My mama said...

Two of the most important people in my life, my mother and Spouse still fail to understand why I blog, and what I love about it. Well dear people, it's this. Picking up on my slightly frantic post from yesterday, lovely Persephone all the way from Canada posted two links on my blog to cheer me up. You don't get that sitting at home on your own NOT hooked up to the internet. Before I had an online life, when my children were small, and the walls of my home were closing in on me, I was going slightly demented. I may still be slightly demented, but at least I have found lots of friendly people to share my dementia with. The blogosphere gives me so much more then mere procrastination (though it offers that too, and I accept gratefully. If I didn't procrastinate I'd never get ANYTHING done.)

On the subject of my mother, about whom I write rarely to protect her privacy (though as she a) doesn't own a computer b) would never go online and read this even if she did, I maybe being over zealous about that), I will tell you that she is an ex nurse (her set at the London was the first to be trained in Bevan's new NHS. I keep telling her she needs to write a nurses version of that book about the East end midwife), and is a fantastic source of old fashioned remedies.

So among many other things my mama has said to me over the years, I have learnt you can use magnesium sulphate to draw out pus from horrible boils (Spouse wouldn't believe that one), a gin and tonic really does work wonders for period pain, and once when no 1 had a horrible gash we felt sure needed stitches, she pulled the skin together really tight, bound it up with steri strips and plaster and lo and behold the gash healed up in days.

Of late she has been giving me helpful advice about the ongoing back problem. One of her suggestions was to take Syndol as a muscle relaxant. I was a bit wary about it because it can also make you sleepy (and contains codeine, which is a cureall my mother used for years before it was banned from the shelves because of it's addictive properties). However. I was in so much agony on Monday night, and swimming which normally helps didn't, I took one before bed. It didn't do a lot and yesterday morning I had another one. Still no effect. The packet has dire warnings about only using Syndol for three days at a time. So I had one last night, thinking I'd give up on it after today, and lo and behold. I woke up this morning relatively pain free. So thanks mama. I'm glad I listened to what you said.

And thanks to Persephone and Jaywalker for sharing this. May those of you who are enjoying a rubbish start to 2009 (and I profoundly hope you aren't) sit back, relax and enjoy...




And if that hasn't done the trick. Have a butchers at this. I laughed out loud watching it this morning. Thank you soooo much, Persephone. I can only dream about my traffic bastards having been that good looking. Or romantic...

And another little bit of news I missed...

I really picked a bad week to go away...

I suppose it wasn't totally unexpected that David Tennant was going to leave Dr Who, but, sigh... rather like Rose (and Donna for that matter) I wanted to travel with him forever. I suppose I've got a year to get used to the idea...

But on two utterly more positive notes...

Paula Radcliffe won the New York Marathon again. Hurrah. I wish she could get it together for the Olympics, but hey, at least she's back on winning form...

And double hurrah, Lewis Hamilton is the youngest formula one world champion EVER. By the skin of his teeth admittedly, but what an exciting finish... A world championship decided two corners from the end. Fantastic. (And fantastic sportsmanship from Massa who thought he'd nailed it, then realised he hadn't).

I love Lewis Hamilton. He appears to have riled lots of people in the notoriously competitive and ruthless world of F1 (that's because he's winning y'see, they HATE it), but he deals with all the stuff that comes his way good and bad with politeness and dignity and never lets any of the crap get in the way of his singlemindeness about winning. When we have so much bad press about young black men, Lewis Hamilton is a welcome relief from all that and a great role model for the young (particularly in the light of the appalling racism to which he's been subjected this season). I couldn't actually watch the race because it was so close to the wire anyway I couldn't stand the tension, but hurrah, hurrah. It was a close run thing, but this year, the right guy won.

For Persephone (mainly)

And anyone else who wanted a glimpse of David Tennant in doublet and hose...

Reviews that I've read of LLL have been (rightly) positive. Came across one which described DT as "mercurial" - yup, that's a word I'd use. I also wanted to compare him to quicksilver but couldn't find the right sentence - and noticed a reviewer of Hamlet saying the same. Definitely definitely more then just a Time Lord (if indeed that was all he ever was...)

And then I found this...




I have to say DT sitting in that tree was one of the highlights of the play. Be still my beating heart...

