"WIND BLOWS" "This programme contains some strong language." "We are not supposed to be afraid of death." "I am." "'What happened to life?" "'You lazy man.'" "You coward." "Why didn't you do more?" "When he was a little boy and he was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said he wanted to be either... a parson or a clown!" "He is very clever and I often think to myself, this is absolutely crazy." "Here you are, without a ha'penny to your name and, yet, you ought to be one of these people running the country, instead of the daft lot we have got now." "Erm..." "SHE LAUGHS" "But he wouldn't want to do that." "Erm... but he is capable of extraordinary things." "He is an extraordinary person." "I have known Garnet for more than 30 years." "He is an unusual character." "He is, um..." "He is highly-talented in many directions, but he is also, a sort of, rather romantic idealist." "He embarks on so many things which are interesting and valuable, but really never give him any money." "He has always been short of money - painfully short, on occasion." "Recently, he got interested in Houdini and I helped him make a cart for this box, this, sort of, trunk that he was going to climb into and then he has got to get out of." "It's all about rehearsal." "Lid comes up." "Leg over side." "They have all got tremendous potential, but don't necessarily all, sort of, materialise into anything." "Garnet has always struggled a bit, like that." "'I have got not only this, but also the mind-reading, of course, ' and walking through a brick wall!" "It is when he is working on his own that everything runs out of steam." "Ultimately, it always does." "This." "GARNET CHUCKLES" "You're allowed to give me a hand." "COMMUNAL SINGING: ♪ Blue moon" "♪ You knew just what I was there for" "♪ You heard me saying a prayer for... ♪" "♪ That's how it goes" "♪ Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah" "♪ Everyone knows... ♪" "♪ I was leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street... ♪" "♪ There may be teardrops to shed... ♪" "♪ And you told me that you've never kissed a girl before" " ♪ Hold your hand out." " Ow!" " You naughty boy!" "♪" "SINGING FADES TO ECHOES" "'I still don't..." "'I still don't have a wife or children of my own." "'What could I offer a woman?" "I can't really set up a household." "'I couldn't afford to pay a mortgage or run a car.'" "I don't even drive a car." "'It's, I suppose, you know, that sense of, you know, 'ultimate intimacy and union with somebody is still something 'that a part of me' yearns for... and will do all my life, whatever happens." "GENTLE LAPPING" "About 20 years ago," "I visited the Highlands for the first time..." "THUNDER RUMBLES ...in search of what, I don't know." "I loved the idea of the solitude and the isolation." "I didn't have a tent and I didn't have a sleeping bag." "All I had, really, in the way of provisions, was two fruit loaves and 60 Embassy Number 1." "I had made the mistake of assuming that the numbers on the contours lines referred to feet, whereas, in fact, they referred to metres." "So I was somewhat out in my calculations." ""Help!"" "And I found myself slipping and sliding and tumbling and, eventually, I, more or less, rolled on to a tiny little section of beach." "And wedged in the rock, standing perpendicularly, was this curious staff." "It is this." "The mysterious staff of Gaulvane, I call it." "But this staff has haunted me for all these years." "POLICE SIREN" "This is where I went 20 years ago, and that's where I found the staff." "Was it hidden, or...?" "It was wedged in the bank of the stream, on the far side of the stream." " Just wedged in." " Yeah." "I had to get into the stream and wade through the water in order to get this thing." " How weird that you found it." " It is very, very strange, yes." "'In 1746, two ships arrived on the west coast of Scotland 'bearing a cargo of gold..." "'..40,000 golden coins." "'This money was intended as a war chest for Bonnie Prince Charlie, 'who wanted to regain the throne on behalf of the Stuart line 'and who had a lot of supporters, especially in Scotland." "'But by the time the money arrived, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his." "'Highland army had already been defeated at the Battle of Culloden." "'And so the money was carried into the Highlands and hidden... '..somewhere on the shores of Loch Arkaig..." "'..which is exactly where I found myself stranded 20 years ago." "'Apparently, they buried the gold under a rock in a rivulet.'" "Well, I