A little while ago Robert Beveridge came up with an idea

 

Why don’t we ask why this film attracts such a disparate group of people to come from around the world to visit these locations?

 

 

I said I didn’t know but would relate how Annie and I found ourselves here 20 years ago in the hope someone can tell us why we keep coming back.

 

 

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I discovered the Archers films in the late 1970’s when they were shown on TV and I loved them all except one. A matter of Life and Death, A Canterbury Tale; The Red Shoes; Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, Small Back Room were all magical and some were mystical. Then came IKWIG. I must have started it five or six time but I just couldn’t get past 15 first minutes – I now blame it on my youth but I couldn’t stand her.

 

 

It could have been 20 years later I gave it another try and forced my way past the bit where Joan was sitting on a post at Carsaig Pier, waiting for her boat from Kiloran. All of a sudden the itinerary was blown from her hand and everything started to go wrong. She had thought she knew what she wanted ~ but like in Gone with the Wind Scarlet O’Hara was much more suited to Rhett Butler than wimpy Wilkes ~ Catriona Potts could see that Joan was too vibrant to be married to a rich old man - Torquil was her Rhett if she could only see it - She was the girl for him and he did give a damn. Epiphany! I loved it!!!

 

 

The film we are about to see is part of the extra features on the Criterion DVD call IKWIG revisited by Mark Cousins: Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Franklin and dear old Jimmy Robb explain just what effect IKWIG had had on them. It was Nancy Franklin’s bit that had the effect on me. She had taken a sabbatical from her job as Film critic for the New Yorker magazine and travelled to Mull. The film changed her life. I had an urge to see inside Moy Castle to see the inscription – So, I booked a large room for Annie and I at the Western Isles Hotel, armed with only a basic map of Mull and set off on the 600 mile journey north to find the locations.

 

 

We found Lochbuie but Moy Castle door was chained up, we paid entrance into the Castle of Sorn (Duart Castle) then pushed on, on a driech Sunday afternoon down to Carsaig pier. It was a perilous narrow strip of potholed tarmac back then going down past the famous red telephone box. On the way back up I noticed the fuel gauge in my Audi A8 4.2 V8 Rocketship was nudging empty – I can hear Annie now “Well I’m not pushing this ‘king’ car up the hill”. We pulled in at Craignure petrol station:

 

 

Ah, no, we are out of petrol just now but I can let you have some diesel……….. Thankfully we just made it back to the Western Isles that night.

 

 

We came back to the WIH for the next few years in February as Valentines Day and Annie’s birthday were on consecutive days and it was much cheaper that time of year - we loved it all. One year (it must have been 2005) we could have been the only guests. The atrium was so drafty, leaky and dotted with messages from the Hotel owner’s dog, that a bar was set up in a little side room. We spent the evening chatting to the receptionist Ima about whiskies, Ella Fitzgerald and IKWIG – Oh she said IKWIG; there is a special IKWIG weekend coming up; a mysterious University Professor had booked the entire hotel in October – but you can’t book a room!

 

 

You needed a password.

 

 

Like Butch Cassidy I have no idea why I keep coming back to hole in the wall. Annie says it’s because we meet wide range of interesting people. I think we are all mad.

 

 

Who was that mysterious Professor ……………………………?

 

 

If you would like to share your story then it to me and I will add a new section on the IKWIG website.

 

 

Ian Court