Original subtitles

Love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as the sky. The

multicolored moves of love are like its saddened wings.

Love makes your heart feel strange inside. It flutters like soft winds in

flight. Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.

Thank you.

That is my world, that house.

It contains all the things I need and represents everything I work for.

And I don't understand anything that goes on in it.

Poor old sod.

I'll emigrate.

Bloody emigrate.

Can't get into them boys' rooms. They're rubbish.

I could do with a bloody angry name.

Everybody leaves in a rush these days, Ruby.

Adam's upset with his lorry driving.

Russell goes with him for the ride. The whole house is empty by eight o 'clock.

Oh, Ruby.

I wish something bizarre would happen.

I've given up hoping for something exciting to happen. Bizarre would do.

I'd like to lie in bed for years.

I'd quite like the house to fall down.

Being intravenously fed with tea.

Sort of just disappear.

I'd have a Valium for me breakfast.

No dinner.

And a Moggydon for me supper.

I'd like to be a gypsy.

I'd sleep right through until it was time to die.

The sound of horses, the smell of wood smoke.

Time to die?

I'd just switch off the tea urn and I'd slip away.

Well, that's a bit drastic, isn't it?

I've got me problems.

Oh, Ruby.

Of course you do, we all do. I mean, mine are blatantly obvious.

I'm your cliché bored housewife.

My husband is a busy, successful man. My children no longer need me.

My mind is full of wild dreams that I'm too exhausted to follow.

And now, as if to rob me of all hope, I think I need glasses.

But you, you're sensible and balanced. What problems could you possibly have?

A steel thing. I mean, no matter what goes on in this house, there you are,

drifting about completely together.

Demi, you pick things up and put them in.

Then...

Old man's got a good job I don't want for nothing.

Perhaps you're imagining it. People do, you know, under stress.

Perhaps you just thought about stealing, but you never actually do it.

Perhaps I was wrong.

Ruby, where exactly did you get these?

Mason's. The store with the friendly smile.

Is this all?

No, that's only today.

You mean you do it every day?

At Sundays.

They're closed on Sundays.

But you make it sound so easy.

Not easy. I'm just very good at it.

Ruby, do you want to end this conversation or should we talk some

Oh, this cushion's got a tear in it. I'd like to help you, Ruby.

It's probably them boys.

You see... You could land in trouble, but if we talk, and if we start by

to find out why you do this thing... Bloody life, isn't it?

Same boring, bloody saga we wake up to every morning.

It's husbands and sons and daughters and mothers and

dogs and money and time.

My time.

It's me only.

Oh, Ruby.

I do know what you mean.

Here.

Have another cushion.

Hello.

Hello.

What are you doing here?

I'm waiting for Ruby. She's in that shop over there.

What are you doing here?

Oh, I just thought I'd sit here and wait for the world to end.

Well, if you want to avoid me, you'll have to stop sitting on seats right

opposite my office.

Funny, isn't it?

We're living in a time when everything's possible.

When almost anybody can do almost everything.

You get up so miserable.

That's because the majority of them aren't themselves.

There's a nagging person in the background.

And equally, they are the nagging person in somebody else's background.

Some of us have managed to shake off that particular vicious circle.

Oh, how clever you are, Mr Married, Separated, Divorced, Living With, Not

With. How well you've got it all worked out.

You've got a versatile face.

Without actually speaking, it can make evil little remarks.

It's probably something to do with the khaki -coloured eyes.

Hazel, it says in my passport.

Oh, then it must be true.

You must let me read it for myself sometime.

Preferably at an airport.

Leonard. We could nip over to Rome. You know, really break out.

I could wander around the Piazza Navona while you ring up your husband to see if

he's boiled his egg properly.

Is that how it all seems?

That is how it all seems.

There's Ruby. I must go. I'm helping her.

She... She's got a little problem.

Oh, God, another one who can't boil her own egg.

That would be.

Everything all right?

The receipt's in there.

Come on, let's go and have a look.

Ruby, have you got another 5p for the meter? Oh, yeah, I've got one in here

somewhere.

I don't know why I've done it.

35. Already got three of them.

like rustling.

