We spent this morning filming. Much to my amazement, some months ago my father produced a video cassette which contained some cine film he and my mother took in Nigeria when they were stationed there nearly fifty years ago. I made an idle comment to friends of mine that the footage should really be edited, and before I knew what had happened the whole affair had escalated into a full blown documentary film of my father relating his African experiences in the 1950s to the accompaniment of the aforementioned video footage and a veritable treasure trove of photographs and slides which show aworld that has effectively ceased to exist.
I am very impressed at the way that the old chap has taken to this new lifesyle like a veritable duck to water. Mike and Helen from Barnstaple have been over for the last few weekends filming him for the documentary, and - pretty unusually for terminally ill a guy pushing 81 - he has become very enthusiastic about the project. When the film is finished it will be two books and a movie chalked up to him in his eighty-first year, which I am sure anyone would agree is a pretty impressive achievement.
On the CFZ front it is a little quiet here this weekend, because despite weeks of ceaseless activity with our publishing schedule and with the frog project (of which more another time), this weekend everyone is on leave. Mark is back with his folks in Weymouth, John has taken a week off, and Graham is - as we speak - driving up to London to see his mother. Corinna and I are left at base to look after Dad and have a (I think anyway) well deserved rest from the world....
... That is what I had planned anyway, but she is bullying me into trying to finish my new book, so I guess the weekend will be more productive than I had hoped.