Love's Labour's Lost

We've just had an incredible weekend. Thanks to the offices of a very good friend Spouse and I went away without the children (a treat enough in itself) to Stratford to see Love's Labour's Lost. LLL isn't a play I'm familiar with, and it could easily feel like not going to the main event, namely to see the wonderful Mr Tennant in Hamlet (which fortuitously we're also going to do in December). But it wasn't at all. If anything, I think on Saturday I had one of the best theatre experiences of my life.

It's a long long time since I've been to live theatre (apart from taking the sprogs to musicals the last couple of years, which is an entirely different experience.) This is mainly because theatre going and small children aren't very conducive, but also because living just outside London as we do, your lovely theatre experience can often end up utterly miserable thanks to the stress of getting home late at night. (I can remember one miserable trip to the Barbican with my parents many years ago, which involved us arriving at the theatre by the skin of our teeth and having a mad dash across London to get the last train home. Any enjoyment of the play had completely dissipated by the time we got home.)

However, having visited the Globe twice in the last year my latent interest in seeing Shakespeare live has been revived, and now the sprogs are old enough to see plays like A Midsummer's Night Dream, I was determined I was going to get us all there this summer. For a variety of reasons (ok, one, I didn't realise how quickly it would sell out) I failed dismally, but the two big ones are coming to Hamlet, and next year I am going to get to the Globe if it kills me. Particularly after having my appetite for the Bard whetted in such a wonderful way.

The RSC are currently treading the boards at The Courtyard Theatre, as their main theatres are under redevelopment. As this is a temporary venue, from the outside it looks like one of those corrugated iron warehouse where they store lockups with dead bodies in them. Anything less like a venue for seeing great theatre couldn't be imagined. But once inside all such worries are put to rest, because it is a wonderful fabulous, intimate space for theatre. It's also in the round, so you have people appearing from your left shoulder (DT did exit stage left of us at one point, sigh.), which I always enjoy. There's something about Shakespeare who frequently teases the audience about the artifice of it all, which lends itself well to be being shown in a small intimate setting like this. You feel almost as though they're doing a private show just for you.

And what a show it was.

I didn't know this play at all and toyed with reading it before I went, but a) I ran out of time and b) I thought it would be more interesting to go and see something where I didn't know the end, which it was.

Love's Labour's Lost isn't performed very often, and I can see why, because in a way it feels like a work in progress, as if our Will was in a hurry and said, Here, haven't quite finished it, but put it on tonight boys and I'll tidy it up for tomorrow. Without giving away the ending, it almost feels as if there's an act missing, though Berowne does make a joke about a year (which is the deadline the men get given) being too long to fit in a play. And the subplot though very funny feels as if it's tacked on, and could quite easily not be there.

The joy of this play though, to me was in the language, which is dazzling and brilliant and you wonder how on earth the actors all manage to say the lines without tripping over the words. The great thing about this performance as well was that it was incredibly accessible. It is very easy to watch Shakespeare and glaze over from the effort of trying to understand what is going on. I don't usually have that problem with plays I know, but I certainly have done with ones I'm less familiar with, and Spouse was sure he'd miss half of the references. We needn't have worried though, because without exception the cast delivered the lines so clearly and concisely it was impossible to miss the meaning.

I did find it rather distracting to watch lovely Mr Tennant at first, not just because he is just as lovely in the flesh as he is on Dr Who, but mainly because it is quite disconcerting to see someone you know so well in one role doing something so completely different. However, he is such a consummate actor, after a bit I stopped thinking I was watching Dr Who acting with a Scottish voice, but seeing Berowne. I was actually a little worried that he might not pull it off, but I needn't have been, because he was brilliant, funny, sexy, quixotic, and for the rare serious speeches he had to give he held the audience in the palm of his hand. Without a doubt he is one of the finest actors of his generation and it was an absolute joy and privilege to watch him in this.

Having said that, Love's Labour's Lost is not the David Tennant show. It really feels like a group effort. Nina Sosanya who played Rosaline really lit up the stage every time she was on it. You genuinely felt she and Berowne were meant for each other and the rather odd ending left me deeply frustrated for them. Kathryn Drysdale better known (by me anyway) as Louise in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and a hilarious turn as a chav in St Trinians, was a huge revelation as she was funny (expected) but showed a depth I wasn't expecting. Definitely a talent to watch that one. The funniest character was undoubtedly Joe Dixon as the Spanish count, Armado, who preened and pranced his way across the stage and brought the house down when he came on playing a guitar, but Oliver Ford Davies was also hilarious as the pompous schoolmaster, Holofernes, and Ricky Champ was a memorable Costard.

