Domestic goddess

I watched a documentary about Doris Lessing last night and am buzzing with ideas for various literary pursuits (as well as nursing very sore feet after going to a jive evening and then walking all the way home in heels).

Here are a few pictures to represent my very domestic bank holiday weekend. The knitty pieces are from the slowly growing patchwork blanket. I usually keep the pieces wedged into giant glass sweet jars, although they are starting to look like some kind of gory specimen in visceral shades of pink, red and orange.
The noticeboard is my own creation from some leftover gingham fabric and a cheapo cork board - I glued buttons and some broken Hello Kitty hairgrips onto the drawing pins in an attempt to make organisation a bit prettier.
And the baby plants are a sweetpea and a tomato plant from my friend Steph, currently weaving themselves round some knitting needles. I fancy myself as a lady of leisure, strolling around my vast grounds with a matching pink trug and shears, but for now a windowsill will have to do.

A totally gratuitous photo of my new shoes (of course with some leopard-print goodness (I think you can never have too much of that). Being me, and a) being impatient and b) flustered by trendy/bored-looking shoe shop assistants I bought them in a hurry and they don't really fit. But if I stand still I feel very Dita or possibly even Bettie.

Oh and on Tuesday I went to the demonstration against the proposed lowering of the 24-week time limit on abortions. It was a great atmosphere, right next to the grandiose, priapic towers of Westminster. We all had pink and white placards and chanted and people sounded their horns and waved. It was really inspiring being surrounded by all sorts of men and women who believed so passionately in a cause. I think we made a difference.

Caramel

I went to see the film Caramel on Saturday. I quite like going to films on my own, although sobbing to Brokeback Mountain alone was pretty dismal and there was something that made me feel a little self-conscious and possibly like a pervy old man about sitting on my own amongst lots of pubescent girls to watch Josie and the Pussycats.

I hadn't seen any trailers and the posters of course promised it would be 'charming', but the more I think about it, the more uneasy the film made me. I did enjoy it in a lot of ways; Beirut was brought to life as a hot, dusty, sensuous city, jostling with people and cars, at times as vivid and carnivalesque (with the kitschy Roman Catholicism) as the Verona Beach of Romeo + Juliet. It was refreshing that it was set in a place known recently as 'war-torn' but with no sight of bullet-holes or destruction and only the occasional soldier. The action takes place in and around a ramshackle beauty salon where the generator frequently breaks down and women come in to have their hair and hearts fixed. In a lot of ways it was like Steel Magnolias, with a disparate group of women's separate stories followed, here to a rather meandering effect. There was an actress refusing to believe she was getting old, an aging woman whose romance is scuppered by her dementia-afflicted sister, a secretly blooming lesbian affair. There was a subtle investigation of the position of women in Lebanese society; one tries to book a hotel room and is frequently rebuffed because she cannot prove she has a husband, the female admirer of one of the beauticians cannot get her hair cut because her family would not approve. But it was the storyline of the woman who is soon to be married, but feels she must have her hymen sewn back up to 're-virginise' herself, that made me uncomfortable. It was dealt with in a humorous, lighthearted and 'all sisters in this together' way, that made the film not quite as sweet as its title suggested.

Troubling times

Troubling because I can't seem to upload pictures to my blog any more, and also I have reached a kind of impasse in my life. Having decided that London was the way to go, Brighton, like a rejected lover with a makeover, has started flaunting itself with the bluest summery skies, the sea bannering on the horizon.

I went to a concert by the Daughters of Albion last night; I know very little about folk but it was a free ticket, and mostly I loved it. there was something about the music that was primitive, natural, feminine, and it was so inspiring to see women of all ages on stage for once, rather than the youngest, the prettiest. I experienced an urge to be one of the older women singing, there seemed something wise and settled about their interpretations of love and loss and motherhood and general living, two things I do not feel at the moment.

It did not help that I was sitting next to perhaps one of the most infuriating concert-goers you could imagine; unlike an annoying gig-goer, who might stand in front of, or on, you or perhaps nudge your pint or sing along raucously, this more refined annoyance clacked chewing gum through the first half, and spent the second half nose-breathing, nodding off and twitching.

I tried to lose myself in the music, despite him, and the encore of Who Know Where the Time Goes almost had me in tears. There was a very Brighton wind blowing all the way home.

Oh my goodness gracious

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXJ_C8kQKc0

This gives me a little shiver down the spine. Mmm angry bloody naked Wolverine... I feel like I am cheating on Gambit though.