

More soon.

Late Night Stargazing

Apologies for the abruptness, but this is going to be my last post for a while.

Shortly after I wrote that last post, I received some devastating news yesterday which has totally left me in bits.

Please don’t message me on here, I won’t reply. It’s not appropriate for me to go into detail here.

Energy 52 –  Café Del Mar ’98 [Original Mix]

Dude: If you’re reading this, love you, will see you soon.

Sunday Afternoon Movie Club

I don’t know if you’ve noticed – it may have slipped under your radar somehow – but there’s a new Star Wars film out soon. You’d think Disney’s advertising and promotional chaps would have done something to bring this to our attention, right?

In preparation for the big day, I thought I’d spend this weekend gorging on the previous six, until I realised I don’t own copies of Parts 2 and 3, which – go on, lynch me – I’ve never seen, having given up after sitting through the snooze-fest that was Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Seriously, you know a film is piss poor if the presence of Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor can’t save it, and if the only thing you remember about it is how annoying Jar Jar Binks is.

Anyway, having re-watched the first one, by which I apparently mean the fourth one, I was all ready to write something terribly witty about how everyone says that basically this is a film about good vs evil, with the Jedi Knights and the Force representing “Good” and Darth Vader and The Empire representing “Evil”, that the Empire are the capitalist bastards, intent on bombing or shooting everything, including little girls (and the Earth) in pastiche John Lewis Christmas adverts.

It’s not quite that straight-forward though; part of this argument is founded on the fact that Darth Vader (bad) is dressed all in black, whilst Luke and Leia (good) are dressed in white, which putting aside the obviously racist connotations of that premise for a moment, doesn’t quite stack up when you consider that the Stormtroopers are also dressed in white. And rubbish at running through doorways.

Anyway, as I attempted to think of something new to write about the Star Wars franchise, a scene from a very different film came into my mind.

This one, to be precise.

For the uninitiated, that’s from this:

1999’s Human Traffic is, without doubt, my favourite film in the world ever. Don’t get me wrong,  I am well aware this is not a cinematic masterpiece. For a start, it contains one of the most cringe-worthy scenes ever committed to celluloid when they perform an alternative National Anthem, which I’m not going to post a link to, as it will put you off watching it – but it reminds me of a particular time and place in my life, and for that reason alone it holds a very special place in my heart.

Here’s what IMDB has to say about the plot: “Five friends spend one lost weekend in a mix of music, love and club culture.”

That doesn’t really do the film justice. Set in the club scene of Cardiff (and therefore earning a big fat tick from me), it tells the story of a group of friends getting ready for a big weekend, blagging entry to a club via a cameo from DJ God Carl Cox (my heart swells with pride that whilst the club scenes aren’t filmed in it, the scene where they are queuing up to get in was filmed outside my favourite club in the world ever, The Emporium – more of that some other time), having it large, going to a house party and then the ultimate come-down. Which doesn’t seem all that much now I see it written down, but trust me, there’s warmth, wittiness and above all accuracy about the film that, if you’ve ever been into clubbing then a) you will probably already have seen this, and b) if you haven’t, you will fucking love it. Many films have tried to capture the clubbing scene of the 1990s, but none have absolutely nailed it in the way that Human Traffic does.

It stars John Simm, an actor I’ve admired for many years and will watch pretty much anything he’s in and know I’m not going to be let down, as Jip, Shaun Parkes as Koop, Lorraine Pilkington as Lulu, Nicola Reynolds as Nina, and a cameo from Andrew Lincoln as Felix (you’ll maybe know him better as Rick from The Walking Dead, but to me he’ll always be Egg from This Life).

And then, crucially, and totally owning the film, there’s Danny Dyer as Moff.

This is unquestionably Dyer’s break-out role, having featured in the usual litany of TV standards before this. For me, he will forever be Moff (see there’s even a Star Wars reference there for you).

Moff is a small time dealer, sorting out his friends and a few others outside the circle, trapped in a situation where he has to live with his parents – his father is a policeman – and of having no job to fund his…er…extra-curricula activities.

These days, Dyer is sometimes mocked for his image as a professional Cockney, derided for being type-cast in numerous films as playing a geezer, and a quick look at his CV gives you an idea as to why that is. Critics would argue that he perhaps didn’t  exactly over-extended himself. Here’s some edited highlights:

2001 – Billy the Limpet in “Mean Machine” (a Vinnie Jones vehicle, for Christ’s sake)

2001 – Brad in “Is Harry on the Boat?”, a British made-for-TV film, based on the lives of holiday reps in Ibiza where even the title is in Cockney rhyming slang (and which I’m not going to explain here, s’too rude)

2004 – Tommy Johnson in “The Football Factory”, a film about football hooliganism

2005 – Frankie in “The Business”  a cockney gangster movie set on the Costa Del Sol

2006 – Steve in “Severance” (I quite enjoyed this one actually)

2009 – Stanley in “Pimp” where he plays a Cockney..oh, you can work it out.

2013 – Mick in “EastEnders”, your archetypal Cockney hard-man with a heart of gold, running the iconic Queen Vic pub.

I fear it will be the latter for which he is most remembered, that and his frankly cringe-worthy series of programmes, originally for the now defunct Bravo channel if memory serves, where he interviewed various football hooligans and hard men, called, without a hint of irony, “Danny Dyer’s Hardmen”, or for his unintentionally hilarious ( I think unintentionally…is he really that arch and knowing….?) BBC3 documentary where he went off in search of UFOs, which you can watch here, and I would thoroughly recommend you do. Or if you have less time, his appearance on 8 Out of 10 Cats sums it up pretty well. Or for his use of the C-bomb on the same show to describe Postman Pat, which you can watch here but which you might have to sign in to watch, so offensive is the use of the dreaded word.

As you may have guessed, I could post links to Danny Dyer related content all day long. The guy is the very physical embodiment of the gift that keeps on giving, and my admiration and respect for him is the very real embodiment of man-love. Personally, I think he’s savvy enough to know what the public perception of him is, and plays up to it to Ker-ching! cash in on it. Fair play to him if that’s the case.

But all of that is a shame, because his turn as Moff in Human Traffic is utterly brilliant. Watch it – but steer clear of the cash-in “Remixed” version where all of the tunes from the actual film are replaced by different ones which don’t quite work as well in the context of the movie.

Anyway, here’s some tunes from the original soundtrack, chosen by Pete Tong. Well, actually, chosen by me on this occasion, but Pete Tong was the musical director on the film, so you get an idea of just how authentic the film is.

Lucid – Scared

 Brother Brown Feat. Frank’ee – Under The Water

 CJ Bolland – It Ain’t Gonna Be Me

 

 The Age Of Love – The Age Of Love (Jam & Spoon Radio Edit)

 System F – Out Of The Blue

Energy 52 – Café Del Mar

 Orbital – Belfast

More soon.