The cast all seemed to be really enjoying themselves and the whole thing felt like a glorious joyous romp (well it did till you get to the odd ending, but that's Shakespeare's fault not theirs.) Time was when you went to the theatre, you used to only clap at the interval and at the end, but this felt like an audience participation event, in that the funniest moments were applauded wildly, without the thing becoming a riot.

LLL is a gloriously rude play and the sight of the milkmaid churning the butter, to Armado saying, "But I loooo-ooof her" will stay with me for a very long time. I also really enjoyed the masque where the men pitch up disguised as Russians (no I don't quite know why either!) and the women all pretended to be one another to test their love - David Tennant in a red beard doing a cossack dance was one of the highlights of the show, particularly when he put on a Borat accent.

We sat outside in the interval even though it was raining - but as I said to Spouse it was such fine rain, it felt like theatre rain, so wasn't real. It just felt magical and wonderful to be there.

Afterwards we tottered round the corner to an Indian (surreally called Thespians) and ten minutes later the whole cast walked past, though Spouse neglected to tell me he'd seen David Tennant till he'd gone by, so I only glimpsed the back of his head. You wouldn't really see that in London. Nor would you be able as we were, to totter back to our hotel and be home in ten minutes. As a theatre going experience, whatever you go to see, I'd recommend seeing it in Stratford, and am just trying to work out how I can wangle another trip...

And as an experience of seeing Shakespeare, I'd have to say that Love's Labour's Lost has to rate as one of the funniest plays I've ever seen, and my most magical theatre experience. Ever.

With grateful thanks to lovely friend who bought us tickets and looked after the children. No greater love doth a friend have etc etc. You've restored my faith in human nature.

Dr Who Meme

medium rob has posted a Dr Who Meme on his blog. Rather unfairly he wants us to choose only three of our favourite episodes from NuWho. Only, three, Rob? That's harsh... However, if you insist.

There is a bit of a theme going here, as all of them are by the same author (and not just because I used to share his surname). It's simply because for me Steven Moffat is King of Nu Who. He consistently, scares, thrills, delights and moves. Plus he's got my children doing all manner of spooky things from asking if I'm their mummy to abjuring me not to blink. It's quite something for a kids' tv show to tap so much into all our imaginations that I end up spooked by my own offpspring...

The first offering is a bit of a cheat, as it's a double parter, but I regard it as the same story, so first honours go to The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, for introducing us to scary gas mask child who was the first nuWho character to terrify the whole family, and for that wonderful ending when Christopher Eccleston revels in the fact that just for once, everybody lived. I loved the darkness and rawness of the new series when the ninth doctor was suffering from the loss of his planet and people in the Time War, and it felt like here he got a bit of compensation. I also loved the ending when he remembers how to dance (but I've already posted that one on the other place).




Second choice (but probably has to count as my favourite) is The Girl in the Fireplace. Once again Moffat does it with scary monsters - those sort of monsters under the bed would certainly give me nightmares - but also it's funny (I loved the incongruity of the horse and Mickey teasing Rose about the Doctor calling Cleopatra Cleo), moving, and has a tender love story to boot. Sophie Myles as Madame de Pompadour is stunning, particularly the moment when she tells Rose that the Doctor always comes with monsters, and the rapport between her and David Tennant is fabulous. I particularly like the fact that he is prepared to sacrifice himself to the slow path for her, and his pain when he realises he's come back several years too late for her. Love it, love it, love it. Don't think Moffat's really topped this yet...



And last but most definitely not least, the superlative Blink. Again, another great scary story - I will never ever look at statues in the same way again, and one which really creeped us all out. It also features David Tennant talking about timey wimey stuff (sigh), and a great warning: Whatever you do, don't blink! I also loved the absurdity of the end when Sally Sparrow finally meets the Doctor properly and he's wandering about with a bow and arrow. Priceless. Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow is just fantastic. Wouldn't she be great as the new companion? All in all another cracker from Steven Moffat. Let's hope he gives us more of the same in 2010...




