So, my Oscar Winner is Anne of The Thousand Days. One of my personal favourite films of all time. Well, it would be considering my love of the subject matter and fondness for Richard Burton.
The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Richard Burton for Best Actor, Genevieve Bujold for Best Actress, Anthony Quayle for Best Supporting Actor and producer, Hal B. Wallis, for Best Picture, but it was the sumptuous frocks, doublets and codpieces of Costume Designer, Margaret Furse, that came away with the only gong.
Genevieve Bujold was stunning as Anne Boleyn – the accent and the whole French ‘attitude’ and panache such a stark contrast to the stately Spanish Catherine of Aragon and her giggly, shy English maids of honour. Richard Burton reportedly hated the role and the film but he was brilliantly cast and played Henry VIII magnificently. So much more realistically than the current incumbent in The Tudors, who is just too damn lithe, slender and young.
It was something of a shock at the time when, having received the most nominations, the film was passed over so dramatically in every category with Best Picture going to Midnight Cowboy. True Grit’s John Wayne got Best Actor and Best Actress was awarded to Maggie Smith for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In retrospect, when you realise that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Hello Dolly were also in the running for awards that year, it was certainly a bumper crop from which the Academy had to choose.
I give you my favourite scene – the haunting recollection of an affair that lasted for so many years before she eventually gave in to his advances. A Thousand Days of consummations dissected into just one coupling where they truly loved each other.
The papers were full of the latest information on International Women’s Day yesterday – March 8th – and I still forgot to mark it.
As well as being commemorated at the United Nations, it is a national holiday in many countries. A day when women all over the world, with a diversity of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate.
So, with apologies for my tardiness, I will let you know about the cause being taken up by the International Committee of the Red Cross to mark the occasion in 2010.
One of the most serious, but least remarked upon, side-effects of armed conflicts in the modern era is the displacement of populations. And this is a consequence that has most effect on women, who often find themselves bereft of their menfolk and forced to flee with their children in order to reach a safe refuge in a new community away from the hostilities. Because of cultural differences that make it hard for them to move about without the presence of a male relative, these brave women often find it hard to find food and water or money. Not only are they faced with poverty and social exclusion, but many become the targets of violence – both physical and sexual – discrimination and intimidation.
However, many of these resourceful women refuse to become helpless victims and they play a major part in treating sickness and helping to organise the distribution of food. As Nadine Puechguirbal, the ICRC adviser on women and war explains, “…when women are asked for input directly, their views and priorities differ from those of the men who purport to speak for them.”
In using International Women’s Day to draw attention to displaced women, the ICRC is giving a voice to women who have responded actively to their plight, thereby revealing their strength and resilience to overcome appalling suffering and ultimately emerge stronger.
I was chatting to Dangerous Lilly the other week about laundry.
Yes, even Blog Sex Goddesses have to wash their smalls.
I was telling her that in my new flat, the laundry arrangements were ‘like they are in American apartments with a communal laundry area’.
Lilly was a little confused because, apparently, life in the US is not always like ‘Friends’ and some of you do actually own your own washing machines and tumble dryers because using the basement facilities tends to end up with your thongs ending up in the pockets of the block’s pervie pilferer.
It rather spoiled my own particular fantasy of months of flirtatious gossip and long smouldering looks culminating in my being pushed face down over the washing machine and fucked by the best looking guy in the building to the accompaniment of a ‘fast spin’.
Have I been living in cloud cuckoo land?
Tell me your laundry stories – just this once, it’s ok to wash your dirty linen in public.
On 12 February 1993, two-year-old James Bulger from Kirkby, near Liverpool, disappeared whilst on a shopping trip with his mother at a local shopping mall.
His mutilated body was found on a railway line nearby the following day.
I recall the horror of the story well. My own baby girl was just a year younger than little James and was thinking about taking her first steps. The idea of losing her on a shopping trip was bad enough. But, as the full details unfolded, it became so much worse.
CCTV cameras showed the toddler wandering off with two older boys. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were ten years old at the time. We are not party to what went contributed to their decision to remove the boy from the shopping centre but, once they had done so, their subsequent behaviour goes beyond what any normal person could understand.
