tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75115955852021459052024-03-13T14:28:49.187-07:00Telly and TravelsWriting about television programmes that make me remember somewhere I have been. The links may be tenuous, the travel with or without child.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.comBlogger176125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-33077041459925357692019-03-12T06:40:00.000-07:002019-03-18T09:03:54.931-07:00Ambling onHello, remember me? I used to write this blog semi-regularly and see it's now almost a year since I last posted. In May, I got a bit stuck writing something vitriolic about the Eurovision Song Contest, in which I vented my spleen about my school and several precocious people who went there (SuRie, the UK's entry, was a former pupil), but it wouldn't have been appropriate (or kind) to publish it. And then I never quite overcame the block.<br />
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I also started to get a lot more paid proofreading work so wanted time away from the screen on days when there wasn't any to do. Plus perimenopause on top of Hashimoto's has started destroying my life at random intervals. I am a shadow of my former self right now (and I always felt that even my former self was still a shadow of who I was supposed to be, having battled autoimmune disease from the age of 15).<br />
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And Brexit has left me (if not us all) in a state of permanent uncertainty and stress. Aside from the more pressing issues of whether or not we will actually have medication, drinkable water and basic food supplies, will we be able to go anywhere ever again as of the end of March? Theresa May's staggering narrowmindedness, stubbornness and incompetence has left the entire nation in limbo, unable to make plans for anything, or see any kind of future. How we can be in this mess is beyond me. It should have all been stopped the day after the referendum. (Or preferably the day before the referendum.) Meanwhile, all the liars and criminals who forged the "leave" vote have not been held to account - in the words of our hopeless Prime Minister, "Nothing has changed!"- so even if we end up going to a second referendum, it will still just be taken over once again by the rabid rightwinger press barons, Russian Facebook ransackers, and tax-avoiding billionaires trying to protect their offshore bank accounts. I have never felt so despairing of my country. We used to be a funny, if slightly useless, place to live, but with fairly obvious strengths (multinational food, pretty scenery, lack of dangerous predators, tolerable if wet climate, free healthcare available to all, ability to laugh at ourselves). Now the place seems to be bordering on fascism, accepting of racism, and all of our state systems are on the verge of collapse. And the Opposition parties are all useless, when really it shouldn't be too hard to stand up and slag off this shambles of a government. But still, as long as the Tory Party stays together, eh?<br />
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So clearly no politican wants my vote, and I can't watch the news, and I just haven't felt inspired to write about what I have been watching. Telly is a bit of a Groundhog Day anyway - the same series coming back again and again, with not much more to say about them. <a href="https://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2014/04/masterchef.html">Masterchef</a>, <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-great-british-bake-off.html">Bake-off</a>, <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2014/04/endeavour.html">Endeavour</a>, <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2016/09/cold-feet.html">Cold Feet</a>, <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2014/03/death-in-paradise.html">Death In Paradise</a>, <a href="https://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2018/01/strictly-come-dancing.html">Strictly</a>, the <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-last-leg.html">Last Leg</a>. More recently, <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2016/01/deutschland-83.html">Deutschland '86</a> and <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.com/2016/02/trapped.html">Trapped </a>have reappeared on our screens, which did offer a flicker of affection for the days when I used to write. In the past year, though, Killing Eve probably deserved a mention, as did a couple of things over Christmas (the ABC Murders, the Midnight Gang). Our daughter loves Dancing On Ice, and I will always have a soft spot for Torvill and Dean, who I got to see skating at Wembley Arena in 1986 thanks to a generous Christmas present from my grandparents. She has also become obsessed with Blue Peter, and has earned herself both the much coveted traditional Blue Peter badge and a diamond badge this year. This has saved us a fortune in admission fees (York Maze, Whipsnade Zoo, Tynemouth Aquarium, Bekonscot and Vindolanda among others) so is to be much lauded. It also entitled her to a free tour of MediaCity in Salford, including a visit to the Blue Peter studio (though it was partially dismantled for the summer break at the time we went - no sofa! - which was poor planning on my part).<br />
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I nearly wrote something about the posh hotels series set in Cliveden, since we went there last summer. But if I don't do something immediately, the memory quickly fades.<br />
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Les Miserables also should have had a blog post, since in October we went to a park in Brussels (see below) where some key scenes were filmed:<br />
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And as for our travels since our trip to Spain last April, we had the aforementioned trip to Buckinghamshire in August, staying at my aunt's. We also had a lovely week borrowing a house of some friends in Newcastle in the summer, but I don't think they would welcome a review on TripAdvisor or random people turning up on their doorstep trying to AirBnB. Newcastle and Northumberland are always worth a visit, however, even if you can't bag yourself some free accommodation:<br />
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And talking of AirBnB, we tried it for the first time in October, when taking our daughter to Brussels, the heart of the European Union, to show her just how bloody stupid Britain is being right now. We travelled on Eurostar (just perfect) and stayed in a wonderful apartment in a brand new block just off the Grand-Place. We went to the Matisse, the Musical Instruments and the Manneken Pis Museums, ate a ton of expensive chocolate (the pound being worth nothing), and spent a day at the Atomium and Mini-Europe. If only the Remain Campaign had photocopied the back page of the Mini-Europe brochure to explain to our dumb-ass citizens what the European Union was all about. Then we wouldn't be in this mess. The Mini Europe model of the Houses of Parliament even has a little Brexit protest outside.<br />
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In February half-term, we unexpectedly went back to Center Parcs. This was because York's half-term was a week later than the rest of the country's, and Center Parcs didn't realise, so were charging about a third of the price of the previous week. We went to Sherwood, where there were plenty of familiar York faces, but most of our friends chose to go to Whinfell. I had expected there to be a possibility of snow on the A66, based on this time last year when the Beast from the East hit, so decided to head south instead. But the weather, as it turned out, could not have been more different.<br />
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However, the Subtropical Paradise <i>was </i>Arctic. Whether it was because it was undergoing some building work, or whether it was because it has a roof made of clingfilm, the temperature inside cannot have been anywhere near the promised 29.5 degrees Celsius. And as the water was just human soup, it was impossible to swim around to warm up. Standing around shivering made the whole experience a real chore, especially as the rammed changing rooms are now showing their age and there is always a long wait for a hot shower or a free cubicle. There were new play areas and a new Tropical Cyclone ride due to open on the Friday, though these were all actually up and running from the day we arrived. Our daughter wouldn't go near Tropical Cyclone , especially after we made her try out the original raft ride, the Grand Cascade, which she found utterly terrifying. To be fair it was pretty fast.<br />
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The whole place is designed to rip you off. Swimming is the only free activity, then you pay for everything else, at vastly inflated prices. We took all our own food and thankfully only had one kid to pay for, but we still racked up a hefty bill, letting our daughter try out archery, football and tree trekking. Thankfully we didn't have to accompany her on the latter, but for £26 it might have been nice to let her go round twice, since she spent a lot of the first circuit wobbling about and crying, only gaining her confidence and deciding she was having the time of her life in the last two minutes. We had also booked on a falconry session but this was cancelled, so we went on a family bowling trip instead. I also had a wonderful afternoon in the incredible spa, the one thing that was genuinely worth the money. Although only I could manage to get a spa injury - I slipped in the changing rooms and banged my knee and hips so badly I had to cancel my Pilates session the following day. Still, our daughter had a great time the whole week. I doubt we'll ever get as lucky with our school holiday dates again.<br />
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So a year on, this is where we are at, sort of. It's all different, but it's frustatingly all the same. Only worse. How can we still be so in the dark? There's another crucial Brexit vote tonight, but will this be the week when the whole shit gets sorted out once and for all? No. It's going to go on for bloody years and we will all have nervous breakdowns that there will be no resources left in the NHS to treat.<br />
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Anyway, I guess my point is that maybe the blog just reached a natural end. Or did it? It's always been kind of a dumb premise anyway. Or has it? Really, Gogglebox does it all so much better than me. Even if they never get off their sofas.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-78818501560474417872018-04-25T02:04:00.002-07:002018-05-04T04:48:07.416-07:00Stephen: The Murder That Changed A Nation25 years ago yesterday, a bright and handsome teenage boy lost his life in a vicious and brutal attack on the streets of southeast London. This documentary series, broadcast over three consecutive nights, looked back at Stephen Lawrence's life, his racist murder, the botched and corrupt police investigation that followed, and the long fight by Stephen's family to bring his killers to justice. Two out of the five suspects are now in jail, but it took until 2012 to convict them.<br />
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Images stay with you. The photo of Stephen in this black and white jumper, smiling shyly at the camera, a wisp of a moustache above his lip. This picture in turn painted starkly onto a mural outside the inquiry building at the Elephant and Castle; a mural I walked past numerous times after work on my way to eat pizza at Il Castello or do some bad bowling in the ugly shopping mall. And the footage of the suspects leaving that inquiry, pelted with eggs by an angry crowd, responding only with snarls and violence. Sharp teeth, black shades: whatever they said (or refused to say) at the inquiry, they turn from cockiness, from "Bring it on!" hand gestures as they leave the building, to images of pure hatred as their aggressive instinct to retaliate takes over. And then there were the covert police recordings of the suspects at home, spouting vile comments about what they wanted to do to black people and wielding enormous knives with terrifying viciousness and speed. They may only be stabbing the wall as they dance around the living room, but it chills you. Their mother claimed they were just having a laugh: well, if so, it's the sickest sense of humour I have ever seen. The documentary couples their machete swinging with pathology photos of the gaping shoulder wounds on Stephen's corpse. It's unbearable.<br />
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And because images stay with you, unfortunately it seems that the suburb of Eltham is still largely known only for Stephen Lawrence's murder. Even though neither Stephen nor his alleged killers ever lived there. Stabbings occur all over the capital but no other murder has left one of its suburbs with such a stain on its character. A friend of mine bought a house there many years ago and one of her concerns was that it was round the corner from where Stephen was killed. It was only seeing the drone footage during the documentary of the area surrounding the Well Hall roundabout that I realised how close she ended up living. Here was the lovely garden suburb where her house lay, the church where her children were christened, the roundabout where you joined the A2 to to Dover, and there the bus stop where Stephen waited in vain to be driven safely home after a night at work. Viewed from above, it's plain that Eltham is not some hideous ghetto - it's just ordinary. And green and leafy. It's <i>nice</i>. It could be anywhere; it could be your street or mine.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">In Eltham, another Stephen (Courtauld) had a palace..<br />
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Life has gone on since 1993; the road junctions have changed, trees have been felled, the bus service has improved, and thousands of residents have come and gone, been born or died. It's a suburb in flux, like any other in London and too multi-ethnic to be classed in terms of black or white. But the past still lurks. If your kids don't get into the right school, they may end up in a different catchment sharing classrooms with the children of Stephen's alleged killers. Although one would hope that people wouldn't judge (or have to judge) the children by their parents. Neville Lawrence expresses his sorrow that the killers were free to have children at all while he would never see one of his again. Nonetheless, he says he now forgives them.</div>
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So how did Stephen's murder change a nation? Did it make us wake up to racism? To police corruption? To other damaged attitudes in the Met? What has been solved, when three of the accused have never been convicted? Did the murder teach us to never give up, to fight for justice, like Stephen's family have over the past quarter of a century, knowing that nothing can bring Stephen back? Does it show that you can never, ever get over the grief of losing a child?<br />
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The extent of the police corruption is only really just coming to light. The Macpherson report accused the Met of institutional racism. It seems shocking now that the police officers first at the scene assumed it was some sort of gang or drug-related attack, that Stephen Lawrence, by virtue of the colour of his skin, had done something to deserve it so didn't merit the quick medical attention he needed. Some officers seemed to believe that proper pursuit, investigation and surveillance of the suspects were not required. And even more shocking is that it seems that the father of one of the suspects, a known drug baron, was nestled cosily into all the police stations in the area, buying officers up to protect his family from being punished for their misdemeanours. I guess I was naive to trust that these gangster stereotypes weren't just limited to the plotlines of EastEnders and Guy Ritchie films. Everyone named the same five men as suspects right from the start, in anonymous tip-offs in phonecalls and notes left lying around the area. These people were not eye witnesses, though. The five were clearly notorious in the Kidbrooke area, with their own vendettas and means of rule. But it wasn't until 2010, when a police officer was asked to clear out an office in a police station and he started rereading the paperwork from scratch that the length of the attack that Stephen endured became clear, which enabled forensic evidence that incontrovertibly placed two of the suspects at the scene to be uncovered.<br />
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And here - of all people - was an interview with Paul Dacre, the man whose newspaper fuels hatred against immigrants, foreigners and people who are different to white Little Englanders more than any other. Because Neville Lawrence once did some plastering work for him and did it well, Dacre knew what a decent, hard-working and honest man he was, and wanted to help him in his fight for justice for his son. "Would I have done this if I hadn't had this information?" he asks. "Possibly not." Funnily enough, Neville Lawrence is not the only decent, hard-working and honest immigrant who does a good job in this country. But Paul Dacre's paper likes to tell people otherwise.<br />
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And here was the woman, now our prime minister, whose policy in the Home Office was to make decent, hard-working and honest immigrants feel as unwelcome here as possible. Her "hostile environment" is making the headlines this week as the scandal of the treatment of the children of the Windrush (and other Commonwealth) settlers unfolds. Doreen and Neville Lawrence, whom Theresa May so admires, are part of this generation. They have made their home here since they were small. They married and had their three children in London. Neville (divorced from Doreen now) has returned to live in Jamaica through choice. And Stephen is buried there, because Britain didn't deserve him. Right now, Britain seems very undeserving of all the Windrush generation, who sacrificed their homes to help rebuild our country in difficult times, only to face discrimination, abuse, horrible living conditions and never-ending rain.<br />
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And I am so uneasy about the way Britain is going again, 25 years on, with rightwing extremism now considered normal and hate crime on the rise. Thanks to the (virtually) 50-50 EU referendum result, our nation now feels more divided than ever. 60 people have been killed by knife crime in the capital in this year alone. It has become endemic. Many of those killings will have been race-related. Someone in the film commented that when the economy dives, racism rises. There is now such a gap between rich and poor that can only worsen after the disaster of Brexit. So there will surely be more killings. Are the police now free from corruption and able to solve these crimes without prejudice? Do they have enough resources now that Theresa May has slashed their budgets in times of austerity? I certainly hope so. Only time will tell. But I will never feel at home in a land where hatred and ignorance reign.<br />
<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-59522070649424040122018-04-16T03:32:00.000-07:002018-05-04T04:57:05.119-07:00Child Friendly Holiday Review: Eurocamp at Camping Internacional de Calonge, Costa Brava, Spain(If you want to read about the campsite and wish to avoid an account of our family's tedious medical history, please scroll down until you see flags...)<br />
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It seems that whenever we book a holiday, a member of our family decides to have a disaster just before we go away. Sometimes it's our daughter - good old vomiting bugs and flu viruses really know how to pick their moments to strike a young child. Often, it's our cat. He crushed the end of his tail in a freak accident the day before a holiday to Northumberland. We later had to have said tail amputated three days before my cousin's wedding. And last year he needed bladder surgery six days before our <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/child-friendly-holiday-review-les.html">Eurocamp trip to the South of France</a> which meant me calling in serious favours from my dad to help nurse him back to health. Last August, I got told I had type 1 diabetes the day before we were supposed to go to Holland, which thankfully proved to be a false alarm but (owing to uncertainty and awkwardly timed flights) resulted in the other half of our intended house swap having to cancel and host us instead.<br />
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This year, it was my husband's turn. He had a known history of gallstones, having had a horrid attack in the summer of 2015, but since then they had left him alone. However, a day of overindulgence on my birthday a month ago saw him readmitted into A&E at midnight in excruciating pain and vomiting uncontrollably. This time the hospital kept him in and after a scan decided he needed immediate surgery. They told us he wouldn't be able to fly for a while and to expect to have to cancel our upcoming holiday, with Eurocamp to the Costa Brava. "Never mind", we thought, "At least this is going to fix the problem once and for all, and insurance will refund us." Even though we can't afford Eurocamp's summer holiday prices (I say this every year, but they remain astronomical), we knew at some point in the future we would make it to Spain.<br />
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However, keyhole surgery is a miraculous thing. After a weekend of severe discomfort (and no painkillers supplied by the hospital), and ten days of post-anaesthetic exhaustion, things began to improve rapidly. The wounds healed and the stitches came out. And as we hadn't got round to actually cancelling, we suddenly realised a week before we were due to leave that the man was going to be well enough to travel after all. A GP gave him her blessing and all looked good.<br />
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Only then snow was forecast for the early morning of our Good Friday departure from Leeds Bradford. And Catalonia started rioting. And our daughter started complaining of a sore throat. It seemed that the challenges to our trip weren't over yet.<br />
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But nonetheless, we rose at 4.30am to get to the airport for our 8.25am flight to Girona. Leeds Bradford was busy with queuing bank holiday travellers, mostly in Boots (but at least there is now a Boots) and it was pouring with rain, although thankfully the snow held off for another couple of days. Our flight was late leaving as the airport didn't have enough ground staff to deliver a wheelchair for an incoming passenger to disembark. But this meant we were spared Ryanair's punctuality fanfare and shortly after noon local time, we touched down at Girona Costa Brava airport in glorious sunshine. We could hardly believe it. "We made it! We actually made it!" I shrieked with delight as the plane hurtled to a stop.<br />
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It took a while to pick up our hire car as Sixt's office was located away from the main terminal and required a minibus transfer. The staff were then in no rush to hand over our keys, but at least one of their team brought out a basket of balloons to entertain the kids while we were waiting. We also befriended a family who by chance were going to the same campsite. We ended up drinking sangria with them on the beach at Platja d'Aro a couple of days later. But when we eventually got going, there was an accident en route on the C-65 which caused a significant tailback. So the journey to the campsite was far longer than the half an hour it should have taken.<br />
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And by the time we arrived, we desperately needed some lunch. The campsite website had implied that not much would be open this early in the season, so we drove on into St Antoni de Calonge to try and find somewhere to eat. We ended up in the restaurant attached to a Carrefour supermarket (unlike many others, open on the bank holiday) so we thought we could grab some food quickly and then stock up with some essential supplies before checking into the campsite. Only the restaurant was the slowest one on earth. My Spanish is poor (it gets me beer), and my Catalan even poorer (I know the word for "sock" from a phonetics class in 1995), so it was hard to figure out the menu or what was going on, and we just had to sit and wait. Which is particularly hard when you are with a seven year old who has been awake since before dawn. Eventually they brought us some bread, and after I had wolfed this down I went off and did the supermarket shopping so we weren't delayed any further. By the time I got back to the restaurant they were finally bringing out our meals, but the food was lukewarm and barely edible. We ate enough to stem our hunger and left as fast as we could.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The flags! On with the holiday review...</td></tr>
