I'm a sucker for Shakespeare.
Particularly the histories, and particularly Henry V, especially with Kenneth Branagh in the lead.
We few. We happy few. We band of brothers
We are but warriors for the working day
Unlike the French knights, the English had no professional standing army. Farmers and labourers fought alongside the nobility. I don't know if you know the story, but most schoolboys of my generation did, back in the day when history was all dates, and monarchs and battles! How King Harry's tiny, weary army defeated three times their number at Agincourt, and the flower of French nobility was wiped out. Henry V married Catherine of France, but died just before he became King of France too.
I don't usually do jingoism, but Shakespeare could turn out a line! I saw the premier of this film in 1989(?) in London, and the whole cinema erupted at the end of the Crispin Day speech.
And I once saw Branagh on stage as Richard III. The point where he woos the grieving Lady Anne over the coffin of her husband he has only recently murdered...
Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?
As Branagh left the stage, he paused and turned to the audience. He raised an eyebrow and....just looked at us. As if daring us to criticise him. It was the most faultless piece of acting I have ever seen. Pure magic.
And did you spot a young Christian Bale in that clip?
Particularly the histories, and particularly Henry V, especially with Kenneth Branagh in the lead.
We few. We happy few. We band of brothers
We are but warriors for the working day
Unlike the French knights, the English had no professional standing army. Farmers and labourers fought alongside the nobility. I don't know if you know the story, but most schoolboys of my generation did, back in the day when history was all dates, and monarchs and battles! How King Harry's tiny, weary army defeated three times their number at Agincourt, and the flower of French nobility was wiped out. Henry V married Catherine of France, but died just before he became King of France too.
I don't usually do jingoism, but Shakespeare could turn out a line! I saw the premier of this film in 1989(?) in London, and the whole cinema erupted at the end of the Crispin Day speech.
And I once saw Branagh on stage as Richard III. The point where he woos the grieving Lady Anne over the coffin of her husband he has only recently murdered...
Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?
As Branagh left the stage, he paused and turned to the audience. He raised an eyebrow and....just looked at us. As if daring us to criticise him. It was the most faultless piece of acting I have ever seen. Pure magic.
And did you spot a young Christian Bale in that clip?
Now this is piercing!
From the Phuket Taoist vegetarian festival, featured in today's Guardian...
...although I suspect the last one is just on his way to hospital after a bizarre accident in a hardware store!
Love to all
L x
From the Phuket Taoist vegetarian festival, featured in today's Guardian...
...although I suspect the last one is just on his way to hospital after a bizarre accident in a hardware store!
Love to all
L x
I was listening to BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour today...as you do...and there was an article on it about laundry. More specifically, the difference between dealing with laundry in the UK and the US. Don't ask me who comes up with these things; I don't know!
But. It jogged my memory about something I'd been told when I was in Fort Lauderdale a few years ago. That in some housing estates/communities in the US, you are banned from hanging your washing out to dry. Now, where we live is pretty solidly middle-class. But every garden will have a clothes line (which reminds me to check the washing on ours pretty soon).
I don't think I've ever owned a tumble dryer. And when I have used one, the clothes just never seemed to smell as fresh as when they are dried on the line. Admittedly, we live on a hill, and at present, there is a good gale blowing through the garden! But we're getting to that time of year when the rain is far too frequent, and so the clothes maiden has to be resorted to, and things dried in front of radiators, which is a bit depressing, and does make you think a dryer might be a good idea.
There was a great statistic about how, in the Fifties, 75% of US households had washing machines, when only 8% of British ones did. Mind you, as we were bankrupt and only just ending rationing, I guess that's hardly surprising. Apparently nowadays 40% of the British population have tumble dryers.
One of the people on the programme talked about having American visitors, who had some washing that needed doing, but absolutely refused to have their clothes hung on the line, saying 'We're not allowed!'. But the next morning, said how well they had slept and how nice the sheets smelt. And she said 'yes, that's because they hang over the lavender and honeysuckle'. But she felt that her visitors thought that hanging out your washing is a bit indecent.
I just have this vision of being regarded as terribly common in the US, when I stand there with a mouthful of pegs hanging the damp laundry out!
But I am going out to retrieve it now, as a month's worth of rain is expected in the next 48 hours.
(God, I do write about the most trivial nonsense sometimes. I am being culturally sensitive and not wading into the fuss over Obama's manners in Japan, which has been hilarious. But I must buck my ideas up, get with the spirit of the site and write about something vaguely sexual!)
