Sunday 28 October 28th 2012. This is planned as a monster writing catch up day before the regime kicks in tomorrow. There is an extra hours as the clocks were put back. I became very tired early last night and was in bed by 9.45 with the consequence that had an up and down and could not get back to sleep quickly long night where I clocked up over 8 hours CPAP use plus an additional hour or more during the night without it taking the average to 7.5
I have played Free Cell successful and reached close to 10 million points Luxor Majong but messed up my latest run level 3 chess. Had breakfast of porridge and coffee and completed the washing up for yesterday. Will watch Andrew Marr. The first news note of the day from Huffington Post on AOL was that dozen of well known stars have contacted Max Clifford concerned they will become caught up in Saville Scandal as they enjoyed sex with lots of teenage girls in the 60’s to 80’s without ever asking to see their birth certificates. Much as I have being saying. There is of course a world of difference between he young women who applied for tickets to Pop of the Pops and other gigs with the intention of having star as a trophy and the kinds of events which has led to people continuing to regard themselves as tightly as victims but the danger is that the everyone will now be tarred with the same brush. If sex was common place on the premise of the BBC in dressing rooms then the Corporation will have a major problem to restore its reputation.
Previously I noted that Friday 26 October 2012 has become a good day despite the onset of winter although the sleet snow did not arrive as far as I was able to observe although last night Newcastle home game against the Belgium side Bruges was affected by sleet.
Newcastle won the game and heads the table with two wins and a draw. Their next match is away to Bruges and a win there to draw should mean they will qualify barring last matches disasters. Given the inexperience of Pardew into European games and he need to rotate the squad and maintain a good position in the Premiership League I feel he is doing exceptionally well and the confidence of being awarded an eight year contract tells everybody that the club has confidence in him and is anxious to retain his services over the medium term come what may.
Although I slept an hour without the sleep Apnoea machine and clocked up under seven hours the average remains at 7.4 and should remain above 7 for the visit to the Consultant in ten days time.
I am now also in position to report the daily and weekly performances of using Wii Fit balance board and programme with enthusiasm that this will prove one of my better decision of recent times. On Friday I was able to ramp up activity to some forty minutes which included a short break in the morning which I hope will become the standard for the weeks and months to come with perhaps as much as an hour some days and not less than 30 minutes unless because of the sleep situation and physical state I am unable to complete the work out in the morning where everything points to being the best time.
I have notice feeling tired sleep after lunch and am yawning now but it is a goon natural physical age related feeling rather than a failure of the sleep apnoea treatment as I also work mentally eat well and also take time to relax and enjoy other experiences.
Whereas over recent years I have dreaded the coming of the months of Winter with long periods of darkness and few opportunities to go out adding to a sense of isolation rather than loneliness, a hermit like existence but comfortable and full life situation but marred by the lack of exercise and the gradual increase in weight, I feel optimistic and confident about being able to add weight control and improve fitness to the situation and the abolition of depressed moments.
The Wii activity which will see me through is jogging which does involved board and where I have quickly mastered the approach required and moved to long distance which lasts five to six minutes instead of three for the shorter. I have made less progress with the step action mainly because I have not remembered red the sequencing. I need to develop a practicing strategy; I also included the heading ball missing objects where I did the best performance of the week with my first try this morning.
Yesterday I only reached 30 mins because of much other activity during the morning with amounted to around 90 mins overall. I also took a long jogging programme which last 10 mins and which I use at least twice in each session
I enjoyed making and eating baguette with half the salami pack, some lettuce, olives and a little pickle while this evening I had three Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages with the rest of tomatoes and beans from yesterday and a portion of mashed potatoes. There was mushroom tomatoes and porridge in the morning, some grapes at lunch, soup before the evening meal and a small banana with a little custard. Going to enjoy a small Pepsi with a few walnuts in a moment.
Yesterday evening after the Sprats at lunch I enjoyed a cheese toasty and a small prawn in shell salad after a cuppa soup. Later I will have roast chicken and roast potatoes for lunch uncertain what I will have for the evening meal.
On Thursday Friday I watched The Rum Diaries, a tribute to Hunter S Thompson the Journalists and Writer by his friend Johnny Depp which I felt self indulgent where as this early evening I watched and enjoyed to my considerable surprise Chalet Girls, a contemporary Cinderella feel good froth.
Hunter S Thompson
was born two years before me and died in 2005 had the kind of start which it could be said was a good seam for subsequent writing with feeling and commitment and according to Depp led a hell raising drink, drugs and women existence which other writers have trodden since young men set forth to make their mark on the world and turn their experience into prose of merit and interest.
I wrote this listening to Gib radio and avoiding the washing up. Gib radio at this hour (evening) is almost continuous good music without constant news, competitions and advertising. Shine Light as a Diamond, SkyFall, Valerie with Amy Winehouse where numbers which caught my eye. There is no reference to artists or titles.
Hunter Thompson is report to have gone off the rails at 15 following the death of his middle class family father in Louisville Kentucky and spent two months in jail at the age of 18 for abetting a robbery which meant he failed to graduate from High School. Nevertheless this did not prevent him joining the USA airforce becoming a journalist and working in Puerto Rico the subject of the film, and in Beirut and Brazil before settling in Aspen Colorado in the early 1960‘s when he would have been as still in his twenties.
After a year living with at the Hells Angels he wrote The Strange and Terrible Saga of Motor Cycle Gangs (1967) and set on a path of creating a new form of journalism in which the writer became the central character with the most recent example only earlier in the week as Michael Palin set off with a camera team to report on Modern Brazil and where he remained the central character throughout. Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas 1972 became Hunter’s best known work. It was serialised in Rolling Stone and the 1998 film starred Johnny Depp and Terry Gilliam. He also wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail publicising his hatred of Richard Nixon who he regarded as dark and representing the violent side of the American culture, while he did not advocate drink, drugs, insanity and violence he admitted these things had worked for him. He took his own life when depressed aged 67.
He has one of the most detailed and interesting biographies on Wikipedia but the two aspects which interested me were his period in Puerto Rico, and where later in life he published an autobiographical account as the Rum Diaries and if it is accurate married the young women he met while working in that country. The Wikipedia biography suggests differently which is not surprising given the nature of the relationship described in the Johnny Depp film.
In the film and possibly the book Depp brings out many of the features for which his life is known. He arrives a day late at the office of the newspaper because of getting drunk in the hotel, alone and wrecking the drinks fridge because he did not find out that the key was attached to the room key. There is much drinking of rum throughout the film and in great quantities.
He and his room mate friend, photography colleague on the newspaper, try out a hallucinatory drug alleged to been given by the CIA to Communists in order to change their view of the world. His antipathy towards Nixon is also covered as the two use binoculars to watch the TV of neighbour through respective open windows and where the sound is on so loud they can hear what is being said. It was not clear why they did not acquire their own TV. They watch Nixon on the campaign trail which results in the Hunter based character unable to watch such is his contempt
There are three interlinked story lines. The first is the future of the paper to which he has been recruited to help save. However the paper is dependent on advertises who do not take kindly to attacks on their role in the country or to attacks on the way the country is run and the role of the USA in particular. The paper is closed down in any event and his attempt to provide at least a final edition of truth and justice also fails when the bank who owns the accumulated debt removes the relevant machines for sale.
On arrival at the flat of the photographer he notes the man keeps a cockerel, a fighting fowl, so he goes along to watch noting the winnings of a couple of hundred dollars from bets. He learns that this is small beer compared to the $2000 dollars plus at a venue attended by the wealthy and influential. They take the cockerel to a voodoo priestess for help to fight the local champion in order to make money to save the paper and although they win and gain some $6000 they are too late.
The second storyline which was to have been the major event in the last edition is that he approached by a young business man to help write up friendly articles for a bid to buy a beautiful island presently used by the USA for target practice but about to come on the market and which the man and his friends and associates plan to turn into a paradise holiday island. The group includes a nuke the commies General and his wife.
The reason his deal to write fails, is not from any high morale indignation but because of the man’s girl friend who he first encounters one evening when he uses a pedalo in the bay and finds the girl swimming naked. He sees her again when he visits the young businessman who comments that the young woman likes to sun bathe naked which attracts the attention of those who stray on his private beach. When Hunter visits a second time to discuss the business proposition her see the couple making love by the yacht via a spy glass. He alienates his host first by after signing a confidentiality agreement brings the photographer along on a visit to the island from which he two plan to visit another island where a fiesta is being held. Here they meet up with the girl who told him about the event and boyfriend and other guests on the trip.
The girl insists on going dancing at a jazz club event against the wishes of the boyfriend where she encounters a masculine local and they engage in a provocative sexual dance where it appears evident the couple are to engage in sex leading perhaps to an orgy at which the girl plays the central part. Realising that she is out of her depth, the boyfriend and Hunter are unable to intervene and are sent packing. The following day there is no sign of the girl and the boyfriend blames Hunter and sends him packing.
Earlier Hunter and the photographer had narrowly escaped from a nasty situation involving a group of locals at a countryside restaurant inn and in getting away have a serious run in with the police. They are bailed out by the businesses man who now turns his back on them but fortunately they have the winnings to pay fines and bribes in order to wipe the slate.
