Meme for a Frosty Morning

Meme pinched from Geosomin… For me it’s not frosty and is night, but we can just ignore all that… maybe it will be a frosty morning for you by the time you read this.

Current clothes: Dark blue denim skirt; red T-shirt with colourful whale design. Multicoloured wool jacket (getting chilly at nights).

Current mood: A touch gloomy.

Current thing: Reorganizing my life so that I have time for new hobbies or old neglected hobbies.

Current desktop picture: I’ve got the Mac cycling randomly through a folder of wallpaper, but when I looked just now, I had Ocean Mysteries on.

Current book: ‘The Tale of Beatrix Potter’ by Margaret Lane. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated, as I also read B. Potter’s biography by Linda Lear. I think (but am not sure) that it was Margaret Lane who wrote that Peter Rabbit etc are much-loved books from our childhood (it might just have been blurb somewhere.) Though I did read some of them in my childhood, they weren’t ‘much-loved’, or even disliked particularly… they were just there in the background, slightly dull and slightly weird.

Current song in head: Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-deeay, my, my, my, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine, heading my way; zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-deeay.

Current worry: How to keep up with everything and stay cheerful. Something I meant to quote… we were watching the film ‘That Darn Cat’, and the mother said “would it really hurt you to be nice to people?” Her daughter said something like “you got all the nice.” Sometimes I feel that’s us.

Miss Pottery Thoughts

On Wednesday night we watched the Miss Potter DVD that Mum gave me for Christmas. Next day we had a ‘notepad conversation’ about it in a café, while a tableful of other people’s kids screamed and rushed around next to us.

NB: if you intend to watch Miss Potter later, you might not want to read our conversation – it will give away elements of what happened…

Me: “Miss Potter was certainly easier to watch than The Hogfather.”

Mum: “Ewan McGregor is an actor who can get into very different roles. Can’t say the same about Renée Zellwegger. She was much the same as the other one.”

Me: “As the other what? And who’s Ewan McGregor?”

Mum: “The chap who was Norman Warne who died. Whatsername in the Edge of Reason.”

Me: “Not such a different role, actually. Single woman makes good despite insufferable mother.”

Mum: “Role model for you??”

Me (after a glare): “Her life was more interesting than married women’s (and some of the single women her friend was complaining about). Mostly ‘cos she made it so.”

Mum: “If she was 32 when the film began and waited 9 years to marry Will Heelis, she must have been mid 40s to 50s.”

(When she what?)

Me: “Who was Will – a childhood holiday friend?”

Mum: “I think they said ploughboy, but that wasn’t likely as his cousins were farmers and he was well enough educated to do law.”

Me: “I think they said her father was discouraged from art and had to do law. That’s exactly what makes me so cross… everybody has to do the ‘profitable’ thing.”

Mum: “It wasn’t that. He had enough money to do nothing… not getting into doubtful company – going to Paris – drugs – peculiar friends. Law was respectable. They said he didn’t practise. Only lived at the Reform Club during the day.”

Me (rather judgementally): “Seems like his daughter accomplished more.”

Mum: “You had to have ‘good family’ (which the Potters didn’t) to be successful in the Army or politics. Law was the next best.”

PS: Good news – Sharky has come to sit on the printer beside me. First time he’s done that for days…