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Soon we were back at the campsite, and annoyingly the restaurant, bar and supermarket were all open after all, so we could have spared ourselves a lot of hassle and a disappointing meal. Before we knew it our car was registered on the numberplate recognition system, our passports had been scanned at reception and we had been sent up to Eurocamp. A lovely courier by the name of Matt was waiting to meet us while some of his colleagues were unpacking brand-new barbecues. It was only the second day of the season for them. Matt didn't mind that by this point I was tired, grumpy, still hungry and therefore scatty, meaning I managed to mislay our accommodation voucher somewhere in the five metres between our car and his office. He had worked at the campsite before so knew his way round and showed us the route to drive up to our mobile home, while he took a shortcut up one of the many staircases.<br />
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Yes, up. Yes, staircases. There is no denying that Internacional de Calonge is on the side of a very steep hill. Our car certainly grumbled about this, as did our legs initially, but the plus side is that we were rewarded by the most wonderful sea view from our caravan, which made every step of the journey worthwhile. For the first time ever, it seemed we had the mobile home featured in the brochure. We had lucked out at last - and all for a bargain £300 for the week.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-quBzRe9tyvE/WstCUHHCduI/AAAAAAAAEnw/uc6o19YJ6FsFG6pP4hv1ZAKjoY7EXbHcQCLcBGAs/s1600/P1060635.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-quBzRe9tyvE/WstCUHHCduI/AAAAAAAAEnw/uc6o19YJ6FsFG6pP4hv1ZAKjoY7EXbHcQCLcBGAs/s320/P1060635.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our row of Avants</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sea view from the deck</td></tr>
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We stayed in an Avant before at <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/child-friendly-holiday-review-eurocamp.html">Bella Italia on Lake Garda</a>, and this one was just as pleasing. It was a three-bedroom model, which gave us extra storage and a couple of spare pillows. We were glad of the duvets and the proper heating that the Avant offers - with Easter being so early, it was still cool at night and as we travelled hand luggage only, we hadn't brought piles of warm clothes with us. We still sat outside every evening despite the sea breezes: I felt like we had been cooped up for months in York because - well, we had. We slowly worked our way through a bottle of Licor 43, a tipple I discovered on a walking holiday in Andalucia years ago and discovered some more in various tapas bars around London. It's like liquid vanilla ice cream and tastes so unbelievably good. There were dramatic moonrises the first two nights which I failed to photograph properly, the end result as blurry as my vision.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Avant</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Useless blurry moonrise photo</td></tr>
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But the accommodation was not without its issues. We had only been supplied with sheets rather than duvet covers, and the next morning the pilot light on the boiler kept going out, making showering if not technically impossible then certainly freezing cold. Thankfully a message scribbled on the pad in Eurocamp reception brought Matt to the rescue - he replaced our gas bottle and fetched the correct bedding packs. But really, as we were the first guests of the year, could gas levels not have been checked? There were also a few items missing from the kitchen - a large serving bowl, scissors and a couple of cereal bowls. Surely a full inventory and restock should have been done at the start of the season? We managed without as we were only three, but next door to us was a family of eight who would have struggled with the missing crockery.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Land train</td></tr>
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The campsite was booked out over the Easter weekend so had laid on a few activities, which was a bonus as we hadn't expected any entertainment. The little land train was running, trundling campers down to the bridge leading over to the beach. There were were kids' club sessions, including an egg hunt all over the campsite, and a couple of mini discos in the evening. As our daughter still hasn't perfected her Europop moves, she preferred hanging out by the vending machines looking at jelly brains in nets with the neighbours' kids. (Another lucky thing was that we were surrounded by families with daughters a similar age, meaning she had playmates on tap, which was brilliant. It's something you can never guarantee or dare hope for.) On the Saturday, the disco ended with a surprise feast. The kids were all lined up and taken off to receive a plate of Nutella sandwiches, Kinder Surprises, other chocolate eggs, and to complete the chocolate fiesta, random piles of broken chocolate. All for free, and all meaning that none of them were able to go to bed any time soon, being off their faces on sugar. So time for the grown-ups to benefit from my one Spanish phrase and get a couple of beers in...<br />
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The kids' club was fine, but I don't think our daughter would have enjoyed it if the neighbours' kids hadn't gone along too. It was also a bit lax, as it let our daughter and a friend leave without an adult collecting them. They suddenly appeared back at our caravan, while my husband had gone to pick them up taking a different route down. No harm done, but if I had gone with him rather than staying behind, it could have had complications. The roads are steep and windy and cars aren't always easy to spot. Likewise children aren't easy to spot from a car.<br />
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The supermarket was fine for basics, with the usual campsite mark-up. We were very grateful to have a hire car so we could stock up more cheaply, and it also meant we saved money by not needing to eat out as much. (Though it was a shame that we didn't manage a meal on the campsite restaurant as it did look very nice indeed.) Internacional de Calonge is listed by Eurocamp as a "car optional" site, but I don't think it is at this time of year - the local bus services weren't all quite up and running, the campsite was not yet organising any excursions, and transfers from the airports only take you as far as the larger nearby towns, though taxis would cover the rest. However, if you want a lazy time just on the campsite and the beach, it really is a lovely place to hang out. The beaches are beautiful, and quiet at this time of year. There are a series of sandy coves you can walk between, via tunnels, cliff paths, bridges and steps (although the path in one direction has - at the time of writing - collapsed into the sea). The sea is quite wild as it crashes against the numerous rocks, but it is the most stunning shade of turquoise, and so clear. There was a heady scent of honeysuckle at the top of the steps down to the beach.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beach near the campsite</td></tr>
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The sea was unfortunately colder than the unheated campsite pools, which was saying something. But we hadn't really been expecting to swim. Some English guests braved the pools most days - but never for very long. The Spanish stayed wrapped up in their coats - it probably felt like Northumberland in January to them. For us the Costa Brava felt blissfully warm after our long Siberian winter. It was a delight to sense the sun on our faces as we read about all the rain falling at home.<br />
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My husband was still recuperating to some extent, so we kept our excursions fairly local. Some families did go as far as Barcelona, but we decided, having spent a week there a few years ago, to leave that this time, as a daytrip just sounded too exhausting. There is just too much to see to fit into a few hours, and there didn't seem to be an easy or cheap way to get there. Trains are expensive - and there was no station nearby. And driving into a big city on four-lane highways is not really our thing.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barcelona in 2009</td></tr>
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We had also visited Girona before so again didn't return, not being able to recall too many things that would interest a young child, gorgeous though the city is - and a definite must-see if you have never been.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Girona in 2009</td></tr>
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We did make it to Figueres, to see the stupendous Salvador Dali museum, which didn't disappoint. Our daughter usually has bad form in world-class art galleries, but this one she loved, as it is so utterly bonkers. It wasn't too crowded either. The drive there from the campsite was straightforward on quiet roads, although finding a car park was as stressful as ever, even though there turned out to be one very handily placed for the museums. We whiled away a couple of hours before seeking out tapas in the main square at the aptly but groanworthily named "Dali-catessen".<br />
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On the way back we stopped at Empuries, a Greek and Roman archeological site overlooking the sea at the lower end of the Bay of Roses. It's a huge place - and they have barely excavated a quarter of what is there. We were a bit tired to do it justice, but it does offer an excellent audio tour, including a special one for children. There are some incredible mosaics to see, as well as a hypocaust and the remains of several houses, shops, stores, statues and and a (partially reconstructed) Roman forum.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Empuries and the Bay of Roses</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mosaic floors</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reconstructed Roman forum</td></tr>
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The two nearest towns to the campsite are Palamos and Platja d'Aro. Both are big resorts, and we didn't spend long in either, mostly just passing through. But Platja d'Aro had an older quarter (Castell d'Aro) inland, with a castle, church, art gallery and museum, but all were closed for siesta at the time we chose to visit. The doll museum mentioned by Eurocamp in its area guide appears to have shut down altogether. But there were flowers and colourful tiles brightening up the houses, and trees saturated with lemons. Sant Feliu de Guixols, the next town down from Platja d'Aro, was also pleasant with a few grand edifices from times gone by along the seafront.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Platja d'Aro</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Palamos from the campsite</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Castell d'Aro</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sundial</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Citrus</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8qiyN2aBumA/WstCZiib7bI/AAAAAAAAEoM/Uv2glFqkR3M5kcZQMxVmUea9h8tyop9kwCLcBGAs/s1600/P1060667.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8qiyN2aBumA/WstCZiib7bI/AAAAAAAAEoM/Uv2glFqkR3M5kcZQMxVmUea9h8tyop9kwCLcBGAs/s320/P1060667.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Feliu de Guixols</td></tr>
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We also went to two beautiful medieval hill towns - Pals and Begur, which afforded fabulous views of the coast and distant snow-capped Pyrenees, and had several nice restaurants, quirky shops and galleries.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pals</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pyrenees</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bay of Roses</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Begur castle</td></tr>
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One afternoon we went to the botanical gardens at Cap Roig. It wasn't far from the campsite, but only as the crow flies. To drive there took a rather circuitous route via Palafrugell. But the gardens were quite wonderful. Steep again, but with views to die for (though our teenage seven year old declared them "boring" as "it's just sea" while rolling her eyes and unable to be persuaded to walk down to the rather fine-looking play area). The gardens didn't have many flowers in bloom yet, but there were plenty of palm trees and cacti, and orange and yellow butterflies flitting around us. The castle in the grounds was undergoing renovation so I don't know what there is to see inside.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"It's just sea..."</td></tr>
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These were certainly interesting times in Catalonia - with the independence referendum having been declared illegal by the government in Madrid and several key politicians recently imprisoned, there were yellow ribbons everywhere, attached to trees and buildings, to show the population's solidarity with their state government. Villages declared themselves to be "part of the independent republic of Catalonia" and "Som republica" was emblazoned across nearly every road bridge. I don't know how they will resolve this difficult situation but it's not hard to see why the Catalan people are so fiercely proud of this beautiful region.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Free political prisoners"</td></tr>
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The end of the holiday was tough as I had foolishly booked us on the 6.40am flight from Girona to Leeds Bradford. Our daughter's sore throat had turned into a manky cough which made it hard for her to sleep and consequently very tired. So getting up at 3am with barely a minute's rest beforehand was frankly not great. We also had to leave the car outside the campsite as the security barriers are locked between midnight and 7am, which was a complication we could have done without, as we then had to carry our luggage down the mountain. We had been advised not to leave anything in the car as one had been broken into recently - although there was actually a night guard in sight of where we left the vehicle. Anyway, the long plod downhill in the dark with our suitcases was another reason to be glad we had travelled light. It was surprisingly foggy driving back to Girona, and hard to navigate our way round the airport as a result. We could barely see the car hire office. It wasn't open that early anyway, so we then had to walk to the terminal as there was no shuttle in operation. We will know for next time and get a later flight if possible.<br />
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For we are confident there will be a next time. We loved the campsite, even if it was quieter than some we have been to in recent years, simply for the views and peaceful atmosphere. It may of course be a different story in the height of summer when all the tent pitches are open and all the motorhomes descend. It must be a nightmare manoeuvring large caravans around the terraces and slopes. But for being busier there would be more in the way of entertainment and it would be easier to entertain older children. Our daughter is suddenly at an age where she is more particular about play areas, and the ones at Internacional were definitely aimed at younger kids. However, if she was at the pirate ship with the girls next door then all was well. In summer the catering outlet would be open up there too and that would make it feel like more was happening. It was a shame that you couldn't really use the pools (one advantage of holidaying in France over Spain or Italy is that they heat outdoor pools so you can use them comfortably(ish) all season). And the pools weren't anything like as spectacular as the complexes you get at the larger campsites. That said, there is a big aquapark with slides just a couple of miles up the road, though this doesn't open until June. The other sports facilities were fine, but there was only one of each sort of pitch/court so they would easily get full, and Eurocamp had little in the way of equipment to loan out (though you could also rent tennis racquets etc from the main campsite reception). Eurocamp were also rather void of any games or beach toys to borrow - last year the campsite we visited in France had loads, which is helpful when you have flown and can't take a car full of luggage. Of course it may just be that everything had already been borrowed by the time we got there, but nothing appeared back later in the week when most people had moved on. But for the price we paid for the week (about £300) we really can't complain about anything.<br />
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We were glad to have booked the Avant as they had by far the best location on the whole campsite - the cheaper Eurocamp accommodation was not nearly as well situated and the mobile homes seemed quite close together. They had no view to speak of, only of other caravans.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our last trip to the beach</td></tr>
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The Costa Brava is stunning, and we would love to see more of it. But for now we are so glad that we got to go on our main holiday of the year after all, and once we had recovered from the early start on the final day, we all felt much better and refreshed from our travels. After such a long winter and delay to spring, I fear I may have gone mad stuck in York watching the torrential rain drown our city over Easter. The floods rose and the Ouse threatened our park and street once again. The only saving grace to our return was that the city's daffodils were finally in bloom.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-60437132693290495282018-03-20T05:10:00.001-07:002018-03-20T05:19:26.558-07:00Location Location Location (2)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bishy Road bunting</td></tr>
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Phil and Kirstie came to town last year, and the episode featuring househunters in York was finally broadcast on Thursday night, just a few days before York was declared The Times newspaper's' best city to live in the UK. Excellent timing.<br />
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One couple were out and about with Phil on our beloved local high street, Bishy Road, and the other were with Kirstie in more outlying suburbs. Kingsway North, for example. And Acomb-Foxwood borders. Those in the know will know what I mean. The second couple (who seemed to have the energy to renovate an old lady house despite expecting a baby so must therefore be much younger than me) were actually friends of friends. That's just how York is - everybody knows everybody else via somebody else. Always and without exception.<br />
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So here were the first couple, relocating back to York from Stoke Newington in London. A very similar move to my husband and me, over a decade ago now, leaving our beloved Crouch End in search of a spare bedroom or three, off-street parking and a garden. We quickly realised that the latter two weren't going to be possible amongst the Victorian terraces of York's Southbank either, but we could at least get a four-bedroom house for less money than we sold our one-bedroom London flat for. Bishy Road wasn't nearly as trendy when we moved here (how could it be, when we weren't yet in residence?) - the shops were practical (greengrocer, butcher, baker, hardware store (AKA candlestick maker), florist) and all we needed, but there weren't any cafes other than a greasy spoon and a couple of curry houses. The Sicilian gelateria was a Bargain Booze. The Pig and Pastry was an empty shell. The Angel on the Green was a bike shop. Fine dining was an option at Melton's on Scarcroft Road, but it was a stark contrast to the other culinary fare on offer. But gradually, things have changed. The Tour de France passing through helped put us on the map, then a couple of years ago the street won "Great British High Street of the Year". It's nice that we got in on the Bishy Road property ladder while we still could, because prices have shot up and I am not sure we could have stretched even our London budget that far now.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Rowntree Park Reading Cafe</td></tr>
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Our London couple certainly found that they couldn't. After a stroll past Costcutter, a coffee outside Trinacria and a chat with Phil in the Reading Cafe in Rowntree Park, they had a token look at a student rental on Anne Street that would have needed substantial renovation costs, before having to go further afield. They ended up buying a perfectly lovely house in Holgate, but with none of our wonderful community atmosphere on the doorstep. Kirstie (before finding her next wall to knock down) was very scathing about the need for cafes in your neighbourhood once you start a family. And she seems more obsessed than ever about couples getting ready to have children. But actually, cafe culture is alive and well on Bishy Road for families with kids. It might be hard work to get a pram in and out of the Pig and Pastry, but every establishment without exception welcomes our offspring and has something on their menu they will enjoy, whether it's the Pig's waffles with fruit and maple syrup, Trinacria's blackberry ice cream or the spring rolls in Rice Style. And the Reading Cafe has a children's book section, regular craft sessions in school holidays, and Lego Fridays. These places are our saviours and help us regain our human-ness (if not our humanity) when dealing with toddlers.<br />
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The classic Location "get them drunk and show them a cheeky offer" estate agent phonecall took place in the sunny grounds of the Principal Hotel and - sigh - York really did look lovely last summer. I had forgotten. It's been so long. I am desperate for the greenery to return to end this never-ending winter. The daffodils along the city walls are long overdue. Normally they are ablaze with colour by now. The snow would have been welcome at Christmas, but not in March. That bitter wind blowing in from Siberia every time the Beast from the East strikes makes it impossible to go and play in the white stuff anyway. I am done with being cold.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What March should look like</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VSbZDVO4fKE/WrD5MNlazLI/AAAAAAAAEnU/A94PJWVNbqMyZGTpylkS8-Lf6ucI6OWYACLcBGAs/s1600/28276427_10156220115818033_8566055684234974883_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VSbZDVO4fKE/WrD5MNlazLI/AAAAAAAAEnU/A94PJWVNbqMyZGTpylkS8-Lf6ucI6OWYACLcBGAs/s320/28276427_10156220115818033_8566055684234974883_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What March looks like this year</td></tr>
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<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-50368248971621263732018-02-08T08:17:00.001-08:002018-02-09T02:18:52.834-08:00Frasier<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pioneer Square, somewhere near Cafe Nervosa</td></tr>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
"Go ahead, caller. I'm listening."</blockquote>
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I love <i>Frasier</i>, and it was with great sadness that I learned of the death of John Mahoney this week, at the age of 77. Which - if nothing else - means that Martin Crane must have been pretty young when Frasier and Niles were born.<br />
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My husband and I have been known to watch <i>Frasier </i>box sets on a continuous loop, though it's been a while (post-child) since we found the time. Nonetheless we've seen each episode so many times that you'd think we'd know the scripts by heart, but actually the language is so nuanced that it's difficult to quote it precisely. I think you don't appreciate just how rich the vocabulary is until you see it written down.<br />
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Which I used to do for a living. It was always the greatest day of my working life when I was given an episode of <i>Frasier</i> to subtitle for broadcast on Channel 4. It made all those <i>Countdowns </i>and <i>15 to 1s</i> and <i>Jobfinders </i>and <i>Ready Steady Cooks </i>and late-night motor racing and porn-in-all-but-name shows worthwhile. <i>Frasier </i>- along with <i>Friends</i> - was highly sought after, if not the most fought-over programme on our schedule. I probably did about three episodes in total, but one of my subtitling friends always argues that it was more.<br />
