Tears Before Bedtime

Tom Holland as Lucas

I have not read any other reviews of the film THE IMPOSSIBLE, but I have heard that the story of how one English family of five got caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 has been criticised for its portrayal of the disaster from the tiny perspective of just one foreign family.
This is an unfair criticism. The story is what it is, and although the movie captures perfectly the astonishing destructive force and sheer scale of the disaster, it wisely never really wavers from the physical and psychological journey of the Bennett family and particularly the experiences of the oldest son Lucas, who rises in statue as the whole emergency unfolds.
The whole film is a sob fest from start to finish thanks primarily to an amazingly mature performance by Tom holland as Lucas and a heartbreaking supportive turn by Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor as his distraught parents.
From the get-go the audience cares deeply and with passion for this family and their survival and so the roller coaster ride of their life after the wave is made even more exhausting.
Having said all this the Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, peppers the drama time and time again with tear jerking tiny moments of real humanity,where the chance interventions of strangers have an astonishing effect on the family after the tsunami has struck.
And so we see elderly native women gently and silently tending the severely injured Maria (Watts) after she is found..while an injured and bereaved German tourist ( Sönke Möhring) insists a distraught Henry (McGregor) uses his precious phone to contact home.
Elderly Brit (Geraldine Chapman) briefly teams up with middle son Thomas (Samuel Joslin) for a haunting moment of human contact and support made even more moving as she is reminded by the boy that she is seventy four and he is a mere seven and a half  at the same time as Lucas makes it his mission to try and reunite the lost and separated in one of the overrun and crowded community hospitals.
It is these scenes that literally break your heart.
This is a powerful,intensely moving and visually stunning drama of an almost unfilmable event...I have not cried as much since Mabel died
9/10

Impossible

My best friend Nuala went to see THE IMPOSSIBLE the other day and said she blubed through it like a spinster at a wedding.
We are off to see it later, and looking at the trailer I can almost see just why she found it so moving, for it seems to celebrate that almost undefinable thing termed  so simply as "the human spirit"
In this modern world where technology, money and success is king, our relationships and contact with others often take a back seat in the hierarchy of needs of everyday life.
We sweat the small stuff......and boy...can I sweat the small stuff!

When the unfortunate souls atop the World Trade Centre waited for the end on that bright September morning, all many wanted to do was to hear their loved ones voices on the other end of a mobile phone one last time.
Survivors from the Boxing Day tsunami have reported great acts of bravery and kindness between perfect strangers...where an innate need to give support and succour to a fellow human being seemed more important than anything else in the world.
I am a firm believer of the goodness of people.
I don't think that this is a 'fluffy bunny' or saccharine view of life...
 (believe me as a nurse I have seen my fair share of what the cynical human race has to offer)... No....I really do believe that what makes us good, generally , are those innate, unthinking moments that bind us to each other and which only really surface when the chips are well and truly down.

I am Addison DeWitt...I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.

I am just that bit pompous enough not to ever allow myself to put up with rudeness.
If I decide to be polite when I challenge a snotty remark, I usually resort to the tried and tested
"I beg your pardon?"
But I have been known to jump quite magnificently into a verbal joust worthy of something out of ALL ABOUT EVE when the need arises and the wind is blowing in the right direction.
Generally I am not shy when it comes to confrontation.

Having said this..Ihave just had a consultation with my GP which was not the most pleasant of experiences.
In my mind he was brusque, offhand and insensitive, and after( what I thought was an overly rushed consultation) I was left feeling I had been talked over and not listened to.
And yet I walked away from the situation without saying anything.
And that annoyed me, because for that brief moment I was not the assertive, knowledgable practitioner....I was one of Joe public who was expected to do what he's told.
Of course I will say something to him the next time we meet. I shall feel strong enough, pert enough and justified enough to do so, but I shall approach it all in a ,measured, fatherly and icy calm way.
In that respect I am just like old Meg
middle aged gays are just like old bitches everywhere
We NEVER FORGET

Home Fires Burning

I left work a few hours early because I wasn't feeling too sparking.Hopefully it's not the novo virus ,(it looks as though a girl I worked with on Saturday had it)-suffice to say in the middle of a somewhat strenuous moving and handling moment I was belching like Barry Humphries' Sir Les Patterson---lovely
I do feel somewhat better now and have eaten some dry Toast ( my first food since yesterday's  lunch) after having had a few hours deep sleep.The snow has come down again, and the mini drama of life on the field has taken yet another cold turn, some of me would like to spend a few more hours under the duvet, but even in the limiting snow, there is always some small little being that needs feeding, watering and protecting

Buster and Melissa McBride safe from the snow in the shed

A lone runner braving the snow

Winnie screaming at the cold

Sorrel pissed off and cold

Irene asking for corn (below Angostrura the lone guinea fowl)

