Saturday 23 September 2017

Acrobatic Montreux

Delighted this morning to receive a call from our friend Andrea from our Geneva days, whom we have visited several times in Scarborough, where she now lives. She is here, staying for a week with mutual friend Yvette, and they are coming to Territet to meet me and have lunch on Monday, which is just marvellous news.

I finished the intercessions of Sermon for tomorrow, then walked into town for some shopping late afternoon. When I arrived, I immediately regretted not having brought a camera, as the covered Market Hall was hosting a community festival of acrobatics, the Montreux Acro d'Acro as it's called with an outdoor trampoline, various kinds of bar apparatus for balancing and swinging from, and a large acrobatic floor stage, hosting not only ordinary gymnastic routines but also used for what I'd call BMX bikes. Two young men performed on these while I was passing by, extraordinary balletic as well as athletic routines of strength, speed, flexibility and balance. I've never seen anything like it, close up. Most impressive.

In the evening, I watched the second pair of episodes of BBC Four's latest Scandi-noir melodrama, having almost lost patience with the story after the first pair of episodes last week. It's set in the frozen wastes of northern Sweden in the haunts of the Sami. Beguiling photography, but so far it's unclear as to whether this is a psychological or a supernatural crime thriller. It puts a certain strain on the story's credibility, while not reaching out to invite one to suspend disbelief. Not the same plot standard as previous Scandi-noir thrillers. Psychological thrillers which play out well within the bounds of ordinary reality can be far more scary than supernaturalistic melodrama, in which the monster most likely to be revealed is figure more of childish fantasy than natural life. Why suspend disbelief when things happening in the real world can challenge beliefs we have about ourselves.

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