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It was always difficult to do <i>Frasier</i> justice. Unlike American closed captioning, British subtitles on terrestrial television in the late 90s/early 2000s had to stick to a strict reading speed, which meant losing about a third of the text while keeping the style, so that deaf viewers would have a similar experience to hearing viewers. This was actually a pretty skilled job if you had decent material to work with. Channel 4 subtitling style also did things differently to BBC subtitling style. Channel 4 positioned Teletext subtitles below wherever speakers were on screen (not helpful if they moved) and each subtitle appeared individually for each speaker whenever the speaker started talking (although you could hold - or cumulate - up to four lines of dialogue on screen at the same time). The BBC used big blocks of text where more than one speaker's words would appear at the same time. All of these style points, plus the fact that you had to bring a subtitle off 5 frames before a camera shot change, added extra complications into the mix, and made us think. It breaks my heart to see what subtitling has become as costs have been slashed over the years - now it's mostly done by voice recognition software and freelance subtitlers are so badly paid that they have to work at tremendous speed in order to guarantee a certain income, meaning that editing and subtitling style have gone out the window and everything is now often just bashed out verbatim. But I don't know if it's only the people who devoted hours and years of their lives to doing the work that will have noticed the difference and the reduction in quality.<br />
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But anyway, our <i>Frasier </i>subtitles were <i>good, </i>and done with love. I am assuming that our subtitles are still used on the morning repeats on Channel 4, even if the company I worked for has long since ceased trading. If I weren't so busy trying to persuade my daughter to put her shoes on, I'd take a look and check.<br />
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Timing <i>Frasier</i>'s subtitles was hard as the banter was quick and you had to make sure you didn't bring the punchline in early. You also couldn't leave out words like "frittata" , "festoon" or "jejune" without the Crane brothers losing their characteristic pomposity. You had to be careful not to misspell the name of a particularly fine French wine or highbrow Seattle restaurant. I once spent half an hour trying to work out how to bring in Daphne's line "Who has 12 people over for pudding?" at the bottom of a long monologue without breaking all the rules in the book. In the end, I used a single-person cumulative, which I had never done before, never did again, and definitely broke at least one rule. It was very effective, but I can hear those in the know sucking in their teeth at the very thought of it.<br />
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It was also really hard to fit your subtitling credit around the theme tune, which had to be subtitled in full and in synch with the lyrics. You sometimes got a fleeting break to insert the credit mid-song (between the "Ha ha ha ha!" and "tossed salad and scrambled eggs"), depending on which version they were using, otherwise you had to squeeze it in between the "Good night" and the Paramount logo, but not if Kelsey Grammer had included the alternative lines "Good night, Seattle, we love you" or "Frasier has left the building", which then didn't leave you the two seconds you needed. This was very important, you understand. For we wanted our names all over <i>Frasier</i>. As much as you'd want your name all over Frasier's apartment lease if you lived in Seattle.<br />
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Frasier and Niles were the two characters most people focus on, with their angst, rivalry, cultural snobbery, social climbing and romantic ineptitude. Then there was quirky physiotherapist and love of Niles' life Daphne, who had the world's worst Mancunian accent until her brother Simon turned up in Seattle. There was Frasier's monstrous agent Bebe, KACL's supercilious restaurant critic Gil, sassy Roz and oafish sports reporter Bulldog, whose lines are so much easier to remember ("This stinks! This is total BS!"). There were guest appearances from ice queen Lilith, former bar staff from <i>Cheers</i>, and celebrity callers. Maris remained forever off-screen. But Martin was at the centre of it all, a character so much more complex than the Crane brothers gave him justice for. He had all the moral decency and true life experience, and knew how to call a spade a spade. This was mostly used for laughs ("What am I speaking, Swahili?" "Hi, Marty Crane. I don't believe we've met.") but the wonderful acting of John Mahoney made him tender and caring and intelligent at all the right moments. His touching performances could bring a tear to your eye. You can see just why Niles and Frasier's academic mother fell for a straight-talking cop. Because the gruff man sitting drinking Ballantines on that terrible '70s chair was sympathetic and funny and just so perfectly sweet.<br />
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I was lucky enough to see John Mahoney on stage in London, performing in the David Mamet farce <i>Romance </i>at the Almeida theatre in Islington in 2005. I'd have loved to see him do <i>Art </i>on Broadway<i> </i>with Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce, but this came a pretty close second. John Mahoney played a pill-popping judge who lost his mind (and most of his clothes) as a court case proceeded. Mamet's more subtle arguments on the portrayal of prejudice and lawyers and anti-Semitism were probably lost on me and anyway have faded with time, particularly as the world has now gone far madder than anything Mamet could have put in the script. My overriding memory is of Mahoney slumped in a vest up on the bench at the back of the stage. And of him coming back on stage after the curtain had come down to ask us to donate money to a cause which I now forget. He had that Marty Crane twinkle in his eye as he thanked us all for being a wonderful audience. A truly lovely man.<br />
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And many years ago, before <i>Frasier </i>was a thing, I went to Seattle. I really liked it there, mostly because of its very English weather of almost constant rain. Seattle's cooler maritime climate came as a relief at the end of a long (rail)road trip to California, where the temperature had been 104 degrees in the shade. My hosts lived on Bremerton Island, which meant we had to take a boat across Puget Sound to get into the city centre, which probably makes for one of the best commutes in the world.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view of downtown from Puget Sound, and Elliott Bay from the ferry</td></tr>
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We drove out past the jumbos in the Boeing factory along the freeway to Mount Rainier National Park, where we saw a family of black bears playing in the long grass and Indian paintbrush. We then continued on to Mount St Helens to see what Mount Rainier would look like if it blew itself to smithereens. It was nine years post eruption and the landscape was still decimated for miles around - the trees charred and uprooted and the lake shores covered in ash. We spent quite a lot of time on the campus of the University of Washington (U-dub), whose buildings were seemingly modelled on Oxbridge architecture. My boyfriend at the time was hoping to do postgraduate study in psychology there. The Cranes must have had a word with the admissions tutors, though, because as far as I am aware, he didn't get in.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mount Rainier</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mount St Helens</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tree and ash filled lake</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">University of Washington campus</td></tr>
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We ate lunch in Pike Place market. There was grunge music, tie dye clothing and the strong scent of coffee. We also took the monorail from Westlake out to the Space Needle, but for some reason I have no photos of it up close, only one taken from the ferry, miles away. You can see it, just. The one famous Seattle landmark, featured in the view from that magnificent apartment in Elliott Bay Towers, and I neglected to record it properly for posterity or any future blogging. But then back in 1992, when I was in Seattle, blogging didn't exist.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not as good a view of the Space Needle as the one from Frasier's pad</td></tr>
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Anyway, Quite. Stylish. Good night, Marty, we love you.<br />
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PS My husband rightfully pointed out that there was a glaring omission in my list of regular characters. I guess - unlike the rest of the scripts - there are only so many ways you can subtitle "Woof"...Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-44119581790220484952018-02-01T06:03:00.002-08:002018-02-01T06:03:41.934-08:00Britain's Favourite Walks: Top 100This was a rapid countdown of something you should actually take time over; definitely more of a sprint than a ramble. The whole point of walking is that you don't get there quickly. You savour the view. But this programme didn't do that. For most of the 100 walks you got a brief voiceover, a red outline on a map and a fleeting shot of drone footage. And then - whoosh! - you were off to the other end of the country and the next walk on the list. There wasn't even time to scribble down the start and end points. Surely the 100 walks could have been spread over two or three programmes? Maybe ITV didn't trust its viewers to be interested enough in hiking to warrant devoting more than a single evening to it. But anyway, at least <a href="https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/getoutside/itvs-britains-100-favourite-walks/">the list is now there on the Ordnance Survey website </a>for you to spend as much time and effort on as you wish.<br />
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The programme was presented by Britain's most annoying walker, Julia Bradbury, queen of the stupid question and not listening to the answer. She of the super robotic fitness, perfect hair, large watch and immaculate hiking gear. All right, I admit that I may be a tiny bit jealous. For I'm the one barely able to draw breath as I plod up the slightest incline, and I like to feel among friends in the rambling community. I bet Julia Bradbury's children don't moan as much on country walks as mine either. Our daughter's unbearable whining is the main contributing factor to my lack of hiking shape. Julia's fellow presenter and Strictly winner Ore Oduba came across as far more human and smiley-friendly, but he didn't feature nearly enough in the half of the show that I watched. His kid isn't old enough to have started moaning yet, by the way.<br />
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The programme did slow down a bit as you reached the top 10. And you met some pretty amazing hikers - the quadruple amputee, who lost his hands and feet after getting frostbite in an accident in the Alps, now climbing Snowdon in some slightly tactless snow. The guy with Alzheimer's who climbs Coniston Old Man over and over again to stave off the memory loss and disorientation that the disease brings. And the lady with vertigo who huffed and puffed her way along three miles of Hadrian's Wall, just because she reminded me of me.<br />
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I was pleased to see how many of the walks I had at least done a part of, though there were plenty on the list I've not yet attempted, from the biggies like Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike to the longies like the Coast to Coast, Ridgeway and the West Highland Way, or even the shorties in places like the Peak District, Malvern Hills and Northern Ireland, where I have barely managed to spend any time at all.<br />
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As for the winner, Helvellyn, it was clearly a surprise to the programme makers. Because it's a bloody hard mountain to climb, although it has its easier and trickier options. But Helvellyn is certainly what I would class as my own "most memorable" walk. As an eight-year-old, for some reason I became obsessed with Striding Edge, one of two serious ridges that lead to the summit. It must have been my dad who told me about Striding Edge, the fool or overenthusiastic Cumbrian mountaineer, depending on your point of view. Anyway, I wanted to see it so badly and climb and conquer it myself. So during one of our frequent visits to Grasmere, my dad and grandfather happily offered to take me up Helvellyn via Striding Edge. What on earth were they thinking? I didn't know as much about my grandfather then as I do now. Back then he was still a few peaks short of completing all the British hills over 2000 feet (I realise this scans like "few sandwiches short of a picnic") and was still busy working in his hiking shop and running his holiday cottages. I didn't know then that he had nearly killed my grandmother several times on hikes in their youth, most notably crawling along the ridge of Aonach Egach in a storm.<br />
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And Striding Edge was to be my Aonach Egach, only - as I was only eight - without the fear factor. We set off from Glenridding, and the first bit of the walk was a long but uneventful trudge. There was plenty of cloud above us, but the visibility was good enough. We sat and ate our sandwiches beside Red Tarn before the big ascent up to Striding Edge. And then within an instant, the bad weather hit. The gale force struck as high as my age, completely whipping our breath away, as well as ripping a five pound note out of my father's pocket, which in 1981 was quite a considerable loss to a frugal Dodgson. The mist became thick and impenetrable, swirling around us and entirely destroying the view. We could barely see more than a metre in front of us. On top of a knife-edge ridge, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you can't see how far you have to fall. My grandfather, however, quickly realised that he had a scrappy little kid with him who would not be safe on that knife-edge, so we went down a few metres and started to walk along the path that goes below but alongside the actual ridge. At first this wasn't so bad as we had dropped down out of the wind, which was buffeting against the other side of the rocks. But as the expert hiker on the programme warned, walking along the side paths of Striding Edge can actually lead you into more trouble than going along the top. Suddenly, in a gap between the rocks, the path crossed over into the full force of the wind. For all we could see in front of us, it seemed that our only option was to scramble up the sheer rock face of a crag to reach the next stage of the path up to the summit. This was just too dangerous, and we had to retreat. I was so disappointed to have not made it to the top, but even my gung-ho grandfather realised it would have been foolish and completely irresponsible to continue. The visibility was so bad, I have no idea how far along Striding Edge we got or how much further there was to go.<br />
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We re-climbed Helvellyn as a family, minus my grandfather but with the addition of my mum and brother, a couple of years later. This time we took the route from Thirlspot, which avoids all of the daredevil approaches altogether. It was a sunny, uneventful day. The path up from Thirlmere is quite steep and a hard slog, but eventually we reached the top, my little brother assisted by an entire packet of Fox's Glacier Mints. But at least my obsession with Striding Edge had been cured, until we picked <a href="http://www.striding-edge.org/">a ceilidh band with the same name</a> to play at our wedding. But it turned out that they were much safer. There is no way in hell (unless it froze over or indeed "vel-yn..." (fell in, geddit?)) I would go along Striding Edge now. At least our daughter would have to have a personality transplant before she develops a similar obsession.<br />
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As for the other walks in the top 100, here are a few of my other personal highlights:<br />
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1. <b>Cat Bells (number 4 on the list)</b><br />
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I so desperately want to climb Cat Bells again. I was probably younger than our daughter when I first went up it, and I remember loving its bumpy up-and-downness, something I'd probably hate now. Why gain height only to lose it again? But I've heard rumours that there is a cake shop at the top. Some students opened it. Just because every child is told to keep going because there will be a cake shop at the top. And there never was. But now there really is. Talk about cornering the market. Alas for now this is as close as we've got to the top:<br />
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If only the weather in Keswick could always be that good.<br />
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Other Cumbrian walks in the top ten included the circular path round Buttermere (number 7) and the Coffin Route from Ambleside to Grasmere via Rydal (27), which was my grandmother's daily walk to school:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buttermere</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking across to the coffin route from Rydal Water</td></tr>
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2. <b>Snowdon (number 2)</b><br />
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I climbed Snowdon for one of <a href="http://39stepsto40.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/challenge-number-one-climb-snowdon-by.html">my 40 challenges for turning 40</a>. Only we went on a train with a screaming toddler in tow who chose that moment (despite 3,000 previous trips to the National Railway Museum) that she hated steam engines. The actual summit was shrouded in cloud, but the views up until that point had been incredible.<br />
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3. <b>Solva to St David's (number 16)</b><br />
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We went to Pembrokeshire when our daughter was two and three quarters, and fell in love with its coastal path. For it is exhilaratingly beautiful. Our holiday cottage was just a few hundred yards from the route, where it passed through a smugglers' cove before re-ascending the cliffs. We took turns in the long June evenings, once our daughter was in bed, to go out and walk as far as we dared before nightfall. We resolved to one day to do the whole walk, but we're still a long way from achieving that goal. We've never been able to face the long drive back to south Wales for starters. I mean, just how many "Are we nearly there yet?"s can you fit into a single stretch of the A487?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St David's</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aberfelin</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wildflowers on the coastal path</td></tr>
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Another Welsh walk was the canal at Llangollen (60), where the boats are still pulled along by horses:<br />
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and the coastal path around Anglesey (32):<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Menai Strait</td></tr>
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4. <b>Craster to Dunstanburgh Castle (number 9)</b><br />
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We love Northumberland. The first time I did this walk, I had left a very sunny Newcastle with a craving for the sea, only to find the sea vanished into fret when we reached the coast. We walked right past Dunstanburgh castle without seeing it, uttering the classic line "Well, it has to be around here somewhere...." Honestly, it was so near to us, standing beside the golf course at Embleton Sands, that we could have touched it.<br />
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Thankfully, the next two times I went, the view was clear. And what a view. Kippers in a restaurant at Craster are always the end to a perfect day.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Embleton Sands</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Craster harbour</td></tr>
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Other Northumberland walks on the list featured Kielder Water (59) and the St Cuthbert's Way to Lindisfarne and Holy Island (51):<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kielder</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holy Island</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lindisfarne</td></tr>
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5. <b>Whitby to Robin Hood's Bay (number 17)</b><br />
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I first did this walk with the University of York Outdoor Society, who organised hiking trips every Saturday morning. Mostly I failed to negotiate my way out of bed in time to join them, but very occasionally, I succeeded, and this particular time I was very glad to have made the effort. It was a glorious hike. On this trip I made a good friend, a funny, kind but troubled soul who a decade after we graduated chose to end her life by stepping in front of a train on the line between Coventry and Birmingham. This was unbearable, but I always remember her now in happier times whenever we go as a family to the Yorkshire Coast. We visit Whitby several times a year, in winter bleakness and summer crowds. Prowled by goths and vampires, fed by fishermen, departed by explorers, it has the steepest steps and the best chippies and Christmas trees in the country.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Finally now re-open after the fire last year</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christmas tree festival, St Mary's Church</td></tr>
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Robin Hood's Bay we don't go to nearly enough, usually because the car park is full by the time we arrive. We are certainly owed a fossil hunt or two on its beaches.<br />
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Other Yorkshire walks included Grosmont to Goathland (39), which we have also only done by steam train (since our daughter doesn't mind them so much now):<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">North York Moors Railway</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hogsmeade Station</td></tr>
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and Brimham Rocks (49), which my brother and I loved as kids. And now our daughter does too. Some may climb them but she imagines the rocks as houses with uncomfortable furnishings. The tea parties are long and tedious.<br />
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There was also Bempton Cliffs (50), home of thousands of seabirds and where I swallowed a piece of plastic fork:<br />
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and Richmond to Reeth (54):<br />
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and Grassington (61), where I have mostly frequented tea shops:<br />
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and finally, Gordale Scar and Malham Cove (3), which is about as spectacular a walk as you can do in the Yorkshire Dales, if not anywhere in the world. Unfortunately I haven't done it since I got a phone with a half-decent camera:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Malham Cove</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We have a photo of my brother aged two standing in this sheep run</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gordale Scar</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Janet's Foss</td></tr>
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6. <b>Arthur's Seat (number 43)</b><br />
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It's the best free thing to do in Edinburgh, although the National Museum of Scotland comes a pretty close second. The extinct volcano looms over Holyrood and the Royal Mile. That said, the only time I have climbed right to the top was with a colossal hangover after a wedding and - really lazily - we even took a taxi to the start of the walk. We haven't yet attempted to drag our daughter up it but will rectify this on our next trip.<br />
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Other walks in Scotland of course included Glen Coe to Fort William (number 14):<br />
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7. <b>Norfolk</b><br />
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There were some delightful walks in Norfolk, including Wells-next-to-the-Sea (42) and Blakeney Point (68), timeless places to go crabbing and spot seals:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seals at Wells next to the Sea</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blakeney</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blakeney</td></tr>
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8. <b>South East England and London Walks</b><br />
