Les Miserables

All four of us - husband, self, Son aged 20 and daughter aged 16, went to see Les Miserables, and we all loved it, and independently have been listening to the soundtrack. Son downdoaded (probs illegally). Daughter and I listened to old CD in the car. Husband streamed videos of old shows on his iPad, while he was working on his big computer.

Daughter can't do the paper round at the mo because of the bandaged hand, but luckily son needs the money and is getting up on time, and we hear him coming back singing songs from Les Mis, which makes a change from Mayday Parade, Morrissey and other miserabalists.

What makes Les Miserables stand out is, of course, the big powerful plot with its great themes of spiritual redemption, dreams of political change, romantic love, and tragedy everywhere - I said to Stan - it makes most stories look a bit small really. I also feel like reading the novel! and I am still stuck in Moby Dick - the chaps have at last killed a whale. Thank the Lord, they have been sailing around, digressing wildly for ages.

Hugh Jackman is brilliant in the main role, and the young men are also very touching. I am haunted by the memory of Sacha Baron Cohen's eyes - blank of every human sympathy. He brought to that part not roguery, but a portrait of genuine evil.

Another job interview - and ESOL policy

This job interview was for teaching English in London, for a private provider contracted to the borough of Southwark. It was interesting work - working with young mums from African and other communities with very little English and often very little confidence. But it turned out it would be for only 2 hours per week, and I was really disappointed about that, as I thought it would be do-able, but for 2 hours it's just not worth going into London.

This is part of a wider issue, that there are communities crying out for English lessons especially at beginner and Entry Level, and this is not funded, so local authorities are taking it on a little but but hardly even touching the need. For example, Southwark is funding 16 hours of ESOL per person per YEAR. After having my lessons the mums wouldn't get lessons again for a year, unless they were able to attend a Further Education College, and it sounds as though these learners just wouldn't have the nerve.

What a shame! it was a very worthwhile job.

Operation to a hand

My daughter tore a tendon from the end of her finger and needs a 2- operation procedure to mend it. This means a lot of trips to the hospital an hour's drive away. She is now recovering from the first stage of the procedure and has to keep moving the finger and hand that is painful from the first operation. Then the doctor needs to take a tendon from her foot to use in her hand.

Poor unlucky girl! We wonder if it is worth the trouble as it is only the top joint of the ring finger, which is the weakest anyway. But it turns out the surgeon and the OT do this procedure regularly, or at least they say they do.

It is keeping me occupied with trips to the hospital. Poor Florence, she won't be able to learn to drive until the whole procedure is done, which will be another 5/6 months.

Up UP UP - arty day in London

Yesterday I took my bad cold to London as my friend Judith and I thought we should see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition before it closed. It was indeed a very comprehensive and impressive exhibition of all the great / or at least most familiar paintings, but in a way it was all lost on me because I have seen them all before. I rather wished I could see them with fresh eyes, but no, can't be done.

Ferdinand being lured by Ariel, from the Tempest

A Roman Soldier is reluctant to part from a Celtic Briton, (and she's clearly not in the best of moods about it either)

 The most talented of the group was Millais, and his early pictures stand out for their brilliance, but I think he also lapsed into aestheticism most totally, and fundamentally aestheticism was a commercial movement - a fashion. He did very well financially, you can imagine. In his old age he took to painting landscapes and these are very interesting pictures because they seem to be just for his own pleasure - not to anyone else's taste or fashion.

 The brother I like least, especially in later pictures, is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, because he is the most repetitive. I don't think he was a great help to his mistresses and I think badly of his affair with Morris's wife.

My favourite is William Morris and that is because his commitment to socialism was lifelong and I think he had that fundamental humility - he was not too grand to design wallpaper. He was grateful for simple things like his bed, after a hard day's work. Not just that, I like that his firm created jobs and tried new methods and revived old skills - it is typical of him that he wanted to use traditional organic dyes instead of the new chemical ones in his wallpaper - he was an artist, but he was also in industry. He was faithful to his wife, as far as we can tell, even though she was not faithful to him, (I think he felt he had been unfair to marry someone who did not feel about him the passion he had felt for her) he worked incredibly hard and his friends loved him. He was a romantic who lived in a machine age, which is a kind of curse.

Anyway after the exhibition we visited the shop and I eschewed all the Pre-Raph merchandise and bought a poster of a Lowry which was in the sale! What a contrast. Because Lowry had no truck with all that long skirts and pretty flowers stuff, did he, let alone the knights and fair maidens? He just painted the kind of narrow streets and anonymous crowds he saw around him, without painting like a realist. He was not scared of the masses and their culture like so many modernists, he liked crowds if anything, and tried to show the way a crowd moves in ones and twos and groups. I believe there is going to be a big Lowry show soon, and I might go, but I went to the Lowry Art Gallery in Manchester last year and it seems a bit soon.

Judith and I started by going to Selfridges department store in the morning, which was too soon after Christmas really - the windows were dull and minimalist in the extreme. We could not believe how many top of the range watches were on display - case after case, and shop assistants with nothing to do. But we enjoyed the food hall very much - such a lovely place to do food shopping! if only I was rich! and they have lovely healthy salads and breads so that one would eat very healthily. There were also many luxury foods. We went upstairs for coffee and were not very impressed with the ambience or decor of the french style restaurant - and then we went to the shoe department. I think it was a really splendid array of the most wonderful shoes in the world - they cost hundreds of pounds, but they draw ooohs and aaahs. At the moment there is a sale on. It was great to see that Gordon Selfridge's vision of supplying lovely things that people will desire was still being fulfilled.

We had a fab lunch in Duke Street - don't remember the name of it but there was a fun and attractive range of decorative items on display in the French style dressers, and nice simple food - I had some soup like a chicken minestrone, with toast, and Judith had a spinach and feta omelette - both delicious.

Huxley Brave New world Revisited - Propaganda

One of the games we played over Christmas involved the recognition of well-known products by their advertising slogans of 30 years ago. As I read many magazines at this time and also watched a phenomenal amount of TV, I was very good at this game. I know that Coca Cola is The Real Thing and that Frosties are Great! I know that Smartie people are Happy People and that Guinness is Good for You! I know all the little rhymes and can sing the little songs. But do I consume these products? No. None of them. Really I am proof that advertising doesn't work, so Huxley really didn't have to worry so much over that one.

see here also for thoughts on Huxley

and here

and here

The Bronze Age - a different climate

It has long been a mystery to me why the people of the Bronze Age, whose clothes must have been quite poorly made and perhaps not too good at keeping out the cold, went to live or perhaps holiday at such extraordinarily cold places in our islands. However, I was told this week that in the Bronze Age the climate here was warmer! So that clears that one up.

OK I realise that the Bronze Age people didn't have holidays as such, but they attended religious festivals and gatherings. I expect they were a bit like Glastonbury.