At one of our poetry groups earlier this year, the tutor played a song for us. No doubt it was to open the conversation to something other than the printed words on a page we were used to. The music she chose was ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’ by Mark Knopfler. I used to play the album constantly and, since hearing it again at the poetry group, I can’t get it out of my head. I looked for it on Youtube today and it is just as compelling as I remember. Some of his other songs are great too: Money for Nothing, Sultans of Swing and so on but I do like Sailing …
Mark Knopfler first came to my attention when I heard his music in the movie Local Hero. We’ve watched the movie several times since it was released in 1983 and it has some great names in it, starting with Burt Lancaster, Peter Capaldi and the legendary, Fulton Mackay.
Some movies stick in your head and this is one of them. I was bemused when I first saw that the village was regularly visited by a Russian fishing boat whose captain was playing the stock market with the help of the villagers. This, of course, was at the height of the Cold War. There was also the incongruity of seeing a Visa sticker on the door of the pub which was in such an out-of-the-way place. Nowadays, it wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.
I can’t believe that nearly 40 years have passed since I first saw the movie.
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