A quiet day so far today, but we got a lot of stuff done one way or another.
You may not have noticed but the month of March has sneaked its way in - it's easy to forget that February is a shortish month, and before you know it, March 2023 has banished February 2023 to the dustbin of history, which is nice!
The blood is stirring inside Lois because the prospect of doing some gardening is making its buzz felt. On October 31st last year we left our big house in Cheltenham with its 130ft back garden, and swapped it for a much smaller house in Malvern with a much smaller garden - I haven't measured it yet, but take it from me, it's REALLY small. But it's just about big enough to do something with, for Lois, a woman with famously green fingers.
Today Lois decides to brighten up our house's dull frontage with a big pot with flowers in - I'm not sure exactly what they're called, but you may recognise them? Polyanthus is it?
the first spot of gardening Lois has been able to do
since our big downsizing move on October 31st
And I ring up the dairy and ask them to ask their roundsman to leave us a bag of compost and a bag of topsoil in addition to his normal overnight delivery of 4 pints of milk, a wholemeal loaf and some cheddar cheese. Something to look forward to tomorrow when we wake up, that's for sure.
Let's hope we don't wake up in the middle of the night to hear our milkman "effing and blinding" because of the weight of the bags.
Poor guy!!!!!
the products that our dairy offers: the items Lois wants
have been ringed by my graphics team (i.e. me)
Laurence-next-door's back garden -
what on earth is he planning, do you suppose!
If you have any ideas about what Laurence is planning, do drop us a line - but on a postcard please! Have some pity for our poor local postman!!!!
Maybe Laurence is a satanist and is scheduling some black masses or similar rituals - I definitely think we should be told. But not yet - let us have today first!
11:30 The phone call I've been sort of dreading, but I felt that by now it was never going to happen. Last week I had an appointment with my dentist, who took a "digital" scan of my teeth. He warned, however, that if the lab rejected it as being insufficiently clear, that he would have to ring me and bring me in for another appointment during which he would take an "analogue" scan, which sounds completely terrifying.
Yikes!
a typical dentist giving a patient's mouth a digital scan:
see how much fun she's having haha!!!
And that won't even be the scariest appointment of this course of treatment, which will be yet to come.
Yikes (again) !!!!!
12:00 Another picture is hung on the bedroom picture rail - one of Florence that we brought back from Italy in 1997 after visiting our daughter Alison who was having a study year at Pisa University.
flashback to 1997: Lois and Alison on the beach at Villareggio, near Pisa
14:00 Oh dear. The rest of the day disappears in a pleasant fog as we have a shower and then go to bed for a nap, not emerging till 5pm for a cup of Earl Grey and a scone with butter and home-made jam on the sofa. Life is good haha!!!!
20:00 We watch an interesting, if slightly horrifying documentary on the filming of sex scenes in Hollywod.
It's interesting, however, that, according to the programme, the film industry in Hollywood and around the world hasn't always been male-dominated in the way it is today. Back in the 1920's and 1930's things were quite different - there were a lot of female scriptwriters and screenplay-writers for one thing: the male-female ratio was actually close to 50:50 .
And what they portrayed was very often the modern woman.
And there were plenty of actresses of the likes of Mae West: women who were "naughty" but also maybe "dangerous" and sexually adventurous. And we hear Jane Fonda say tonight that the 1920's and 30's were actually the sexiest time for women in movies, the Bette Davises, the Mae Wests.
It's surprising, but what finished the era of female power and influence in the film industry was the censorship era of Hollywood's Hays Code etc, introduced in 1934 and applied until the 1960's, because its rules tended to circumscribe the sort of roles and behaviour that women could be portrayed in.
Lois reminds me of Jane Austen's little phrase about women of her time: "cabinned, cribbed, confined". Good one, Jane!!!
According to the programme, the original motivation for the Hays Code, a.k.a. the Hollywood Production Code, was so that Hollywood could police itself, and, with that policing, prevent any kind of state censorship.
Couples started sleeping in separate beds. They had to remember to keep both feet firmly planted on the floor at all times. Kisses couldn't be longer than 3 seconds, and what the kiss would lead to could never be shown. Oh dear!
Other rules: no sexual relations between white and black characters; no sex outside of marriage, unless it was shown to be something that was tragic; black characters were never leading actors, and were included chiefly as domestic servants or people of similar status, with one aim being that black women would always be sexually non-threatening to white women on screen.
Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American movie star, but she was always cast as the Dragon Lady, the woman who was going to threaten to steal your husband.
What a crazy world we live in !!!! [That's enough madness, Colin. Now go and take your medicine! - Ed]
21:00 We wind down for bedtime by watching the most peaceful programme on TV at the moment, "The Secret Life of the Forest", a series which is showing us aspects of the wild life native to Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire, first created 100 years ago.
But who knew that English chaffinches have "regional accents", that vary apparently from county to county? So, for instance, Yorkshire chaffinches, with their repertory of 10 calls, some of which are predictive - indicating rain on the way, a bit like Michael Fish - sound quite different from the repertory of the chaffinches way down south in Hampshire.
Presumably that also means that Yorkshire chaffinches are never going to mate with Hampshire ones, because e.g. the Yorkshire male's mating calls will just sound like gobbledygook to the average Hampshire female.
The people of the two counties also sound different, as we well know, although I don't think that's ever stopped them mating.
But what a crazy country we live in !!!!!
some Yorkshire expressions
Remember Michael Fish's most famous prediction, from 1987? "Apparently earlier on today, a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well don't worry, there isn't!"
A chaffinch would never make that sort of mistake, that's for sure!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment