Mallory's Camera

First turning tree I’ve seen. Unmistakable.

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Watched the original Willy Wonka last night, which oddly enough I’d never seen. Gene Wilder is really amazing in it, particularly his deadpan delivery of the line, Help, police, murder, and his somersault at the factory gates by way of introduction to the children – a move that apparently was entirely improvised. A beautifully nuanced performance in all respects, and one that really captured the understated menace of Roald Dahl’s original text. Wilder’s rendition of that treacley Anthony Newman song Pure Imagination is enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up – but beyond that, it’s just so melancholy, it’s like the pathos of Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein.

From there, for whatever reason, I started thinking about the Llewelyn Davies family and their unfortunate fates. These were the five boys who inspired the writing of Peter Pan.

One imagines that JM Barrie was a Willy Wonka type. Not a pedophile. It’s a narrow, clumsy culture that imagines sex is the only engine of obsession.

“Why can't you fly now, mother?" Wendy’s daughter asks toward the end of the original stage production, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.

"Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way."

"Why do they forget the way?"

"Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”

I think JM Barrie desperately wanted to fly.