There Will be blood

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14°C Sun.C20, brisk westerlies (again)

There Will be Blood: on a roll now; two great films in a week. This one was very long, again it’s set in the deserts of the US, but the dark tension came from a different direction. This time there was focus on a character Daniel Plainvew, clues were revealed when the lead wanted to expose them. They were not nice things to see, some were only hints but still ugliness was there in a way that created a a heavy, tense and sinister feel. As dark as the crude oil that he was obsessed with. Stupid me, didn’t realise that the lead was played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Perhaps that is the mark of a great actor, or a viewer who doesn’t have a care about celebrity.
This film is worth watching again.

Marshy Meadow

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18°C, windy, warm & quite humid

Not far from home: it’s possible to escape into what looks like remote countryside, just church spires are visible in the city, poking above the heavy trees.
Plenty in bloom, small delicate flowers, they are tricky to track down in the reference book. The even smaller blue ones are even more intricate and remarkable. Harder to photograph though. This Fuji pocket camera is really quite poor in many ways. Replacement is looking unlikely because of the bizarre trend towards no viewfinder- how are we supposed to take photos in bright sunshine then?

hibiscus; and the darkening above us

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14°C, NW winds, 20 miles

Near dark sky, it’s an oily blue-black up there. But, you know- twenty past nine…
Repotted a plant with a name like a drug; from the hibiscus family. The Acerecae has gold-glitter in the mud, what is that stuff? Looks like mica.
What is summer going to be like: this is farmland in Warwickshire, but it’s early May!

Brief Encounter (with a bun)

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18°C, dark

Kneehigh Theatre: with their version of Brief Encounter, a homage to Noel Coward as much as the original film of 1945. They included "I’m no good at love" (which I’ve included on these pages in the past), along with other songs and passages by him. There was some audience participation, in one scene I was offered a bun, which I ate- it was really quite fresh I should state clearly now. Other nice touches, in the programme, actors’ own brief encounters printed with their shortened CVs.

Uneasy, unconvincing, insecure…

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15°C, light cloud

Rape of a two-year old: I have a really uneasy feeling about this story. I sense the faint scent of a miscarriage of justice: the evidence of a three year old child seems very weak to me- not the actual evidence itself, I haven’t seen that> The problem lies with the notion of taking evidence of such a young child so seriously. I teach 11-18 year olds at work each day, and a number of them have trouble forming sentences that convey what they mean. Let’s wait and see.

SATs boycot: go for it! I’m even tempted to agree with the usually belligerent NUT on this one. SATs are of no use to children, nor to their teachers- it’s a measure of schools for league tables. No benefit then, only loads of stressed children and anxious parents who have been duped by this practice. Okay, yes it may be illegal to boycot the tests, but it’s immoral to conduct them in my view.

Fritillaria: don’t you just love these little characters, go and sit to watch them in a light breeze.
There is not other occurrence of chessboard patterns in nature, purportedly.

No country,

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15°C, bits of rain.

Film: No Country For Old Men: now here is a film full of space, time to breathe and heart-thumping tension. Given, the characters were not really explored in depth, it’s not a film about that. There was so much to explore otherwise that I didn’t miss it anyway. The story was centred about a psychopath, casual murder and some gore, blood, dust and desert. It was however, quiet; quiet enough to hear your heartbeat. It beat out because of the plot which didn’t give away too many secrets in advance. The theme of ageing was never far away, timeless characters were set against a guy who was so conscious of his own. I liked this film, the space, the long scenes and the smallness of the players in that vast desert.

An outbreak of hysteria-1N1 Virus

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12°C, rain threatened, but pulled its punches in the end.

News: Viruses are able to turn people bonkers: Guardian. It seems that self-replicating semi-crystalline proteins can seriously damage rationalism. We now have a couple of people here in Britain with H1N1, they have mild symptoms and will recover in a few days. Contrast that with the thousands who die from ‘flu every year in this country under normal circumstances anyway.. Even in Mexico, it seem that we don’t know whether the pig flu killed those hundreds of people or did they have the flu and die of something else. The statistics just don’t exist to answer that one. I’m prepared to listen to Dr. Rosemary Leonard, she sounds like the sensible one.

This house remains calm.

Sparrow & Crow

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15°C, heavy rain, dry now.

CDs: The Sparrow & The Crow: I’d swear I ordered this on LP.
The Rip: Portishead

Through the glory of life
I will scatter on the floor
Disappointed and sore
And in my thoughts I have bled
For the riddles I’ve been fed
Another lie moves over

A week gone by

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15°C, light SSE wind, clear sky, Cycle 69 miles

LPs: William Fitzsimmons- in vinyl is still at work, I can’t carry LPs on the bike. Looking forward to hearing that album in its entirety.
Work: going back has been a bit of a start; like a shock but less so (I’ll reserve that word for things like seeing a pheasant getting run-over on the A515). Wednesday cracked it though, after some days feeling terrible, I went to bed before 22.00. You should do that too sometimes. Now I feel normal.
Normal: actually, I don’t. Today’s 70 miles was harder than it should have been. Perhaps I didn’t eat enough yesterday to feel normal today. I was too tired and desperate to get home to shoot some photos of blooming rape against darkening cumulus clouds. I missed a pearl there (not in a knitting sense).