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My husband and I used to go walking nearly every single weekend when we lived in Earlsfield, South London. Our proximity to Clapham Junction meant that we could hop on a train and be in the depths of Surrey, Kent or Sussex in no time. We worked our way through the <i>Time Out Book of Country Walks</i>, which took in parts of the South Downs Way (13), and the Devil's Punchbowl (76). Occasionally we headed north to check out routes in Buckinghamshire like the Ridgeway (46) and the woods around Great Missenden (75), but the countryside was never as interesting as it was south of the city. For me, Buckinghamshire was too like the boring rolling farmers' fields of rape seed in Hertfordshire that surrounded my hometown. But perhaps I do it an injustice.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our London walking bible</td></tr>
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We also did parts of the Thames Path (63), though technically so does anyone who walks along the river in London, and the Regents' Canal Walk (number 90) through Little Venice and London Zoo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hampton Court</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tower Bridge</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London Zoo aviary</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Little Venice</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Little Venice</td></tr>
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For some reason, the Capital Ring, our very favourite London walk of all, and the only long-distance route I have ever walked in its entirety, did not get a mention, although a stretch of it did feature - through the deer haunt and London's lungs of ancient Richmond Park (98).<br />
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I think walking kept us sane in London: after long days of commuting and offices and fumes from pollution, we craved fresh air and a taste of country life. And it was the love of walking that fuelled our desire to move away and live somewhere surrounded by beautiful landscape. And Yorkshire certainly has that in spades. We are also both so lucky to have family in the Lake District, meaning we can visit those glorious fells whenever we like. It is no wonder that the top 10 featured so many walks in Cumbria. And we can't get our daughter to go on a single bloody one of them.<br />
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So where do you like to roam? What is your favourite walk, either on or off the list?Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-46420310166388059792018-01-24T08:36:00.000-08:002018-01-24T08:36:10.477-08:00GirlfriendsThis is painting by numbers for menopausal ladies - 1: Hot flushes, 2: Senior Moments, 3: Grey hair, 4: Wrinkles, 5: Divorce, 6: Grandchildren, 7: Wayward Children, 8: Musing on What Might Have Been, leading to 9: Trying to Recapture A Misspent Youth and 10: Feeling Old, possibly leading to 11: Being Told You Are Too Old by the New Bright Young Thing On The Block. Just splash on the concealer liberally then forget to rub it in.<br />
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Disclaimer: most of this was written after the first two episodes, so it's now kind of out of date. Arse. Been busy.<br />
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There has been obvious dumbing down for the anticipated ITV audience. "This is what sexism means." "This is what ageism means." "This is what being gay means." "This is how gay people have children... Yes, they CAN do that." "Here is a view of York Minster just in case you didn't hear the word York. Because yes, we are in York." Poor Kay Mellor - I would love to see what she originally wrote, because I know she can do things (like <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/love-lies-and-records.html">Love, Lies And Records</a></i>) slightly more subtly than this.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Minster view</td></tr>
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But despite all the cliches making my eyes roll, it does have a brilliant cast, who make light work (albeit with slightly randomised northern accents) of a plodding, inconsistent and stating-the-obvious script that is really trying to fit an awful lot in to a one-hour slot. Miranda Richardson plays Sue, Zoe Wanamaker is Gail, and Phyllis Logan is Linda. And that homeless bloke from <i>Rev</i>. plays Micky, who gets killed off in the opening moments, leaving questions unanswered other than "How desperate for a stage career must you be to take a job in the P&O Ferries cabaret?" I know this was technically meant to be a swanky cruise ship, but I don't think they sail from Hull. Anyway, over his cabin balcony Micky goes - the perils of the North Sea. But did he jump, did he fall or was he pushed? The family, the insurance company and the police all need to know, as Micky seems to have left a trail of debt and a mystery woman behind him. His rapid drunken demise struck me as rather a waste of another fine actor, which makes me wonder if he shall return to haunt the leading ladies. (Ah, yes - just watched episode three...)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the real North Sea you only get a porthole in your cabin, never a balcony</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trust me, it's the only way to get through the kids Disney cabaret...</td></tr>
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The other burning question is how do they manage to get from Leeds to York and back again so quickly? Sue is the only one who seems to have a decent car, and she crashes that outside the sexual health clinic on Monkgate quite early on, before parking it illegally at the bottom of Stonegate. Unless it's by committing further traffic offences, how are they so immune to the daily jams that block the A64? (Them and the taxi drivers Sue uses after she finally gets her car towed.)<br />
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And it's not just the driving that has poor continuity - so do the characters. And you can spot this even if you don't live in York. Sue's seemingly supportive, content and carefree son suddenly turns on her at her birthday party to unleash a load of repressed issues that he blames entirely on her. Sue's total shit of a boss and part-time lover John tells her she is a waste of space and needs to move out of her penthouse (in response to which she throws a jug of mojitos over him in the Cosy Club on Fossgate), but he is then surprised to find her packing her bags in the flat the following morning. And she, oddly, seems pleased to see him, albeit briefly. Until the estate agent turns up.<br />
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Sue is features editor for the bridal magazine John owns, until he sacks her (or rather offers her a euphemistic "consultancy role") because she wrote an article about second marriages, which he claims doesn't build on the hopeful dream of marriage that the youth of today still have. They only want to think about first time around, not the possibility of second.<br />
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Yet all around Sue are middle-aged women looking for love. Herself included, though she seems to have finally dumped John, who doesn't want to know their son. Gail hankers after her ex, a driving instructor who (bit of a running theme here) hates her son. Micky's mystery lady was clearly after something. (Ah - episode three: turns out she's just bonkers and kills cats for fun.) Sue's mum is getting married to her long-term partner. However, Sue's stance against ageism doesn't extend to her own mother when she hears this. "Gross", Sue snips dismissively.<br />
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Sue should set up her own bridal magazine for the ladies of a certain age that she has become - it sounds like a good money spinner. (Episode four, maybe?) After all, tastes change within the same dream. Strapless skinny bridal gowns just don't sit right on someone over 40. Plus you have different priorities as you age. For example, I am now much more interested in articles about switching child trust funds to Junior ISAs in <i>Woman and Home</i> than ones guaranteeing orgasms in <i>Cosmopolitan</i>.<br />
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Sue's magazine just needs a honeymoon travel section with articles about Thailand so that Gail's son can mug up a bit more the next time he comes out of prison pretending to have been running a timeshare business "somewhere in the middle bit". That's if he gets let out again, having overshot his curfew by having sex with Linda's daughter. (Oh, there he is on the sofa in episode three - that was a quick spell inside.)<br />
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I am not sure how things will pan out. Who is telling the truth, Linda or mystery dress agency woman? (Ah, it's Linda - episode three.) Will lollipop lady Gail help the love of her life to cross the road, or will she go back to the ex before the decree nisi becomes absolute? Will Sue be allowed to babysit for the house of gay couples or is there just too much gin around for her to be trusted? Will Andrew get his anti-ageism day in court with "doesn't want to know" dad John? Will the ladies reform the band that protested at Greenham and performed at Linda and Micky's wedding? Will Gail's mother make another run for Scarborough in her nightie? Will Linda ever understand financial matters? Will Linda and Sue perform Morecambe and Wise sketches in bed? Will Gail get rid of her grandson's nits? (Oh, he got kidnapped in episode three.)<br />
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My husband works very near to the Trinity Centre in Leeds, and we've often been there for lunch with our daughter, sadly to overpriced but reliably child friendly chains rather than the pop-up street food that put the shopping mall on the map. Trinity also has several familiar clothes stores, an Everyman cinema, a Lego shop that we do our best to avoid and a glass roof that turns the whole place into a furnace in summer. The three girlfriends are spotted walking through Trinity on their way between the spa that serves the green sludge and the rooftop bar that serves the birthday cocktails, though where that actually is I have no idea.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trinity, Leeds (Photo: David O'Brien)</td></tr>
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I have been with my "girlfriends" a couple of times to the Cosy Club on Fossgate, where Sue makes the "scene" with the mojitos. We got free prosecco on one visit because they were slow to bring out our mains. We'd been so busy nattering that we hadn't even noticed how long our food was taking - but the waiter turned up with a bottle to apologise before we did. My kind of guy.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-802093697263722402018-01-11T11:35:00.002-08:002018-01-11T11:35:56.977-08:00Strictly Come Dancing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Can you believe that we were Strictly novices in our house? Apart from the <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/holiday-of-lifetime-with-len-goodman.html">"my dad nearly being on TV with Len Goodman and Ann Widdecombe" incident</a>, we'd never really encountered it. In our life B.C. (before child) we probably (though not necessarily) had more exciting things to do on a Saturday night than watch telly. In our P.C. (post child) life, during which we watch far too much telly, <i>Strictly </i>always clashed with child bedtime - bath, stories, cuddles, faffing, not going to sleep - so we could never sit down and give it a go.<br />
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But suddenly here we were as a family all willingly watching a TV series together for the first time. It wasn't Netflix or CBBC just being on and annoying in the background while our daughter played with her toys and we slightly more surreptitiously played on our phones. We were all focused and keen and - after a while - obsessed. It started when our daughter heard about Aston and Janette's <i>Trolls </i>dance from a friend at school and asked to watch it on iPlayer. Johnnie Peacock had already piqued Mummy and Daddy's interest in <i>Strictly </i>during an interview on <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-last-leg.html">The Last Leg</a></i>. Then our daughter completely fell in love with him, and we just had to carry on watching. I couldn't be prouder of her first crush, which at one point I was worried would end up being Chase from <i>Paw Patrol</i>. If she brings home nice young men like Johnnie (or nice young women like Oti) in her future years, then all will be happy in our household. Just not so keen on the Alsatians.</div>
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I think our daughter's motivation was partly that it meant she could stay up late and postpone her bedtime faffing on both Saturday and Sunday nights. But how joyful it is watching people learning to dance. And how unexpectedly good some people turn out to be. Like Joe, who eventually won. And Davood. Susan Calman quickstepping with Kevin to Bring Me Sunshine was a personal highlight. Obviously the best dancers were the ones who had already had plenty of training and experience like Alexandra and Debbie, but I can see why they are the ones who struggle to get the votes at times - it's a very British thing to support the underdog.<br />
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Now we realise just how much we have missed over the years - all of Bruce Forsyth's, Len Goodman's, Ed Balls', John Sergeant's, Judy Murray's and yes, even Ann Widdecombe's appearances.</div>
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The timing of our new family obsession was perfect, as our daughter then got the part of a judge in her school play, <i>Lights Camel Action!</i>, which was a sort of <i>Strictly: The Nativity</i>. She played the Innkeeper's Wife, with lines like: "Never mind a bucket of frogs - it was fun, fresh and funky!" and "I loved the bells and watching all you young men leaping around!" Miraculously she learned them all perfectly. The teachers made her watch extra <i>Strictly </i>in class so she could channel her inner Darcey Bussell a little more effectively.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Though with essence of Craig at times...</td></tr>
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Of course Caesar had all the best lines, darlings. The aforementioned bucket of frogs on the camel funk: "Legs, humps and hooves all flying around with no sense of timing." On the tango: "That had all the passion of a wet fish in a paper bag." But he did love the "extension in the arms" in the Angels' Ballet, and as for the Disco Star: "Give me big hair and some glitter and I'm away... "</div>
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It was a fun show and the teachers made their own Strictly dance video to show to parents at the end. So nice to see them still with smiles on their faces after the most interminable of terms.</div>
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Our daughter cried when Johnnie had to go home, insisting that Debbie should have been made to hop on one leg in the dance-off to make it more equal. She kind of had a point, but Johnnie was happy that the judges had made no allowances for his disability. Craig didn't like Johnnie's bum sticking out, and that was that.</div>
Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-50901329594111949062018-01-10T03:44:00.000-08:002019-03-15T04:50:58.710-07:00The Miniaturist<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam</td></tr>
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<i>The Miniaturist </i>is a slightly odd book. My overriding memory is lots of people wandering around crying "sell the sugar!". But there's also hypocritical Puritanism, gay and extra-marital sex, spooky prophecy, childbirth, drowning, racial tolerance and intolerance, and a woman wandering around Amsterdam with a surprising amount of freedom and feistiness considering the repressive age in which she is living. (I have no issue with women being free or feisty; I'm just questioning the historical accuracy of the book's representation of a wife's lot in the Dutch 1680s.)</div>
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But I did enjoy the television adaptation. It looked stunning, with the darkness of a Rembrandt gathering but the brightly coloured dresses of a Vermeer portrait. The performances were beguiling and the plot utterly absorbing, right from the opening moments. The programme began not with the sinister and tragic church funeral of the book, but with the beautiful Nella sailing past windmills on the way to her new marital home on Amsterdam's Herengracht, full of hope and expectation.</div>
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Of course it all then goes horribly wrong. Nella's merchant husband Johannes Brandt is often physically absent and unwilling to engage in any form of passion when he is around. His sister Marin rules the roost with pious coldness. Nella's companion parakeet escapes. Nella then discovers that her husband only has sexual feelings for men, one of whom turns up to murder the family dog. The Brandts' African servant Otto stabs him in self-defence. The owners of the sugar that the Brandts are supposed to be selling, the Meermans, spot Johannes and the dog murderer in a tryst at the docks and report him to the authorities. The dog murderer claims he was attacked by Johannes and that his stab wound proves it. Nella then discovers that Marin is pregnant, and not emotionless at all. Far from it, in fact. Nella believes that the father is Frans Meerman, who had been romantically involved with Marin in her youth. But the father's identity is only revealed once the baby is born with dark skin. Sadly, Marin does not survive the birth's complications. Johannes is sentenced to death by drowning by the court. Otto witnesses this vile punishment and returns to the Brandt house to meet his new daughter and to grieve. </div>
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And all of this is somehow foreseen by the Miniaturist. Johannes gives Nella a cabinet replica of their house as a wedding present, and she seeks someone to furnish it. From Smit's List, the Amsterdam equivalent of the Yellow Pages at the time, she locates a woman who lives at the "Sign of the Sun". Nella requests that she make items like a lute and a box of marzipan, but instead the Miniaturist delivers a child's cradle, calligraphed cryptic messages on folded scraps of paper, and accurate doll figures of everyone in and involved with the family. And there's more - the figure of the family dog acquires a drop of blood shortly before he is murdered. A tiny sugar cone grows mould just as some of the ones in the warehouse are discovered to be rotting in the damp.</div>
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Nella and the Miniaturist did meet briefly on screen at the end, which they don't as far as I recall in the book. This was an attempt to solve some of the mysteries of the text, but we still didn't get all the answers we seek. Just how does the Miniaturist of the title know so much about the families she makes things for? How does she predict the future? Where did she come from, and where does she go? </div>
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And what will become of Nella, Otto and Cornelia and baby Thea after the deaths of Johannes and Marin? How can they make a success of the family firm with such scandal behind them? Will they ever sell that sugar? </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the mouldy sugar cones made it to the Castle Museum in York</td></tr>
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The Dutch scenes were filmed in Leiden, rather than Amsterdam, which makes sense, since Amsterdam is far too busy to be a practical shoot location. You are not really going to get that authentic 17th century feel with hoards of Japanese tourists sailing past in glass Lovers canal cruiseboats and all those distracting shop windows in the seedier parts of town, which bring a whole new meaning to "sign of the Sun". The gabled houses are lower in Leiden, but it's such a wonderful city. We spent a couple of holidays <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/child-friendly-holiday-review-eurocamp.html">camping in nearby Rijnsburg</a>, and loved popping over to stroll along Leiden's waterways, take a boat trip, explore the not insignificant museums, visit the windmills and botanical gardens, or just shop at the Saturday market for cheese, <i>stroopwafel </i>and <i>kibbeling </i>before lunching at one of the many floating cafes along the canals.</div>
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We went back to Amsterdam this summer, while staying with a friend and former colleague of mine in Beverwijk, which is how I finally got to see Nella Oortman's dolls' house in the place that inspired Jessie Burton to write the story. It was the rainiest day imaginable (thankfully the only one in an otherwise glorious week), and the Rijksmuseum was the fourth we had visited that day because it was impossible to do anything outside. We bought annual museum passes which saved us hours of queuing in the deluge. Our return to science centre Nemo had gone down well:</div>
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But the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk less so with our six-year-old philistine. Moan, moan, moan.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Officially "the worst museum in the world"</td></tr>
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So the Rijksmuseum was seriously pushing our luck, even with a promise of pancakes at the end of it. Which possibly explains why our daughter was prepared to give us a maximum of 20 minutes to see the whole museum. And why the snaps of the dolls houses are very blurry - blink and we would have missed them as we hurtled past.</div>
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We also managed to catch glimpses of <i>The Night Watch</i> and the <i>Milkmaid</i>, which have now merged in my mind into images of the Brandt house from this superlative televisual feast. Thankfully the girl was safely in bed during the broadcast so I could watch it with all the time in the world. Nice work, BBC.</div>
Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-49362034534832329432018-01-07T06:21:00.000-08:002018-01-10T03:09:16.128-08:00A House Through Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Have you ever wondered about all the people who lived in your house before you? Who they were, what they did, how long they were there? You may of course already know the answers - you may live in a relatively new house that's only had one set of previous owners (like the house I spent most of my childhood in), or in a house that has been in the same family for generations (like my dad's house in the Lake District, which was first lived in by my great, great grandfather). But generally, it's information a lot of us don't have.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ours for generations</td></tr>
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If you've bought your house, you will normally have met the previous owners to you, though not necessarily. The owner may already have moved out or be an absentee landlord, or the house may be a probate sale owing to its occupant's demise. There may be neighbours around to fill in some of the gaps in information, depending on the friendliness of your street. But however much or little you know about your house's previous occupants, everyone who has lived there before you will have left their mark somehow - their choice of bathroom or kitchen, a scrap of wallpaper several layers below yours, a wall built or knocked down, a forgotten box in the loft, a bush in the garden. Their ghosts live on, though not necessarily in a supernatural sense. For unless you completely gut the place, it will never feel entirely yours.<br />
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<i>A House Through Time</i>, written and presented by social historian David Olusoga, aims to chart the history of a single house, 62 Falkner Street in Liverpool, from its first occupants to the present day. He has gleaned information from archived documents and newspapers. It's an approach a bit like the one used in <i>Who Do You Think You Are?</i>, only without the celebrity starting point. Our starting point is instead a picture of fields, owned by the farmer after whom the street is subsequently named (though with a misspelling). The house was built in 1840, and was originally number 58, its number increasing to 62 as more houses were built piecemeal onto the road. Nowadays, it's a strikingly substantial Georgian-style (because technically it's Victorian) terraced property in what looks like a highly desirable part of town. It may have since lost a lot of its original features and fireplaces, but back in the day it had a drawing room, a maid, bespoke furniture, the works. The house was bought for around £1,000 by its first owner, Richard Glenton - a seemingly lazy and unambitious clerk in the Liverpool docks, which were then at their height. Glenton had lodgers to help him pay the bills on his meagre £50 annual income - the rest of his apparently lavish lifestyle being funded by the "bank of Dad"; a dad who had also got him his clerk's post in an extraordinary level of nepotism apparently quite normal for the time. Once Dad died, leaving his fortune to Richard's unmarried sister, Richard had to sell up and find himself a more humble abode. He sold the house to a couple called the Orrs, who had been in service but ended up the equivalent of millionaires in today's money. The husband, a former butler, worked long hours as the manager of the "newsroom" at an exclusive gentleman's club, overhearing conversations which enabled him to make shrewd financial investments.<br />
