Filming in the Wild West

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been thrown under a bus during the night. Note to self: filming days are like house guests - have them for too many days on the trot and they start to smell like rotten fish! A lovely little day off would’ve rejuvenated us all... but we plough onwards. It doesn’t help that yesterday was a bit, well, bitty. We had large gaps in our filming schedule, which meant there was a great deal of waiting about. When you fall out of the rhythm of filming people back-to-back in a state of high adrenaline, you can end up feeling a little deflated!

We were in the South of London, which everyone knows is the actual Wild West. We kicked things off in Clapham. It took poor Keith-the-cam considerably more than three hours to drive down from his hotel in North London. By contrast, he could have driven all the way home to Liverpool in less time. The broken transport infrastructure in our city is almost certainly why Londoners have a reputation for being grumpy and aloof.

We spent the first part of the morning filming at Nightingale House, which is a rest home for elderly Jewish people run by a very lovely bloke called Alastair. There’s always something going on there. We were filming in the big art room, which has a large kitchen attached where a group of residents were having a cookery class. Having to get them to be quiet for a couple of minutes at a time was not the easiest task in the world. “Okay, ladies, could we have about two minutes silence whilst we do this shot?” “What did he say, Ruth?” “He told you to shut up, Hannah!” “Well that was a bit rude wasn’t it? He could have asked nicely...”

We filmed four people at Nightingale, starting with Harold, whom everyone calls Tiger. When I first met Harold, his teeth kept falling out, so it was almost impossible to understand him. I was very concerned the same was going to happen today and had come up with a number of contingency plans about getting him to stare wistfully into the camera in the belief that some faces tell a story without words, but his teeth had been sorted, and it instantly became clear that we were filming a East End gent who had been devastatingly handsome in his younger years, and, even at 95, was still quite the catch.

After Harold came Alex, born in 1933, who was brought up in China by Russian parents. Alex appeared wearing a straw sun hat, which turned out to be two identical sun hats, one inside the other, which gave the illusion of a double brim. I assumed it was a quirky fashion statement, and duly filmed him, although I think he perhaps hadn’t realised! I think he looked fabulous.

After Alex, we filmed 97 year-old Evelyn, who talks like the queen and was brought up in Hyde Park (London, not Leeds!) Though proudly Jewish, she was the only Jewish girl in her class at school, and spent most of her adult life in Kent, so, I suspect, has always felt a little like an outsider looking in. She’s a hugely interesting character. She once worked at the Houses of Parliament.

Last up at Nightingale was 99 year-old Phylis Miranda, whose name is as beautiful as her face. Phylis grew up in Swansea, so I’ve finally managed to tick that all-important (to me) Welshie box! She was actually a volunteer at Nightingale House before becoming a resident there which must be a somewhat strange experience.

We drove from Clapham to Wimbledon, to film Hilary and her grandson, Noah, in one of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever seen. It was a detached Victorian property, built in 1899, with tall ceilings and glorious light pouring in from the enormous windows. Hilary is an impossibly glamorous journalist, and represents, 1944, the year that both of my parents were born.

There was a long drive along the South Circular to Ladywell, where we had lunch, and then lazed in the park waiting to film Ali and George and their son, Kingsley, in another one of those houses which I look at and covet. At the end of their garden, there’s a garage, the top of which has been turned into a raised roof terrace. It’s a wonderful little secluded spot, surrounded by trees, where they’ve put a tiny summer house. It’s there where we filmed Kingsley.

Ali, who was in the same class at school as my ex, Stephen, was filmed in front of her piano in the sitting room and her husband George, a crisis counsellor, was filmed in the kitchen. George is a particularly interesting character. He has Scottish, Jamaican and Portuguese blood but feels intensely proud to be Jewish. He speaks of his first visit to Jerusalem and feeling as though he knew every street.

The last part of our day took us into the hood that is Peckham. It’s not a place which makes me feel hugely at ease, and Keith kept saying that he thought we were going to be stabbed. We filmed an artist there called Michelle in a fabulously bohemian pad in a low rise 1960s tower block. I showed Michelle’s photo to Nathan when I got home and he said, “now SHE’s fab!”

I asked her if Peckham had changed much in the thirty-or-so years she’d lived there. “Yes” she said, “but not always for the better. In the olden days you knew where the stabbings were going to happen. These days they might happen anywhere!”

We locked the doors on the car journey home!