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Over the past week or so, the Guardian and the Observer have been running a series, called 100 Years of Great Press Photographs. I thought, rather than me rattling on about this and that, you'd like to see some of them. It's hard to pick a selection, because they are all brilliant. I am leaving out obvious choices, like Dorothea Lange's wonderful photo of Florence Thompson, or the famous Tiananmen Square photo, because they are just so well known.
I've also tried, despite the fact that photographs of disasters tend to be desperately compelling, to balance my choices. But I've put a couple in spoilers, as they are incredibly disturbing. You may not want to view them.
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Russell Lee, c 1940, Oklahoma
I love the flushed faces, the self-consciousness, the awkwardly expressed emotions. We all want love to be seamless and perfect, but I think we should celebrate its imperfections, its often stumbling nature.
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Anonymous, 1943, Warsaw
So I break my own rule almost straight away. The iconic picture of Jews being rounded up for the death camps after the Warsaw uprising. It's usually the boy who catches your eye, but the little girl on the left reminds me of my daughter.
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Mario Giacomelli, c 1962-3, Rome
Even the priests, it seems, caught the spirit of Italy in the sixties.
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John Sturrock, 1984, Wath
Wath is a few minutes' drive from here. Like many villages in South Yorkshire it had a strong mining heritage. When the confrontation between the miners and the Conservative government came in 1984, the strength of the miners' wives in supporting the year long strike, organising food kitchens, and holding things together captured everyone's imagination. But the strike was lost; coal had been stockpiled, and the miners couldn't hold out. The only thing the union got wrong was how many pits would close; they vastly underestimated, and the British coal industry died on its feet. But this photo conveys the spirit of those people and those times, as they prepare a Christmas feast.
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Mike Sargent, 1986, Washington
Much as I disliked Reagan's policies, I think this picture conveys something of the spirit of the man, and you can see why he was so engaging for many people.
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Kevin Carter, 1993, Sudan
I've also tried, despite the fact that photographs of disasters tend to be desperately compelling, to balance my choices. But I've put a couple in spoilers, as they are incredibly disturbing. You may not want to view them.
-----------------------------------------------
Russell Lee, c 1940, Oklahoma
I love the flushed faces, the self-consciousness, the awkwardly expressed emotions. We all want love to be seamless and perfect, but I think we should celebrate its imperfections, its often stumbling nature.
-----------------------------------------------
Anonymous, 1943, Warsaw
So I break my own rule almost straight away. The iconic picture of Jews being rounded up for the death camps after the Warsaw uprising. It's usually the boy who catches your eye, but the little girl on the left reminds me of my daughter.
----------------------------------------------
Mario Giacomelli, c 1962-3, Rome
Even the priests, it seems, caught the spirit of Italy in the sixties.
----------------------------------------------
John Sturrock, 1984, Wath
Wath is a few minutes' drive from here. Like many villages in South Yorkshire it had a strong mining heritage. When the confrontation between the miners and the Conservative government came in 1984, the strength of the miners' wives in supporting the year long strike, organising food kitchens, and holding things together captured everyone's imagination. But the strike was lost; coal had been stockpiled, and the miners couldn't hold out. The only thing the union got wrong was how many pits would close; they vastly underestimated, and the British coal industry died on its feet. But this photo conveys the spirit of those people and those times, as they prepare a Christmas feast.
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Mike Sargent, 1986, Washington
Much as I disliked Reagan's policies, I think this picture conveys something of the spirit of the man, and you can see why he was so engaging for many people.
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Kevin Carter, 1993, Sudan
I can barely look at this image. I don't think it needs commenting on, save to say that the boy did not die, as he was within reach of an aid station, despite criticism heaped on Carter for photographing when he could be saving. Carter won a Pulitzer for this, but committed suicide three months later. Not the first or last press photographer to be shattered by the things he witnessed.
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Annie Liebowitz, 1994, Sarajevo
As Liebowitz was driven through Sarajevo, a mortar shell struck a teenage boy on a bike in front of her, blowing a hole in his back. She and her driver took him to hospital, but he died on the way. The almost abstract grace of the photo makes it even more devastating.
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Carol Guzy, 1999, Kukes, Albania
Europe pissed on its own credibility, dithering while ethnic cleansing killed thousands in the Balkans. Here, a happier image of refugee children, safe in the mountains of Albania.
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Tom Stoddart, 1998, Sudan
Sudan again. What an appalling country. Here a well-dressed and well-fed Sudanese man steals a bag of maize from a starving child. It needs seeing in the context of the Islamic/animist conflict that has devastated Sudan, and in which the black Southern Sudanese have been treated like dirt by the Islamic majority population. There is no cultural relativism here. It is just genocide.