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Then the house was owned by Wilfred Steele, a cotton trader who experienced every extreme imaginable in his short life. Boom, bust, battle. He lost two young sons and ended up in a debtor's gaol, yet abandoned two stepdaughters to a miserable fate in a Liverpool workhouse. He benefited from slavery but fought in the American war against it, though the latter was probably for the money rather than the morality of the issue. David Olusoga quite understandably did not take kindly to this man, although many of the facts were speculative rather than pure.<br />
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I am very much looking forward to the next instalment. And the programme makes me want to find out more about our house in York. It was built around 1910, and for many of its recent years was a student rental property, before being sold to our vendors, <a href="http://39stepsto40.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/challenge-number-twelve-get-our-attic.html">who did a lot of crazy renovations, </a>the majority of which we have had neither the luck, skill nor money to undo. We met said previous owners once - they were both academics, and like us, had moved to York from Crouch End in London, which seemed like a good omen. They spent the three months between us viewing the property and completing the sale chain-smoking and cooking greasy dinners, the aromas resulting from which it took us about ten months to eradicate. We never quite got rid of the dirt.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edinburgh nights with Walter Scott</td></tr>
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Our house has a name, Waverley, etched into the glass above the front door. But I have no idea when this was done or why. None of the other houses on the terrace have a name, though they all have the same Victorian tiled hallway floor. Was it Waverley after the Walter Scott novel, the steamship on the Clyde, or the great station at Edinburgh? I do know that the house was already called Waverley 50 years ago, since by chance last summer I met another previous owner. She happened to walk past when I was sitting on our new bench outside in the front yard and stopped to chat. She had bought the house with her husband but when they had two young children found it as impractical as we had with our young toddler, with its steep stairs, narrow rooms and deep draughts. They, unlike us, had got their act together and traded it in for a 1930s semi with a garden a few streets away. Their legacy was to remove a picture etched onto the glass behind the word Waverley, to knock the kitchen through into the toilet outhouse to create a downstairs bathroom, and to board out a storage area under the eaves to install a train set, where we now keep our suitcases and cat carrier.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The place I sit to learn about our house</td></tr>
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Another previous resident turned up mildly stoned on our doorstep one night to say he liked what we had done to the front yard, since it was just a hole in the ground when he lived there. I am not even sure if he had the right house or why he had felt so compelled to knock on the door, though the story of the giant hole makes me wonder if there are more to the suspiciously diagonal cracks in our walls than my husband will ever believe.<br />
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And then there is the story of a certain school administrator who I discovered had a boyfriend who still lived with his parents in our house many years ago. "Ooh, the fun I've had in your lounge!" she merrily told me. Our lounge was his bedroom, as the family rented out the top of the house to lodgers working on the railway. I've never quite felt the same about the four walls surrounding our sofa since.<br />
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Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-16977836390775982112017-12-05T06:25:00.000-08:002018-01-10T03:13:29.394-08:00Howards End<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hidcote, Cotswolds</td></tr>
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I thought, "Do I need to watch this? Because I've seen the film." But it turns out that the film is now 25 years old and the plot I remembered was actually the one for <i>The Remains of the Day </i>(there is a small cast overlap). But I suppose that is at least one step better than remembering it as <i>Howards Way.</i> In fact, it's pretty remarkable - I can't remember the plot of a film I see nowadays for longer than five minutes. I saw <i>The Girl On The Train</i> at the weekend, for example. It was about a girl on a train. She drank a lot. She got confused. And so did I.<br />
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So yes, it turned out I did need to watch <i>Howards End</i>, and I am glad that I did. But a shock similar to the realisation of how long ago the film was made was seeing Matthew McFadyean eligible to play the part of "stuffy old man", when I still like to think of him as "bright young thing". It's a bit like if Ewan McGregor was asked to play Grandpa Joe in <i>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. </i>That hasn't actually happened yet (has it? Renton was still only a mildly craggy middle-aged man in <i>T2, </i>even if he did have a heart attack at the start (don't ask me the rest of the plot - it's been weeks)), but elsewhere Phillip Schofield is a white-haired man fronting <i>This Morning </i>without Gordon the Gopher, and Paul Nicholas and Wayne Sleep are presenting documentaries about retiring. It seems we've all moved on, people. Alas. I've aged, and so have they. (Shopping list item one - reading glasses.)<br />
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Another shock was how little of the plot takes place in Howards End itself. Mr Wilcox struggled with his property portfolio, inadvertently buying an estate in the wrong part of Shropshire, where there were "no grouse to shoot". He didn't seem sure what to do with any of his dwellings or which of them to live in, because there were just so many of them. He couldn't keep track and just let them all slowly decay. A bit like the landlords of the properties either side of us here in York. But then the point of this adaptation did rather seem to be its relevance to now - the class divides of wealth, opportunity and sexual attitudes; the gulf of achievements and expectations between genders; the rich decimating the lives of the poor with no heed of the consequences, like water running off a duck's back; the difficulty of climbing back on the ladder when society dictates that you slide off it; wandering about on top of a cliff edge looking longingly across to Europe.<br />
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The BBC had thrown in some racism for good measure (and Lord knows, there's still plenty of that around today) with servants and partners from ethnic minorities being regarded with a frown beyond the disapproval of all things German that the Schlegel family faced. But I loved the unconventionality of the Schlegels - the assertive sisters with their cosmopolitan tastes, wonderful dress sense and free opinions (which they were able to express, even if Mr Wilcox wasn't listening), and Tibby with his hypochondria, apprentice pipe smoking and eccentric academic foibles such as suddenly sitting down to learn Chinese. I am not sure if he set foot outside during the whole series.<br />
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It was all very subtle, with long scenes and gentle putdowns dismissing great ambitions. So subtle that I didn't even notice that the first Mrs Wilcox was terminally ill, or that Leonard and Helen were supposed to have had sex. The big dramatic climax - the reveal of the illegimate pregnancy, the beating with a sword, the bookcase end of poor Mr Bast - was over in a moment. Then we were back to a slow meadow, reminiscent of that wonderful scene between Lucy and George in <i>A Room With A View</i> where they kiss for the first time in the Tuscan hills (another, even older film). Only this time the love was between two sisters and a child, and for a man who finally understood what it is to honour a legacy, a dying wish, and who had accepted that you cannot act differently to the rules that you dictate to others. There was thunder rumbling in the distance.<br />
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There were many scenes in London. The Wilcox's London apartment was in a block on Kensington Gore opposite the Royal Albert Hall, through a window of which I once saw pornographic material being projected onto a giant screen during an interval at the Proms. I thought the soon-to-be-demolished Georgian terraces of Wickham Place were on that perpetual weekend film set of Lincolns Inn near Holborn but apparently they were in a square in trendy Clerkenwell.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Becky Buckley</td></tr>
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This Howards End, with its gorgeous country garden reminiscent of the one in the opening photograph of this post, was a house near Godalming in Surrey. West Wycombe House in Buckinghamshire stood in for Oniton in Shropshire, but I can't comment on the National Trust's permissions for grouse-shooting. Aunt Juley's house and the cliffs looking out to Europe were above Studland Bay in Dorset. They all made England look far lovelier than the realities of 2017, where sadly the "remains of the day" are just too many of the attitudes in <i>Howards End</i>.<br />
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<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-56544043548716367062017-12-01T03:07:00.000-08:002018-01-10T03:16:06.332-08:00Love, Lies and Records<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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I am enjoying this Leeds-based drama by Kay Mellor, although I haven't quite worked out whether it is comedy, drama, murder mystery, love story or just a mix of everything. That would make sense, as "a mix of everything" is pretty much the job description of a council registrar, who must see the highs and lows of life on a daily basis.</div>
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Ashley Jensen plays Kate, a slightly unconventional senior registrar who is popular at work but has teenagers at home, with all the upheaval that brings. Dodgy texts from unknown males, truancy from school, late-night disappearances, stepsons randomly turning up to move in. Her husband is a detective, dragging corpses of young women out of canals. Somehow it looks as though all of these things are connected by more than just family ties.</div>
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Rebecca Front plays Judy, the woman who longs to be Kate's boss but instead finds that Kate has become her boss. This brings out all of Judy's narcissistic nasty sides, with her (pardon the pun) trump card being her possession of CCTV footage of Kate's fling with a colleague at the office Christmas party. Judy doesn't seem to accept that the reason no one wants her to be the boss is that she's really a bit of a bitch. I'm not saying that it's a good idea to shag your colleagues in a stationery cupboard either, especially if you have a husband and kids, but being nice to your workmates (even the ones you aren't shagging) usually takes you far.</div>
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Then there is James, trying to become Jamie. He's been thrown out by his wife, so he moves in to Kate's as well, even if the sofa is the only space left in the house.</div>
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The office, Judy aside, is an open and tolerant place where people from all walks of life walk in. From the parents who want to call their child Chlamydia, to the gay couples finally allowed to marry after 25 years of partnership, to the Slovenian woman possibly being illegally coerced into marriage to get her husband a right to remain. Then there is the man who turns up with his newborn baby son to register his birth. The baby's mother is absent because she is dying in a hospice, having refused to start potentially life-saving cancer treatment in order to be able to continue with her pregnancy. The couple aren't married because they never had the money or time to get around to it, and now it seems it's too late. But not if Kate has anything to do with it. A couple of phonecalls, some emergency form-signing and a trip to a charity shop later, the hospice is full of flowers and family and - well, you're a heartless cow if it didn't bring a tear to your eye. Very shortly afterwards, the husband is back at the Town Hall to register his wife's death. Kate is out officiating at a wedding and trying to locate her truanting daughter, but he waits and waits, his calm and peaceful baby son lying in his arms. For it is Kate that he wants to officiate. Not Judy.</div>
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My cousin Flo got married at Leeds Town Hall. It was an early start for us all, as the only slot available for the date she wanted was at 9 o'clock in the morning. Which may explain my slightly dishevelled look on the photo below. I was very glad I didn't have to do full bridal make-up and hair by that time, but of course Flo managed all of that effortlessly and looked amazing. And actually, it was a good thing that the wedding was so early - about an hour after we had our photos taken on the Town Hall steps it began raining torrentially and didn't stop for the rest of the day. </div>
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Though I am fairly sure that the steps that they use in <i>Love, Lies and Records</i> are actually the ones that go up to the City Museum in Millennium Square, where my daughter and I have whiled away many an hour in its Toddler Town and animal-filled basement. </div>
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And nasty Judy may run this TV Leeds Council office, but Nice Judy runs Leeds City Council in real life. I am biased of course - she happens to be my aunt. But she just got awarded a CBE by the Queen at Buckingham Palace in a ceremony alongside Mo Farah and Delia Smith, for her services to local government and the City of Leeds. So she is definitely doing something right. We are so proud of her. Bravo.</div>
Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-91298475412584588962017-11-29T11:31:00.000-08:002018-01-10T03:27:19.342-08:00MotherlandThis is just deliciously excruciating. I had been waiting for a full series ever since the pilot last year, and it hasn't disappointed.<br />
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I don't currently have a high-flying professional job to manage on top of the school run, I can't afford a nanny, and my husband isn't a total dickwad prone to disappearing off go-karting or to stag dos every other weekend, but I can still relate all too painfully to so many of the situations featured. The smug yummy mummies in the Teabags cafe making you feel vastly inferior to their manicured nails, perfect hair, high-achieving children and expensive cars while you sit at the "toilet table" wondering if you'll ever sleep again... The child who erupts with norovirus two minutes before an important event... The disastrous birthday party... The lack of enthusiasm among parents for PTA events that don't involve alcohol... The inability of a mother to listen properly to anything anyone tells her... The obsession with parking permits...<br />
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Though I was impressed with the turnout for their PTA meeting. I think we need to start holding ours at Teabags. But look, we've made a cake book! Buy it, please!<br />
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I do have two criticisms though - if these are busy professional mummies, how come they have so much spare school daytime to spend in Teabags? And how are they able to nip out to the pub so easily in the evening? Is there a babysitter surplus in Queens Park? And would a character like Julia really have such a juvenile husband? More likely to have one she never sees because he is working late in the city every night. But I suppose that isn't funny for anyone, just true. Mind you, the desperate phonecalls to him wherever he has buggered off to are very funny, and remind me of Graham Linehan's other masterpiece, <i>Father Ted</i>, when Ted would ring his friend Father Larry Duff on his mobile phone, to calamitous results.<br />
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We were once invited to a five year old's swimming party, which also went a bit wrong. The pool was having some building work and all the plaster dust in the air triggered the fire alarm to go off halfway through our session, meaning we had to get out of the water and evacuate the building. It was June, and sunny, but York is cold all year round when you are in a swimsuit. The pool attendants handed out space blankets in tiny packets which took so long to unfold that the alarm had ended and we had all contracted hypothermia before we managed to wrap them round our children. Never mind - the parents of the birthday girl plied us all with fine French wine afterwards to apologise and served up an excellent barbecue. And while the changing room was a total stampede, at least I wasn't wearing a white designer jacket. Because I only own waterproofs to wear to meetings.<br />
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We also held a birthday party at home one year, on our daughter's request. She spent months planning all sorts of random impossible games with rules that only she understood and frequently changed. She designed a treasure hunt and pass the parcel featuring no end of shit plastic jewels she had found on the ground, stolen from playgroups, kept from crackers or persuaded me to buy in the charity shop. She insisted on a princess theme. I had planned to turf all the kids out to the woods at the end of our road, but of course on the day, two weeks of sunshine dissolved into pouring rain, so we had to keep them all cooped up in our lounge, high on sugar. No vomiting bug, but I had gone down with a stonking migraine three hours before the party, and while my vision had just about returned to normal I still felt like I had been hit by a bus. I didn't quite resort to the "throw them a quid and feed them undiluted squash" but it came close. This year we went to a pottery painting place instead and it was so much more civilised.<br />
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We don't have family anywhere near who could help with child care (or refuse to help with child care, as in Julia's case), although something miraculous happened this half-term. During a trip to the Lake District, our daughter was suddenly old enough to tolerate my dad babysitting her for a couple of hours in the day (there <i>may </i>have been a teeny bribe involved), so my husband and I went out for a Michelin-starred lunch in Grasmere (Dad had given us a Forest Side gift voucher for Christmas), while Dad and his partner took the girl to Hayes Garden World and The Rock Shop in Ambleside, which she thought was brilliant, and my dad was nice enough not to squirm about. My dad never took <i>us </i>to such places on our Lake District holidays - he dragged us up mountains instead. I thought I was young when I think about the hills I was tackling at my daughter's age (Skiddaw, Helvellyn in a Force 8 gale) but then my brother reminded me that he was three years younger and only survived these expeditions through a perpetual supply of Fox's Glacier Mints. We're lucky if we get our daughter round a pond without her whining. The youth of today, eh? Don't know they're born.<br />
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<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-85326791115107045352017-10-20T05:23:00.001-07:002017-10-20T05:26:17.534-07:00Liar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the week of the Harvey Weinstein furore and the #metoo campaign highlighting how widespread sexual harassment and abuse still are in our times, it seemed pertinent to write about this ITV drama, which came to its chilling conclusion this week.<br />
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Not quite as sensitively handled as <i>Broadchurch 3</i> on the matter of rape (no Olivia Colman for starters), <i>Liar </i>still packed a punch, highlighting a woman's genuine fears that she won't be believed if she reports an attack to the police. But that's how this drama worked - the clue was in the title. Just who was the liar? Laura Nielson or Andrew Earlham? How did such a promising-looking date turn so sour? For judging how the initial dinner was going, without the drugs, consensual sex looked as though it would probably very much have been on the cards. It seemed impossible that such a charming, conventionally good-looking, successful and intelligent man could commit such a callous and heinous act. The victim had a history of mental illness and had something in her past which threatened to come out, so had she just made it all up, to right a wrong, as a rebound from her failed relationship, or just because she couldn't separate fiction from truth? Andrew seemed a broken yet justifiably angry man after her accusations.<br />
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But people are never what they seem. Apart from the sleazy school headteacher from Laura's past played by Peter Davison, who was exactly what he seemed. Even the charming surgeon saw straight through him and his brand of sexual harassment (which also went unpunished thanks to a combination of fear and blackmail and the victim's sense of hopelessness - much more of a Weinstein situation).<br />
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As the series progressed, it became clear that Laura was the victim of lie after lie - not just at the hands of Andrew Earlham, but closer to home too, at those of her sister and ex partner, who had been having an affair. And the truth behind Andrew Earlham became sicker and sicker. A long history of drugged and abused women, crushed, confused, unable to prove a thing. A dead ex-wife. But ultimately two women determined to seek justice, catch him out, and send him to jail.<br />
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The police weren't much cop (despite one of the victims being a cop), although Earlham had made his tracks hard to find, and the undercover policewoman was just too slow with her syringe of wine. No one seemed to spot Earlham's regular visits to see his mum and the possibility that she might have storage facilities that needed checking. Laura figured it out all by herself, the final prompt she needed coming from Andrew's careless slip of the tongue about "playing back" his assault. Yes, he had videoed every depraved and foul moment of what he did to these unconscious women.<br />
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The central performances, particularly from Joanne Froggatt, were superb, but the series wasn't an easy watch. And instead of retribution, of seeing Andrew get his comeuppance, or one last showdown between the two main characters, the ending was a bit of a damp squib. The carer's phonecall warning Andrew of Laura prying in the shed did not provoke a wild car chase out to the docks. Instead, Laura was able to hand the video and drug evidence into the police unheeded. Andrew was declared missing, and only as the credits rolled was he spotted lying in the marshes with his throat slit. Then series 2 was announced. Where presumably it will be revealed exactly who prevented him entering a court of law. Cos it's pretty difficult to cut your own throat. Though maybe not if you are an experienced surgeon.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-7937311028265721432017-09-25T06:22:00.002-07:002018-01-10T03:36:58.258-08:00The Child In TimeI am a huge Ian McEwan fan and have read nearly all of his books. But <i>The Child In Time</i> is definitely one of his less penetrable works. I first read it many years ago and spent a lot of it feeling nervously perplexed, as it was just - for want of better words - a bit weird. There was too much on the physics of time and place for my impractical, unsciency little brain to cope with. The looking through windows into the past and future at parents and children just didn't gel with McEwan's normally brilliantly everyday, realist and remarkably detailed settings.<br />