found the staff wedged into a rock in a small rivulet." "Maybe the staff that I found in the stream in fact is a marker for the position of the gold." "What I want to do is to go back up there and have a look." "At a conservative estimate, er, it would be worth something in the order of one billion pounds." "He is actually challenging the possibility of this gold being there." "He's had that stick all these years, and basically the story's based round the discovery of that and everything that it means." "What I need to do, I need you to put your dose of steroid up." "I don't think you're having enough steroid, and that needs to go to six tablets once a day, which is 30 milligrams." "30?" "OK." " Any other problems?" "No?" " No." "No, not really, except for being old." "Well, that, unfortunately, is not something we're very good at treating on the National Health." "I shall be 90 this month." "You've got a big birthday coming up, haven't you?" " We'll have to get you a bit better for that." " Same day as the Queen's!" "Isn't she lucky to share my birthday!" "Isn't that a treat?" "I don't want to drop the door on you." "It has been very frustrating for me for the past few years, because if" "I'm going to make a reasonable job of looking after my mum, that means I've got to be around the place and I've got to, you know, sort of dance to whatever tune is necessary," "the doctors' visits and all the tablets and all this sort of thing." "'No sooner have I done one thing than, lo and behold, 'it's time to do another one." "'Time's going by.'" "Erm, and here I am, just sort of stuck in this sort of nowhere land, this limbo." "Er, I'm afraid there's no, erm, tartare sauce." "'During the war, a fellow student was Lucian Freud." "'He tried to seduce me... 'avidly when I was 19 and was very annoyed when I wouldn't, er...'" "SHE CHUCKLES ...wouldn't succumb." "What else have I done?" "Back in the '70s, I made up action songs and singing games for children." "One of these songs, it's gone worldwide." "It's sung all over the world by children." "♪ When all the cows were sleeping And the sun had gone to bed" "♪ Up jumped the scarecrow And this is what he said" "♪ "I'm a dingle-dangle scarecrow With a flippy-floppy hat" "♪ "And I shake my hands like this And I shake my feet like that"" "♪ When all the hens were roosting And the moon behind a cloud" "♪ Up jumped the scarecrow And shouted very loud" "♪ "I'm a dingle-dangle scarecrow With a flippy-floppy hat" "♪ "And I shake my hands like this And I shake my feet like that." ♪" "Well, thinking this through, there's quite a lot of costs involved." "I'm going to need a boat, obviously, and, erm there's got to be a vehicle to tow the boat or take the boat up there and, erm, maybe metal detectors, lifejackets, I don't know what else." "Erm, and it's all adding up to quite a bit of money... that I haven't really got." "I could ask my mum for money, I suppose, but I don't really want to do that." "Well, we'll just have to see." "So, we'll go down here and join Joe, who is doing some extra preparation on the boat here." " Right." " OK." "It's a bit wibbly-wobbly, but..." " It's all right, isn't it?" " Er..." " Get a nice, firm grip." "And up." " How heavy is it?" "It doesn't feel too bad." " For a second or two." " Yeah." " THEY LAUGH." "OK." "That's it." "OK, that looks magnificent, doesn't it?" "Right..." "Well, I've known Ann..." "Ann's a bit older than me, so... er, she's maybe 62 or something." "I'm 64 now, so I was about 20, 24 when I met him." " Well, it's about 35 years, something like that." " No, 40 years." "We'll just start off with the absolute basic "turn it on"!" "HE CHUCKLES" "BEEPING" "He's one of the most imaginative, erm, exciting people that I've ever met." "Shall I put it in here?" " It's not very well hidden." " Right, I'll hide it more, then." "'But he has such high ideals.'" "BEEPING" "Straight on it." "Straight on it." "It's quite hard to live up to the sort of things that he would like a woman to be, I think." "Just going to hammer this in and I'll make Garnet sweep." "He hasn't seen where I've put it." " BEEP." " There." "Sorry, he's just pulling faces!" " Oh, there." "There it is." "There it is!" " Yeah, well done." "That's one of them." "Two quid, innit?" "LAUGHTER" "Have a pint tonight with that." "ALL: ♪ You are beautiful... ♪" "I've developed a little bit of a love interest, you might say," "I don't know, or I might have done, anyway, erm, with respect to Jilly, who plays the piano in the Kendall." "And, er, and