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Jonas Bendiksen, 2000, Russia
The second stage of a Soyuz rocket has crashed to earth in the Altai region. Two men perch atop the rocket, looking to salvage the high quality metal for scrap, while white butterflies fill the air around them.
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Michael Appleton, Sep 4 2005, New Orleans
A week after Katrina, and the failure of the flood defences, fires still burn across the abandoned city.
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I think a great photograph can be a hundred times more compelling than film. You build a story in your mind, rather than having it spoonfed to you. I have some superb photographers among my friends on this site. I hope you find something of interest in this selection. I did try to limit myself to ten, but couldn't quite achieve it!
Love to all
L x
Stats of the day!
Wii Fit age: 34
Brain Training age: 21
So. Just like a cross between Brad Pitt and Noam Chomsky! Or maybe not
But I am enjoying getting a lot fitter. I've been doing Wii Fit routines for a while now. Yoga, muscles, but I've substituted a 3 mile run for the aerobics session. And it is soooo good to be out running again! I'm firmly avoiding dieting; I don't want to end up like I was when I was climbing hard - 1500 calories a day, and diuretics. Just good sensible food, with the odd mad blowout!
There's still parts of my anatomy that don't want to play. My climber's elbow still gives my gyp, and my left shoulder is still terribly weak since I ripped the tendons out of it. And it has reminded me of the fact when I've been climbing recently! But on the whole ticking over nicely. Which is a relief; not too long ago, I was thinking 'Ah, come on, you're in your mid-forties now. Why bother with all that? Just relax and let yourself go'. I am just so glad I didn't.
Anyway!
Favourite curse of the week.... "Christ on a cross-trainer!" Thank you, 'The Thick of It', for that gem.
Favourite line of the week (same source) "We need to persuade Matt Delaney not to cross the floor. I think we should use the carrot and stick approach, yeah. You take a carrot. You stick it up his fucking arse. Followed by the stick. Followed by an even bigger, rougher carrot." (n.b crossing the floor - voting against your own political party)
High point of the day? Calculating how much I'd get if I get made redundant, and finding that, after tax, it would come to about £73,000 (about $122,000), which was considerably more than I expected. So, the future is not quite as scary as I thought!
Low point? Um, not had one yet
My ever-absent global manager has resigned. One of my colleagues found out via Facebook. I'm not sure we'd have noticed otherwise (also why I abandoned Facebook - too many work colleagues and relations!). Tempted to email his boss, and say I'd be a better global manager than he ever was. Not sure I want the grief of being that high up the greasy pole, though. And they've probably got someone lined up for a shoo-in anyway. Someone not quite as mouthy as me.
Anyway. I am going to go for a run now. Then finish off some reports, pick my darling daughter up, and abandon any pretence of working again till Monday.
Love to all
L x
Wii Fit age: 34
Brain Training age: 21
So. Just like a cross between Brad Pitt and Noam Chomsky! Or maybe not
But I am enjoying getting a lot fitter. I've been doing Wii Fit routines for a while now. Yoga, muscles, but I've substituted a 3 mile run for the aerobics session. And it is soooo good to be out running again! I'm firmly avoiding dieting; I don't want to end up like I was when I was climbing hard - 1500 calories a day, and diuretics. Just good sensible food, with the odd mad blowout!
There's still parts of my anatomy that don't want to play. My climber's elbow still gives my gyp, and my left shoulder is still terribly weak since I ripped the tendons out of it. And it has reminded me of the fact when I've been climbing recently! But on the whole ticking over nicely. Which is a relief; not too long ago, I was thinking 'Ah, come on, you're in your mid-forties now. Why bother with all that? Just relax and let yourself go'. I am just so glad I didn't.
Anyway!
Favourite curse of the week.... "Christ on a cross-trainer!" Thank you, 'The Thick of It', for that gem.
Favourite line of the week (same source) "We need to persuade Matt Delaney not to cross the floor. I think we should use the carrot and stick approach, yeah. You take a carrot. You stick it up his fucking arse. Followed by the stick. Followed by an even bigger, rougher carrot." (n.b crossing the floor - voting against your own political party)
High point of the day? Calculating how much I'd get if I get made redundant, and finding that, after tax, it would come to about £73,000 (about $122,000), which was considerably more than I expected. So, the future is not quite as scary as I thought!
Low point? Um, not had one yet
My ever-absent global manager has resigned. One of my colleagues found out via Facebook. I'm not sure we'd have noticed otherwise (also why I abandoned Facebook - too many work colleagues and relations!). Tempted to email his boss, and say I'd be a better global manager than he ever was. Not sure I want the grief of being that high up the greasy pole, though. And they've probably got someone lined up for a shoo-in anyway. Someone not quite as mouthy as me.