I mean, you never know these days. You might have been... Dead?

Well, that would have solved a problem or two.

Anyway, you're not, so I'll go.

Like a sandwich?

It's all right. They're not poisoned.

Thank you.

You seem to have been here all night.

I mean, it's only 8 .30 now.

Right.

Don't your parents mind? I mean, isn't it a bit risky?

Somebody could come along here with a combine harvester and you could end up

over the place.

I've left home.

Oh.

Going to London.

Everybody does, yes.

So what went wrong?

By that, I mean, which parent did you decide to hate?

It's dead boring at home.

He sits there with a newspaper over his head, and Mum hovers round the table,

giving a breakdown on the price of food.

Like a talking calculator she is.

Dead boring.

Are you a father?

I bet you're dead boring too.

I teach dear kids, do you, about right and wrong.

How it was when you were young. Using words like society today, the decline of

the moral standard.

Oh, you're all the bleeding same.

It was nice having breakfast with you.

I'm sure you'll go marching off into the world, enriching it with your jovial

approach.

It's not our fault that you're bored.

And boring.

By the time it reaches you, there'll be no stopping it.

Wait.

It's rather like Russian roulette, isn't it?

There.

You can all start.

I've got to finish the ironing.

Aren't you eating with us?

No, I've been inhaling it all morning.

Oh, hey, Mum, could you get round to my pink shirt?

just to put the whole lot straight through the liquidiser? Sorry.

I made an egg custard, by the way.

What a mess.

I was reading a new scientist about battery hens. OK, OK, skip the details.

No, if people knew the suffering that goes on in a factory farm, they wouldn't

eat half the things they do.

Well, that's not strictly true, Adam. You know about my suffering in the

kitchen, and you still sit there, waiting.

Yeah, but no matter how bad your output is, we don't send you to have your

throat cut, do we?

OK, sunshine, skip it.

I'm up to your pink shirt now, Russell.

Great. Oh, it's got face powder all over it still.

Couldn't you get your girlfriends to wear masks when they're closing in on

I'll put it to them, yeah.

Funny how each shirt has its own personality.

Russell, smell of make -up. Adam, smell of perfume.

And your father's smell of that stuff he fills people's teeth with.

Yeah.

Dad has all the fun.

I don't know why they're not ironing their own clothes.

Oh, come on, Dad.

There are some things in life a guy must avoid.

Like work, you mean?

Work's OK, if you can get it.

Ironing? Out.

And what if you were living alone?

I'd have a visiting lover.

Or a chick next door going crazy for my body.

Right now, I've got Mum.

I've got all three.

If I notice.

Oh, wives is something else. You can control mothers and lovers. Trying to

control a wife is like taking a Great Jane out on a piece of cotton.

We're just not ready for that kind of grief.

Grief? You don't even know what it is.

Listen, acne is grief.

Yeah, I'm not being able to kiss properly for a whole year. I never knew

do with my nose.

And flat feet, that's a real grief.

And being bored.

And being broke.

And being young. And feeling old. And ironing.

Oh, it's all grief.

Yes. Well, I think we've established that you're all reasonably suicidal.

Would you stop threatening everybody with that potato?

It's funny.

I was saying today to... to a friend, I was saying, how miserable everybody

look.

It's fashionable somehow to have a collection of problems. Take Ruby, for

instance. Now, who would think that the quiet, plodding Ruby was actually under

great stress?

How old's Ruby?

What's that got to do with it?

Just that it might be...

Her age, that's all.

Oh, yes, of course, I'd forgotten.

Once we're over 40, we're too old to have actual emotions.

Our hormones pack up and go, leaving our mouths making mindless hysterical

noises. I didn't mean that. Of course you meant that. All men mean that.

A man chatted me up not so long ago in the park.

Do you mind if I sit here, he said.

It's a lovely day, he said.

I've seen you in the park before, he said.

My wife... at that funny age, he said.

And then off he went with his giant digital watch and his moon boots.

Well, I guess we're all at that funny age.

I would like not to be included in your statistics, if you don't mind. My only

immediate problem is the egg custard.

Adam, you haven't finished.

