Pottering and Miss Potter

A showery day, and gloomy to say the least. But have managed to prune and rid the front garden of dead wood and leaves. Next week is going to be a busy one as I am working nights on Monday, bee club on Tuesday, Theatre on Wednesday, out with Jonney Highfield on Friday which will be fun and Nu's hen night (gulp) on Saturday! with working nights on Sunday , I am going to knackered!

Listening to one of Chris' Christmas Cds today. A 1930 review type collection thing, and not very interesting in itself, but two songs did catch my attention. "Get Happy" from the film Summer Stock , sung by Judy Garland, and The Way You Look Tonight sung by Fred Astaire in Swing Time. The Garland song just bursts with energy, it is quite joyful! and lifts the spirits quite easily. The way you look tonight was featured in many films, obviously My Best Friend's Wedding!, but interestingly in Hannah And Her Sisters, Peter's Friends and the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!! Astaire cannot sing, but his suave art deco tones seem just right for the song!

Miss Potter (2006) is quite a sweet little film, that never quite convinces in its portrayal of Beatrix Potter. Now I love Renée Zellweger , and was looking forward in how she captures the reality or indeed the guessed reality that was Miss Potter, but I found the characterisation a bit thin!...charming yes, but ever so slightly thin. I guess the information about the personality of Beatrix Potter is, in itself, scanty. From what I have read about her she is described simply as jolly and good fun, but I suspect little of the "real" woman is realy known. Perhaps this is why Zellweger is reduced to pulling her cute pudgy face into a pout and crinkling her eyes a lot. Having said that I enjoyed the film greatly. Ewan McGregor (not an actor I like) is incredibly moving as Norman Warne, her publisher and suitor, and Emily Watson, as Norman's wisecracking spinster sister is always worth the price of admission. An enjoyable evening.

Oh no.............its apocalp..to !

I should have taken a warning from the publicity blurb for Apocalypto (2006) ! It is advertised as Mel Gibson's Apocalypto rather than just "Apocalpto", as if the film itself needed Gibson to help sell it to the general public, which of course it does. The story of how the baddie Mayans (ugly brutes !) take poor simple forest Indian villagers ( Environmental heros) prisoner to satisfy their angry gods is a thinly veiled political allegory about civilisations, (especially the USA), in decline. It is also quite simply a chase movie in the Les Misérables tradition, and a violent and often disturbing one at that. Gibson directs the action sequences deftly, but we have seen all this before in so many ways!- At one point the council estate looking hero Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), gallops through the jungle pursued ad nauseum by the Mayan psychopaths, I found myself wishing for him to end it all by jumping over the obligatory waterfall. I almost laughed when he did just that! Many of the other action set pieces are quite breathtaking and the cinematography is stunning ! but everyone looks pierced to death and all a bit dirty for my liking.

The Last of the Mohicans did it all so much better.

The Flower show committee and music to have at my funeral

Well I am officially a member of the Trelawnyd flower show committee! ( according to Hazel at work!), and I am totally overwhelmed with the responsibility! even though the letter with "it in writing" hasn't plopped through the letter box as yet! I do suspect they need a robust pair of hands to set up the Hall rather than a new perspective on decision making! but I am looking forward to our first meeting, when I meet the other "chosen few"!

Think we are off to see Miss Potter (2006) at the weekend, looking forward to that as I do like Renée Zellweger and her spot on/Meryl Streep-esque English accent. Another favourite actress of mine Emily Watson appears in the film too, so I am hoping for an entertaining evening!

ps. George had his first proper wee in the garden.......! al hum dilly la!

Postscript, I know I am risking sounding like a Luddite, but I must comment on how pleased I am with my cheapo Technika MP3 player, which I bought from Tesco for some ridiculous sum (not even a tenner). Filled to the brim of film soundtracks and particular fav ballads (Moon river being one), I am forced into thinking about making a list! This list is the music I would have at my funeral!

As the coffin is being wheeled in (Julia Fordham.....Happy Ever After OR The theme from The Archers)...I want wry smiles at the very beginning! Then interspersed during the service I would like "Moon River" (I would like Chris sobbing loudly at this stage as it is "our song" !, then "Thank You" by Dido ( did I hear a strangled cry from friends in the congregation?. This would be followed up by "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure, and finally as the crowds are staggering towards the exits, I would finish them off with the end credits from the film Out of Africa, by John Barry.

who says I'm gay!

A good British Comedy film

Shaun of the Dead (2004) caught me by surprise last night,as it is a truly funny modern British comedy! The tag line of the movie states it is A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies. and that just about sums it up. Simon Pegg, (who also co-wrote it) is wonderful as the hapless Shaun, an electrical store supervisor, with a loser best friend, dissatisfied girlfriend and hated step father, who rises to the challenge of a zombie takeover of London and becomes an anti-hero. Pegg is a talented comedian and surprisingly he brought some pathos to a comedy/slasher film, which is no mean feat.

Caught up with lots of jobs today in between toilet training. Bought a hoe (with Christmas vouchers from Chris' dad), planted the old Christmas tree in the garden and shot through to Llandudno to swap some theatre tickets for Ron Moody in A Christmas Carol at Venue Cymru, so I can go to Nu's Hen night! The new re vamped theatre complex looks great, and certainly better than the hospital day ward that it resembled last year.