I won’t dwell on the details which shocked a nation, but little James was abducted, tortured and then killed by the two boys, who became the youngest children to be convicted of murder in modern English history. They were sentenced to be detained until they reached the age of 18 and, despite a public furore about the decision to allow them anonymity and freedom because of fears that they might be able to repeat their offence, they were released on what is known as ‘life-long licence’ with new identities in June 2001.
Last week the whispers started about Jon Venables. Each day a little more information was released in the newspapers and news reports on television and radio. He had been detained by the police. He was being held on serious charges. He had been returned to prison. The charges related to indecent images of children.
Leading politicians have gone on record as saying that the media is at serious risk of criminal charges because their continual drip feed of information may be prejudicial to any future court proceedings and this is why no one in authority is confirming or denying anything.
It’s little James’s mother that I feel for. To have what must be the worst pain any parent could ever endure prodded and poked on a regular basis as she is manipulated for a reaction by unscrupulous journalists determined to sell newspapers.
And now to find out that at least one of the perpetrators of the most horrendous crime against her child was not rehabilitated by his years of treatment and imprisonment.
What can be done to alter the mindset of people with these unnatural desires? Counselling? Drugs? Physical castration? Or is permanent incarceration in the care of trained professionals the only answer?
When this sickness affects such young people, what on earth can we do to protect the innocents whilst allowing for the growth and treatment of the youngsters who are affected, which morality says should be our duty as a civilised society?
‘The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother’
Into the Storm is a drama sequel to the Emmy award-winning The Gathering Storm, charting Winston Churchill’s rise to power as prime minister, his dogged determination to lead the country to victory in World War II, and his devastating loss of power in the 1945 general election.
Told through a series of carefully juxtaposed flashbacks, the film offers a fascinating portrait of this inspiring yet flawed man. His defiance, headstrong stubbornness and blinkered single-mindedness were the traits that made him a great wartime leader. The same traits meant he lost touch with the British people, resulting in him being ousted from Government within weeks of the World War II victory celebrations.
The film also explores Winston’s changing relationship with close friends and family: how the intimacy between a man and his wife is sacrificed for the sake of a greater goal. There are moments of painful poignancy when the emotional consequences for his wife, Clementine Churchill, become clear, and she is forced to lead a life in the shadow of such a personally and publicly demanding global figure.
With the benefit of hindsight, Into the Storm offers an intimate perspective on pivotal events in history. The film shows how war is not simply played out on the battlegrounds but also in the minds and hearts of people.
There was, for me, a pivotal moment in this film where Churchill belittles Clemmie’s war work efforts with a throw away riposte designed to make the other people in the room laugh but guaranteed to alienate and upset his wife.
His daughter’s defence of her mother forces him to rethink and apologise privately a little later… but, for her, the damage was done.
So many people, myself included, love to indulge in this type of behaviour. The quick quip that gets a laugh from the audience at the expense of the feelings of the butt of the joke. I would do it in an attempt to be popular. To be seen as the funny girl, rather than just a ‘fat arse’ but, through my marriage, I learned a valuable lesson.
It’s fine so long as that butt is not the permanent recipient of your unrelenting sense of humour. If that is the case, that person ends up feeling bullied and worthless.
From the bitter experience of having been on the receiving end so often that my self-confidence suffered a catastrophic malfunction resulting in anorexia. A condition where the mind turns on the body and seeks to destroy it, purely to be able to exercise some form of control over its destiny.
I realise now that it made it hard to be a mother when my role as a wife was seemingly so undervalued.
Love, cherish and honour her.
Allow her to feel your joy as you physically fulfil all those vows with every fibre in your body.
Carl Sack says: ‘I thought Republicans were Pro Life?’
Denny Crane replies: ‘That’s for babies. Criminals are for killing’
Boston Legal, Season 5 Episode 4 ‘Kill Baby Kill’
This was an extraordinary episode of the hard-hitting series by David E. Kelley and centred on a correctional officer in Virginia who, as part of his inclusion in a ‘death team’, witnesses an execution that is going badly wrong. The prisoner is having a fit for nearly 30 minutes and is clearly not dying but nobody knows what to do. The guard takes out his gun and shoots the restrained man in the head, killing him outright. He is then charged with Second Degree Murder.
According to the programme, executions by lethal injection in America are not carried out by doctors as they refuse to perform these procedures on ethical grounds. This means that the muscle relaxants, barbituates and fatal dose are administered by non-medical personnel, resulting in botched executions where the drugs that are meant to anaesthetise and paralyse don’t get injected into the vein properly.
