Stop! Look! Listen! a weekly selection of some of my favourite films/books/people…

Watch…
Ken Loach at the BBC. During the 60’s and 70’s at the BBC he directed some of his most innovative work with Tony Garnett and Jim Allen which is now collected on this excellent DVD. It includes Cathy Come Home, a heartbreaking account of homelessness; Big Flame, a hard hitting political drama which imagines dockers occupying the Liverpool docks; and Days of Hope which covers the political events of 1916-1926.

Listen to…
Hey Dreamer  by John Spillane, 2005. John is from Cork in Ireland and writes beautiful songs in English and Irish. This is the first of his CDs that I bought and still play for one track in particular, The Dunnes Stores Girl”. It sounds like it should be a punk track, its funny and heartfelt about a young man falling for a shopgirl.
Hey check out the Dunnes Stores Girl
She’s the one who rules my world
I’m gonna walk down the aisle with the Dunnes Stores Girl
I’m gonna waltz down the aisle with the Dunnes Stores Girl
She rules my world

Read…
The Life and Death of Mary Wollenstonecraft by Claire Tomalin. Written in 1974 it tells the story of a remarkable woman. Mary was a pioneer in terms of her radical views on womens’ lives , she lived the life she wanted to, including having a child outside wedlock, and living in France during the revolution. It was Claire’s first biography and it was groundbreaking in terms of the new material she unearthed concerning Mary’s life.

Book now….
One Big Blow at the Hyde Festival Theatre from May 15-19.Set in a coal mining village in the 1980s, One Big Blow portrays the two sides of the miners’ lives – the tough conditions under which they work and the effect this has on their health, and how they  escape from this when they play in the colliery brass band. To book for this production please go to the Hyde Festival Theatre web site page for this production and click on the “book tickets logo” or telephone 0844 804 2634.