Anyway. I am going to go for a run now. Then finish off some reports, pick my darling daughter up, and abandon any pretence of working again till Monday.
Love to all
L x
Well, you know what they say. Blog in haste, repent at leisure. So this morning's introspective, brooding blog has been left to simmer for a few hours in Notepad, before being discarded, despite containing strong evidence of my ability to displace angst with cookery!
Let me tell you a story from my teen years instead. When I was 16, two friends of mine and I were doing the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme; one of those worthy awards designed to get young people to develop their interests and get involved in their communities. For our gold award, we had to do some form of community work. And we ended up going to a nearby mental institution to teach basic first aid to inmates who had the possibility of moving out of the hospital into supervised housing.
Now this was nearly 30 years ago. Big institutions still existed to house people with a whole range of illnesses and disorders. Of the people we worked with, I don't think you would dream of sectioning any of them these days. There was a guy with severe epilepsy, one with acute ADHD, a woman with Down's, two with cerebral palsy, and so on. Hardly conditions that require confinement.
Anyway, the weeks we visited there were some of the most fun weeks we ever had. The people we worked with, both staff and patients, were just out of this world, not least in having the most wonderful senses of humour. We'd talk through all the basic stuff; burns, cuts, etc., me usually trying to avoid having Katrina sit behind me as she had a thing about stroking my (then) long hair.
But the funniest guy there was called Peter. Peter had severe cerebral palsy, and was confined to his motorised wheelchair (with skull and crossbones logo). He had little muscular control, and severely impaired speech. But the most riotous sense of humour you can imagine! When we were doing bandages, he always insisted on being the patient, so we'd struggle to try and put a sling on his madly thrashing arm, while he moaned theatrically about how it hurt so much. And then he'd want to have a go himself. Well...there is a point when his lack of control, and the fact that the floor is now covered in discarded bandages, and the patient looks like an extra for The Mummy, just meant that everyone dissolved in helpless hysterics!
Being teenagers, we all moved on afterwards, finding more important things to do in life than go back and visit. Margaret Thatcher introduced a policy of Care in the Community, where people like Peter and Katrina were to be cared for in their homes, carers supporting families. Laudable in principle, but disastrous in practice, as lack of funds, strategy or will often meant vulnerable people were left to fend for themselves, sometimes on the streets, and even ending up in prison, as no alternative existed anymore. Writing this, I find it hard to believe that this was only 1981 and not 1921. Incarceration or neglect.
The hospital is gone now; there is a large housing estate there instead. But I do wonder how all those people got on. Peter's indomitable spirit, I suspect, could carry him through most things. Alan, much more brooding and depressed about his cerebral palsy, found life much harder. What did it do for me? Well, they taught my teenage self to look at the person beyond the condition, and to find their warmth, and humour and, yes sometimes their sadness and frustration. In fact, I'm sure I learned much more from them than they ever did from me.
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So. A happy story deserves happy music. This is the wonderful Duke Special, who I was lucky enough to see a couple of years ago. His songs, sung in his deep Belfast accent, are beautiful showtune ballads and folksy melodies. I got a 10" limited edition vinyl signed by him that night. I can't play it though; it's 78rpm!
Watch out for Temperance Society Chip Bailey on the Stumpf Fiddle, surely one of the US's greatest contributions to the world of musical instruments! And you will have never seen a cheese grater and whisk played with such elegance!
Love to all of you
L xxx
Let me tell you a story from my teen years instead. When I was 16, two friends of mine and I were doing the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme; one of those worthy awards designed to get young people to develop their interests and get involved in their communities. For our gold award, we had to do some form of community work. And we ended up going to a nearby mental institution to teach basic first aid to inmates who had the possibility of moving out of the hospital into supervised housing.
Now this was nearly 30 years ago. Big institutions still existed to house people with a whole range of illnesses and disorders. Of the people we worked with, I don't think you would dream of sectioning any of them these days. There was a guy with severe epilepsy, one with acute ADHD, a woman with Down's, two with cerebral palsy, and so on. Hardly conditions that require confinement.
Anyway, the weeks we visited there were some of the most fun weeks we ever had. The people we worked with, both staff and patients, were just out of this world, not least in having the most wonderful senses of humour. We'd talk through all the basic stuff; burns, cuts, etc., me usually trying to avoid having Katrina sit behind me as she had a thing about stroking my (then) long hair.