The result is that the condemned man is potentially conscious but unable to communicate his pain and distress when the lethal dose goes in.
Apparently, this problem is particularly relevant for the State of Virginia where they use a different method of lethal injection to other States. One which, it was reported (although later they said that they were misquoted), has been deemed unsuitable for putting down sick animals by the American Veterinary Association.
With a client who refuses to plead insanity and being forbidden by the judge to use the validity of the Death Penalty as an excuse, Carl Sack’s ‘unusual’ defence is that the prosecutor is deviously and insidiously trying to draw public scrutiny to the abolition of executions by pursuing the case because he is secretly in favour of doing away with it.
In seeking a strategy for the defence of a man who is being tried for killing someone who was in the process of being executed, Carl and Denny Crane have a discussion about the fact that America is the only Westernised nation to retain the ultimate punishment, drawing unflattering parallels with other countries who use execution as a correctional measure – Iraq, China, Sudan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Carl quoted statistics showing that it was more expensive than life imprisonment and less effective, with Canada showing a 40% drop in homicides after the law was changed.
Reference was made to the fact that most Americans love the Death Penalty and, in order to capture that percentage of the voting public, all prospective Presidential candidates purport to be in its favour, even Obama and Hilary Clinton.
That’s when Carl asks the most telling question of all about the Republicans.
To this Brit, the political system and ideologies in America – admittedly as put to me by the cases depicted in Boston Legal – are often quite bemusing.
I went for my annual check-up at the optician recently.
I’ve been short-sighted (myopic) since I was 16 so I’m a long-term wearer of contact lenses and glasses.
Originally, I wore my lenses all the time. I hated my glasses. Contact lenses in those days were bought to last a year or two. They were quite thick and required regular trips back to the optician for ‘descaling’. I even had a very expensive blue-tinted pair at one point. They made my already strikingly blue eyes almost luminous.
Once I had the kids, I didn’t have time to wipe my own bottom, let alone faff around cleaning contact lenses before going to bed. So, unless I was going out somewhere special, I wore my ‘Deirdre Barlow’ big glasses. These came into their own when I had small children who would poke at your eyes. They were better than safety goggles.
Every year I would go for my annual check-up and there were tiny changes to my prescription but, mostly, I just changed glasses when they broke.
Two years ago, the optician asked if I was having trouble with my sight. Was I moving books backwards and forwards trying to get the right distance to be able to read the print properly? To my negative response, he said that it would start happening soon… because of my age.
B*****d!
I determined to ignore the symptoms but, within weeks, he was right. In restaurants, I would find myself holding the menu with my arms outstretched and then pulling it gradually closer until I could see it properly. It was noticeably worse when I wore my contact lenses because I couldn’t look underneath my glasses to facilitate doing close work. Threading a needle was really the clincher.
I was gutted! I had hoped that, having been short-sighted for so long, age-related long-sightedness would kick in and compensate giving me 20/20 vision for my 75th birthday. But, apparently, it doesn’t work that way.
Once we reach our early 40s, the lenses in our eyes begin to lose their elasticity. They become stiffer, reducing their flexibility and, therefore, their ability to allow light rays from near objects to focus on the retina. This means that close objects look blurred, making it harder to read and thread needles. It’s called presbyopia and it will affect almost everyone, regardless of whether they already wear glasses or contact lenses.
So, I have some options.
I can get a new prescription on my current glasses for driving and day wear and then invest in a second pair to use when Im reading. Godammit, I have enough trouble keeping track of the pair I wear all the time. If you knew how many times I’ve gone hunting for them because they blend into the quilt cover on the bed… or because I’ve forgotten that I have left them sitting on top of my head!
I can guarantee that I will not have the right pair of glasses for the job in hand.
I could get some surgery. Normal laser techniques won’t cut it for presbyopia so I would have to replace the current dodgy lens with an artificial implant.
Click to enlarge
Or, I could look at varifocal lenses for my glasses. I immediately thought of those horrible bi-focals with the line in the middle that my grandfather used to wear, but things have moved on a bit since then and varifocals are the marketed as the closest thing that you can get to natural vision.
