Aurel's laurels

I am thinking of killing off Marc Aurel and starting a new blog in my own name. Maybe this is not such a good idea. Much as I love and admire my fellow bloggers, it is convenient that I know that no one knows me well enough to turn up on our doorstep, or inundate me with letters of dubious solicitation.

I was an actor for years and it is particularly pleasing for me to change from time to time. Usually the fashion of my facial hair, although I almost always have some hair on my face. So it is with blogs. Since I have, as it were, invented Marc Aurel, I get bored of him, even though in blogland I really am him.

I've started a new blog, but I will not show it for a while, but what I will do is tell you how the name came about.

I have always assumed that some observant film buff would some day write me, "Ah yes, of course, the name of the cafe where Holly Martin is set up to trap Harry Lime in "The Third man". It is not my favourite scene in that favourite of all the films I have seen, but it is the climax when the four main characters are all present...."Sir, sir, he's out the back."

My favourite scene starts in Anna's bedroom. As he talks, Holly tries to engage the cat's attention. Zither music haunts the whole scene and soon we see that same cat outside warming to the legs of an un-identified man standing in a doorway outside. In the eighties, I recorded all the scenes which are scored onto a cassette. On the other side was the authentically unfinished recording of Mozart's famous requiem on reproductions of original instruments. I was a car courier and got to know both recordings really well.