Budge-it
I have learnt today it may be possible to over do it on the Irish budget and particularly on Pat Kenny & the Irish budget.
Perhaps it was following the day long Budget Special carry on with Frontline’s program Alcohol: The Social Cost that finally did me in.
It’s one degree and falling outside. Crisp as you like. I just went for a very short run to throw off all that budget terminology especially “Troika” .
Imagine there’s even a Part II tomorrow. I may have to ration myself.
Thanks Robinson (1994) & Robinson in Space — you made my weekend.
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The Bach Choir was also lovely, (thanks Ita, Tara) I knitted my way through it and through the family “birthdays” dinner (Thanks J, Gma, L et al) and through to needing an icepack from muscular protest from over-knitting at 1am.
All good men are born in December. My two good men are anyway. One of these good men will soon have a very handsome jumper if I do not end up in traction first. It is an olympic knitting pace to get this jumper finished.
Rebel knitting
The Anthony Trollope inspired-portable-post office-table had an aesthetic quandary when it came to hinges. The hinges were attached following a very difficult knitting episode and this certainly must have influenced the matter of the hinges being put on (by me) in a manner that made the table crooked.
Less Anthony Trollope and more Vicar of Dibley looking post hinge attachment!
But it is remarkably sturdy and so can perhaps be enhanced further.
Knitting raving Glenda
Knitting rage. Size 9 needles. What was I thinking? Thankfully Glenda provides comfort in The Maids.
Surprised and delighted to report progress has been made on the Anthony Trollope post-office portable wooden desk, but where’s a woman to obtain a small set of hinges at this late hour on a Friday ?
I have only sustained 2 puncture wounds and a few holes in the carpet in the process. It looks a bit dicey there with the Robertson’s wood screws. God above I do not like Robertson’s. Philips all the way henceforth.
Battling Denis
Early morning with Denis Donoghue’s bewk. I don’t entirely agree with him, (I’m more partial to social history than Denis maybe) but admire his questioning and hungry, battling through the nettles rather than admiring the swans, mind. Rather a joy at 5am with the current cold, sunny spell out the window.
The small male is a very early riser these days. This morning he remarked of our neighbours across the street “Spotted… two more insomniacs, one making breakfast.”
Pragmatic Glenda
Aerial wrestling, ace gingham coated, ‘Oh for God’s sake, you great schmuck’, ‘that was awful’ Glenda.
(Something quite conventional about this film, but nonetheless Glenda is flying! She could deliver the phone directory with conviction. Great training for politics.)
Practicing Glenda
An apparently forgotten Glenda Jackson film from 1968 Negatives (found under Vintage Gothic Horror Babes channel, er wha?)
The film or the parts I’ve watched anyway has a slighty odd preoccupation with a furniture shop. (A whole new genre of film: dads and furniture shops?).
Anyway it’s all quite thundering high octave, as have the past few days been for several people I know and who impress me with their fortitude.
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I am reading Denis Donoghue’s The Practice of Reading and find it quite probing and agreeable thus far. A treat to be reading about reading. Especially after a busy year of “necessary” reading, it’s lovely to have some breathable reading space.
Restless
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXmMsOBrx9g&w=420&h=315]
Shelagh Delaney (film made about Shelagh Delaney’s Salford by Ken Russell in 1960). This is such a refreshing piece 52 years later.
Shelagh Delaney also sadly died recently.
Ken Russell has died. His death creates a reflection on his work and contribution and reminds me of how important Glenda Jackson was to me in my twenties. A divine inspiration! Not least because she turned on her heel from acting and went into politics.
I’ve been rewatching some of his early films and The Music Lovers (never realized Melvin Bragg wrote the screenplay for it) for as Virginia Woolf noted, as soon as someone is dead we long to know more of them.
And since deaths are cumulative, his reminded me today of another loss Derek Jarman. I used to go to the National Film Theatre at the Embankment to see Jarman’s super 8 works projected, pieces like The Last of England and many others. They were the lamp posts that kept me going in those angst-ridden, stumbling, wondering years.
Russell told an anecdote in a interview reshown today about getting a reply from Channel 4 that said the script he’d sent them (in recent years) wasn’t cinematic enough!
I am very curious about Ken Russell’s 1958 documentary called Lourdes, but cannot find it.