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I then re-read <i>The Child In Time</i> with my book group a couple of years ago, and found myself in a different place - that of a parent. A parent angry about the state of education for our young children. And a parent who can better imagine the total horror of a child abduction and its worst nightmare scenario. The panic, the grief, and the unanswered questions if the child is never found.<br />
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The television adaptation had the latter as its focus. Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly McDonald played Stephen and Julie, the parents of Kate, who aged four was taken from a supermarket and to this day has never been seen again. As a result, their marriage has crumbled and they have each retreated into their separate worlds. She has run away to a beachside cottage, where she teaches piano and, in her words, "gets by". He is a children's writer, struggling with a lack of words for a work about a boy who wants to be a fish. Stephen writes in front of an aquarium and practises holding his breath underwater in the bath.<br />
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He is also part of a government focus group working on a new children's education policy, sitting for hours in stuffy meetings, disgusted with how out of touch the civil servants and ministers appear to be with young people's lives. He still lives in the family's London flat, where he leaves a note for his daughter on the front door every time he goes out, in case she comes home. He has kept his daughter's bedroom as a shrine, and he leaves wrapped presents under the tree at Christmas. "I'm not mad," he tells a friend, but at times he is definitely teetering over the brink of madness. He sees his daughter mirrored in other people in random places - on a beach, in a school. The latter is more worrying, as he manages to break into the building and enter a classroom to talk to the girl he has seen. The book was written prior to the horrors of <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/dunblane-our-story.html">Dunblane</a>, when school security was more lax. But nonetheless, even in today's more modern setting, he is treated only by kindness and understanding by the staff, and he is given time, the time of the title, to gather himself and move back on into the world. As much as he can. How can you ever really move on after such a terrible event?<br />
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He has friends to look after him, Thelma and Charles. Charles is his publisher and also a government minister, but he too needs to retreat from the world, to retire. Only it is into an eternal childhood that he goes, the boyhood fantasies of Arthur Ransome and Enid Blyton, on a perpetual adventure in the woods. He climbs trees and builds dens, lays traps and pretends to shoot. He has the energy of a toddler, covered in mud and bruises, and a wildness behind his eyes as he clips off his greying pubic hair. Don't we all want to return to our youth, to the innocence of childhood? Don't we all fight now for our children to enjoy that innocence too - to let our kids be in fact kids? Isn't our current government doing all it can to rob our children of that freedom to play, as they force them to neaten their handwriting and learn about fractions and fronted adverbials at an age when really they should be rolling in that self-same mud and climbing those self-same trees? Will they all be like Charles in middle age, trying to live the childhood that was taken away from them by obsessional testing and pointless arbitrary standards? I hope not. But something needs to be done.<br />
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Thelma is a much lesser character in the television adaptation. In the book she is a physicist with much to say, whereas on screen she just quietly tolerates Charles' regressive foray, ringing a handbell at dinner and bedtime so that he knows to come home. Until the day he doesn't, and Stephen finds him hanging from a tree.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Climbing benches on London's South Bank</td></tr>
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The settings of the film are familiar McEwan territory - London, the South Coast, the Kent countryside. Stephen walks through Whitehall, crosses the Thames from Embankment tube, then walks along the river to the National Theatre. He catches the Tube at Maida Vale. Not so much this time in McEwan's native Fitzrovia, the setting of <i>Saturday, </i>where he describes characters I used to see on my lunchbreak from my job on Carburton Street, notably the lady feeding the birds in Fitzroy Square.<br />
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One of my daughter's favourite games is hide and seek, and one of her favourite places to play it is in a clothes shop. She treats the racks of dresses and trousers like topiary bushes, skirting round the skirts, burying herself beneath the rails. And when I can't find her I am casually hyperventilating mum, forever remembering this story of <i>The Child In Time</i>, barely able to conceal the rising panic within. I try to convince myself that nothing bad will happen, that she will always come if I call her, though it's hard to flatten my shrill intonation when I do. I want to let my daughter have fun but have to protect her from harm. There is the dilemma of not wanting to scare her unnecessarily, while accepting my own duty of care. She is innocent, but others in the world less so. She has to play, but please, please, please let her get out of the Next jumpers section alive. Rationality must prevail. "Come on, it's time to go." And breathe....<br />
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And "Keep breathing," Stephen says to Julie at the end, in the maternity ward he has managed to barge into as easily as the school. The lost Kate is gaining an accidental brother, a brother Julie has seen through her window on to the beach and Stephen has just glimpsed on the Tube. The couple who could not live together or apart have found the end of their rainbow journey. Hope has befallen them at last. Though the poignant gap of the missing girl will never be filled.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">South Bank rainbow above the QEH, London 2016</td></tr>
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Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-83763644086597168712017-09-15T05:07:00.002-07:002017-09-15T05:25:44.440-07:00Hollywood and friendsIt's feeling like autumn. The nights are drawing in, the conkers and leaves are tumbling, yet the weather still has to warm up for summer...<br />
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Televisually, September means we are back with old friends. Hapless Pete and pals on <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/cold-feet.html">Cold Feet</a></i>. The increasingly psychopathic but much wronged <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/doctor-foster.html">Doctor Foster</a></i>. Fondly bickering Phil and Kirstie on <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/on-location.html">Location Location Location</a></i>, though sadly this series won't be featuring the episode filmed <a href="https://www.yorkmix.com/things-to-do/spotted-kirstie-phil-filming-location-location-location-york/">in our part of York</a> sometime in May. Disparaging Jeremy and his Oxbridge nobs on <i>University Challenge</i>. Clever Victoria on <i>Only Connect</i>, which also featured Oxbridge nob and University Challenge winner (til her team was disqualified) Gail Trimble. <br />
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And <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-great-british-bake-off.html">The Great British Bake-Off</a></i>. I was going to stay loyal to the BBC, I really was, like Mary, Mel and Sue before me. But the BBC has become a hideous Tory propaganda machine and is so biased (pro-Brexit, anti-Labour) in its news reporting that frankly it doesn't deserve my loyalty. Plus I actually like Channel 4. Because <i><a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-last-leg.html">Last Leg</a></i>. Because Jon Snow. Because <i>Frasier</i>. Because of my beautiful subtitles gracing its <i>Countdown</i> screens all those years ago.<br />
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And the news is so stressful right now that it's unbearable. I just want to look at cake instead. And biscuits and bread and sticky toffee caramel. And, new presenters aside, the show is so reassuringly familiar and cosy. The rest of it has been transferred in its entirety. The music. The bad puns laced with innuendo. The marquee with torrential rain streaming down its window panes. The tea cups and bunting. The malfunctioning ovens. The cakes hovering over bins. The mysterious proving drawers. The crazy contestants, although they seem a little Liverpool heavy this year, maybe as an homage to Paul, the only surviving face from the original series. He's just the same too, with his fierce eyes, dismissive comments and occasional bear-like handshake reaching across the work surfaces.<br />
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Admittedly, the ad breaks and heavy sponsorship are as irritating as I feared, but at least the content of the programme hasn't been cut short to accommodate them. And I'm having to get used to it being on a Tuesday, with Jo Brand's <i>Extra Slice</i> on a Thursday, rather than the Wednesday and Friday slots they held on the BBC. Routine is important to me. But Sandi Toksvig is very cuddly, and I quite like Noel Fielding's dreamlike musing, even if he doesn't seem to be that interested in the food. Prue Leith is scary though. She's much more of a force to be reckoned with than Mary Berry. She's about twice the height of Mary for starters. And you won't be crying on her shoulder (you wouldn't reach that far!) or getting any sympathy or gentle advice if you mess up.<br />
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I am part of a small team working on a baking book at the moment. It's to raise money for the school (so it can still afford to buy things like books, and, er, staff) and putting it together has been a lot of fun. It's going to feature lots of delicious everyday recipes, submitted by parents, teachers and local cafes. Mostly things that you should be able to bake with kids, as opposed to the impossible challenges you see on Bake Off. So more this:<br />
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Than this:<br />
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The book will come complete with professional colour photos, hopefully no typos (since it's my job to find them) and a decent level of wit. Please buy a copy when it's published, hopefully sometime when we are officially - rather than only weatherwise - in autumn.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-5787328008639452552017-09-13T11:30:00.002-07:002017-09-13T11:33:07.617-07:00Astronaut: Do You Have What It Takes?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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An X Factor with brains, this. A group of people who might be described as seriously clever clogs get to do all sorts of gruesome tasks in order to prove they have what it takes to enter into a European Space Agency astronaut training program.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clever clogs</td></tr>
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The ESA doesn't necessarily have any astronaut vacancies, since they haven't recruited any new staff since 2008, but this is all about kudos - or at least getting space veteran Chris Hadfield to write you a half-decent reference.<br />
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The tasks aren't gruesome in a celebrity eating revolting bugs in the jungle kind of way. Although that may yet come - the possibility of accidentally crashlanding in the Brazilian rainforest makes that sort of survival skill necessary for an astronaut. Plus you've got to learn to stomach all that pouched up dog food on the International Space Station, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/05/heston-blumenthal-chef-cooks-astronaut-tim-peake">especially if Heston Blumenthal's contributions get blown up</a>.<br />
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Instead of eating cockroaches, the contestants have been facing a series of gruelling physical and mental endurance tests. Counting backwards while being starved of oxygen, repeating series of numbers backwards while stepping on an off a block (there is a lot of counting backwards - must be a rocket thing), being stuck in a pitch-black sphere for 20 minutes, having to escape from a box underwater, being strapped in a box attached to a human centrifuge (there is also a lot of being put into a box, which is definitely a rocket thing)... They also have to extract their own blood in a syringe, ready to perform experiments, and learn some basic Russian. The latter was the only task I could do. Everything else has been a case of "not on your nelly." I'd be a total wreck. I'd be the one deciding I was deprived of oxygen while still on 100% flow, thus jeopardising a multi-million pound spacewalk. I can't even iron a shirt flat (and why should I?), let alone keep a hovering helicopter level. I don't like putting my face underwater, so wouldn't be much cop at solving maths puzzles on the bottom of a swimming pool. Etc.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Counting backwards to launch...</td></tr>
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The judges are all terribly calm, but meticulous. And completely ruthless. They send you home at a moment's notice. They wouldn't have even let me through the door. So I have to admit that it's just a teensy bit satisfying to see all these said clever clogs come a cropper, and be made to realise that they are mere human beings after all. They might be nuclear physicists/ ballerinas/ Everest conquerors/ neurosurgeons/ urosurgeons/ academics/ engineeers, but some of them can't sprint or swim. Some of them are claustrophobic. Some of them can't answer technical questions about how you pee in space. Some of them don't notice that they're about to pass out from lack of oxygen because they are too busy doing sums.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My husband being "a bit shit" at an ISS experiment</td></tr>
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Was I the only one who expected Tim Peake to be a bit shit, because he was British? For being a bit shit is what we are good at. We just moan about it, or laugh about it and carry on. We never quite get anything to work properly or be a resounding success. We just lack that drive. Taking the piss out of ourselves is so much easier. But Tim Peake is the exception. He was just awfully good at everything. He didn't drop a screwdriver on a spacewalk, sending it somersaulting off into the heavens. He didn't get ill or have allergic reactions. He didn't cut off anyone's oxygen supply or lose some important plant cuttings. He didn't crash the space station into a satellite or misfire the Soyuz capsule. He even ran a marathon simultaneously with the one in the London. And he was just terribly nice and enthusiastic about everything the whole time. He is a rare Brit indeed. Just as well he got signed up in that last recruitment drive by the European Space Agency in 2008, when Brexit was only dreamt of by jokers in UKIP, rather than being the everyday nightmare unfolding before our eyes in the lazy hands of David Davis, severing us from all that is good. For no matter how clever cloggy or physically strong these contestants are, they are British, and the European Space Agency, like the rest of the Continent, will soon be sailing on merrily without us. These folk ain't going up in a rocket any time soon, unless it's one piloted by Richard Branson.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Or it's one in a museum</td></tr>
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I went through my own recruitment process in the summer as I applied for a couple of jobs at the university. I earn a bit of pocket money doing academic proofreading, but really need to earn some proper cash and get myself some guaranteed hours. But I quickly realised, after seven years of being based at home, how out of the game I have grown. It's not just how technology has marched on with things like apps and virtual learning environments and that I haven't opened an Excel spreadsheet since 2010. It's not just that the job I was good at - subtitling - has all but collapsed as an industry in the UK and now wants to pay a rate half that of what I used to earn 12 years ago. It's not just that I am now in my mid-forties and there are so many bright young things out there who don't have a small child and the need to fit work around school hours and school holidays and who can maybe talk about something other than rainbow unicorns and Harry Potter. My self-confidence is at an all-time low, my health is crap, and I just don't believe myself capable of anything. That said, I am obviously not too bad at filling in application forms since I managed to get interviews, but that's where the process ended. I totally failed to sell myself. Although - and knowing how the university works - I felt fairly sure that they had internal candidates lined up for both positions since the interviews either consisted of deliberately wacky questions asked just for the hell of it ("Describe yourself in three words!"), or such sparse, superficial questions that they wouldn't have found out anything of relevance to the post about someone they didn't already know. Or that's what I am telling myself, anyway.<br />
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Maybe I am doing myself a disservice - perhaps I assume I am "a bit shit" just because I am British. Maybe it's all about self-belief and talking the talk. Yes, I would make a BRILLIANT astronaut! You couldn't imagine a better person to send up into space. I've read a book about it! I've built space Lego!<br />
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You can send that nice Kevin Fong chap over to give me a medical.<br />
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<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-4273114307884650592017-09-13T01:45:00.002-07:002017-09-13T02:26:20.237-07:00Milton Keynes and MeGosh, it's been an age... Trying to catch up after the summer holidays. Feels like (and is indeed) weeks since I watched this programme, but never mind. Off we go...<br />
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I never expected to use the words "touching" and "Milton Keynes" together in the same sentence, but that's what this documentary led me to do.<br />
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It was a film about having a home town that you grew up bored by, and later embarrassed by, and that you ran away from as fast as you could as soon as you could. But a home town that you remain attached to simply because it is where your family made your roots, and where your parents stayed to grow old. And it was a film about how life turns full circle - suddenly, you have your own kids and realise what a nice place your home town might be to raise a family. Maybe you are merely trying to recreate your own memories for the next generation - memories which, as you age, acquire the rose-tinted spectacles of yore.<br />
<br />
I possibly have similar feelings about my own home town. It was crushingly dull as a teenager - it didn't even get its own cinema until after I left home. Or rather it had had one years before, but that had long since been turned into a Marks and Spencer. Life only got marginally more interesting for us once we could start trying to drink underage, but it was never a place where anyone sensible would want to hang out on a Saturday night. But I've seen many friends, who shot off like the proverbial bullet to university in far-flung places as soon as they had the opportunity, move back there over the past decade to have their own kids. Possibly they just want the free babysitting that the grandparents offer. Alas that's not an option for me, with my mum dead for over 12 years, and my dad sold up and moved away back to his own childhood roots. But home is home. There are things about my childhood that I wish we could offer our daughter. A school with a large playing field and lots of trees instead of the concrete playground she has to make do with. The proximity to Hatfield Forest and Audley End children's railway. The opportunity to go to London every weekend. Sunshine in summer, snow in winter. An airport on the doorstep, the Suffolk coast and Channel crossings that much nearer.<br />
<br />
I've only been to Milton Keynes properly once, on an organised coach trip from my own dull home town to do some Christmas shopping. It was possibly my first trip to a "mall". It was all terribly exciting and I remember stocking up on a Eurythmics tape, a bad lipstick that matched the one Annie Lennox was wearing on the cover of the Eurythmics tape, and a terrible pair of black and white '80s trousers from Chelsea Girl. But my only visits to the place since have been driving round its endless roundabouts en route between the M1 and my aunt's house in Buckinghamshire.<br />
<br />
And Richard Macer's documentary began with those self-same roundabouts. There is a roundabout appreciation society, did you know that? It has its own calendar. And Milton Keynes makes them drool. They call a garden roundabout a "Titchmarsh" or a "Monty Don". They will risk life and limb to cross lanes of traffic and stand in the middle of them.<br />
<br />
But there is a town behind those roundabouts. Hidden by trees, mounds and duck pond reeds are a multitude of houses which, at the time of building, were considered innovative and state of the art. (They haven't necessarily aged well, however.) They have unusual sloping eaves, a sense of light and space seldom found outside Scandinavia, and open-plan living. They were designed to lure people out of the London slums, where kids never knew darkness - without their own room and forced to sleep in the lounge, they had to put up with their parents staying up late in artificial light. The families were helped to settle in by social workers. One recalls helping a woman who was dying of cancer to write letters to her young children. It still makes her cry after all these years.<br />
<br />
Going back to the architecture, the original shopping mall, the centre of MK, has all sorts of features that you wouldn't necessarily notice unless you were given a tour by its actual architects, which thankfully in this documentary we are. They point out the reflections, the framework, the Roman marble. They sum it up with a "Milton Keynes - so there!"<br />
<br />
Unfortunately a new shopping mall has been built bang in the middle of the Boulevard, the main thoroughfare through town, causing a diversion. This has upset numerous locals as the town has lost its sense of flow and order. The original planning corporation of Milton Keynes has been disbanded and replaced by a council committee desperate to make commercial money. So the grand plan has begun to slip. Admittedly, some parts of the original grand plan were a little way out, such as the Vegas style leisure centre, with its rodeo, wave pool and souk bar area that wouldn't have looked out of place on an episode of Star Trek. But these were never built.<br />
<br />
There is however a lot of way-out art that has survived. It's a shame that the only sculpture people have ever heard of is the concrete cows, as there is a whole lot more. There's a gallery full of it. Enthusiasts will show you round. Artists and photographers are still lured to the streets and estates. A new piece is being commissioned to commemorate the town's 50th birthday - for a roundabout. It's a little telling that the council chooses to hold the 50th birthday party in the historical house at Bletchley Park, rather than say, the shopping centre, or on a roundabout. It's as if they're not quite as proud of the town's achievements as they claim.<br />
<br />
The school tried to make the artists of the future. They would have themed days where the intended curriculum would be forgotten and pupils would be allowed to specialise in an activity of their choice, like art, maths, rollerskating or even golf. There was no uniform, the classrooms had carpets and the teachers and pupils were on first-name terms. Nowadays the pupils all wear ties and follow rules and whatever prehistoric lessons Michael Gove has made them learn. The vision of utopia has been snatched away from under them. Today's pupils find Milton Keynes "boring", just like the documentary maker (who attended the school at the height of its vision). But they do like the town's openness and tolerance, and multiculturalism. Which didn't exist in its early years. A famous advert with a clown on stilts carrying red balloons encouraging people to move to Milton Keynes had only white participants.<br />
