Its funny the things that make you miss somebody.  Jayne is away this week on a school trip, leaving me and the kids to wreck look after the house.  As she has taken our only surviving car with her, it leaves me a bit stranded here.  By the time I have cycled up that hill home and spent some time hyperventilating and sweating the last thing I feel like is going out again.  At some point this week I am going to be in the novel position of being dependent on Charlie to run down to the shops on his motorbike to get some milk.There are some benefits of course.   Without Jayne around it means I can indulge in those little pleasures that she frowns upon.  I think everybody knows what I am talking about… the Doctor Who DVD box set!   This week I shall mostly be watching season three.

She should have been here tonight though.  There was a great accidental film on TV.  Accidental films are those you would probably never have made a conscious decision to watch.  If you had seen it in the listings on TV you wouldn’t have tuned in, but for some reason you stumble across it, linger a moment and find yourself hooked.

Normally this happens to us if we have watched something we wanted to and intend to turn the TV off and go to bed but don’t turn the TV off quickly enough.  Some opening credits come up and some sort of curiosity makes us decide to see what it is that we are not going to watch – and before we know what is happening we find ourselves still up two hours later than we meant to be.

One such film was The Matchmaker, with Janeane Garofalo, and another was Carpool.   Tonight I turned off the DVD player and was about to turn the TV off but something about the film that was on just didn’t seem right and caught my attention.  It looked like a 50s film because of the colours and nature of the picture and yet the people in it were contemporary actors.   Before I knew it I was watching Greenfingers – a film about inmates of an open prison becoming interested and then obsessed with gardening.

In every shot there was another familiar face: Clive Owen (who erally suited the retro look & feel), Warren Clarke, Danny Dyer, Paterson Joseph (with a West Country accent), Natasha Little (from This Life)  and David Kelly – who is one of the unsung heroes of British (and Irish film).  He was also in The Matchmaker.  I’m pretty sure he wasn’t in Father Ted ever – but he should have been.  And then Helen Mirren makes an appearance too.

The film is a gentle comedy – so gentle it is not very funny at all – apparently based on a true story.  At times Clive Owen was acted off the screen by the plants he was tending, but it was, for some reason, compelling.  I wish Jayne had been here because I reckon she would have enjoyed it too,