What a weekend! I’m glad to be back at work for the rest 
Friday was the weekly meeting of the Barcelona Temperance Society at their luxuriously appointed club rooms in Bohemian Bloomsbury. The bar was overseen by count Vlad the Impaler (seriously: The barman’s a vampire obsessive, who’s had his canines filed to sharp points, has his bottle blond hair tied back in a very gothic pony tail, and has cultivated the sort of suntan normally seen on corpses), and the company was sparkling and witty. And wasted. Or at least I was - on a cocktail of Stella and antiseptic throat spray. It’s a long story…
Saturday, we bought new windows and patio doors for the house. It was supposed to be a fact-finding quote, with two more to come, but the price was right, the salesman was pleasant (not in that way), and the deal was done before I even knew it. So sometime in November, if all goes well, we’ll be discarding our slightly rotten wooden window frames and going for brand new double glazing.
Afternoon, we went to see Helen Mirren in ‘The Queen’. A really nice film. A very good preformance from Ms M. Not an impersonation; a performance. An impression, if you like, is created, of a woman you think you know. But it’s done without forcing a funny voice, or gallons of prosthetic makeup. It’s done with small details: The way she moves, almost hesitantly in public; the bits you’d not necessarily imagine (she does sleep with her husband), that make ehr a little more like a real person, and less like an actress playing a part. All-in-all a very nice performance. Michael Sheen as Tony Blair is very very good too. The film is not necessarily anti-monarchist; in fact, it’s heart is best expressed by Blair towards the end of the film, where this new Left Wing Prime Minister, this ‘Great Moderniser’ says, basically, whether you like them or not, we’ve got them, and you can’t just wipe them out. True, but it’s doing them no favours by displaying them as (one suspects) they really are: Emotionally retarded strangers to reality.
Saturday night, I cooked potato and saffron stew, and sausage and white wine casserole, and we sat down to watch ‘V for Vendetta’. Not as good as the comic book graphic novel from which it was taken. A little pointless ultimately, and the narrative thrust seems to fizzle out halfway through, but still a fair flick. Natalie Portman’s accent is very Rank Charm School.
Sunday was a trip to the gym, followd by a nice breakfast (raisin cinnamon bagel with cream cheese and squashed figs) a half hour viewing of the dvd of the Bette Midler ‘Gypsy’ (5.99 in a bargain shop), that looks and sounds so like the old 1950’s classic MGM musicals that I’m falling in love with it (even though I’m sure there are lots of people who’ll tell me why it’s an abomination). Ms M even does a total Sophie Tucker / Ethel Merman (That comes up as ‘Ether Mermaid’ in my spellchecker) on ‘Some people’.
Off to town for drinkies and lunch (a lovely panfried sea bass on a risotto actually; very very tasty) with one of the Fly Boys, your Uncle Bob, and capt. Canuck, then off to Wembley for Will Young en concert.
Hmmmm. Will Young. More on that tomorrow.