Another Big Milestone, Astronomical French Tax & This Is England ...

I've just realised it's now less than 200 days before I become a dad! Another milestone passes and the time draws ever nearer to the next stage in my life, and probably the biggest change I'll ever experience (people tell me the second child onwards is far easier). It'll be amazing, and I'll be so happy it'll equal the joy I felt on the last day I left France for good in 2004 (I'd worked there for nearly 4 years, and all I had to show for it was a bloody good French accent and a bloody huge French tax bill ...

When I was in France, I was told that because at the time I was single and so far childless, then I would pay a massive tax bill ... unless of course I could get married, have three children and have my (exhausted) wife not go out to work. I asked if I could buy ready-made families at the supermarket, which didn't go down too well with my humoristically-bereft French colleagues.

This Is England

There's something about home-grown English cinema that really excites me. From the likes of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach to London-esque flickmeisters like Guy Ritchie and Nick Love. But recently one film seems to be soaring above anything that those guys have put out, and that film is This Is England by Shane Meadows. Now I knew Shane back in the early 1990s through his friendship with the actor Paddy Considine, who I was at school with. As I remember I wasn't all that keen on Shane, because to me back then he seemed a little too arrogant, with too much to say for himself ... but maybe that was just me.

What I can say now though is that this new film I hope will push him to the zenith he deserves. About 1980s skinheads in England around the time of The Falklands (not Malvinas), for me this film responds to everything I look for in a film ... action, strong characters, realism and that all-important coming-of-age story that gives even the harshest of tales that injection of believability. Miss it at your peril ... here's a short clip ...