Southampton

So here I am. So far, so good. Eeva had cleaned whole house to peak of shininess, made me turkey salad for tea, and her boyf brought round Wild Hogs on DVD which was really very surprisingly quite funny - omg, am I becoming addicted to comedies of social embarrassment? (viz/ Blades of Glory, 40 Year Old Virgin.)  Have I got the perfect lodger or what??

Cats embraced  garden again, joyfully. After two days shut up in boxes of varying size, we were probably equally glad to stretch out in green space and sunshine:-)

I also watched Bend It Like Beckham, a film of which I am inordinately fond, in a hotel near`Warrington last night with 2 disgruntled cats, followed by , of all things, A Hard Day's Night, which I'd never ever seen. It occurs to me that we're actually seeing something of a golden age of films which try to understand in a depth beyond merely comedic both young and middle aged men's ordinary insecurities - not poets with crises or heroes with dilemmas , but ordinary joes who panic at getting a date or living the rest of their life as a dentist. As if Nick Hornby had started script writing for half of Hollywood. In the films above we've got sympathetic understanding of Jess's Sikh father, of both a priggish and a yobbish male, of geek salesmen, and of the aforementioned dentist and his middle class weekend-biker pals. While we girls get Bridget Jones as the spokesperson for all our worries. Bring back Emma Thompson, f'godsake.

Whereas in AHDN, c 1964, there are only two classes of males; youths who are cool and laugh at everyone, and middle aged males who are tbere solely to be laughed at. Frankly if anyone behaved like the Beatles do in AHDN nowadays they'd be lucky to get away with an ASBO. They are introduced mocking an old man on the train simply for being old, behaving raucously when he demurs at this, playing music loudly to annoy others in the carriage, and chatting up schoolgirls in a really annoying way. i wanted to slap their fatuous smart alec behinds. Fab 4? It'sa  good thing Paul could write a good tune, or on this  showing thy'd never have caught on:-)

Poor Anita Roddick. Terrible hair aside, she did as well as anyone to shape the idea of ethical business. I hope it smells of dewberry in heaven.

(no subject)

ang_grrr has a really interesting poll enquiring how many people really do an average 16 hours a week housework as reported in the press. She included cooking and food shopping in "housework" on the obvious ground that how on earth could people do 16 hrs a week otherwise? I'm not so sure however. So..

[Poll #1053852]