Peter's Last Stand

This is a piece which tries to describe something of the personality, history, life, and death of someone I knew well as a friend. The subject of this short film is Peter Chambers. As well as being about Peter, it is also about lots of people who for different reason end their lives in lonely isolated circumstance - the rich or at least varied tapestry of their previous lives no longer visible - existing only in the memories of one or two friends or relatives, alongside a few old photographs or artefacts. It is also about the space he inhabits - the particular order of the room, and the objects in it. These things owe their existence to Peter. They are part of his situation and he a part of theirs - the bent spoons which he uses as clothes pegs, the margarine tub as a pen holder, the figurine of the old matelot with his barrel of rum which Peter liked to identify with. Peter had an ethic and care about people and society, he was of, and represented by, a period where social thinking had aspirations to create a better, fairer and more egalitarian world - a sensibility and wisdom which went on to found and deliver the NHS. A period where enough people were ethical and intelligent enough to realise that if we don't have a sense of responsibility for our fellow man/woman - each other - then we have chaos (Sadly highlighted by the current Covid-19 crisis).