I wasn't expecting that." "And she said, "Oh, have you ever tiled a bathroom?"" "I said, "Yes."" "So, erm, you know, we're kind of talking about maybe tiling her bathroom, which I'd like to do." "Well, there's part of me that wants to be in love." "Erm, and that's part of my nature, I suppose." "I want to be in love." "And I can't stop it any more than I can start it." "And I can't start it any more than I can stop it." "Well, we're just on our way down to the Clockhouse caff, which is near the station, in order to meet Jilly." "PHONE BEEPS" "Er, I've got one unread message." "Hang on, here we go." ""Oh, Garnet, I'm soooo sorry, I completely forgot!"" "Er..." "Well, better go in the cafe and, er, send her a text saying, "Does" ""that mean you're not coming today at all?", which it implies, because... that's all she says, with lots of exclamation marks and four Os in "soooo sorry"." "I seem to have been asleep, really and I've been waiting for something to come my way that never really has." "♪ If the wanting' don't do ya" "♪ Then the waiting sure will" "♪ Cos the bottom does drop out" "♪ If you're hoping to fill" "♪ The shoes of another" "♪ With great big ideals" "♪ Just waiting for" "♪ I'm waiting for" "♪ A little... ♪" "'With Garnet's experiments or his schemes or his projects, 'they're the friends of his life, they're the women in his life, 'they're the children of his life," "'This isn't just a trip on some historical quest." "'This is it." "This is Garnet's life.'" "'Life is short." "'Before you know it, turn around and you're tiny, 'turn around and you're grown." "'But God, if I don't get on with something now, 'the whole of life will have flitted past.'" "20 years ago, when I found the staff in the stream no-one knew where I was." "I had no food or shelter." "I was lost." "I lay down near the stream and resigned myself to die." "But I had no fear." "Erm, well, for the purposes of this, erm, expedition," "I'm obviously going to need a vehicle and stuff like that, y'know, which are fairly expensive things." "And I did have a fella stood by who was going to put up some money, but he dropped out, so it's getting a little bit difficult at the moment." "So I suppose the point is, would it be OK...?" " Yes, yes." " Yeah?" " Yes." "I mean, I could repay it, I guess, you know, when I've managed to sell the things and so on." "Yes, yes." "That's OK." "That's fine." "Yes." "OK, that's really good." "Thank you." "HORN HONKS" "Here he is!" "This is it." "How about that?" "Finally!" " Hello!" " All right, Garnet?" " Wow, how about that?" " I know, this is it." " It's four-wheel drive." " Yeah." " It's all MOT'd, good tyres." "He says it's been reliable." "He says it's one lady owner." "I'm not too sure about that!" " Ohhh!" "How about that?" " The old Landy!" " God, I'd love to drive it, actually." " Oh, you've managed to lock the keys in." " Yeah." "That's exactly what I've managed to do!" " Are all the keys on that key ring?" " Yes." "Check that door." " Oh, that's all right." " Oh, thank Gawd for that!" " All the best, mate." " OK." " I'm sure it'll get you there." " OK, brilliant, thank you." "Thanks again." " You're welcome." " Marvellous." "All the best." "We're going to the remotest part of the remotest place in the whole of Europe." "LAUGHTER" "It could, by some strange chance, be sort of a virgin opportunity that has merely been overlooked..." "Yeah. - .." "Over years and years and years." "I mean, he spells it out." " He spells it out." " Marked on the map, isn't it?" "Now, what we're going to do today is test the boat here." "No, the other way, Joe." "That's it." "She's had a bit of a knock already!" "Mighty Neptune, please accept this gift of the blood of the vine." "ENGINE FAILS TO START" "Oh, God, what's up now?" "Er, well, this will be the helium balloon." "Maybe that's the only size you can get." "Awkward." "I need to put that in a vice, really." "That's better." "Well, it WILL go over..." "'So now it's a question of retracing my steps." "'I've got to get back precisely to that point on the stream where." "'I found the staff before.'" "I know I came in through here somehow and over this mountain range here." "'The question is exactly where." "This is the difficult part." "'Now, one odd thing I do remember is that 'when I was halfway up the mountain, down below on the flat," "'I could see a mysterious structure probably made of stone.'" "It had a very, very distinctive shape, something like this, a straight line broken by a circle." ""Press and hold the button