And if I'd been left up to my own devices and not constrained by Rob, I'd also have added from Series 1: Father's Day for poignancy and brilliant you can't undo time kind of stuff, and The Parting of the Ways because I liked Bad Wolf, and I loved the way Christopher Ecclestone looks at Rose and says, Ah Rose, I had so much I wanted to show you (what can I say? I write romantic fiction). From Series 2 I'd have to add Tooth and Claw because I loved the werewolf and Doomsday for the hilarious meeting between the Cybermen and the Daleks, and bittersweet ending (which you should really have left alone Russell). In Series 3 I also loved the Human Nature/Family of Blood double parter. And finally, in Series 4. I thought Turn Left was stunning and The Stolen Earth had the best cliffhanger ever.

But as I can't include those, you'll have to make do with Moffat...

Sex and the Doctor

All right, all right. This is just another excuse to print a picture of David Tennant again.

There. Isn't he lovely?

Although, actually I did have something else to say.

Elsewhere in blogland there exist others as obsessed as I about the good Doctor, and they are having conversations here

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dave_hill/2007/04/no_sex_please_were_time_lords.html

and here:

http://strugglingauthor.blogspot.com.

I decided that Dave and Marie had both made me think about it so much that I had too much to say and they'd get bored of me posting on their blogs, so I would just go and post on mine...

I have to confess when they first brought Dr Who back I was really nervous. I mean. Russell T Davies. He wrote Queer as Folk and The Second Coming for god's sake. And brilliant and all as that was, I couldn't quite see him toning it down for a Saturday teatime audience. But then I saw Mine all Mine, and thought, ok, maybe I got that one wrong then...

To my delight as a lifelong saddie Dr Who obsessed fan, Russell T more then delivered. I thought Rose was a huge improvement from the wet assistants of my day (even Sarah Jane who keeps being heralded as a really strong cookie. I thought she was a girly wuss... Russell hugely improved her when he brought her back).

I was a tad disconcerted by the burgeoning relationship between the Doctor and Rose - partly because Christopher Eccleston seemed way too old for Billie Piper, and partly because, well. it didn't seem like Dr Who, did it? I mean since when has the Doctor gone about fancying his companions? (Although I do remember Jon Pertwee being quite affected by Jo going off to get married...)

However, I have to confess, the very last episode of the first series, The Parting of the Ways, changed my mind.

I just LOVED the very tender kiss the Doctor planted on Rose to get the Vortex out of her head, and then the way he said as he regenerated, Oh Rose, I was going to show you such things... It was beautiful and haunting and well, romantic... For me that pressed all the right buttons. Moving, but not schmalzy, tender but not too sexy for a kid's programme.

And then of course the last series was a great long tease between Billie and David, who were much better suited to one another, and spent the whole of it getting separated as if to herald that final separation: Sarah Jane showed Rose her future without the Doctor, Madame de Pompadour his without her, she got trapped by the wire, he got trapped in a picture...

You have to hand it to Russell T, he does like to flag things up for us.

But...

It ended. The Doctor lost Rose and until he met Martha he was on his own again.

And, I really don't want the whole shebang to start again. If he falls for Martha the way he fell for Rose he's going to end up looking like some kind of lothario, and personally I'm with Dave Hill, I kind of like him being slightly asexual, and OUT of all that sort of thing. I do love all the depth of emotion that David Tennant portrays with the whole being the last of his line thing, and that he cannot be like other people. But if he keeps hopping from assistant to assistant he's just going to look like your average jack the lad down the pub. And that will never do...

And apart from anything else, without sounding too prudish about it, this is a kid's show. My lot are deeply embarrassed by any hint of what they call the kissy kissy stuff. They prefer straightforward daleks being blasted into smithereens kind of episodes. And despite the laughably ridiculous pig slaves of the last two weeks (though they did hark back to the idiotic kind of monsters from my childhood, so in that sense they were following a well worn tradition), the children thought they were great.

