Ella Ogden is now
safely with us, after a long labour and an emergency Caesarean. Joe and Becca’s
daughter. I’ll send pics soon.
My friend Sylvia is overjoyed to have her cat back. She says he looks fine but seems somewhat subdued. She has ordered a cat-tracker for him.
Again, a better
day here than forecast. 1865 steps – one of the days when the step-counter isn’t
really trying. Archie and I got around the garden once.
Helen is going to
take me to a GARDEN CENTRE tomorrow. I think we think we might as well do it
properly, and go to Hopetoun House. It will be exciting. I don’t know what I
want, except for some small flowerpots.
I’m a bit further
forward with sock-knitting. Thank you for the reminder about negative ease,
Tamar. I have recently bought myself some bamboo-and-cotton socks for my
cruise: very smart-looking and comfortable. Does anyone really want hand-knit
woolly socks any more?
I knit this
morning while watching “Pursuit of Love”. I wasn’t tremendously impressed. I
spent much of the rest of the day reading it. It’s not an easy book to
translate to the screen. My main objection to the early scenes – which is all,
in fact, I saw – was that they didn’t get the 14-year-old balance of innocence
and curiosity and sophistication right: the girls were 21st century girls.
But the book requires them to age a full 15 years or more, so it would be hard
to get actresses who could do that, and also be 14. But we started off on the
wrong foot: the scene was Christmas-time, and the light and the green
countryside were wrong. Also we saw one of our heroines coming home from a day
of hunting, riding astride. Mitford makes a point of how uncomfortable it was
to trot home while riding side saddle. Walking was all right – but the horse
would get too cold. Cantering was fine –but the horse would get too hot. It’s a
small point; why bother; no one will notice. But it irritated me.
I am not always so
carping. I loved the BBC “Pride and Prejudice” and have re-watched it a couple
of times.
Now I really must
re-engage with Italian.
I did notice that they were riding astride! The first of many disconnects with my memory of the books... I found it was best to watch with the memories firmly shut away.
ReplyDeleteI should have said how happy I was to read of Ella's safe (if alarming) arrival.
DeleteWelcome Ella! And a garden center!! What fun, even if you buy nothing.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten how racy and fun the book was. The film is trying a bit too hard - the reviews had warned of the Baz Lurman effect and I don't think it was a good idea. The interlude with Lord Merlin's house party arriving belonged to a completely different film, stylish though it was. But the girls at Kroesig's lunch-party did seem like gawky teens out of their depth. When you look at the usual offer on the evening schedules this made a welcome change, side-saddles notwithstanding.
ReplyDeleteI would assume there are not many horses trained to carry someone side-saddle any more, perhaps that was a consideration?
ReplyDeleteWelcome Ella!
ReplyDeleteLisa RR