The girl arrives at the shared flat, they have sex but she goes off to New York. He also goes back to the USA. In the final notes Depp mentions that the character in the film did find his writing voice and become successful and settled down in the USA and marries the woman he met in Puerto Rico. The film is only of interest because of the relationship with Depp and prior knowledge of the author and his autobiographical novel would have helped.
I watched the opening of Chalet Girls where I had seen a trailer at the cinema expecting awful teen’s rights of passage romp and stayed to watch the whole film. It is more a contemporary fairy story. The girl and her father cling to each other after the death of the wife and mother in a car accident with both blaming themselves for contributing to the death,
An accident to an existing Ski Resort chalet girl enables Cinderella to be accepted by an agency for a four month contract despite an inability to Ski. The girl can cook and works hard but is out of her depth among the other sophisticated and experienced Chalet girls who look after the rich and famous to keep large latest gadgets homes in the resort where they spend occasional holidays in season, bringing business guests and sometimes friends, eat caviar and drink the best champagne. Bill Nighy plays the wealthy chalet owner with his snobby wife, a former air hostess and their son, Prince Charming who is about to become engaged to a suitable girl of money and social standing.
The girl discovers she has a talent for snow boarding although is held back by the sense of guilty regarding the death of her mother. She is forced to enter a major competition held at the resort when after celebrating her birthday at a party they invited everyone back to the Chalet where she is discovered skinny dipping by the son who returns unexpectedly and makes them pay up their tips as compensation for the damage caused by the other party goers. Unbeknown to the girl the young man comes for a weekend before his engagement party and uncertain he is making the right decision joins the girl for day on slopes at the end of which they fall in love and have sex, only to again be discovered by the mother who comes to collect her errant son. He backs out of the engagement at the party and is understandably physically assaulted by the girl.
The girl enters the competition and appears to fail in the first run ending up first reserve. She gets her chance at the last moment and wins a substantial money prize as well as finding a new career as a professional snow boarding competitor. The girl, her by now Chalet girl friends all find their ideal love sex partner as does her father back homer with his local authority help although why is entitled to a home help escaped me. It was good fun.
I nearly went to see the 2011 version of Jane Eyre in theatre and thought I had written a review after seeing the film on TV in early October. Cinema films were made in 1934, 1944 with Jane Fontaine (seen) 1956, 1960 with Susannah York 1996 1997 (seen) and now 2011 with Mia Wasikowska plus a mini series in 2006 1983 and back in 1973 with Sorca Cusack. I have visited the parsonage where the Bronte sisters were raised to young women as well as walking the Moors which feature in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and viewed several TV programmes about the Bronte sisters and their impact on English literature and the role of women.
The film is an excellent addition although I am not certain if it follows the book which I read many moons ago and have found in the library and added to the titles to be read over coming months although well back in the queue. Jane is brought up in a family where in modern parlance she is abused by everyone and when she stands up for herself she is packed off to a harsh residential establishment for the training and discipline for young women, where she has an even harder time, but survives to be appointed the governess of an orphan French girl at the castle like home of one Mr Rochester and his housekeeper Alice Fairfax.
When Rochester returns from one of his many travels he takes to Jane because of her independent spirit and in time decides she is the one to marry than another young woman part of the County set who he invites at one point to his home.
When the couple are to be married, someone intervenes at the ceremony to say that Rochester is already married and is the severely mentally disturbed woman who Rochester cares for secretly in an otherwise unoccupied part of the home. Jane has already rescued Rochester from certain death with his wife attempted to burn the house down Jane goes off in distress which deepens as she wonders the moors and weather deteriorates. She is taken in by a would be missionary and his two sisters who finds her work teaching at the local school. He sets his sights on her and is disappointed when she rejects his sincere wishes to marry her.
Jane has discovered she has become a wealthy woman after her aunt yields a letter on her deathbed sent by a relative of Jayne who has made a fortune in the West Indies and has attempted to locate his only known relative. She inherits when the man dies.
When she returns Thornfield Hall, Rochester‘s home, she finds it has substantially burned down. Rochester is blinded in the blaze which also killed his wife. With money of her own and the right social background she is now free to marry and to care for the man in a role reversal situation.
Please write an essay of 1000 words explaining what Jane Eye and Chalet Girl have in common.
In mid September I watched Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English Reborn and confess that apart from the last episodes of Black Adder I failed to find his brand humour entertaining once one had got over marvelling at his facial expressions and ability to communicate without words which remains outstanding. The problem has always been the scripts.
The film is meant to be a Spy spoof of the James Bond Genre which celebrates half a century of films, all on Sky if you chose and with the latest Skyfall packing em in cinemas this weekend. I cannot remember anything of the original film made eight years ago and here he starts learning martial in Tibet having been exiled after a failed mission in Mozambique where the head of state he was supposed to protect is assassinated.