On a slightly wider point, I do think this constant obsession with sex in everything is also an indication of something that has gone slightly awry in our society. Given that I have girls, I am constantly cross when I come to buy them clothes and find it damn nigh impossible to find them anything that doesn't make them look like little tarts. It's not just having images like the inexcrable Bratz dolls thrown at them (mind you, what we think is just tarty, they think is pretty and on the upside, the kids do play fantastically imaginative - and no not what you're thinking - games with them, so they're not all bad), or the fact that even magazines for eight year olds are full of pictures of skinny popstars, there seems to have been a change in society which assumes that we shouldn't hold back. Kids should know about this stuff. It's the way the world works.

Now granted, when I was growing up, we were shielded alot from That Kind of Thing, and it wasn't always helpful, but I hear horror stories (I have no idea yet as to how apocraphyl) about sex education lessons at secondary school including discussions about bestiality and s&m behaviour and think, aren't we taking honesty and openness a bit far? Last year no 1 came home from a talk about puberty with a leaflet about periods which earnestly explained that you can still have sex when you are having a period. Why on earth did she need to know that?

And from where I'm sitting, all this sex education appears to be having no effect whatsoever, given that we have the highest teen pregnancy count in Europe. Now there's a statistic to be proud of. Because there seems to be an assumption that as everyone is at it, it is having safe sex that counts, instead of an assumption that it is probably in the main better to wait till you're old enough, and for most of us the whole thing works a lot better when the relationship involved is a reasonably important one.

Which brings me back to Dr Who. Without making too much of a mountain out of it (ok, I probably am), what sort of subliminal message are kids going to get from seeing Martha jumping into the Tardis with an alien she's only just met, and then moaning that he isn't interested in sleeping with her (see episode two about Shakespeare, in every other respect, totally brilliant)? And if the doctor does get it on with her, it kind of implies that commitment is an out of sight out of mind kind of thing.

I had an interesting if rather oblique discussion with no 1 about this the other week. We were watching Mansfield Park and she came to the (correct) conclusion that Henry Crawford wasn't the One for Fanny. I explained as unscarily as I could that no 1 in time might meet the odd Henry Crawford, but really it was Edmund Bertram she should bother with. Jane Austen. Sexual politics in a nutshell.

I kind of hope therefore that the Doctor doesn't turn in to Henry Crawford (they can have Captain Jack for that), but remains if not Edmund Bertram (ok he is a bit wet), Mr Darcy or Mr Knightly through and through...

Either that or he regenerate as a woman...

Three and a half hours to go till...

Denanana, Denanana, Denanana,

Oeeoooo... oooo,

Dadada, dada, daddaaaaa......



Well you get the gist. John Barrowmore did it much better on Celebrity Weakest Link last night.





But....





Huzzah, my hero is back tonight fighting aliens...

And isn't he gorgeous???

Hopefully his return will help no 3 get over her distress at Rose leaving.

I'm off to prepare for my dinner party so I have time to watch instead of cook...


But I might just have to stare at lovely David Tennant for a bit longer....


PS h&b have you any idea what I'm talking about? Do you get Dr Who in Oz?

Post Dr Who and Dinner Party Script....

And he was lovely. And didn't disappoint. Neither did Martha. No 3 spent the whole thing on my lap with a cushion over her head, but hey, that's what Dr Who's all about. As Madame Pompadour put it you don't get the doctor without the monsters... Spouse thought rhino aliens as police were a bit naff, but I with all due respect as a scientist, he is not very hot on the suspension of disbelief stuff that we English grads take for granted, so it didn't bother me none. A triumphant return I'd say...

Oh and the dinner went well too...

Mushrooms and stilton wrapped in pancietta (yes, it was stolen from the Sainsbury's ad, via some writing friends... my version was a bit burn, but what the hell)

chicken and herb parcels (thank you lovely butcher who sold them to me yesterday at great, but worth it, expense), with lemon/garlic/rosemary spuds a le Hugh Fearningly Whittingswotsit, mashed sweet potatoe and swede, roast parsnips and carrots.

Cheesecake (Hugh FW again) and Chocolate mousse courtesy of the child genius Sam Stern. In my excitement about David Tennant, I did cock it up as I chucked the whites of the eggs in first,THEN read, mix in yolks first, whip whites into peaks and fold them in. I did a bit of frantic whipping of whites and chocolate, but I don't think it was enough. It tasted ok, but it was chocolate runny mousse.

Well you can't win them all.

And I'd take David Tennant any day...