That's what happens when you interfere

I Tivo'd this movie and watched it a couple of nights back - lovely art direction and so on - but those bloody people! What gives people like that the right to interfere in the lives of others?? How dare they be so condescending and patronising as to 'want to do something for poor Mr Bast'? - Mr Bast was doing quite nicely, thank you, and ended up in the sh!t as a result of their arrogance.

In the first place these Utopian second rate Bloomsbury Groupers had no right
to presume on so slight an acquaintance with both Wilcox and Bast to discuss Bast's business. Having forced Bast to take Wilcox's advice, which was solicited and given in good faith *at that time*, and seen the result of their handiwork in his destruction, to then send him a check adn expect him to accept it was grossly vulgar. Mind you, had I been Bast I'd have pocketed it, and taken myself and the wife off to the US - that would have been plenty of seed money to make a really good life out there, where he would have been as good as anyone else. He could always have regarded it as a loan and returned the capital with intereest once he had made his pile.

That said, had the Schegel girl not been so eaten up with frustration over her single status, and so cocksure that she knew best, a really sensible plan would have been to purchase or lease a good little going concern,a small business of some kind, with accommodation attached, in a decent part of London - it wouldn't have cost anything like GBP5K at that time - and put Bast (who was also useless, IMHO) and his wife in as managers with free accommodation and a reasonable wage. He would then have been free to pursue his career and find another position without looking too desperate to get himself hired.

Of course that would have meant that Forster could not have used his favorite device, the sudden death of one of the protagonists, to such good effect.

Having in my own family one or two of these well meaning but really very stupid meddlers, that sort of thing really riles me, and it can cause real problems and hardships for the recipients of their 'charity'.

Also I can quite understand the Wilcox family's attitude regarding the action of Mrs Wilcox in her quixotic gesture toward Margaret Schlegel. Quite obviously the 'will' would not stand in a legal sense, but what on earth makes people (Mrs Wilcox in this case) do these stupid things? Unless of course, she was too ill to have thought it through - another good reason for throwing the thing on the fire.

Good job it's only a book made into a film , eh??



George... don't do that!