until the indicators turn on."" " I guess it's working." "And that'll be the..." " Hello!" " OK." "So, if I can find this, then I think I can use it as a guide, as a pointer, towards the pass that leads up and over the mountain precisely to that point on the stream." "And so I've got to, I don't know," "I've got to figure out a way of rediscovering this identifying this shape which of course is most clearly visible or distinctive from the air, from above." "My mum..." "She collapsed." "And, erm..." "She's, erm..." "Yeah, she's in hospital at the moment which worries me deeply, really, because, erm..." "I mean, they keep talking about sending her back home, and maybe they will." "Or maybe they won't." "And I've just got a feeling that maybe she won't come home now." "I don't know." "I don't know." "I don't know how to, erm..." "I don't know how to cope with it, really." "HE SNIFFS TEARFULLY" "Oh, fuck." "'In some churches, where there are murals of medieval... 'depictions of Hell, 'it shows all these little demons poking people with pitchforks." "'That's a bit what it feels like." "'I don't feel very old." "I feel about 40 inside my head." "'You look at your arms and you think," "' "Oh, my God, It's an old person's hand" .'" "And I find it shocking, really when I look at myself." "I have very vivid dreams, and I quite often dream that I'm much younger." "I dream that I can run and dance and swim and do all those things." "Stop for a minute..." "SHE CHUCKLES ...while I get my head together." "'I'm..." "I'm very conflicted about the way I feel about it." "'I have to say I'm conflicted." "'You know, sometimes I just feel annoyed by it," "'I feel ground to dust by it, I really do." "'And I think, "When will this ever end?" You know?" "' "When will I be free?"'" "Sometimes I find myself thinking, you know," ""For God's sake, why don't you just die?"" "Then you think, "You bastard." "You shouldn't think that at all."" "Erm, you know?" ""Bless her, let her keep going as long as she possibly can."" " Oh, God." " Right." "Just take it easy for a while." "That's it." "SHE SIGHS" "Right..." "'I've often thought, "Well, you know, my poor mum."" "'She must wonder where I'm going, what I'm doing.'" "I don't know what she might ideally have wanted for me." "I don't know." "But whatever it was, I'll never quite be that." "Lots of people have these ambitious ideas." "We all do, really, and we talk about it cos it's a nice idea, but will it ever happen?" "Does it ever happen?" "HE SIGHS" "Of all the things I nearly done..." "There's many, many, many things that I've nearly done but not." "Show me a man who hasn't." "But, erm... hopefully there's still time yet for me to do a little bit of something with what's left of, you know, with what's left of life." "Well, while I'm away, the Paiges will probably do more than is necessary." "They'll be rushing in and out with food and cups of tea" " and things like that." " I'm sure they will, yes." " Yes." "And Ann." " And Ann will show her face." " Yes." "Erm, so, I think it should be fine." "Touch wood." "So, er, I think it should be OK." "I mean, I was worried that, you know, maybe..." "Well, I don't know." "HE SIGHS" " It all sounds all right, anyway." " Yeah, it..." "Well, yeah." "Bye-bye, Mum." "INDISTINCT CONVERSATION" " Enjoy yourself, hm?" " I'll be fine." " You'll be fine, yeah." " I'll do the door." " OK." "'Well, I hope he finds something, whatever it is.'" "SHE CHUCKLES" "If it's not gold, it's his heart's desire." "♪ Heaven is so far away from me tonight" "♪ But right here is where I wanna be" "♪ Heavy is the hope that carried off my life" "♪ But right now, I'm ready to believe" "♪ And all my rambling spins me out in circles" "♪ It's high time for living out this dream" "♪ And all my waiting's left my heart in shackles" "♪ But, oh-oh-oh" "♪ I'm ready to believe" "♪ I'm ready to believe" "♪ I'm ready to believe... ♪" "It's too beautiful." "Look over there." "That's so beautiful." "It's beyond description or belief." "Well, I've never been here, but I mean, it is just stunning." "It's amazing." "I mean, I've never seen anything like it." "'Everywhere you turn, there's a mountain, there's water, 'there's wildlife." "'It's a dream place.'" "PIPER PLAYS FLOWERS OF THE FOREST" "LAUGHTER AND CHATTER" "Well, apparently Charles did bring some gold with him." "There's a story that one of Rob Roy's sons was one of the ones who was also entrusted with it." "Er, whether the gold exists or not is another story." "Apparently, it's buried some place