In contrast to my normal glasses, which have a constant maximum aperture at all focal lengths, varifocals have a maximum aperture that becomes smaller as the focal length increases.
In order to accommodate both distance and close-up work in one lens, they have a gradual change of power from the top to the bottom so that, when you look straight ahead, you’re getting the distance section of the lens and, when you look down, you automatically see through the part that aids reading and needle-threading. For things in between, you will need to experiment by lifting or lowering your head slightly until the focus is correct. I am told that, in time, this adaptation process does become instinctive.
Lens designs vary, with some having wider reading areas, other bigger distance portions and, still more, a thicker central corridor over which the power change is implemented. The wider the corridor, the bigger the area of vision but, on either side of this zone, the lens surface will be distorted, causing a certain amount of soft-focus or blurring. It is also possible to compact the distance and reading parts more closely so that they can be used in smaller frames.
As with all things, it would seem that you get what you pay for so it is better to spend more money on the lenses than on the frames when it comes to varifocals, as these tend to have wider corridors and less edge distortion.
Apparently, although they do require some getting used to, over 90% of people do use them successfully and some are now moving into varifocal contact lenses.
Fortunately, my optician operates a 30 day trial period and, if I really don’t like them, they will make me a standard pair and reimburse the price differential.
Sometimes attraction is like a worm inside your brain, eating away at your self-control. You’re totally committed to someone, have a whole life and a family with that person… and yet you find yourself drawn to another.
They make you feel so much more than the humdrum shadow of your former self that you have become.
And it’s wrong! You know it is, but you can’t help yourself. Seeing that other person is like therapy. It makes you a better spouse and parent because it buoys you up and makes you feel worthwhile.
An emotion you haven’t experienced in a long time.
But that’s when you start to get angry. Because you shouldn’t feel this way. Your Significant Other should be ensuring that all your needs are fulfilled, your insecurities rendered invalid. You need to feel more connected than you do.
They’ve let you down.
Because it’s someone else that makes you feel special.
You shouldn’t feel this way but, despite every bone in your body telling you that it’s wrong, you pick up the phone anyway…
I was angry before I even started the journey.
A cold fury with myself for giving in and calling her. But it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I work, she is always there at the back of my mind. I need to see her. I knew I had to find a way to continue this but without hurting my family. Read more
I was watching an entry on youtube about Mindfulness with Jon Kabot Zinn, a very famous exponent on meditation.
Basically, the premise is that if you can learn to meditate, to become mindful, to be able to fall awake, then the stresses in your life will become less and you will be come a healthier, happier person. The piece itself was really helpful in learning how to achieve better mindfulness during meditation. How to live in the moment, rather than focusing on the past or the future. To acknowledge the transient thoughts of the mind’s chatter but bring your mind back to the breath.
At the end, he said:
If there is anything that I have said today, even one word or not any words, just what I have pointed to underneath the words, rings true to you or disturbs you in some way. Then trust that and see if you can pour a little bit more attention into it and, over time, wonder if perhaps there is something inside you that is nothing to do with me or meditation or Buddhism, that is really important to attend to? And attend to it with tremendous kindness and compassion. It is impossible to go wrong if you take that sort of attitude to it. This is not attaining some ideal. This is recognising who you already are and the beauty that is already you.
And then he quoted this poem: The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
I’d like to think that is what I am starting to do now.
To look at my reflection and smile at the person staring back at me.
She could feel his eyes boring into the fabric covering her pert behind and, almost involuntarily, she wriggled it. Just to ensure that she had his full attention. An assumption which was confirmed by the ensuing sharp intake of breath from a few feet behind her
How many times have you done something that you know you shouldn’t… but the delicious sensation of naughtiness is just irresistible. Teased and tormented someone, almost jeered them into acting upon their frustrated desire? Tested their fulsome assertion that they will not betray their partner (well, not by going the whole hog anyway) to the limit?
When there is a mutual attraction so strong that it hangs in the air polluting your attempts at being ‘just good friends’, alcohol should never be brought into the mix. Sometimes, I think of him and remember that feeling of temptation.