Oh, that's it for me, Mum. Thanks.

Can't you eat the cabbage?

I ate the cabbage. I just can't make the stalks.

Cabbage cost 80 pence. 80 pence. And the potatoes, 60 pence.

In fact, that whole meal cost... Ria.

You get them to clean the garage, I get them to eat cabbage.

That whole meal cost a fortune. To say nothing of my time and my effort. But

don't you think it may be, uh, boring?

I mean, when these two do leave home... Oh, bliss!

they left with pleasant memories of mealtime at home.

Just a passing parental thought.

I'll get the egg custard.

You never see me sitting with a newspaper over my head, do you?

All right?

Oh, good. That's three mornings now, Ruby.

I'll still get the urge.

Oh, we'll get rid of that eventually.

I'll give you a lift.

You can drop me at the pet stores.

Food for the dog. And the cat.

And the hamster. And that budgie.

Bloody lot I've got.

You know, my old man doesn't get on with my kids.

He keeps on at them.

Telling them he's ashamed of them and that.

Well, the world's full of them punk people now, isn't it?

The other day, my Abbie says, I'll fight fire with fire in future. There's what

I'll do.

This morning, he went to work with a safety pin in his ear.

Little things like that, isn't it? What sets up all the worrying?

Yes, Ruby.

It's very little big things like that.

What's he on about?

Bloody cheek.

Probably wants to park his car.

Why didn't he let you out then?

Move over!

I am returning your knickers.

Ben, don't go. Wait for me.

I'll be ten minutes late.

We will lunch together.

From now on, we will always lunch together.

Ria.

God, I feel old.

The world, it seems, is striding on.

Progress, they call it.

Everything is becoming computerised.

The grass is full of strontium, the cattle full of hormones, the air full of

lead.

Soon it'll be spray -on clothes, capsule for lunch and sex on a stick.

I don't seem to fit anymore.

The whole world's changing, and here I sit.

The same.

Are you all right?

Yeah?

I'm fine.

Just fine.

Tolerance. I must have more tolerance. I must move with the rest of them.

You get the cassette.

Okay.

Hi, Dad.

I didn't know she was there.

She wouldn't think anything.

There's nothing to think.

It could have been Ben.

Leonard, I asked you to come here today on that same mission we came on one year

ago.

All this has got to end.

All this? All this or what? All this.

Whatever it is.

I am married, you know. That is fact.

Just meeting and talking like this puts my whole life at risk.

But when you charge up the road waving my knickers, it becomes ridiculous.

Look, these days, it doesn't matter... I am not a product of these days,

Leonard.

Until me, with all my morals and inhibitions and fears.

We don't really change, you see.

If I were unimportant to you, you would have laughed at the incident.

I have a lunch appointment with my husband.

It's what we know, isn't it?

Go.

Maria.

Go.

You mean absolute go?

The go that means go?

You're still there.

Will you be long?

Oh, I love you, Ben.

I... I love you. I really do love you.

Oh.

I just wanted you to know that.

This is our final lunch together. Are we going to the guillotine?

You never were very romantic, were you?

Who knows?

Everything's ready.

I made it before I went out.

We'll just wait a little longer for the wine to chill.

You know, I was thinking a moment ago about Adam and Russell.

I suppose we are lucky having them here in this house.

I mean, most kids have left home.

Got to live in some...

Seedy bed fit with equally seedy friends all doing their own unimaginable thing.

Oh, yes, we are very lucky.

I wish I could be like you.

Be their friend.

Their mate, if you like.

Not that I want to dance with them the way you do.

God, can you imagine it? The arthritic waltz.

Your body could probably manage, but your face would never approve.

Underneath the arches We'll dream our dreams away

Underneath the arches On cobblestones we'll

lay Pavements as our pillow No matter where we

stray Underneath the arches We'll...

the surgery sometime.

It isn't easy, is it? Changing?

No, darling.

It isn't easy.

Lunch.

It's a little present for all you've done.

I expect you've got enough to think about without me.

Oh, Ruby, you needn't... It was no trouble. Oh.

I've paid for it

with money.

Love is love.