<br />
And after school the university - the Open University. That of the beards on early morning BBC2 and unfathomable equations. Local residents signed up in droves but were then disappointed to discover that physics is hard. Time to go and meditate at the first Buddhist peace pagoda in the Western world instead.<br />
<br />
I grew up near another new town - Harlow. It was the first place my parents lived when they moved down south, in one of the country's first residential high-rise blocks. My dad worked in Harlow on an industrial estate making Latex for 30 years. Harlow had a similar ethos to Milton Keynes - lots of airy houses, green spaces and cycle paths. And roundabouts. But unfortunately it quickly lost its original aspirations and became a bit of a dump. Growing up, it provided our local A&E and cinema, though both were fairly nasty. That said, the town had its own cultural highlights - Carter USM were discovered at The Square, and the Pogues played Harlow Park. Harlow Playhouse had its annual pantomime where all my school friends seemed to get invited up on stage but I never did (oh, the trauma of being eight!), and a series of children's classical music concerts called Patchwork which attracted some pretty famous musicians (Emma Johnson, Malcolm Messiter) and instilled in me my love of early music and folk. The town's sculptures were by Henry Moore, who lived locally. Recently, a Polish man was murdered there in a racist hate crime after the EU referendum, which was far from Harlow's finest hour, and shows none of the tolerance and diversity so praised by the children of Milton Keynes. Sad times indeed. Though Harlow has apparently responded, like Milton Keynes would, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-39357577">with art</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m0lPLiEsXcw/VtQSWnnl5JI/AAAAAAAADqE/bLmBCFoDaGcnWt4JjhmgENChU1FexHl3wCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/scan0002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="635" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m0lPLiEsXcw/VtQSWnnl5JI/AAAAAAAADqE/bLmBCFoDaGcnWt4JjhmgENChU1FexHl3wCPcBGAYYCw/s320/scan0002.jpg" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and my mum hanging out in Harlow's green spaces in 1975</td></tr>
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<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-32171457273287642132017-08-18T06:26:00.000-07:002017-08-18T09:01:18.998-07:00A lament for LoveFilm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qu2O6S2YpYM/WZblPFExlqI/AAAAAAAAET4/4FMB7wzttzAuRxiEzZJRgbKSAmUgAFbOwCLcBGAs/s1600/P1060341.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qu2O6S2YpYM/WZblPFExlqI/AAAAAAAAET4/4FMB7wzttzAuRxiEzZJRgbKSAmUgAFbOwCLcBGAs/s320/P1060341.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Dear Amazon,<br />
<br />
Thank you for your recent e-mail announcing the closure of your LoveFilm DVD postal service at the end of October. However, you have made me rather sad. And a bit cross. Your excuse for the demise of LoveFilm is that you've apparently seen decreasing demand for DVD and Blu-ray rental "as customers increasingly move to streaming". Streaming? Streaming what? Colds?<br />
<br />
Some of us, you see, have no idea what you are talking about. Some of us are technically inept and technologically decrepit. Some of us just don't always have the money to upgrade to the latest thing. Some of us are still barely coming to terms with the demise of VHS. And the closure of our local Blockbuster.<br />
<br />
I have a DVD player. In fact, only last year I upgraded it to a Blu-ray player. It's been a long haul into the 2010s in this household. So what? As far as I'm concerned, I've got it and I still want to use it. Why should I chuck it out and waste all that plastic and circuitry just because a lot of your customers have got streaming colds?<br />
<br />
Oh, wait, you mean Internet streaming. There, I'm not such a luddite after all. Yeah, online streaming. We do that with Netflix. I signed us up in desperation for a free month's trial when our daughter got chicken pox at the end of reception, which housebound us for the best part of a week. And it's shit. It buffers a lot, crashes regularly, and has very little on it that we want to watch. Some good TV box sets, yes, but we're probably only interested in about one film in a hundred, none of which were released in cinemas in the past three years. Besides, our daughter has completely hijacked our account by watching <i>My Little Pony</i> and <i>Paw Patrol </i>on a loop.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
You see, I used to go to the cinema at least twice a week. I saw pretty much every film going. Living in London, I could see anything that a review made sound interesting, no matter how obscure. This backfired sometimes. <i>Uzak, </i>for example. But anyway, I didn't get to miss out on movies. Relocating to York, with only one art-house cinema, our choice was more limited, which is how our LoveFilm subscription started. I still read the reviews, and slowly worked up a list of films that weren't heading our way that I wanted to see. And then we had our daughter, which (aside from a crazy year of taking her once a week as a baby to City Screen's Big Scream, where she sat through <i>Black Swan, 127 Hours, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Another Year</i> and many other inappropriate titles in complete milk-overloaded oblivion) meant we didn't get to go to the cinema at all for ages. Now when we go it's to see things like <i>Captain Underpants, Minions, The Boss Baby </i>and <i>Moana</i>. Which are all fine, but meanwhile our LoveFilm list of all the titles I really want to watch has been growing and growing.<br />
<br />
It's not often that we get an uninterrupted evening with enough time and energy to actually sit through a whole film, but when we do, it's a proper treat, and we want therefore to treat it properly. Do the cinema thing. Turn the lights off, and the sound up. Have a glass of wine. Maybe even make popcorn. We bought a bigger telly to enhance our experience. We wanted to replicate the Picturehouse in our house. We're not bothered about being able to watch things on our phones. But I'm certainly regretting how few uninterrupted evenings we have, which meant we sat on <i>The Hateful Eight</i> for three whole months, now that we only have two months left to get through the rest of my LoveFilm list. I'm trying to up our game now, with the nights drawing in at the close of summer, but it won't be easy. I just had to quarantine my husband in the spare room for two days because he threw up everywhere on Monday night and I selfishly didn't want our daughter (or me, because I have a piece of plastic fork stuck in my intestine) catch it.<br />
<br />
The DVD still has something that Internet streaming doesn't. What you get on DVDs or Blu-Rays are (1) extras and (2) subtitles. Extras that tell you something about the background to the movie you just watched - how it evolved from concept to completion, how special effects were achieved. Deleted scenes sometimes show you how thought directions were abandoned, for better or worse. You may catch some silly bloopers or other funny incidents that occurred during filming. You will undoubtedly see actors, writers, producers and directors gushing about how brilliant they all are. You may even capture some handheld footage of the wardrobe department. Many extras are total dross, but I always watch them. Because I spent years of my life subtitling them, or getting other people to translate subtitles for them. So a lot of effort has gone into the behind the scenes of your behind the scenes and I for one want an opportunity to appreciate it. And of course the main feature will have subtitles too - for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and in up to 38 different languages, depending on which regions the disc will play in. The subtitles will have been put together by poorly paid professionals, mostly doing it for love, because translating a movie is more interesting than translating a washing machine manual, even if it's paying you less than minimum wage and has a turnaround so fast you almost have to translate in real time.<br />
<br />
How will the deaf community access movies now, with so little online being subtitled properly, if at all? And, more importantly, how will I watch the latest releases in Norwegian or Brazilian Portuguese?<br />
<br />
It was kind of annoying that you didn't have much control over what you were sent next with LoveFilm, but the mystery envelope winging its way from Peterborough was part of the thrill. Now you are offering me Amazon Prime instead of my LoveFilm subscription. I try so hard not to accidentally click on that big yellow Prime icon every time I order a book or CD (yes, yes, I'm so prehistoric, but it is surely clear to you by now that I prefer objects to computer screens), but now you have really upped your ante. Will you actually have any of my LoveFilm list on your Prime selection, cos you certainly didn't the last time I checked? Or will I have to do a pay-per-view for my more obscure choices that will cost way more than my LoveFilm subscription ever did? Are you even going to e-mail me my LoveFilm list before you delete it, because I'm not going to be able to remember ten years of film choices by myself? Actually, since you are about to have a warehouse full of unwatched DVDs that you can't sell, why not use me as your charity shop and send all the ones on the list my way? I'll sit in my ark, gradually working my way through them.<br />
<br />
And I don't want your discounted Firestick, thanks, because you let Jeremy Clarkson advertise them.<br />
<br />
I think that ditching LoveFilm and making us all take Prime was always your plan. You said otherwise, but who ever believes a word that large tax-avoiding corporations say?<br />
<br />
Yours, except I'm not,<br />
<br />
A disgruntled LoveFilm by Post viewer.<br />
<br />
<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-22252754401674237522017-08-18T03:44:00.004-07:002017-08-18T09:04:29.632-07:00Summer holidays and teenagersSo we're over halfway through, and how's it going for you? How's the weather been? (We've actually had a tiny bit of sunshine this week in York.) Are the tensions in your house at Trump-Kim levels yet or are they still relievable by wine? Yesterday my daughter asked me when I was going to stop controlling her life and let her take charge instead. This was a response to me inviting her to go to the ice cream boat over the river as a treat. She wanted to stay at home and play with her magnets instead. You just can't feckin' win, can you?<br />
<br />
She is harder to please than ever this summer. We've done some lovely things. We've been to some shows at the Great Yorkshire Fringe and to see Robin Hood at York Theatre Royal. We've been to Harlow Carr, Newby Hall and the wonderful York Maze, and we went to stay with my dad in Grasmere for a few days, where we met up with friends and played Swallows and Amazons at Blackwell House in the pouring rain. We've done campfire cooking and raced around Goddards. But during it all there was so much moaning! (Particularly when I managed to wreck her bread dough in the campfire...) And I haven't even made her go on any country walks!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l88nXEIAS78/WZbBzOLkJvI/AAAAAAAAETg/b2CFEi98PR01E_-tL117THuZM4XaPyWzACLcBGAs/s1600/fringe1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l88nXEIAS78/WZbBzOLkJvI/AAAAAAAAETg/b2CFEi98PR01E_-tL117THuZM4XaPyWzACLcBGAs/s320/fringe1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Giant's Loo Roll<br />
(the daughter was bribed with a chocolate pancake not to scowl in this picture)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kSyG3cQ55NI/WZbBzpSbo0I/AAAAAAAAETo/o9dh_nuDdGMW5BMcbw7J24SHggN9N21tQCLcBGAs/s1600/fringe2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kSyG3cQ55NI/WZbBzpSbo0I/AAAAAAAAETo/o9dh_nuDdGMW5BMcbw7J24SHggN9N21tQCLcBGAs/s320/fringe2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Scarecrow's Wedding</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Genuine tents...</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">..and genuine boats from the <i>Swallows And Amazons</i> film at Blackwell House, Bowness</td></tr>
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<br />
The dissatisfaction is spreading beyond home. This week is she is attending Kings Camp, a sports activity week held at the Mount School. It's a lot of fun, but every day she comes out overly focused on the negative - that she hasn't won star of the day, that she had to wear a beginners red cap in her swimming session despite the 25 metres badge she has sewn on to her costume, for which she was teased, that she scraped her knee during a treasure hunt, that the timetable wasn't announced in strict order at the start of the day, that they didn't go outside enough, that they went outside too much... Bah! It's partly tiredness, hence me trying to revive her with ice cream. But give the poor guys a break!<br />
<br />
It's a foresight of what the teenage years may hold, assuming Donald Trump, Kim Jong-Un, Isis in a van, and a piece of plastic fork let any of us live that long. Did so many things cause my parents sleepless nights when I was little? Plastic forks didn't of course, because my parents weren't that stupid, but when I was my daughter's age Thatcher had just come to power, nuclear war between Russia and America definitely seemed a possibility, and then Argentina invaded the Falklands. But was it this bad? With Brexit, that narcissistic, volatile moron tweeting unpredictable nonsense from the White House, a fat kid in North Korea playing games and people being run over on the streets of Europe, I feel like I am living in a nightmare that can only get worse. My mood certainly can't be helping my daughter's negativity, even though I try not to mention any of it to her. Let her have her innocence for as long as it can last. But when will something good happen? Even <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-last-leg.html">The Last Leg</a> can't lift my spirits about the madness of the world any more.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Love to you, Barcelona</td></tr>
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Anyway, teenagers. Yeah. There's a bunch of them living in the park this summer. <a href="http://tellyandtravels.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/dark-angel.html">Our lovely park</a>, which has just lost its park keeper thanks to the latest wave of austerity cuts (my prediction in a previous blog post came true). Now it's up to volunteers to maintain its flower beds and keep it looking lovely. Which was hard enough with its flock of geese shitting over its lawns and pathways, and has now been made even harder by these teenagers' inability to use a litter bin. Oh, such bravado they show as they do their wheelies down our street and around the park stage, which only a few weeks ago was used to put on an opera. Such colourful language as they abuse each other and passers by. Such profits the corner shop must be making as they purchase their bottles of Rubicon Spring and packets of Moam. And such a mess they hurl on to the grass without a moment's thought. There's no dealing with them; they are a wall of hormones who just want to laugh at adults requesting a little respect out of them for their surroundings. Needless to say, me politely requesting them to stop ripping leaves off my neighbour's bushes did not go down well the other day.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, I did pick all this up afterwards</td></tr>
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<br />
My daughter chipped a little off their cool though. The boys invaded the zip wire queue in the play area, pushing in front of her, where she had been standing watching some friends. "We're going next!" they boomed, sneering at her. "That's OK, I don't want a go anyway because I don't like it," replied my daughter. "Ew, what are you, six?" they snorted. "Yes. But I'm nearly seven!" answered the girl, oblivious to what they were inferring. She's darn tall for her age.<br />
<br />
We have a teenager coming to stay in our house next week actually. Hopefully he can sort the brats in the park out with some good Dutch manners. We are doing a house swap with a friend in Holland, a cheap and convenient way of being able to go abroad in August. So I am spending this week frantically trying to tidy up and looking at everything in the house that doesn't quite work properly, thinking "My goodness, how have we put up with this for ten years?" Well, mostly because one of us in this marriage is very laidback. He has to be, of course, else he wouldn't cope with me being the other half. But as a consequence his attitude to repairs is somewhat slack. He'll just work out a way of tolerating whatever has gone wrong. Deciding he prefers showers a bit on the cool side, for example. Deciding that the steam function on an iron isn't necessary if you just squirt a bit of water on your shirts instead. Not minding water spraying in his eye from a pipe because really it's quite refreshing after a long run. That sort of thing.*** Anyway, I'm just hoping I've managed to patch the place up enough to stop it falling down before the end of the month, so that our friends have a peaceful and harmonious visit, despite bringing a teenager.<br />
<br />
So yes, ten whole years we've lived here in our <a href="http://39stepsto40.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/challenge-number-twelve-get-our-attic.html">crazy house</a>. I think that's the longest I've lived anywhere continuously in my life. Cracks are still appearing in the walls. I panic about subsidence, my husband merely decides they add character. Our daughter could definitely be a little bit more like her daddy on some things.<br />
<br />
Only 19 more days til the start of term.<br />
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*** My husband would just like me to point out that while the girl and I were in Grasmere he painted four shelves that have been bare MDF for nearly as many years. It seems the trick to make him get round to doing DIY jobs is to go away without him...Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-6340769759741575042017-06-23T04:53:00.000-07:002017-06-26T04:15:52.016-07:00Childhood HeroesAfter the whole hideous Jimmy Savile business, it felt like there was no longer anything sacred about my childhood television viewing. It had all been spoiled forever. It was the 1970s and 1980s, and they had all turned out to be a bunch of perverts. And we, in our innocence, had been completely and utterly duped. Savile was disturbingly close to home too, as he had worked with my grandfather in Leeds, and met my parents and aunts - and apparently me as a baby - at hospital social events. My mother recalled one of his cigars in an ashtray in their lounge.<br />
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Then Rolf Harris. Sunday afternoon cartoon fodder for me and my brother once we were back from our weekly swimming session at Leventhorpe pool. "Can you see what it is yet?" When we lived in Crouch End, Harris regularly went into the primary school down the road to give art lessons, open fetes etc, as his grandchild was a pupil there. But he was not what he seemed either, and was released from prison just over a month ago. No wonder the Queen's smile looked so forced on his portrait of her. I am no royalist, but she is an astute woman who can express much without words. It can't be coincidence that she dressed up as the European Union flag for her vellum-penned speech in the House of Lords this week.<br />
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However, recent events have restored some of the balance. There were good, honest people out there making television when I was little after all. I went to see Peter Lord, creator of Morph, give a talk at the York Festival of Ideas a couple of weeks ago. He is a York graduate, which I had forgotten, and one of the founders of the wondrous Aardman Animations. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPX02jAxbZE">Morph lives on even now.</a> Even without Tony Hart, who has become famous <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/tony-hart-dies-twice-morph-forced-to-intervene-10048506.html">for nearly dying twice</a>. I had really bad stomach ache throughout the talk (thanks to "the fork"), but it was lovely to hear Lord give an account of his career, showing some brilliant clips, even if these were hindered by technical glitches from the rather strange audiovisual set-up in the Bootham School auditorium. But nonetheless we saw everything from their first attempts at stop animation (photographing people jumping in the air then splicing the footage together to make it look like they were flying), to the original Aardman superhero character, to making the <i>Sledgehammer </i>video for Peter Gabriel (the success of which meant the Aardman Christmas parties trebled in size). Wallace and Gromit, <i>Chicken Run</i> and <i>The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists! </i><br />
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Peter Lord was terribly modest, and spent the entirely of the talk modelling a piece of brown plasticine into a fresh Morph that was then <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2017/events/peter-lord-morph-auction/">auctioned off for charity</a>. He also paid tribute to the wonderful Peter Sallis, who had passed away a few days before. He showed a clip of Sallis remembering how Nick Park had persuaded him to record the voice of Wallace when he was a young film student. Sallis graciously obliged, for very little money. He heard nothing more until Nick Park phoned him up six years later to announce "I've finished! Do you want to come and see it?" Such is the time-consuming nature of animating plasticine models.<br />
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Peter Sallis is a loss, though my childhood was more spent watching him rolling down a hill in a bath in <i>Last Of The Summer Wine</i> than in Wallace and Gromit. But that just reveals my age.<br />
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And there have been two more recent passings of children's television presenters from my childhood that reassured me that they weren't all terrible sexual predators. First, John Noakes, Blue Peter hero. Who will always be remembered for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz9omscQ1F4">an elephant standing on his foot</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4YFCJETmwI">climbing up Nelson's column</a> on the world's most precarious ladder, without even a nod to health and safety. Because it was the 1970s and the BBC was, well, distracted. Rumour has it that the first time John Noakes climbed Nelson, the sound didn't record, so he had to do it all over again. A brave (and patient) man indeed.<br />
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Secondly, Brian Cant, voice of Camberwick Green, Trumpton and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-hQ6-biWoo">Chigley</a>, and presenter of <i>Play School</i> and <i>Play Away</i> until both were abruptly decommissioned in 1984. I never really saw him on screen again, though it seems he kept working right up until a few years ago, when Parkinson's took hold. Bizarrely, his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GF6ouF0AXg">copresenters on Play Away included Tony Robinson and Jeremy Irons</a>. Which just goes to show any actor with rent to pay will do children's television. In the 1970s and '80s, 'kippers' had no connotations with Nigel Farage, and it was still acceptable (see above) for people to sing songs about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MDVSHsFFh0">ladies in a harem to young kids</a>.<br />
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Our daughter is growing out of CBeebies, but I wonder which of its many presenters she will remember into adulthood. Justin "Mr Tumble" Fletcher? (Who of course is one of the voices on Aardman Animation's <i>Shaun The Sheep</i> and <i>Timmy Time.</i>) Lovely Chris and "Show me show me your groovy moves" Pui? Andy "Dinosaur Adventures" Day? I will be heartbroken if any of them are subsequently hit by scandal. Apart from Topsy and Tim's mum. She deserves all she gets.<br />
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<br />Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-8350936157561761362017-06-20T07:01:00.000-07:002017-06-20T07:01:45.604-07:00Wife Swap: Brexit SpecialWife Swap: something my husband may wish was more widely available. Also a typically scandalous Channel 4 title for something that is in fact slightly more inane - a chance for families with opposing beliefs or lifestyles to see how the other half lives. The female of the family swaps places with the female of another for a week and goes to live in their home. First, she follows the "rules" and lifestyle of the family where she is a guest, including doing whatever work the woman does. Then she tries to introduce some of her own ways of doing things to the family. But naturally there are some deliberate attempts to fuel an argument or court controversy. I am still traumatised by the memory of the mindless sap who pretended to be a Japanese geisha girl morning, noon and night.<br />
