'American Beauty'...

...To the true believer 'American Beauty' is the finest album the Grateful Dead ever produced. (For a true 'Deadhead' that, therefore, must make it equally the finest album ever, period, etc.) Gentle, kind, lyrical, hopeful - all this and more, somewhat sadly ironic in the present circumstances of so much London pain that it was there that Robert Hunter wrote so many of its best songs.

There would, though, be those of a later - and more musically deprived - generation who would be thinking not of the album but of the film of the same name. Funnily enough so, today, am I. For on popping over to Isaac the barber yesterday morning - Saturday an unusual day to go - I found myself having an entirely Kevin Spacey moment.

There was a 'Saturday girl' to wash the hair, a luxury my reduced crown does not need. Dispensing, therefore, courteously with her offered service I was struck by two thoughts: what an entirely and utterly attractive young woman she was, and a strong sense that perhaps she was not entirely unfamiliar.

As it does not, by and large, do for a cleric of a certain age - even one in Saturday mufti - to be accosting entirely and utterly attractive young women with the hackneyed phrase "Haven't we met somewhere before?", I said nothing and sat down to be dry-trimmed as per usual.

On rising though to pay my way - a decent if not spectacular cut having been accomplished - it struck me that if I were not wrong in my presumption of prior acquaintance then the person would have been all too familiar from days gone by.

"Are you by any chance Miss A?" I had therefore to enquire. Well, yes indeed she was and is. Miss A attended a local primary school with my own E and, for a while, E and she were closest of companions. Their paths diverging at secondary school level I had not seen Miss A more than once or twice since that time. So here now was a pretty child - as she was - turned into a simply stunning young woman.

Mutual identity being thus established - she of course at once spotting E's pa and perhaps somewhat puzzled that E's pa had not instantly spotted her - I had to offer some form of apology for not entirely recognising her at first. There really was nothing for it but to acknowledge it was her maturing into said entirely and utterly attractive young woman - without either seeming to doubt that this would have occurred or indeed that it was something on which one wished too stridently to comment - that had thrown me off the scent. Anyways, news and pleasantries were duly exchanged before I left Isaac's in continuance of the day's activities.

From dim remembrance of the film itself I am tolerably confident I shall not find myself flipping burgers for a living, nor indeed end up with a hole in the back of my head having been shot by the irate father of the obscure object of Mr. Spacey's desire.

One is though left with a firm sense that whereas 'American Beauty' qua film does not and cannot match 'American Beauty' qua album, it has moved up the hierarchy of significantly apposite and interesting cinematic experiences.