Not my best photo (tired fat bastard photo in fact) to be honest I have got a stinking cold.....mind you I am going to get this blown up and put on the fridge.....message to self......don't miss weight watchers this week.....and any week for that matter.

This Life......

This Life + 10 (2007), was on this evening on BBC2, and I must admit I did have a quick peek to see how Anna, Miles, Millie, Egg and Warren looked 10 years after we enjoyed their arbitrary 1990 lives in "This Life". They all looked pretty good, especially Jason Hughes as the sadly optimistic Warren , but I did turn the television over after a few minutes as I wanted to remember the characters as they were, when I enjoyed their chaotic relationships a decade ago. Seeing them all again, was like bumping into close friends, and it was a feeling that didn't sit quite right! Friends that stay in your life do so for a reason, others fall away and are grieved over or forgotten about, depending on the reasons for the parting. We all experience close friends that leave us , and I am in a mind now that generally we should "let sleeping dogs lie" rather then to try to capture past closeness. A couple of years a close friend of mine dropped our friendship; her sudden and what I saw as her selfish never explained behaviour shocked and hurt me badly, and times like New Year still makes me think of her. I thought it clever of the BBC to air This life at this emotional, and introspective time of year, and I almost fell for it....... but, just at the crucial moment, I realised that the famous five should be left in 1997 where we last enjoyed them . As twenty somethings ,they had hope,energy and excitement, we said our goodbyes then.

Winter has hit home here and the beach was painfully icey on our walk, thank god for Chris' Christmas pressie, the hairy hat! I love it!. Spoke to Nu who was full of the wedding plans ( AND the hen night). Chris went back to work today, and was secretly bursting to get into his office! This year is our seventh year together, which is lovely.

Happy New Year Mrs Rosen

Hollywood has seldom portrayed New Year as anything more than a metaphor for change within a narrative structure.The Poseidon Adventure (1972), also used it as adramatic backdrop to the disaster and as a child I always remembered Shelley Winters as good old Belle Rosen making sure the shy storekeeper Red Buttons was crossing his arms with her at the stroke of midnight..."Mr Martin. don't be on your own tonight...here,.... come stand next to me!!!" as a ten year old, I always thought being alone like that at New Years so incredibly sad, especially as Mr Martin was trying so hard not to be single! it was such a caring thing for Mrs Rosen to do...I just knew in my water thay she would have a sticky end! After she had dived into pools of oil water to save the bad tempered Gene Hackman and died so melodramatically with his slobber all over her cheek, I almost laughed as Ernie Borgnine sadly thanks her for her bravery,
"You hadda lotta guts lady..a lotta guts!"..........many a true word

New Year's Eve on ITU, has been (so far) ok. We are fullof acutely sick patients, but now at 3 am all the main work has been completed and the patients are all artificially asleep! I am looking forward to the week ahead. Dog toilet training, pottering jobs and home....
Happy New Year...............

New baby.

George has certainly made his presence known. In almost 24 hours he is treating the house and household with friendly dominance. By the look of the kitchen floor every 20 minutes, there must be a diuretic ingredient to his puppy food! He is also totally bonded to human legs rather than the hairy ones of the other dogs, so walking around the black kitchen floor is fraught with accidents as he blends in quite easily. Meg and Maddie seem to be accepting this little tyke but Finlay seems rather mistrusting and aloof and has given an uncaring George a few nips if he bounces around a little too energetically. The picture is George and Meg

Working nights tonight and tomorrow so after a long walk on the beach I am just about to settle down to watch Sherlock Holmes with the excellent Jeremy Brett in The Master Blackmailer (1992)

Making lists..Christmas is officially over

Chris usually photographs his Christmas gifts (it has become a bit of a tradition) I usually make a mental list of what I received! (quelle surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!) thought I would list my gifts!, not only because I am anal to the point of obsession!, but because this year I have been particularly lucky and have received some lovely things.

From Chris (George,a mobile phone,a pair of winceyette pyjamas!!!,a lovely ink pen, woolly hat (my favourite see pic), calendar,theatre tickets,and clinique "Happy" aftershave. Janet and Ned , an Edwardian glass, a book on allotments, an art deco silver spoon, a theatre voucher AND a lovely gaudy welsh jug. Ann & Tim, a mushroom growing kit (!), vitamin E cream from Body Shop,wild flower seeds a dog duvet, garden secateurs, & fingerless gloves for work on my field and a lovely 1930 style pie dish. Nephew Chris, a dog bowl. Andrew & Jayne, a cookery book. Nigel, a home designed calendar with lovely photographs and a bee keeping book. Mike & Bev, allotment and gardening books! Sorrel, a years' subscription to Empire Magazine for 2008. Nu & Jim, a years' subscription to Empire! for 2007. Katherine (a voucher to repair ancient tapestry for the National Trust). plus many bottles of wine,genden vouchers, a bottle of gin, tons of chocs!!!

There I feel better .....list have been made!......I know Christmas isn't all about gifts! just wanted to thanks everyone for their thoughfull and welcomed pressies....