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But now it was something closer to home - a family of Leave voters swapping with a family of Remain voters. One of the accusations bandied about after last year's (in my opinion) disastrous referendum was that voters lived in their own bubbles, each believing that everybody thought like them, and never hearing the alternative view. Remain bred Remain, Daily Mail bred Daily Mail. I saw nothing but pro-EU posts in my Facebook feed from my friends, and all the posters (bar I think two) in our part of York were for Remain. Whereas Leave voters got fed bullshit by Boris, Gove, Dacre and Murdoch and the side of a bus, which was all self-reinforcing.<br />
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So now it was time for the two opposing views to have a conversation, and try and understand each other. Only it turns out you still can't have a conversation with a Leave voter. They just stand and shout crap, and refuse to listen to anything other than the sound of their own voices. They come out with Daily Express soundbites about taking back control and wanting their country back whilst blatantly failing to understand what the EU actually is. This Leave husband and dad, Andy, was no exception. He took Kat, a German migrant, to an East End market to show how there was only one white face left manning the stalls (who was Jewish). Seriously. But Andy's not racist, apparently. No. He just doesn't recognise his own Little England any more. Kat tries to point out that the EU has nothing to do with how many Pakistani people are selling mangos or saris in London. At home in their garden over a glass of wine, Kat tries to explain that EU migrants do not get a house and full unemployment benefits within ten minutes of landing at Dover. But Andy won't listen. He's read everything he knows in the paper. In the Canvey Island pub where his wife Pauline works, Kat rolls her eyes over an outside smoke as she tries to make the punters understand that she is the EU migrant and not the Syrian refugees who are fleeing a terrible war. She just gets shouted down with Dacre quotes. "Is this about not liking the EU, or not liking brown skins?" she asks in exasperation. But they're not racist either, apparently.<br />
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Meanwhile, Pauline, the Leave wife, over a meal of boeuf bourgignon, is surprised that the Germans in the room no longer feel welcome in the UK, having been told in the street to go back to their "Hitler Merkel". It's not that sort of immigration she's opposed to, you see. Not the sort where people pay taxes and work hard and have an education and raise children here. Well, what other sort did the EU give us, you moron? She objects that she's not allowed to put on a nativity play at Christmas any more. Which is again, nothing to do with the EU. She is shot down by Guardian-reading left-wing opinion, but is ultimately a little humbled by it. Nonetheless, she still goes and puts a picture of Nigel Farage above the fireplace. And later hides a garden gnome of him in the garden.<br />
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Meanwhile, Leave husband Andy won't take his England flags down. Kat should fit in, he says. "When in Rome..." Except he was totally unable to realise the irony of that statement, having just voted against the treaty of its name. But then, he acknowledges, Kat is the one with the facts. Which makes her the one in the wrong, apparently. Kat takes him to a Polish restaurant, which he is surprised to find isn't staffed by criminals, but instead by nice folk from Poland. With his love of roasted pork belly strips, really he should fit right in. When I taught English at a summer school on the Baltic Coast in Poland in 1996, we were expected to eat fatty cuts of meat three times a day.<br />
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Andy's unhousetrained dog learns to poo on the Daily Express at least.<br />
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At the end of the day, Kat still feels adrift. And who can blame her? She's done her best, but it was like banging her head against the proverbial brick wall, only one festooned with the flag of St George. The only small sign of progress is that Andy and Pauline, who have definitely found Kat very intense and quite hard work, try not to list any anti-German stereotypes in the car on the way home. For now, that's as good as you are going to get.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-56093868243009841682017-06-06T11:02:00.000-07:002017-06-12T12:00:13.711-07:00The Handmaid's Tale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So this is my essential Sunday night viewing for the next ten weeks, or as long as "the fork" lets me last. I am a big Margaret Atwood fan, but <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> was the only one of her works that I didn't enjoy the first time I read it. Nothing to do with Atwood's writing, it was simply that I thought it was a horrible story, with an awful premise. I found it genuinely disturbing. I worried about the mind that had dreamt the whole thing up.<br />
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But a few months ago, I read it again with my book group, and this time saw so much more. The storyline couldn't shock me any more, so I could observe the wit and insight behind the words with much greater objectivity. And a lot has happened to the world since I first read the book. I realised that Margaret Atwood hadn't just dreamt the story up out of nowhere in some sort of sick moment. She had studied and observed how totalitarian regimes handle women. She had understood the oppressive nature of extreme religious beliefs towards the female gender. She had recognised that man believes his sole purpose on this earth is to procreate, and the lengths that people may go to in order to pass on their genes. In a way, she had, writing in 1985 about an American dystopia, foreseen the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. We recently read <i>I Am Malala</i> in our book group, which made all too clear the ruined role of and lack of opportunities for women in Afghanistan and Pakistan's Swat Valley under their rule. And current US Vice President Mike Pence seems to hold beliefs not a million miles away from many of the Gilead regime, which is why the book was enjoying a resurgence in popularity long before the television adaptation.<br />
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The television adaptation is great. Very dark, both figuratively and literally, but it seems that electricity has gone the way of fertility so there aren't many lights to turn on. There are many shocking scenes: Janine losing an eye, the bodies strung up by the river, the Eyes in the vans, the ceremonies of rape, death and birth. But there is also Atwood's sense of the surreal, and her sense of humour. The technicolor macaroons. The Scrabble game. The oranges. A Simple Minds song. Atwood herself has a brief cameo, a blurry spectre looming large to slap a girl down in front of Aunt Lydia at the Red Center.<br />
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I love the use of flashback to Offred's past life, and her barbed interjections on the voiceover that reveal her innermost thoughts. Elisabeth Moss can say a thousand words with her facial expressions in any case - she might seem mute, repressed and withdrawn, but you always believe that there is a firebrand within.<br />
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I have seen Margaret Atwood twice in person - once at the Hay on Wye book festival discussing <i>Oryx and Crake </i>with David Aaronovitch, and secondly at the Theatre Royal in York this year discussing <i>Hagseed</i>, her reworking of <i>The Tempest</i>. Both times I was struck by how staggeringly intelligent, erudite and eloquent she is. She talks slowly and steadily, but her mind must be racing as she speaks in order to be able to continually come up with those sorts of verbal goods. In York she kept her coat on throughout the session and seemed only to be dropping in for the briefest of moments, yet the hour felt far longer owing to the sheer richness of her contributions. Atwood managed to give interesting answers to even the most banal of questions. The York interviewer was simpering and simplistic, and the first person in the audience to ask a question took about five minutes of precious time to do so. He began with the epithet "I'm retired", which raised a collective groan, and he then proceeded to tell his life story, waffling on to eventually form some sort of question which basically seemed to require a denunciation of the "youth of today" and all its ilk. Atwood graciously shot him down with her highlighting of environmental concerns (the focus of many of her novels, particularly the <i>MaddAddam </i>trilogy), to ensure that her priorities lie with making sure that there is actually a world still here in fifty years' time for "the youth of today" to live in. <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> presents a world where "youth" as a concept stands in danger of being lost forever. The human race is dying out, and the fault is entirely its own.Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-68813230863025962912017-06-06T03:29:00.002-07:002017-06-12T11:57:35.952-07:00Question Time SpecialWhile the news has been dominated for the past two weeks by the election and the terrible attacks in Manchester and London, my life has become pathetically obsessed by the fact that I have a piece of plastic fork stuck inside my intestine. One moment of carelessness, the sort of thing that happens when you have a young child and spend your life not concentrating and attempting to multi-task, and as a result I am now living in constant fear that I am going to win a Darwin award for the most stupid death of the year.<br />
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We were having a lovely day out in Bridlington, and had been to see the breeding sea birds at the spectacular Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve.<br />
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Our daughter was full of the moans, as she had been made to go for a long walk and it was well past her lunchtime. So we pulled up at our favourite chippy, 149 on Marton Road, and bought ourselves a picnic to eat on the cliffs next to the car park at Sewerby. Randomly, some friends from York were seated at the next bench. So I was talking, sharing my meal with my daughter, admiring the view, feeling pretty darn hungry myself, enjoying the yummy food, and therefore not paying attention to my cutlery. It was only when I swallowed that I felt something sharp. "Crikey, that was a big bone, or a tough bit of batter," I thought to myself, only to then notice that a tine of my fork was missing. I tried to calm my instant panic, by reassuring myself that it would just past straight through, like one of my top teeth when I was seven, which dropped out of its socket while I was leaping up and down on a bean bag and I reactively gulped down.<br />
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Anyway, not to put too fine a point on things, it hasn't re-emerged, over two weeks later. And I have a sharp pain on the right-hand side of my small intestine. And no doctor will effing believe me. The trouble is that plastic doesn't show up on X-rays. So there is nothing to see. I have had a CT scan with oral contrast, quite a miraculous achievement in itself for a Sunday afternoon in York Hospital on a Bank Holiday weekend, but all it showed is that my bowel is still intact. Obviously I don't want to be cut open unnecessarily, but I know it's there, sticking into me a little more as each days go by. And I can't get the bloody thing out, no matter how hard I try.</div>
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So here I continue, each day in pain, each day feeling very sorry for myself, and a bit scared of what the next few days or weeks might bring, with a sharp object in my body made of toxic plastic. It brings home to you just how special your family are to you, and how much there is to live for, and all the things that you never quite got round to doing. "You aren't going to die," my husband groans in exasperation. He is used to this sort of talk from me, and naturally doesn't like it. I am very paranoid about my health. I always was, and then watching my mother die of cancer made me a million times worse, especially now I have a child of my own, who I couldn't bear to leave motherless, because I just fricking adore her. </div>
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And what a bloody idiotic thing to have done. That desperation to travel back in time and reset the clock, to go to a different chippy, to just chew my food that bit more thoroughly so that my teeth could have found the big sodding bit of plastic before my gullet. But it's happened, and there is nothing I can do about it now.</div>
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So it was good in a way that <i>Question Time</i> came to York last Friday, to remind me of the bigger picture. Here I am stressing about a tiny piece of fork, when we have the chance to decide and change our futures this coming Thursday, and when the May and Corbyn bandwagon was rolling into town. They'd both been to York already during the campaign. May spoke to ten Tory party activists in a back room of the Barbican (that "getting out and meeting voters rather than taking part in TV debates" that she keeps referring to, part of her "strong and stable leadership" mantra repeated ad nauseum, alongside "It is very clear that" and "negotiating Brexit" and pulling that funny fish face every time she tries to think of her own words) whereas Corbyn addressed a packed St Helen's Square, holding up an amplifier so that everyone could better hear Rachael Maskell's introduction. This was early in the campaign, when he was very lacking in the polls, but even then he had the popular touch. </div>
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I have never been a Corbyn fan. I am angry that he ordered a three-line whip on the Article 50 vote - and that he voted to allow May to hold this election in the first place. He seemed to have no clue about what it means to be in Opposition, i.e. that you are supposed to oppose. But Corbyn is genuine at least. He is a man of conviction and integrity. He tries to stay on the side of decency. He is a pacifist. He gets out and talks to people. He is comfortable in his own skin. He tries to answer questions put to him. He doesn't U-turn at the drop of a hat, though he might want to learn the art of compromise a little more succinctly. But most importantly, he isn't full of shit. Unlike Theresa May. And all of that has counted a lot over recent weeks. </div>
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But whatever doubts I may have had about Corbyn, I am going to vote Labour in this election, assuming my plastic fork lets me survive til Thursday. This is partly because I have a huge amount of respect for York Central's current MP, Rachael Maskell, who defied Corbyn's whip to vote against triggering Article 50. She chose to listen to the majority of her constituents, who voted to remain by a far greater margin than the country as a whole voted to leave the European Union. She has served our city tirelessly since being elected in 2015, and frankly I have no idea when she sleeps. She is there for the big issues, and also the small. When the city was inundated by water, there she was on our street, speaking to the residents next to the park whose houses were full of the river. She lambasted David Cameron for the government's lack of funding for flood defences. When Virgin Media trashed our pavements in Southbank laying new broadband cables, she was there demanding that they pay for the damage. When a group of mums at school campaigned for a safer crossing on Bishopthorpe Road, she came to see for herself and to ask what she could do. She has much of Corbyn's honesty and integrity, and I hope will go far. But the Tories are gunning for her seat. They have the money to throw at their campaign, and Theresa May is busy sending her glossy brochures out to the more marginal wards of York, particularly those who leaned more towards Brexit. It's greedy and despicable.</div>
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Anyway, here we were, Question Time, from the Ron Cooke hub at the University of York, part of the new Heslington East campus. Not a leaders' debate, because the Maybot only does pre-programmed cliched rhetoric, but a chance for the public to ask their questions. Although no one I knew - pro-European, left-leaning - who applied to go on the programme was successful. Instead, the biased BBC had managed to dredge up a load of entrepreneurial, wealthy, nuclear-war loving, anti-foreign aid and anti-Northern Ireland peace process Tories, young and old, to have a go at Corbyn. Gold star to the woman who finally had enough of the red-button grilling, and asked if people would kindly refrain from discussing the murder of potentially millions. Anyway, the audience certainly didn't reflect the people of York - who I generally regard as open-minded, tolerant, cultured and international - that well. They were more a reflection of the Saturday afternoon binge-drinking hellhole that our city can turn into from time to time. There were a few awkward questions for Theresa May too - notably from a nurse who has had only 1% pay rises (not in line with inflation) since 2010 and from a lady who had had a terrible experience during a work capability assessment and has had to wait years for psychological treatment. But nobody pushed May on how many people she was planning or not planning to bomb, or how she will deal with the fallout from Brexit on the borders in Ireland and the IRA. That would have made her pull a multitude of fishfaces.</div>
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Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511595585202145905.post-15324167899886379392017-05-18T05:34:00.000-07:002017-05-18T05:34:43.917-07:00The Truth About Sleep<div style="text-align: justify;">
In recent years, I have had a troubled relationship with sleep. It isn't just because I have a young child, though that certainly doesn't help. She likes to get up at stupid o'clock, and still has illnesses and bad dreams often enough to keep us on semi-alert all the way through the night.</div>
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But I wasn't much good at sleeping before she came along, to be honest. I don't think I've slept through the night since I was about 21 years old. I am terrible at dealing with jetlag, not that there's much opportunity for long-haul flights at the moment. How I envy my daughter the way she sleeps when she finally - after a much protracted bedtime routine of toileting, baths, further toileting, toothbrushing, hairbrushing, saying goodnight to the cats, reading Harry Potter, non-stop chatter and clingy cuddles and us popping in and out of her room for what feels like hours - FINALLY drops off. I don't think there is a more beautiful, heartrending and peaceful sight than a sleeping child.</div>
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If I am in familiar surroundings, I can get to sleep fairly quickly. (Different story in a strange bed, when I seem to forget how to fall asleep at all.) But then after a couple of hours I will wake up, and then spend most of the rest of the night tossing and turning, having silly dreams where I am half-awake, half-asleep and trying desperately not to get up and go to the loo. At certain times if my thyroid is swollen, I develop sleep apnoea and wake up gasping for breath, my heart pounding. And then just as I finally settle and begin to nod off again, something will disturb me - a passing drunk or car on the street outside, an owl in the park, or the pigeon that lives on our roof and coos at the first break of dawn every sodding morning. Or the girl wakes up. Or the cats start taking lumps out of each other or knock something over downstairs. Then there is my husband, trying to reclaim his share of the duvet, or rolling onto his back and starting to snore, or having one of his nightmares which make him wail like he's being murdered. And so it goes on, with me getting more and more restless, my joints achier and achier, and my feet and hands full of pins and needles. Then I will pass out into proper unconsciousness about ten minutes before we have to get up for school and work.</div>
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With my own little foibles, I am very annoying to share a bed with. I hate noise, so sleep with ear plugs in. I like darkness, so want blackout blinds and sometimes even an eye mask. And I love lots of fresh air, so I will sleep with the window wide open even in the depths of winter, the duvet over my head so that all is exposed to the chill is my nose. (See husband's battle with the duvet in the previous paragraph.) To help ease the sleep apnoea I will smear myself in Vicks and stick a little plastic strip across my nose. Then I need the bed propped up on several books to relieve acid reflux, so it feels like I am lying on a cliff, regularly sliding down to the bottom of the bed until my toes hang over the end. This gives me backache, and makes me toss and turn even more.</div>
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Sometimes my husband and I just give up with each other and sleep in separate rooms. It's bliss. But we don't like to admit that to one another.</div>
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(And my husband would just like to point out that it is <i>very </i>hypocritical of me indeed to complain about anybody snoring.)</div>
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But I am by no means alone. <i>The Truth About Sleep</i>, presented by Michael Mosley, told us that insomnia is becoming a national, generational problem. None of us are getting enough sleep. And it's making us depressed, obese, and diabetic, and prone to all sorts of other health problems. But I really didn't need to know all that. It's enough to keep me awake at night.</div>
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You can measure how sleep-deprived you are by lying on your bed in the middle of the day. Hold a metal spoon over the edge of the bed above a metal tray. Make a note of the time. When you nod off, you will drop the spoon, and the clatter of the spoon hitting the tray will wake you up. See what time it is, and how long it took you to fall asleep. If it's less than 15 minutes, chances are you need more slumbertime.</div>
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So what can we do about it? GPs offer the quick fix of sleeping pills, although they are usually reluctant to prescribe these for long, as they are addictive and - if our bodies adjust to them - soon rendered useless. That said, some people end up swallowing them for years. There is only so much resistance a doctor will put up if they have a waiting room full of patients to see.</div>
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But what about more natural ways of reducing insomnia? Well, there's the obvious behavioural things like avoiding alcohol and caffeine and large meals just before you go to bed. Although apparently if you down a shot of espresso just before you take a nap, you will feel much more alert when you wake up. This is the recommended course of action if on a long car journey you find yourself too tired to drive. Pull into a service station, buy a coffee, and then have a snooze in your car. But who the hell can manage to have a decent nap in a car, other than a toddler? Not me, that's for sure.</div>
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Another thing you can do is to switch off all screens - laptops, smart phones, Kindles etc - at least an hour before bedtime. The light from them acts as a stimulant and upsets our body clocks. Proof that the darkness I crave <i>is</i> important. Our daughter still refuses to sleep in the absolute dark, but daylight certainly keeps her awake in summer. Michael Mosley goes to stay the night in a Danish greenhouse to investigate the healing effect of floods of natural light controlling our bodies.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kiwi fruit and alcohol-free wine</td></tr>
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Then there's a selection of what seem like kooky old wives' tale sleep aids to try out. Two kiwi fruits an hour before bedtime. A hot bath. A session of mindfulness. And taking pre-biotics, a white powder stirred into a drink to encourage gut bacteria to grow and thus improve the dynamic between our brain and digestive system. A group of insomniacs each trial one of them. Bizarrely, all seem to have some sort of beneficial effect. I think I'll have a go at the lot.</div>
Rebecca Dodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12396545553023245856noreply@blogger.com0