Call The Psychologist

SEE YOU MONDAY....famous last words.
When I finished my long day at work last night I was faced with one of those " can you just?" Requests....and so instead of another day shift today, I am working nights instead.
That's fine with me and it gives Chris a break from the stressful round of adhering to animal care plans, blind cockerels that flap hysterically because they don't know you and needy dogs who want a quick pee and sniff in the snow.
After work last night I caught up with the family who had all gone out for dinner.
In the general conversation I was asked if I had ever performed any "chemical experiments" as a child?
Out of nowhere I remember an incidence when as a kid of eight, I had suddenly had an impulse to pour an entire bottle of peppermint essence into our garden pond.
Bugger alone knows why I wanted to do it....
Probably it was one of those, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF MOMENTS?....but into the pond the essence went ( and when I said pond..I actually mean a large enamel bath, complete with taps which was sunk incongruously into the centre of the lawn, then filled with a few stones and 12 sad looking koi carp.)
Anyway...........20 minutes later I ran into the house shaking after 12 even sadder looking fish floated belly up amid the perfumed stench of after eight mints.
Yes, by today's standards I was a fledging serial killer in the making, and would have been whisked away to be assessed by a kindly psychologist lady in a tweed skirt if it was 2001.But it was 1971 or thereabouts and so all I suffered was some high level bottom smacking and a week of thin lips.
In retrospect my animal killing tendencies were dampened by a sudden and lifelong obsession with Shelley Winters and The Poseidon Adventure....with the help of her,the hot panted Carol Lynley who had to be hauled up the Christmas tree by an ageing Red Buttons and the overwhelming sense of "doing the right thing in the face of tidal wave adversity", I managed to let go of all things dark...and skipped gayly and briskly into the light.....

I couldn't resist

If I am away for just one shift there is someone in the cottage who just can't
 cope
Ok I just couldn't keep away....saddo

See You Monday

Sod's law means that tomorrow and Sunday I am working two, 12 hour day shifts.
This leaves a rather miffed Dr Chris looking after the animals during two of the coldest, miserable and difficult days of the year.
I doubt I will be able to blog until Monday...
He'll be a nervous wreck Come Sunday night.
When the weather is as harsh as it was today, only the geese and ewes venture out, so the Ukrainian village looked all but deserted this afternoon, save for a few anxious faces at coop doors all searching hungrily for extra corn and thawed bowls of water.
my face was chapped and red as an eskimo's arse when I had finished the jobs
Thank goodness for woolly hats,Christmas gloves and stout underwear

Les Misérables & The Digital Thermometer Saga

Redmayne and the delightful Samantha Barks

Well I will start by outlining the good bits.

1. I loved the sweeping epic nature of the opening number "Look Down", where hundreds of convicts haul a warship into dry dock during a storm. Impressive and suitably grand.

2. Hugh Jackman throws his entire being into the Jean Valjean role and makes for a wonderfully sexy hero

Crowe is ok in the difficult role of Javert as is the delightful Hathaway in her much lauded role of Fantine but for me ( and this was a surprising fact) Eddie Redmayne stole the show with his angst and slightly odd looking portrayal of Marius, the young student.

3. The ensemble belted out the favourite show stoppers such as ONE DAY MORE and DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING? with suitable gusto and the riot scenes captured the drama of the Paris uprising quite well

4. I did shed a tear at Eponine's wet death scene...another surprise for me

BUT 

1. I just didnt enjoy the main characters' signature songs as much as I did in the stage production.

Now I know just why that is, for the answer lies in the main difference between a cinematic musical and the stage production...and that is the close up!

In the film every song showed every tiny emotion of the actor as they were singing. Sure that makes for some impressive cinema ( Hathaway's I DREAMED A DREAM and Redmayne's EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES being standouts) but some pieces just do not lend themselves to this sort of cinematography. They need a big stage to offset a big voice. The intimacy of a closely watched actor reduces the dramatic effect for me, which was a shame

2. Sacha Baron Cohen is absolutely dreadful as the scheming innkeeper Thedarier and

Master In the House, a piece that gives the entire first half of the musical some well needed levity was just thrown away

3. The whole film felt just that little bit hurried...a thing I never really felt during the stage production.

By the time the girl from Mamma Mia started trilling A HEART-FULL OF RAIN, I did feel somewhat bombarded by it all.....and I found myself thinking " for fuck's sake die already!"

That's probably why I felt all a bit hot and headachey towards the end, almost as if I was coming down with something.And so when we finally got home (after all the ladies in the audience had given the entire movie a polite round of applause) I sought out the digital thermometer out of the kitchen cupboard and bunged it under my tongue.

As it turned out my temperature was fine.... I didn't take too much notice of exactly what it was

FOR I SUDDENLY REMEMBERED WHEN I LAST USED THE THERMOMETER

IT WAS MAY 3RD 2012

And in panic over a very sick Mabel the bulldog

I HAD SHOVED THE BLOODY THING UP HER BUM!!!

A QUICK WIPE OF THE THING WITH ONE PIECE OF KITCHEN ROLL

IS NOT  GOOD STERILIZING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!