Under Milk Wood

 Like most people I know something about Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. Essentially I understand it to be a piece of prose for a myriad of voices, what I didn’t know it was a commissioned piece for radio

A poetical day in the life of the Welsh town called Llareggub (read it backwards) this stage version wisely projected the prose about the cast of eleven who were playing every character and scene with gusto and with an energy which was at times slightly exhausting they lived the sometimes bawdy words seemlessly together. 

Slightly long at 2 hours 20 I was still happy with going and Theatre Clwyd  is looking mighty fine after it’s refurb from 1970 Crome to rich 2025 larch wood and copper panels 

It’s beautiful

You know Where You are with!

A beautiful cover to a sad video

Back to work today 

Last night Roger enjoyed Call My Bluff

 

The Other Bennett Sister: The First Bridget Jones

 The retelling of a much loved story from a different perspective will be always a bit of a challenge to digest, as change often is, so I was interested to see the first two episodes of The Other Bennett Sister which recovered the bare bones of Pride and Prejudice from the third, and perhaps least interesting of the Bennett Sisters, the plain and academic Mary ( Ella Bruccoleri)

This BBC adaptation has a lot to cram in to its first hour, so it all feels frothy and at a bit of a gallop, but we do get a flavour of how different this adaptation is. Mary is the ugly duckling for sure, but is seen by her mother as the main protagonist against the rest of her sisters getting successful marriages. Mrs Bennett ( Ruth Jones) plays the character as a hard bully. Gone has the humour and the hysteria and the desperation  of Brenda Blethyn’s version and in its place Jones gives us a cruel and nasty piece of work. HNo wonder poor Mary picks at her fingers all of the time. Mary is constantly criticised for holding her sisters back and although sister Lizzie is kind to her , there seems a distance between her and her siblings which makes Mary the underdog. The only warmth Mary receives is some gentle support from house keeper Mrs Hill ( Lucy Briers) and her aunt Mrs Gardiner ( Indira Varmer) so as we suddenly reach the time when all her siblings have left home and her father dies a new chapter with a new story stretches before us by the third episode. 

Mrs Hill

I’ll be interested to see where the story takes us.

Gawd Help Us

 We now need a bit of lightness 

Three Mothers

My mother, aged 16 in 1941

 I’m lucky, I guess, for in a lifetime that has spanned 63 years so far, I have had the fortune to have had three mother figures in my life. 

My real mother was a drama queen. She was critical and anxious and depressed and ultimately bitter. She lacked warmth and found affection giving difficult and awkward, but she was my mother and I loved her in a dutiful way that was as exasperating as it was hard work. 

My grandmother and my elder sister were the warm constants in my life. They brought laughter to a sad home life and gave me a taste and an attraction to warm people with big hearts.

They allowed me to balance my own psychi, and taught me empathy, and kindness and showed me that encouragement not criticism was the way forward . 

If you are lucky you have a mom that nurtures and enables

My mother could not share that gift 

But my surrogates could …… 

Ps…on reflection I suspect my mother suffered from untreated PTSD before this photo was taken she was actually shot at in the streets of Liverpool when walking home from work ( the rear gunners would do that after bombing the docks ) she was also in the house when a bomb blew in the windows and when another unexploded bomb went under the kitchen floor 

Hablaré español con fluidez.

 I met a friend for lunch. He gave me some learn Spanish for beginners books. 

This is my next challenge 

I’m going to sing along with the lisping choir! 

I’m boiling a haggis

Tomorrow I’m having haggis and cheese toasties as suggested by Jay Rayner on BBC Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet.

I wonder what haggis is in Spanish?

Like you do

 Don’t get me started

We only get post around once a week now. 

Of course it’s all unofficial but after a straw poll of villagers was taken 

I have come to the conclusion that letters are not a priority for the Royal Mail and that weekly visits are becoming the norm. Today I’ve had three letters and each one posted back at the beginning of march

Go figure that one

Today the postman couldn’t push the letter box open, so he called through the open window

I explained that I had to jam a knitted Father Christmas into the letter box itself to keep it shut in the gale force wind of yesterday. 

He looked faintly surprised but said “ like you do”

Riding the storm II

It’s stormy today and Trelawnyd feels as though it’s hiding in the protection of the Gop. The cats have hunkered down upstairs and refused to go out in the gale force wind and the wind through the yew trees in the graveyard has almost been deafening. Twice I’ve checked on my laburnum sapling, and thankfully she remains tall and strong and defiant. She’s seven years old 

How time flies

Last night I watched Notting Hill a film that reminds me of an unhealthy relationship I was once in… having said this and  film’s portrayal of what could be seen as an ultimately decent relationship between Anna Scott( Julia Roberts) and William Thacker ( Hugh Grant) gave me that “ arh ha!” Therapy moment I was writing about yesterday.

I went with my boyfriend to see the movie on a Friday afternoon, after which he disappeared to his second home in the Lake District, something he’d do regularly and always without me. I realised after that that I was making do with the crumbs of the relationship and that was “ok” because I didn’t deserve anything more or better. 

Crazy to think that now, but back then I did , only to realise by the final credits of the movie I was worth more than that.

I broke up with him soon after.