Oh, it’s been a wild, wet and windy week – we’ve been battered by Storm Gerrit. As always, the north got battered much more significantly than did we but I tell you – this wind and rain is getting pretty tedious.
I recounted my birthday celebrations last week – a lovely day and evening. Thank you again to all of you who sent kind wishes. I neglected, however, to share with you the birthday portrait produced by Jessie. I swear, it’s like looking in a mirror.
Christmas Day was equally splendid. We went over the Adam & Ava’s and spent the day with them. Various presents were exchanged and Adam prepared the Christmas feast which was excellent. There was a fair deal of consultation with Ms Playchute but everything came together superbly.
Boxing Day was another treat, everyone around at ours again. Jessie brought her roller blades and Annabelle brought her bass guitar – there was much rolling at the recreation ground opposite us and a rousing jam with Annabelle on bass and me quietly strumming along on guitar. We were astonished at how quickly Jessie mastered the art of roller blading. She was very quickly scooting across the tarmac – don’t know why we should have been surprised, she very quickly seems to master just about anything she sets her mind to.
Having spent the days since my birthday slowly working our way through the Biblical feast Penelope had prepared, the Boxing Day meal was a much more sober affair – fish pie for the pescatarians and a Cottage Pie for the carnivores. Absolutely excellent.
One of my favourite gifts this year? A new Steve Bell coffee mug charting 14 years of Tory progress:
Hard to believe that any government could be this useless and this corrupt but there you have the proof.
We’ve done very little else over the past week and that’s undoubtedly how it should be. I read an article in the Guardian about one of the greatest gifts of Christmas – the week between Christmas and New Year when one does almost nothing other than eat and lounge on the sofa in front of the television.
Losing your sense of time is the true marker of a successful Boxing week – that hazy week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. There’s no official name for it in Britain, but it’s a week that cries out for a title in appreciation of all the wonderful things it gives us. Call it Twixmas, Chrimbo limbo or Witching week – whatever you prefer, it’s the true gift of Christmas: a week when nothing happens.
Jessica Furseth – The Guardian
So, embracing the period of Twixmas or Chrimbo or whatever you’d like to call it, we watched a couple of films over the festive period, some of which were worth passing on.
We watched The House of Gucci with Lady Gaga playing Patrizia Reggiani, and Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci which I thought was good, if not outstanding. Both did a pretty convincing job of playing Italian speakers (i.e., speaking English with a pseudo-Italian accent) but, as is often the case with films of this sort, I couldn’t help but wonder why they wouldn’t cast Italian actors in these roles. I get it – the box office bottom line is what matters more than any semblance of reality but still, there must be plenty of Italian actors who could have done an equally good if not better job. Jeremy Irons as Rodolfo Gucci, the father was particularly ill-cast I thought even though, of course, he is a great actor.
We also watched the Kenneth Branagh film Belfast which was also good, I thought, if perhaps again not outstanding. It did win an Oscar (Best Original Screen Play for Kenneth Branagh) and at least it had the benefit of mainly Ulster-born actors who could do a decent job of an Ulster accent (with the exception, I think, of Judy Dench who played the grandmother). The film is based on reminiscences of Kenneth Branagh’s childhood in Belfast in the 1960s as The Troubles began in earnest. The young boy playing Buddy was superb, full of innocence and wonder.
And finally this week we also watched Bradley Cooper’s Maestro which I have to confess I found a little bit underwhelming. We both love Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper undoubtedly was very good as Bernstein. But I spent most of the film wondering what the point was. It’s the story of a period in the life of a very talented and convoluted musician to be sure but I came away thinking it hadn’t really given me any sort of real insight into his life or character. Hey ho.
YCNMIU
We’ve finally found one of those elusive Brexit benefits the government keeps searching for. With great fanfare and relish, the government announced that British winemakers could, from henceforth, sell their wine in pint bottles. Apparently, Churchill was fond of drinking champagne in pint bottles – just enough for two people for lunch or an individual at dinner. Thank God we’ve left Europe so that those nasty foreigners can no longer tell us what size bottles to use for our wine!
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that seemingly no English wine producers are intending to rush over to selling their wine in pints. As one wine producer said, “No one is going to make a pint-sized bottle. In order to make a pint-sized bottle, you’re going to have to invest a huge amount of money. It’s a silly measure.”
Silly might be one way of describing it but I would probably use somewhat different language.
From the right to live and work freely in or retire to any one of 29 nations, sharing of intelligence, medical research data and a seat at the geopolitical table to trumpeting the theoretical ability to quaff liquid in slightly different increments from Johnny Foreigner. From a promised extra £350m a week to play with after leaving the European Union to this. Well done, England, my – alas – England.
Lucy Mangan – The Guardian
And finally, our preparations are in hand for our New Year’s Eve celebrations this evening.
Happy New Year to you all.
Meanwhile, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg