The Illusionist (L'Illusionniste) (2010),

Chris and Janet are not due back until well after 11pm, so I treated myself to a jaunt to the Scala
Seven years ago I fell in love with Slyvian Chomet's French animation movie Belleville Rendez-vous. It was quirky, uplifting and had an elderly heroine with a personality and deadpan humour to die for.
Chomet's latest animated feature (The Illusionist (L'Illusionniste) is a very different kettle of fish. It is a sombre , melancholy and at times rather beautiful tale of loneliness and the inevitability of change as experienced by a french illusionist in 1959 Scotland ( of all places!)
The unnamed magician ( picture Jacques Tati crossed with an aged James Stewart) befriends a young girl called Alice in a tiny Scottish village. They forge a platonic relationship before moving to Edinburgh where Alice out grows her benefactor, whose employment and that of other variety artists are on the wane.
I must admit, I did miss the humour and warmth of Belleville Rendezvous (who indeed would not), but having said this the visual depiction of a vintage Edinburgh is so lovingly created in this movie .- The swooping overhead shot of a misty,surreal city at night literally takes your breath away- I can forgive the movie that tiny flicker of warmth and heart
8/10

Silence is golden (finding Ivy & Duckling update)

The one thing about dogs that I do like is that they cannot talk in the mornings.

I have never been a "chatty" person first thing and need time to come round.......so this morning's row was inevitable as Chris did his best Brian Blessed impersonation before it was time for me to get up to take him and my sister to the railway station.

I heard him banging around, at 6am and in that awful fugue state of being half asleep/half awake I staggered to the bathroom with my nerves jangling.....

Now, as I was sat there in all my glory, the bathroom door opened and Chris started to ask me questions about some receipt he had found in my over night bag!!!

It's dawn!!

I am half asleep!!!

I am sat on the loo!!!

I have had no coffee!!!!!

and he is asking me about a bloody £2 quid receipt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could have turned into a serial killer!!

After a decade together, he still cannot understand that could rip a small child's arms off if engaged in mindless conversation as soon as I wake............the dogs understand this perfectly well........after their morning walk, they have always picked up on my non verbal communication and retire quietly next to me without fuss, and without noise .

Anyhow I feel more balanced now ( post bagel, coffee, quiet duckling feed and dog walk) Chris disappeared off with my sister to London ( they are having a girly day in the capital and are treating themselves to a matinee of Phantom Of The Opera) There is a tube strike in London today which is a bummer for them, but I know they should have a lovely if not a tiring day.

Me?..........I will be harvesting onions, runner beans, shallots, potatoes and artichokes

...................silently!

Last Night I found Ivy the guinea fowl (left). She was sitting on a huge mound of eggs on top of the Church wall and she blended in perfectly with the undergrowth and nettles which surrounded her. With difficulty I shooed her off the nest and with a heavy heart smashed the eggs for the hens to eat. It is just too late in the year for Ivy to be trying to raise 20 guinea fowl keets....

The seven ducklings are now a couple of days old now and the familiar screaming and tap dancing has started in the shed, much to the delight and excitement of William who will now be camped outside listening to the hysteria with partially hidden glee!

The little deformed black duckling thankfully died overnight

Late Babies

Seven of the ducklings are viable, vital and healthy. One black baby (foreground) has a hatching injury and doesn't have the strength to straighten his neck, he will not survive, but I will give the little fella a chance of sorts today to see if things may improve, sadly it won't.

I have learnt from bitter experience NOT to house ducklings in a cage in the kitchen. They are dreadfully dirty little devils and have an awful habit of pooing on their webbed feet and flinging it around the worktops!

A couple of years ago we had 16 of the little shysters on the kitchen table and Chris and I nearly got divorced because of it all! I will always remember hearing Chris bellowing from the kitchen on his way out to work "Shut up you dirty bastards!!!!!!" at the cacophony of 32 tap dancing little feet as the ducklings ran back and forth in the cage, following his every movement.


From then on , all ducklings have been banished to the shed and the latest babies seem to be happy under their heat lamp It is a little late in the season for babies as the weather is changing to an Autumnal chill, but baby runners are plucky little chaps, and I am sure they will be alright.


Ivy, the female guinea fowl has gone broody late in the season which is a little worrying. She is hidden away somewhere in the Graveyard and pops up briefly every day to have a feed and a drink before disappearing again....Guinea fowl keets hatching in late September is not good

The weather is changing again this week. Gale force winds and driving rain are due today. I snapped this photo of Meg this morning when she sat in the cottage window watching the Churchyard elms whipping back and forth as the weather deteriorates.....William of course, has disappeared...he knows the ducklings are in the shed and has now set up a vigil by the shed door

George is no mug..... he is asleep under our duvet

I hate common tourists

The Children are now back to school and the coastal towns of North Wales are quietening down somewhat.......tomorrow I will go down to Prestatyn to do some shopping and banking and the usual seasonal gauntlet of trailer trash visitors will hopefully NOT be clogging up the pavements and shops with their awful plodding fat carcasses

The dying holiday towns here in North Wales ( and I am talking about the ones that have NOT survived by specialising in out door pursuits or elderly chic) still attract the trailer trash holiday makers of the UK and the towns' populations seem to have an uneasy alliance with visitors that spend most of their days in the Stalag 17 looking Pontins Holiday Camp or the faceless expanses of caravan camp social clubs that lie a stones throw from the sand dunes.

Apart from spending money in Home Bargains and the Clwydian ( a Wetherspoon-ish bar- which has been nicknamed the Chlamydian by local wags) I would question just what these holiday makers give to the local economy but perhaps I am being a little unfair when I say all this...perhaps the daily presence of the aimless and rude, the socially engineered disabled and the uncouth have pandered to my natural snobbishness..........anyhow suffice to say.......most of them from tomorrow HAVE GONE HOME!

Ok enough of the rant.....

Duckling news......update....... we now have 8!

four hatched yesterday and another four hatched this evening.....all runner ducks and runner duck crosses and all look health happy and all bordering on nervous exhaustion......

Dan's ducklings

Not the best of photos but you get the gist...Four duckling have hatched so far , with at least another three piping.......Dan from "All that Comes with It" (http://allthatcomeswithit.com/) will hopefully be very pleased as some of the new babies are earmarked for a life over in West Yorkshire!

New babies show the general characteristics of the parent animal....Turkey poults remain slow and rather depressed looking, whereas hen chicks and guinea fowl kleets remain vital bright and just a little bland. Goslings, even when a day old, exhibit bags of personality seen in the adult birds and Indian Runner ducks just look, well, mad as a box of frogs!!!

Hysteria is catching amongst baby ducks....in a matter of hours, when approached, they will start their screaming and shouting, and with stiff little wings outstretched in uncontrolled panic round and round they will run like little girls at a tea party!

Does Dan know what he has let himself ( and his long suffering wife) in for

tee hee

Back to normal

Cinderella's back from the ball.......those dainty wellingtons are now back on my feet and the sounds of the field await those first jobs of the day.
Chris sorted everything out very well..apparently Boris behaved himself (a sign that he remains "under par" and as Chris put it so succinctly last night "no one has died!"
It is nice to be home too.
As always there is plenty to do, even though I have only been away for two days....
The dogs are getting their haircuts today,
The runner duck eggs in the incubator need to have their humidity increased as they are due to hatch very soon
and I need to arrange to pick up 4 unwanted hens from a local pub....
...the field population grows.........

City Mooching and the Best Movie of the Year

It has been a lovely day.
After a leisurely breakfast ( Nu's hubby Jim missed out cos he had to jet off to Amsterdam for work) we caught the tube into town and suddenly became real tourists for an hour or two when we boarded one of the Thames clippers and took a trip from Embankment up to the London Dome and then back to Southwalk .
The weather was lovely.
At Southwalk we ambled around the cathedral then had a cracking seafood lunch at
The Wright Brothers Oyster Bar, which was filled to the gunnel's with suited and booted diners

We took our time over lunch, talked and laughed some more and then made our way to the Curzon Cinema in Mayfair where we indulged ourselves with probably the best film I have seen all year- the Argentinian movie The Secrets in their Eyes

Now Romantic movies have a tendency to leave me rather cold but The Secrets in their Eyes combines an absorbing and rather affecting generational love story with a well written and pacy crime thriller.

Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is a retired criminal court Investigator, whose efforts to write a novel are frustrated when he finds himself unable to shake the memories of a 25 year old rape and murder case. After visiting his ex-supervisor (Soledad Villamil), who is now a judge, Benjamin decides to re investigate the case, and the audience is transported back and forth from his memories of the investigation to more recent twists and turns relating to it and in the course of this unravelling mystery Benjamin examines his own romantic history with Irene and his friendship with his drunken best friend and colleague Pablo ( a wise cracking Guillermo Francella)

Darin, with his hangdog charm and mature sexiness is wonderful in the lead role of Benjamin but his scenes with the sassy and luminous Villamil catapult this movie into something much more than your entertaining crime camper.

The couple's chemistry (portrayed over a twenty five year period) is at times terribly moving and their will-they-won't-they relationship literally reduced both Nuala and me to tears..... not a mean feat I can tell you!

Having said all this, there is much , much more to enjoy in this absolute cracker of a movie. The cinematography is superb ( a swooping tracking shot over a football stadium is just one particular standout) and the musical score by Federico Jusid re enforces the film's themes of loss,memory, fantasy and fiction.

Nuala loved the film as much as I did, and after a brief but thoroughly enjoyable narrative post mortem of what they did and why, I just had time to say my emotional goodbyes before I caught my train home.

It has been a lovely, lovely day.

Sigh

I thought I would indulge myself with a very quick blog before we have a sunny breakfast of papers, smoked salmon and bagels! (bliss)
Nuala took me to the Palm Court at Langham's Hotel for afternoon tea, so thank God I had scrubbed up for the event,we ate miniature pastries to die for, weird gin flavoured tea and scones that would make Auntie Glad weep....and it was delightful.
We mooched around Leicester Square , drank wine in the sunshine and chatted non stop , then went to see Sweet Charity at the Haymarket, which was a real and rather surprising tonic.
I absolutely loved the chorus of girls in the Fan-Dango Ballroom, who are all beautifully played, full of weariness, bitterness and savage wisecracks by a troupe of talented long legged but somewhat shopworn looking actresses............their rendition of Big Spender was a real riot....

I loved Dorothy Field's biting and at times rather moving lyrics and of course the other famous numbers such as Rhythm of Life and There's gotta be something better than this.." were real show stoppers............

Anyhow today we are fitting in a river trip , lunch out and a cinema visit ( I KNOW I am in London what the hell am I doing going to the cinema?- well you have to remember me and Nu love the movies, a trip together to a discussable film is something of a treat for both of us!)....
and all before I catch the train home
Back to wellington boots covered in chicken shit