{"id":143,"date":"2025-01-04T12:18:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-04T12:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/?page_id=143"},"modified":"2026-06-18T16:11:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:11:04","slug":"upper-spernal-blues","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/?page_id=143","title":{"rendered":"Upper Spernal Blues (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" data-image-dimensions=\"640x480\" allowfullscreen=\"\" mozallowfullscreen=\"\" msallowfullscreen=\"\" src=\"\/\/fast.wistia.net\/embed\/iframe\/hniho6uu2o?wmode=opaque\" webkitallowfullscreen=\"\" oallowfullscreen=\"\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\" name=\"wistia_embed\" width=\"640\" data-embed=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"wistia_embed\" height=\"480\"><\/iframe><br>\n<script src=\"\/\/fast.wistia.net\/assets\/external\/E-v1.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I grew up in Warwickshire, where my closest childhood friend was the son of a neighbouring cereal farmer. As a boy I played on the farm and later, as a teenager, I worked on it during the summers, helping get the harvest in.&nbsp;During that time a wealthy businessman invested in the farm, as a result of which it expanded in size tenfold,&nbsp;from 500 acres to around 5000.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A decade or so later the farmer died and the farm was inherited by his son &#8211; my childhood friend Granville. Not longer after that the businessman also passed away, and a new investor had to be found to take his place. That investor that eventually came on board was the notorious poet and publisher&nbsp;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Felix_Dennis\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Felix Dennis<\/a>, who had a home in &#8211; and a passion for &#8211; Warwickshire. I never met Dennis in person, but my friend asked me if I&#8217;d make a film about the farm as a welcome gift for him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Owner of one of the first generation handheld digital video cameras (a Sony PC1E, in case you&#8217;re interested), and in need of an excuse to use it to shoot something other than my home movies, I gladly obliged.&nbsp;<em>Upper Spernal Blues&nbsp;<\/em>is the film that resulted, my little tribute to that Warwickshire farm and the countryside in which I was fortunate enough to spend my childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This countryside also features heavily in my novel <a href=\"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/?page_id=82\" data-type=\"page\" data-id=\"82\">Midland<\/a>, so if you&#8217;d like to get a flavour of the area where the book is set, you could do worse than watch this film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in Warwickshire, where my closest childhood friend was the son of a neighbouring cereal farmer. As a boy I played on the farm and later, as a teenager, I worked on it during the summers, helping get the harvest in.&nbsp;During that time a wealthy businessman invested in the farm, as a result [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-143","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesflint.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}