When one decides to jump down a rabbit hole, as did the fictional young girl Alice one fine summer day in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” one never knows what one is getting into. Will it be a wondrous place, as Alice encountered, or something else? It seems there’s always a bit of risk.
How deep is the hole?
Will one ever get out?
The risk is small, however, and the reward: risk ratio potentially sizeable.
As the old adage goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
In recent reading, I encountered some comments about a film I had somehow missed. Based on a slim volume of true events by Alan Bennett, English playwright, the 2015 film featured, among others, the always excellent Dame Maggie Smith as a homeless woman, Miss Shepherd, in the winter of her years who lives in an old van. Thus the title: “The Lady in the Van.”
Without giving too much away, Miss Shepherd ends up parking her van in Mr. Bennett’s driveway in the Camden part of London. What was supposed to be a few months at most turned into 15 years, 1974–1989. The film is a recount of those years and the interactions between Shepherd and Bennett.
Those interactions were not always pleasant. Bennett entertained strangulation, likely more than once, of his exasperating guest.
