Though my followers are few, yet they are valuable and when someone comments (as they did yesterday) that it’s good to see me blogging again, I feel all warm and fuzzy and have to go for a lie down. Not so long ago I thought this blog was over. I thought I’d said everything I needed to say and had no more ideas. I didn’t think I’d miss it: for months I didn’t miss it, and then I did; sentences started to spring up in my mind and I’d think ‘I’ll put that on the blog’. Or I’d watch a film and think, ‘I must review that for the blog.’
One of the things that dispirited me was the number of followers. There used to be more but they dropped off when WordPress (in its infinite wisdom) decided that you could no longer link automatically to social media, and they never recovered – even though I can copy and paste the link myself. Something had broken and it wasn’t morning – and now my followers are so few that I feel like the organiser of some whacky fringe religion. The Judean Popular Front, perhaps. I am depressed by the awareness that in internet terms I am but an infinitesimal speck; yet I don’t know how to change this. I’ve tried all sorts of approaches but all they do is to make me seem a stranger to myself without garnering any more attention. Hey ho.
The more I see of Ben Wishaw the more I appreciate him. Not only has he captured perfectly the voice of Paddington bear, he played Norman Scott to the life in ‘A Very English Scandal’, the story of Jeremy Thorpe and his gay lover. I think there should be an embargo now on calling things ‘a very British’ or ‘a very English’ something-or-other as it’s been done to death and you can’t remember which very British thing is which – but will they listen? I doubt it. Anyway, it’s a very gripping and well-told story. Hugh Grant is terrific as Thorpe; Machiavellian with a crocodile smile as he lures Scott into an affair and then dumps him. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth a watch (and has resurfaced on BBC i-player.) The other thing I enjoyed recently was a webinar on ‘Being Mr Wickham.’ This is a one-man play starring Adrian Lukis who played Mr Wickham in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. The play tells the story from Wickham’s point of view, asking the viewer, in my situation what would you do? It sounds very interesting and I wish I’d been able to see it.
Book-wise I’ve been reading ‘Bullshit Jobs’ which I mentioned yesterday – I may blog more about this another day – and re-reading ‘Miss Mapp’ by E F Benson. I’ve blogged about his books before
https://lizardyoga.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/anyone-for-tilling/
and they are an eternal delight. His style is so Dickensian and the way he describes the minutiae of life in terms of a Greek epic is delicious.
As a true Tillingite would say, au reservoir darlings – and I appreciate you all.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 