That’s for As Time Goes By – the British sitcom with Judith Dench as Jean and Geoffrey Palmer as Lionel. I was thinking this morning about Lionel – in fact, the episode where someone remarks to Jean that “Lionel is kinder than he wants to be.” That is about the best I can hope for, given my personality. I do not understand how kindness comes naturally to some people.

Just to refresh memories, here’s a summary from an ATGB site:

Their two characters: Jean and Lionel, fell in love during the early 1950s, but when army officer Lionel was sent to Korea they lost touch after a letter he sent her never arrived.

Both assumed the other had lost interest, but 38 years later their paths cross again, when Lionel returns to England to write his memoirs of life in the army and as a coffee-planter in Kenya (imaginatively titled ‘My Life in Kenya’).

Seeking an agency temp to handle the typing, he is sent a young secretary in the form of Judith Pargetter and after hitting it off they agree to meet for dinner.

That evening, though, Lionel also chances upon meeting her mother and his long-lost sweetheart: Jean.

But could their love be rekindled after so long?

I like this quote also, although I don’t think of it as often as I do the “kinder” one:

Lionel: [trying to get him to write a second book, Jean walks Lionel through the first time they met] I saw you, and I stopped breathing. I really did.
Jean: Aww
Lionel: I started again, of course, or I would have died…