But the funniest guy there was called Peter. Peter had severe cerebral palsy, and was confined to his motorised wheelchair (with skull and crossbones logo). He had little muscular control, and severely impaired speech. But the most riotous sense of humour you can imagine! When we were doing bandages, he always insisted on being the patient, so we'd struggle to try and put a sling on his madly thrashing arm, while he moaned theatrically about how it hurt so much. And then he'd want to have a go himself. Well...there is a point when his lack of control, and the fact that the floor is now covered in discarded bandages, and the patient looks like an extra for The Mummy, just meant that everyone dissolved in helpless hysterics!
Being teenagers, we all moved on afterwards, finding more important things to do in life than go back and visit. Margaret Thatcher introduced a policy of Care in the Community, where people like Peter and Katrina were to be cared for in their homes, carers supporting families. Laudable in principle, but disastrous in practice, as lack of funds, strategy or will often meant vulnerable people were left to fend for themselves, sometimes on the streets, and even ending up in prison, as no alternative existed anymore. Writing this, I find it hard to believe that this was only 1981 and not 1921. Incarceration or neglect.
The hospital is gone now; there is a large housing estate there instead. But I do wonder how all those people got on. Peter's indomitable spirit, I suspect, could carry him through most things. Alan, much more brooding and depressed about his cerebral palsy, found life much harder. What did it do for me? Well, they taught my teenage self to look at the person beyond the condition, and to find their warmth, and humour and, yes sometimes their sadness and frustration. In fact, I'm sure I learned much more from them than they ever did from me.
----------------------------------------------------------------
So. A happy story deserves happy music. This is the wonderful Duke Special, who I was lucky enough to see a couple of years ago. His songs, sung in his deep Belfast accent, are beautiful showtune ballads and folksy melodies. I got a 10" limited edition vinyl signed by him that night. I can't play it though; it's 78rpm!
Watch out for Temperance Society Chip Bailey on the Stumpf Fiddle, surely one of the US's greatest contributions to the world of musical instruments! And you will have never seen a cheese grater and whisk played with such elegance!
Love to all of you
L xxx
PUPPY TIME AGAIN!
Merlin is seven months old this week. He is now a big oaf, with slobbery jowls and a predeliction for chewing various parts of your anatomy. So I thought I'd try to do some pics of him that give you an idea of how big he is now. Bearing in mind he won't be fully grown till he is two!
The timer went off just after a big slobbery lick in the face...
Of course, it all started to go downhill. He launches a pre-emptive strike on my hand...
Control is regained....for a moment...
But it all goes wrong again. The infamous shoulder lock is deployed...
...before pinning me to the ground, and chewing me mercilessly...
My hound!
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AND, in other news! Oh, America! Shame on you!!! How could you bring the reputation of football (oh, I'm sorry, SOC-CER) into such disrepute? I am genuinely shocked!!! Elizabeth Lambert, you bad girl!!!
Some jostling off the ball?!? I counted three straight reds, and four yellow card offences, just in the incidents shown! That means she should have been sent off five times!
(mind you, I've heard these New Mexico girls are a rough bunch
)
Made me laugh though. Of course, in the noble sport's birthplace, we never have behaviour like that.
Merlin is seven months old this week. He is now a big oaf, with slobbery jowls and a predeliction for chewing various parts of your anatomy. So I thought I'd try to do some pics of him that give you an idea of how big he is now. Bearing in mind he won't be fully grown till he is two!
The timer went off just after a big slobbery lick in the face...
Of course, it all started to go downhill. He launches a pre-emptive strike on my hand...
Control is regained....for a moment...
But it all goes wrong again. The infamous shoulder lock is deployed...
...before pinning me to the ground, and chewing me mercilessly...
My hound!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AND, in other news! Oh, America! Shame on you!!! How could you bring the reputation of football (oh, I'm sorry, SOC-CER) into such disrepute? I am genuinely shocked!!! Elizabeth Lambert, you bad girl!!!
Some jostling off the ball?!? I counted three straight reds, and four yellow card offences, just in the incidents shown! That means she should have been sent off five times!
(mind you, I've heard these New Mexico girls are a rough bunch
)Made me laugh though. Of course, in the noble sport's birthplace, we never have behaviour like that.
Two blogs in one day is not good. But I get so bored reading back me writing about work. Feel free to read it if you want, but I wanted to put something joyful up today.
I love contemporary dance, and the first act I ever went to see was DV8 performing Enter Achilles. Have just a minute of joy in your day by watching this compilation from their film, The Cost of Living...
Funnily enough, the complementary exercise they recommend for climbers is contemporary dance!
I love contemporary dance, and the first act I ever went to see was DV8 performing Enter Achilles. Have just a minute of joy in your day by watching this compilation from their film, The Cost of Living...
Funnily enough, the complementary exercise they recommend for climbers is contemporary dance!
