This is England

I watched the aforementioned film last night. As anyone who knows me, knows, any film that doesn't have a montaged dance-training scene doesn't usually come onto my radar, but I had read good reviews and thought I should educate myself.

I found it really disturbing, not so much because of the violence, although it was brutal and often unexpected, but because of its vision of an England that exist(ed) on the periphery of 'normal' society. The skinheads are disenfranchised, anarchic, chaotic, but also seductively stylish and loyal (up to a point). I was a child during the Thatcher era, and so have never really understood the extreme emotions, the hatred and rage, that her actions stirred up. My knowledge of the Eighties is more of a second-hand, nostalgic one, similar to the (ironic) use of 'Tainted Love' blaring out of a radio at one point- New Romantics, kids dressing up like Boy George, a mum with enormous glasses and perm like my mum had when I was a child.

It was also touching and spikily humorous and affectionate, and left me thinking about the nature of masculinity and sexuality and identity and integrity, and of art's capacity to be politically more effective than any number of dry treatises or speeches.

Meep

Ok, this is not a proper post, but this blog is possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen...

Rainy days

What is this appalling weather all about? Saying that, I am tucked up inside, intermittently lurking on Craftster and knitting yet another scarf. I made a mistake about five inches in, but have kept going in a stoic, I-don't-care sort of way, even though it is as niggly and annoying as the pub sign outside my flat which promises 'complimentary champagne'. I have an urge to perform some kind of nerdy stealth graffiti on it.
Have been at my mum's for most of the weekend. She lives in the middle of nowhere, and so I have spent a very pleasant, calming time doing country-ish things like gathering apples from the garden, star-gazing with binoculars and painting the stairs a very Cotswoldy shade of pale. There's something about taking time off work that seems to make it acceptable to eat cake after every meal and to regard stroking the cat as half an hour's worth of constructive activity. It would probably drive me mad in the end, but I find the idea of living in the depths of the country very inspiring creatively. Perhaps because London at the moment feels all wet concrete and people in identical black coats and the monotony of Tube adverts, but everything in the country feels more tactile and real: onions in a brown bowl, the pink dawn filling a curtainless window, nights so black and silent.