along the banks of Loch Arkaig." "Nobody's ever found it." "What's the chances of finding it?" "There's also a rumour that it might be up in Glen Pean, on the Rough Bounds of Knoydart." "There's supposed to be another cache at Bannockburn." "Near Bannockburn House there's supposed to be another treasure chest buried." "But that's probably under the motorway now." "My idea is that the rock in the stream where" "I found the staff all those years ago might conceal some sort of underwater cave or cavern or hollow in the river bank," " something like that." " That's where you think the gold is buried?" " Yes." "THUNDER RUMBLES AND CRASHES" "RAIN POURS DOWN" "Now is quite a crucial moment, you know." "'On the test last time, the propeller let us down.'" "And, you know, we've mended it, but it hasn't had another test, so this is the key moment." "That boat has got to work." "All right, we've got enough water there now to put the motor on." "ENGINE FAILS TO START" "ENGINE STARTS" "Yes, it's started." "I was brought up mainly by my mum and by my grandmother, her mother, because my parents split up when I was about 18 months old." "My dad, he, erm, in fact ran off with the woman" "I think next door but one on the other side of the road or something, somebody very close by." "'I was 32, I think, 32... 'and went round to his house." "I tracked him down." "'And he said to me," "' "Who are you?"'" "I don't know what a father is, really." "I don't know what a father's supposed to be." "That's probably one of the reasons why I haven't had children myself." "Where there should be a dad there's just a sort of dad-shaped hole." "ANN:" "I think I would have found it very difficult to have stayed with." "Garnet all that time." "And I can't really imagine what life would have been like all these years." "We were, you know, very close for I don't know, a total of seven years, something like that." "We were together for about eight years." "Well, you know, she'd stay with me, and I'd stay with her." "We had a lot of fun, you know?" "Because he was always so exciting." "He had such good ideas about things, and we'd go off on adventures." "We've been on holiday together." "We went to the Red Sea..." "We'd take the train with our bicycles and we'd go painting for the day." "...and the Sinai Desert and places like that." "You know, it was great fun." "He's hard to be with, but also he's very exciting to be with." "And she couldn't afford to, you know, wait around, and I don't know," "I had other ideas." "I thought..." "I don't know what I thought." "'It's hard for me to have found out that my relationships that." "'I pursued when I was in my thirties and so forth, that... '..you know, wonderful as they were..." "'..and painful as they were... '..what did it amount to?" "You know, what's left?" "'" "After Garnet and I split up," "I had two children with somebody else, yeah... which was hard for me, because I wanted to have children with Garnet." "But you can cut that out!" " But you didn't want..." " No." "Ohhh!" "You OK?" "HE GROANS" "HE BREATHES HEAVILY" "THUNDER RUMBLES" "Oh, Jesus." "THUNDER RUMBLES" " MAN:" " 'So, Garnet starts on this journey 20 years ago." "'And it's been simmering in his mind ever since." "'What has really been going through his mind all those years?" "'How's he going to react when he actually sort of approaches 'that area where he sort of nearly lost his life?" "'" "Because in the end, this is what the whole thing's all about." "The story of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the treasure and everything suddenly evaporates." "We'll just have to see." "We'll see what happens." "Wow, look at that." "It's so beautiful." "That's the mouth of the river." "Incredible." "When I came down the mountainside when I was here 20 years ago," "I came down this way." "But that is definitely where I came down and found myself stranded in this tiny cove." "And I'm just thinking here, you know, how amazing that I was picked up from that cove." "There's nobody here." "A similar time of the year." "I could've, y'know..." "I could've waited there forever and a day and nobody would have come." "Not a soul." "Not a soul." "As far as the eye can see." "It's amazing." "As far as the eye can see, nobody." "I can see down there the mouth of the stream, a stream." "It must be the stream." "I never saw it before, but that's going to run up this way through the glen, underneath the footbridge." "And it's somewhere on the other side of that footbridge that I found the mysterious staff