Thank you for the music: Oh Mr.Porter!

I'm going to break with custom for this entry, and make this both a blog entry, and a review. Since Ireland is only a day or so's steaming from Swansea, it seemed like a good idea to see if I could arrange passage on a collier crossing the Irish Sea since the Irish Republic is remaining neutral during what the Irish, with their delightfully characteristic understatement refer to as "The Emergency". Having made the crossing without any interference from Adolf's U-boats I'm almost in time for Saint Patrick's day, which, rather surprisingly, is not as flamboyant an affair here, as it is, in for example, the United States.

Finding accommodation presented no particular obstacles, and I have a bed and breakfast room for the week at Mrs. Callaghan's house, in a quiet residential street about ten minutes walk from the waterfront. In contrast to the sirens and bombings of London, the most disturbance I have encountered here has been the singing of a couple of inebriates returning from the Cobbler's Rest at the end of Mackintosh Street, and an enthusiastic rag-and-bone man.

Alright, my review: Mrs. Callaghan has been very hospitable in inviting me to join her listening to the wireless in the parlour during the evenings, but last night I accepted the invitation of Michael Connor, an employee of the shipping company with which I came over, to see the latest Will Hay comedy at the Supreme Picture Theatre.

"Oh Mr.Porter!" tells how a ne'er-do-well poor relation of one of the directors of the railway company is propelled into the job of stationmaster at the rural Irish railway station of Buggleskelly: it's a job that nobody really wants, and the last half-dozen stationmasters have either gone missing in mysterious circumstances, or lost their wits as a result of an encounter with the ghostly fiend, One-Eyed Joe, who haunts a railway tunnel beneath a disused mill.

Will Hay is supported by the mischievous talents of Moore Marriott and Grahame Moffatt as the two resident railway porters who seem to have no regard whatsoever for the railway company's regulations!

Mr.Connor was in infectiously high spirits after the picture, whistling a jaunty polka and even breaking into a dance for the last few hundred yards back to Mrs.Callaghan's. I genuinely regretted that it would not be possible for us to "walk out" again as he put it, but at least he granted me the favour of helping me jot down the tune of "The Aberdare Railway" during a short visit to Milligan's Restaurant. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Ticket Office

Oh Mr.Porter! may be available on DVD from Emporium Pictures,
P.O. Box 28,
Somersworth,
NH 03878
USA

I also think it is worth mentioning that Emporium Pictures do far more than just remastering old movies to new media: my experience trading with them has been that they make a real effort to recreate the experience of the period, and I do hope my fellow picture enthusiasts will give them serious consideration when looking for hard-to-find movies.