English and Irish

I've watched a couple of movies on TV lately: firstly Five Minutes of Heaven, and secondly, Happy-go-lucky. Let's look at that second movie first. It's directed by Mike Leigh, so naturally it's going to have some off-the-wall feel to it, it's going to be superbly cast, and superbly acted, and it's going to leave you thinking about it for some time after.

But it's also supremely annoying. I've just been looking at some of the reviews of this movie, in which Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, a woman in her thirties who jokes and laughs her way through everything, and who seems to have (to me) an instinct for not understanding how she's affecting other people (particularly those who aren't like her in any way). Hawkins is marvellous in the role, but it doesn't take long for you to feel there's something unlikeable about her. Have I been around gloomy people for too long, and can't stomach someone who's supposedly so full of life and so full of get up and go?

I don't think so. The reviewers all praise the film, and particularly Hawkins; few of them seem to think she would be unbearable to live with. (Her flatmate manages to do so, but she has done for ten years, and they have a longstanding friendship.) Poppy teaches at a primary school and does the job well; she's also fairly sensitive in a scene with a mildly deranged man she meets while out walking alone at night in what would appear to be a rather dangerous area. The rest of the time she rubs many people up the wrong way. Should they be so rubbed? Perhaps. The main one is Scott, played by Eddie Marsan. He's an exceptionally uptight driving instructor, with a most peculiar (but apparently successful) approach to teaching people to drive.

However, I had more sympathy for him than for Poppy. She's plain irritating as soon as she gets in his car, refuses to listen to him, goads him, provokes him and pretends a lack of concentration on the task in hand that drives him absolutely crazy (almost literally, in the end). He's not an especially pleasant character, but to me he doesn't deserve the treatment Poppy dishes out to him.

Nor does the bookshop owner we see briefly at the beginning. He's a morose man who plainly doesn't want to make small talk. Poppy insists on babbling on - it's almost as if she can't stop the endless joking and nonsense, as she demonstrates throughout the movie - and in the end you side with the man in wishing that she'd just leave the shop and leave him alone. Curiously enough, when she goes for a flamenco lesson with the principal of her school, while her eyes keep doing the goofy thing and her body language is still in joking mode, she actually keeps her mouth shut, mostly. The flamenco teacher is as neurotic as the driving instructor, and has a major blow-up in the middle of the lesson. Characters in Mike Leigh movies are never straightforward.

Finally Poppy meets a 'nice' bloke and it all seems to go well. He could still be in the picture after the movie has finished, as it were. But could any guy stand Poppy's nonsense for long? Or would she, having finally found a man who appreciates her, let her tongue have a rest? It's hard to think so.

Five Minutes of Heaven is the story of a Protestant Irishman (Liam Neeson) who, as a teenager, killed a Catholic youth in Belfast - and nearly killed his younger brother in the process. The younger brother is subsequently made to take the blame for the death - his mother insists on saying: You could have stopped it, which is plainly nonsense, but it eats into the boy's soul.

As middle-aged men the two are due to meet again via a TV programme. Neeson's character has done time for the murder, and spends his days warning the world about the perils of ideological thinking in teenage minds. Reconciliation is expected, but the surviving boy, now something of a perpetual nervous wreck (James Nesbitt plays him as though he's going to explode any minute) is just as likely to kill the other man in front of the cameras as forgive him.

The television filming is aborted, and Neeson and Nesbitt eventually find their own way through the mire, with a final violent confrontation. It's a serious, intense piece, with barely a moment of lightness in the intensity, and perhaps it's over the top in its own way (a number of reviewers have felt the ending is too contrived). I found it more satisfying to watch, however, than Poppy's endless gavorting...

Gold and the IRA

At the end of February this year, my job comes to an end. I'd known about the possibility for a while, but my initial reaction was that I'd really like to carry on working, because I enjoy working.

I became eligible for the pension/superannuation in May last year, so I've been getting that as well as my wages (well, I've been getting the bit that the Inland Revenue will allow me to have once they've taxed it quite heavily as secondary income).

I've been on holiday since the day before Christmas Eve, 2010. And something dreadful has happened: I've begun to consider that maybe retirement isn't such a bad thing after all. Freed from that constant stricture of having to go to work and stay there until the hours are done, I'm feeling quite good about the possibility of not working at all. However the income aspect is a bit of a problem, and maybe part time work somewhere (without stress or responsibility!) would be useful, just to pay those nasty bills that turn up occasionally.

I came across the acronym, IRA, recently. It isn't related to that Irish group who went round shooting innocent people (and some not so innocent ones) but stands for Individual Retirement Account - or Arrangement, depending on who's telling you what it means.

Regrettably I don't have much of an IR Arrangement...seldom having worked in a job where there was a pension attached, I'm having to rely on the Government to see me through (and they, money-grubbing people that they are, are even taking the tiddly bit of English pension I earned thirty plus years ago and using it to pay my pension here!) So I won't be taking up a gold IRA even though it sounds like a great idea...because the amount of gold I've got is pretty much limited to my own wedding ring and my English grandmother's one - and that looks like a very skinny curtain ring, anyway. Talking of rings, the phrase IRA gold has a nice ring of its own, but unless some currently unknown relative dies and leaves me some gold in their will, it's going to have to continue to ring without my appreciating the sound.

I don't know much about investing in gold (for the reasons stated above) but seemingly: Gold IRA accounts benefit from negative economic, political, environmental, or monetary conditions [that] contribute to a rising gold price. This is the reason gold has always been referred to as the “crisis commodity” and why investors are rolling their 401k and 401b's into Traditional gold IRA and Roth IRA gold accounts.

Does this mean anything to you? Plainly it means something to people who have gold to invest, so I checked out the Web and found out this: In the United States of America, a 401(k) retirement savings plan allows a worker to save for retirement and have the savings invested while deferring current income taxes on the saved money and earnings until withdrawal.

Sounds like a nifty plan, and I'd really like to be involved in a 401k gold plan in my imminent old age. Certainly appeals more than storing the gold I don't have under the bed. All I have to do (if I'm a gold holder, instead of a Gold Card holder - which I actually am) is do a gold IRA transfer.

Actually it's possible that the Irish IRA might well be interested in a gold IRA transfer....certainly more than a Gold Card transfer. Still, Gold Cards are not to be sneezed at. I travelled from Wellington to Paraparaumu on the train the other day - and back - for free because I'm a Gold Card holder. That was a Wow moment for me, really. So far my Gold Card has done nothing more than get me to and fro on the buses either at a discount (in peak hours) or free (in off peak). I'm not complaining, it's just that the train trip was the best bonus I've had in a while. Even getting into the movies with a Gold Card isn't much cop - you save all of six dollars....that's also pretty much Wow, but in a rather different mode.

Photo courtesy of IzaD KasmijaN