of Gaulvane, whatever that may mean." "Incredible." "To be alive, to be alive now, here, in this incredible place, after all these years, still alive, still alive, it's unbelievable." "Maybe it's all just a..." "Maybe all this, this moment, the whole thing, is just one beautiful illusion." "Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and and, er it'll all be gone." "Well... it will be gone soon enough whether it's an illusion or not." "When I came here 20 years ago, I looked death in the face." "Dear God, I was lucky to get away with my life." "I was 38, I suppose." "And maybe it was..." "I don't know, maybe it was the last official day of my youth or something, I don't know." "I'm 58 now." "And time has stood still in this place." "Well, maybe time has stood still for me." "Wow, what a day." "What a day." "What a place." "And it's my birthday, too." "So happy birthday to me." "We're up above the clouds." "Up above the clouds!" "Wow." "Down there where the mists are now, in the wood in the base of the glen, that's where I found the mysterious staff." "We come down from the mountain in the morning before we actually enter the glen, and that's going to be a key moment." "And then we go into that place that I've been waiting to return to for all these years." "I'm..." "I'm..." "I-I can't wait." "STREAM GURGLES" "It's the same place." "The bridge is different." "It's just that the bridge looks different." "Everything else is..." "It is the same." "So I'm here." "I've returned." "I offer you my hand." "In there!" "In there." "Oh!" "Ohhh..." "'I'm sorry." "'Sorry, Mum." "'Sorry, Ann." "'Sorry... '..all the people.'" "I'm sorry that I let you down." "And I'm sorry that I never quite measured up to your expectations of me." "Sorry that I've hurt you." "I'm sorry I've confused you." "I'm sorry that I've kept you waiting." "Erm..." "I'm sorry that I didn't make you more proud." "Sorry I couldn't have done better." "It's the way it is." "I mean... you say sorry to people, you say sorry to God, you know." ""I'm sorry, God..." ""..that I wasted my life."" "And what's He going to think of that?" "'Perhaps this is my way of... '..it's my way of saying sorry..." "'..a love letter from me to you, the people that love me... '..something to make you proud of me... '..if you can be." "'You know, it can't make up for all the time that's been lost, 'but it's, er... 'something.'" "WIND HOWLS" "THUNDER RUMBLES" "THUNDER CRASHES" "HELLO!" "THUNDERCLAP" "HUGE THUNDERCLAP" "GARNET'S MOTHER:" "Gold isn't just stuff that you find in the ground or in a box marked X on a map." "You know, your life consists a lot of the time in thinking about the past and and your place in it and the friends you had." "And you gather up fragments of gold from those." "Gold dust." "My, my." "What a pleasure." "Thank you, world." "How does it go?" "Of all the things I nearly done I nearly met the Aga Khan..." "GARNET'S MOTHER:" "Yes!" "SHE CHUCKLES" "I nearly buzzed the southern piers With Aevis in his death machine." "I nearly traversed across the desert On a camel with a Bedouin" "I nearly painted golden towers" "I nearly practised the guitar for hours" "I nearly saw the meaning of a suffering soul" "I nearly stormed the pitch and scored a goal" "I nearly entered my account on time" "I nearly was an honest man." "Of the things I nearly done." "When all that's nearly done is through." "What's done, what isn't, when the bell has rung." "And there is nothing left to nearly do." "If I can't grasp a late degree" "I'll ever say, "It was for lack of loving thee"." "So let my heart be open and my way be true." "And let me put aside the things I nearly done." "And bring me daily closer to the things that I do do." "Well, you did write that, and I think it's rather a good poem, Garnet." "MUSIC:" "Until The End by Liza Minnelli and Wynton Marsalis." "♪ Until the end" "♪ The very end" "♪ It's not over until the end" "♪ You can make believe" "♪ Or you can just pretend" "♪ But when the chance arise you will see" "♪ Things are gonna work out rather differently" "♪ For you and me" "♪ It's not over till the end" "♪ Some say I'm lacking in savoir faire" "♪ But I quite politely c'est la vie" "♪ I've been getting ready almost all my life" "♪ And now I'm finally on my feet" "♪ Now and then" "♪ Every now and then" "♪ I ask all around" "♪ And wonder aloud" "♪ What could have been" "♪ Well, I may be a dreamer waiting by the phone" "♪ Staring out the window at a life unknown" "♪ But, my dear friends" "♪ It's not over till the end!" "♪"