She was on her knees rummaging through a pile of magazines when he came out of the bathroom and noticed her. The noise of the party below them obscured the sound of his approach and she was so engrossed in her task that she visibly started as he noisily pulled the swivel chair from under the desk and fell into it. Read more
Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 469,323
15 Sites Linking In
Canada 120,386
United States 122,286
United Kingdom 266,191
The huge boost from the Kristen Archives at the end of January is now starting to balance itself out. Traffic has settled at 1300 each day. I am posting every day, twice a day and trying to use the best keywords alongside those posts.
I have to admit to being totally bemused by how the Alexa rankings work, but it’s the Global figure that counts and mine seems to be going up every time.
I have received the first month’s videos to accompany my Blogging To The Bank 2010 book and will start putting all the tips into practice on my smaller blog so that I can work out the successful strategies and implement them here.
I will be back with an update next month.
With Many Thanks to all the Bloggers who sent their good wishes and have now put me on their blogroll:
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This is another of my favourite yoga poses – the Lizard.
It is guaranteed to free up those tense muscles between your shoulder blades that are a side-effect of too much time slumped over a laptop. Computer back. One of the hardest complaints to alleviate… other than to stop spending so much time on it.
Resting your forearms on the floor, you have to suck in your Mula Bandha, the core muscles that directly affect the control of your spine, and try to drop your chin and chest to the floor, whilst leaving your bottom in the air.
Which brings me to the other reason that I love the Lizard. I’m not totally sure why it’s even called that, although I would surmise from the picture that it’s to do with the upright pose of one part of the body, tailing off down towards the other.
But I digress. Ruf and I both love this position because it presents my finest feature in the optimum position to accommodate access to either of the lower cock pockets.
With my bottom so definitely in the air, the position also allows me the room to use whichever of my favourite toys is in reach to stimulate my clitoris until my climax signals the moment of his penetration. Knees spreading ever wider to facilitate the best trajectory, my squeals and gasps punctuate the communion between us, before he adds his own tremulous crescendo. Withdrawing at the last moment so that he can pebbledash the alabaster milkiness of my back with pearl white drops of his own vegan man milk.
It’s hard to believe, but it actually is possible to get an even whiter shade of pale.
The infamous HaikuMaster has deemed that this week’s haiku theme should be ‘Work’.
At first, I wasn’t sure I could contribute but, by analysing what was taking up all my time over the weekend, inspiration came to me. We’ve been having some work done at the house, repairs as part of an insurance claim. Apparently, I am responsible for getting someone in to put right the cause of the damage. They will only return the damaged room to its original condition. However, they are unable to recommend a plumber so that I can get a reliable tradesman to fix the leak caused by the previous operative. Grrrr!
Then, both my laptop and main computers decided to have internet connection issues with regard to speed, both of which seem to be very difficult to solve, despite repeated phone calls to the service providers. Double Grrrr!
And, hey presto, two haikus whilst I waited on the phone to speak to a call centre :)
Maintenance Nightmares:
Thwarted at ev’ry turn by
Jobsworths or Slackers
With Connections Slow
When Cake Has So Much To Do
She Can’t Get Work Done
Haikus are non-rhyming poems of three lines with the pattern of five, seven and five syllables. If you would like to join in, visit The Troll Report and throw in your entry.
We exchanged pleasantries and she asked if I was happier now that I was living in my own.
I confirmed the affirmative and proceeded to tell her a little about my new business enterprise.
She seemed entralled which, to me seemed a little excessive.
But then she said:
‘I love talking to you.
‘You are so brave and so determined.
‘You got out of a bad situation and now you’re making a go of something new.
‘To me, you’re an inspiration because you make it seem as if anything is possible.’
To be perfectly honest, I was a bit embarrassed at her effusive praise. So I thanked her and scuttled on my way.
But, the more I thought about it, the more I understood how it must appear. On the outside, I am always positive and I do focus on what I have achieved now, rather than the misery that I went through.
I sometimes wonder if she would be quite as supportive if she knew about the rest of the baggage in my holdall.
And then I wonder if the fact that I am now a confident, forward-thinking woman, who is determined to go out and achieve her goals, completely outweighs some of the rather grubby methodology surrounding the journey to get to that state of mind.
So, my Oscar Winner is Anne of The Thousand Days. One of my personal favourite films of all time. Well, it would be considering my love of the subject matter and fondness for Richard Burton.
The papers were full of the latest information on International Women’s Day yesterday – March 8th – and I still forgot to mark it.
This is another of my favourite yoga poses – the Lizard.
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