Hatchet Job by Mark Kermode

Author:Mark Kermode [Kermode, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

CHAPTER FIVE

WEREWOLVES OF LONDON

Monday morning. Alarm. Up. Wash. Let the dog out. Dog doesn’t want to go out. Insist dog goes out. Dog not going out. Dog goes and lies on the sofa. Tell dog she is not allowed on the sofa. Dog looks unimpressed, as if to say, ‘You’re not in charge.’ Which I am not. Trudge back upstairs. Start to shave.

Noise from downstairs. Dog yowling to be let out. Consider leaving dog to suffer, but realize she will only scratch the paintwork on the door. Plus, she will poop indoors and I will have to clear it up afterwards. Trudge back downstairs. Look sternly at dog. Dog still not impressed. Open door. Dog goes out. Cold air comes in. Stand there in a T-shirt feeling miserable. Call the dog to come in. Dog doesn’t come in. Call again. Still nothing. Bugger it; shut the door and trudge back upstairs. Immediately, dog starts yowling to be let back in. Consider leaving her to suffer but realize she will only scratch the paint on the outside. Trudge back downstairs. Open door. Look sternly at dog. Dog looks unimpressed and goes back to lie on the sofa.

Kitchen. Coffee, coffee, coffee.

School run.

Park the car in the station’s overpriced car-park. Buy coffee and the Guardian from Mike at the platform kiosk. Train. Full and standing. Trolley. More coffee. Find a seat after Winchester. Sit down. Realize the person sitting next to me has the loudest headphones in the world. Stand up again.

Suffer in silence all the way to . . .

Waterloo. If it’s raining, Bakerloo Line to Piccadilly or Northern Line to Leicester Square. If it’s sunny, walk across Waterloo Bridge and be momentarily struck by how beautiful the city can look at this time of day – the vista down the Thames towards the Gherkin, the Shard and St Paul’s. Feed the birds, tuppence a bag. The BFI Southbank, the National, the London Eye. Hugh Grant being told that he is ‘no longer my brother’. Terry meeting Julie, crossing over the bridge where they feel safe and sound.

Snap out of it as you hit the Embankment, play Death Race 2000 with the cabbies on the Strand, up past St Martin’s, round the edge of theatre land and into the thick of Movieville.

When I first started doing this job back in the eighties, all the major film companies were located within a square mile of each other. 20th Century Fox were in Soho Square, just across the street from the British Board of Film Classification (formerly Censors), while Columbia and Guild were across Oxford Street, in the environs of Wells Street where CFC (the Computer Film Company) now make their home. With time, the film businesses would expand and migrate to nearby Golden Square, once the domain of UIP and Paramount, and now the centre of operations for Sony Pictures UK. Today, Universal are situated in what appears to be a very large brightly coloured Lego Block, just around the corner from Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue.

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