However he is summoned back by the new boss Pegasus Gillian Anderson (M17) to stop a plot to kill the Chinese Premier during talks with the British Prime Minister. Although Johnny was highly regarded within the service he looks up to another agent who from the outset is the baddie although Johnny is such a stupid man that he fails to see what is obvious especially to his new recruit assistant.
As you will appreciate I found the character awful, irritating and deserving of every nasty thing that happens to him. Fortunately his assistant is OK and misguidedly helps Johnny to survive but why escapes me. Johnny is tested by a behavioural psychologist who amazingly develops a thing for Johnny and also helps in his rehabilitation and eventual success.
What emerges is that those behind the planned assassination are the same as in Mozambique and use a behaviour controlling drug initially going to be used on the boss of M17 but is then Johnny. He appears to die saving the Premier but survives through a kiss from the psychologist. There is a scene at the end at Buckingham Palace where Johnny is to be knighted for his services and mistakes the real Queen for a villain who has disguised herself as the Queen. Silly rubbish all the way and I did not find anything funny.
I now come to the great disappointment of the year Anonymous, a historical drama with as its background the controversy as to whether the plays now performed and studied as by William Shakespeare were in fact the writings of the 17 Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere. The production is glorious using a host of big name stars including Vanessa Redgrave as the first Queen Elizabeth, Joely Richardson Rafe Spall and Rhys Ifans as the Earl of Oxford. Joely, Vanessa’s daughter plays the young Elizabeth which is a great piece of casting.
The case against William Shakespeare being the author of the works is a strong one because the man was a low level actor. The list of candidates for authorship includes Francis Bacon, the 5 Earl of Rutland, and the 6th Earl of Derby with supporters arguing that the Earl of Oxford continues to pose the strongest.
Why the film disappoints is because of the blurring with the present and past in the film and where the issue of the authorship of the plays remains secondary to the basic plot which is who will succeed Elizabeth as she approaches the end of life and the move of the Catholics to put James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne and undo Henry’s break with Rome.
The background is that Oxford became a prodigious playwright from a young age. When Oxford lives in the House of Cecil he kills a servant for spying on him, Cecil blackmails him into marrying his daughter and also bans his further involvement in playwriting. The film suggests that Oxford had presented one his plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the Young Queen Elizabeth and they establish a relationship which results in the Queen secretly given birth to their son who is brought up as the Earl of Southampton without the boy or Oxford being initially aware of his paternal parentage. This means that the boy would be the rightful heir after the Queen dies and scupper the plan of Cecil.
In his mature years Oxford visits the theatre and is impressed by a play from Ben Jonson which is about the position of Essex alleged to be another of the Queen’s secret sons. Johnson is imprisoned in the Tower because of the play but Oxford offers to free him if he passes Oxford’s play Richard III as Jonson‘s. Johnson although happy to be freed decides against claiming authorship which he offers to Shakespeare and is then surprised by the plays success. When Shakespeare discovers who the author of the play is he blackmails Oxford into funding the building of the Globe Theatre and as part of the deal begins to put the completed plays of Oxford as his own.
Oxford then attempts to blacken Cecil and writes Venus and Adonis to remind the Queen of their love Cecil captures two sons of the Queen on the grounds they are plotting to take the throne from her by force. Oxford has a private audience with the Queen to plead for his son and she agrees on the basis that no will ever know that he is the true author of the plays under the name of William Shakespeare. After the death of the Queen, Cecil makes every effort, successfully to ensure that Oxford is not revealed as the author especially after James when crowned becomes enthusiastic about the plays. Shakespeare retires to Stratford to become a business man with the money gained through being regarded as the author of Oxford’s work. This may all appear clear enough but has only been worked out long after I sat confused by what happened on the screen.
A film with an overlapping theme is The Magnificent Showman a vehicle for John Wayne and Rita Hayworth back in 1965. The film is primarily about the struggle of Wayne to produce a three ring Circus which was a fashion at the time and where I remember attending a performance of one such event in the Croydon area in the 1950’s or even may have been the late 1940’s. He has with him the orphan of a famous aerialist who died and whose mother has disappeared. The Circus has its problems caused unknown Wayne by the friend of dead man who blames the boss for the death.
The truth is that Wayne and Hayworth had an affair with the girl being their daughter, when the father had an accident Hayworth runs off from the guilt. She returns to see her daughter and at first Wayne is concerned that the daughter should find out. As one might expect in the end Wayne Haworth and the girl become happy families but not after there is second fortunately unsuccessful attempt to burn the Circus down by the resentful friend of the dead man. The daughter becomes a aerialist much to horror of Wayne but is reconciled when she is shown to be as talented as her mother.
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