Missus H.

I DVR'd this ages ago because I couldn't remember if I had seen it before. As soon as I started watching it I realized I had, and quite frankly it would have been a freak occurrence had a Harrison Ford movie slipped by my radar (the notable exception is of course the one on a submarine with Ford doing a Russian accent because even I have limits).  I am such a scared cat that even Michelle Pfeiffer in varies stages of anxiety puts me on edge, and I have been fast forwarding through the creepy bits.

This film reinforces why I wont live in a large house on the edge of a lake (even if Harrison Ford comes included in the real estate).  Poor old Pfeiffer has just packed her daughter off to college and is left rattling around a large house with her second husband (Ford). Her over active imagination kicks in and she goes all Rear Window with her new neighbours. This is of course a decoy and it is actually her husband's dead mistress who is driving her slowly mad. That's what I like sisters doing it for themselves. No need for Hamlet to send Ophelia doolally when one of the sisterhood of the traveling pants could do it for him. If I had a ghost who was trying to get a message to me I would prefer a more direct route. Reach out from beyond the astral plane and friend me on FB. Don't blow doors open and closed, turn the stereo on at random moments or keep knocking over a photo until I realized that there was an article printed on the back that would explain all - the missing girl, the accident a year ago, why her husband kept bringing her flowers.

You can be somewhat sympathetic of Ford's character (even if he is a philander) because sharing a creepy house with such a highly strung wife would be a challenge (especially when she gets that far away look in her eye - is she short sighted and squinting or is a repressed memory floating to the surface) but then he commits the cardinal sin, and starts looking into having her committed. At that point I am all for Pfeiffer's character being possessed by the ghost and going after her errant husband.

I have a fairly unhealthy relationship with my iPod. The geniuses at Apple make it really easy to listen to one song over and over again. At least with a Walkman you had to go to the trouble of rewinding and checking you were in the right place. But with an iPod you can repeat with ease until your ears bleed.  For the past ffew days I've been obsessively listening to Hunters & Collectors 'Throw Your Arms Around Me', however my preferred version of the song is by the Doug Antony All Stars.  Way back in the mists of time (the late 80s and early 90s) these guys were boss. They could loosely could be described as a rather salty cabaret act. The bulk of their show was comedic songs (one focused on the dangers of meeting a "girl" in a saliors' pub in the early hours of the morning when it is easy to over look that see has an adams apple) but they would always do a few straight songs that always had more resisence because they were few and far between.  In 2003 DAAS reformed for one night to perform 'Throw Your Arms Around Me', and I think Australia (and their fans) were very happy.

I was chatting away with my mum this week, and we got onto the subject of how the British PM had likened himself to Heathcliff.  My mum summed it up as ""Fantastic, we're being governed by a fictional character from a Yorkshire farming ghetto".  I don't quite get why Gordon would go for Heathcliff.  Has he read Wuthering Heights? Did he fall into the pre-GCSE trap of seeing Heathcliff as a brooding, misunderstood character than roams the moors and not the inarticulate chav that sets out to destroy all around him.  Perhaps Gordon is trying to imply that he is a closet farmer, a man's man who wants us to get back to a simpler time when there were foundlings in Liverpool. Of course it could be something more sinsiter if Gordon is Heathcliff then is the British populous Cathy - being held captive as Heathcliff takes out his revegne and expands his empire.  The flip side to Gordon 'Heathcliff' Brown is an article about how much of a reader Obama is, and if he wins in November he could be the most well read President and that is an exciting prospect. I'll over look that he favors Melville because I don't think that he will fall into the trap of comparing himself to Ahab, Ishmael or Queequeg.

And finally, before I got to lament the near passing of my laptop, how the hell did Rushdie win best of Booker? How many people have actually managed to finish Midnight's Children. Come on be honest is it sitting on your shelf next to A Brief History of Time?

Summer pud

The barbecue was a great success, and my food went down a treat. No great surprise there since I had mined the depths of Nigella for her best recipes: buttermilk chicken drumsticks, vodka marinated steak, cornbread, coleslaw, watermelon with rosewater, and seasame peanut noodles. For desert I decided to keep it simple and made a truck load of madelines and a summer pudding.  I wasn't quite prepared for the overwhelming compliments for my summer pud because it is just moulded berries and stale bread. It's a simple desert that I grew up with as a kid, though my dad was a bit more sparing with the sugar than I am. 

Our friends always tell me off for doing the bulk of the cooking and not sharing the load but I can't help it as I love to cook and I am a complete control freak in the kitchen (just like my dad).  More photos of the barbecue over at Alex's Flickr site.

Last night an astonishing amount of food was delivered to our pad.  The fridge is packed with fresh produce, the freezer is awash with chicken drumsticks and my cupboards are full of every condiment and herb know to man. What can I say other than - we're having people over for a picnic slash barbie tomorrow afternoon.  I actually think that the cooking bit will be almost as much fun as the entertaining segment of the weekend. The sense of achievement that you have managed to turn all this raw ingredients into a feast, and people are like eating it!!!! Planning what dishes to make (and cooking them) has filled the void that is left when I am not incessantly studying. Both tasks require thought and contemplation, and to rise at an ungodly hour on the weekends.

I should really be getting a jump ahead this evening but we have dinner plans at Babbo, and I am hoping that delicious meal should put me in the right mind frame for cook.

Have you ever broken a bone? If not, what's the worst injury you've sustained?

I just spent the last 20 minutes writing a some what amusing account of when I sprained my ankle last year playing tennis, and then to the alarm of my co-workers didn't hot foot it to the doctor's for an x-ray or MRI (because I knew it was just a bad twist and I didn't need to pay someone to tell me that because the ankle was getting better everyday), but the power gave out on my powerbook and my post was sucked into the ether. I'll hold my hands up and say that it was my fault for not plugging in the power which was a foolish oversight given that this laptop is going through a phase of spontaneously shutting itself off.  I think it needs a new battery but Alex down graded its operating system from wild cat to house cat and it appears to be helping.  When I re-booted it and got the message about the date being rolled back to 1969 (a la Life on Mars) but when I opened the date/time thingy it corrected itself so there is hope.

In honor of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.

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Oh why oh why did none of the vestal virgins of Manhattan island warn me about this flick?  Thank the gods that I had my knitting with me otherwise I might have fallen asleep it was far too dull and predictable. By the end of it I was second guessing if the TV series had been any good in the first place. S&TC worked in a 30 minute format where over the course of a season all of Carrie's sidekicks could take a turn sharing the limelight and even though the film version clocked in at 2 hours 20 minute we didn't really spend any quality time with the girls it was all rather skin deep.

Samantha has relocated to LA to manage Smith but in the process lost sight of herself and ended up as a frustrated housewife who gained a little weight (cue jokes at Samantha's expense). Charlotte is still living in domestic bliss with Harry and their adoptive daughter Lily, and on a trip to Mexico accidentally swallowed some water and pooed her pants in front of her friends (cue jokes at Charlotte's expense accompanied by lots of fart sounds). Now Miranda is still bitchin' about living in Brooklyn and struggling to juggle the domestic with the professional to the point where she has a lapsed membership to the bikini wax club - not a good thing when you are on hols with the girls in Mexico (cue jokes at Miranda's expense).   And Carrie what was up with her? She was still dating Big until she allowed her wedding to get bigger than Big, and then she morphed into Miss Havisham. She is rattling around Manhattan feeling sorry for herself with a PA in tow until she is able to reconnect with Big.  By the way was I the only one wondering if Carrie was paying her PA off the books, or was she doing it legit and giving the poor girl health insurance? These are the types of questions that pop into my head during these types of films.

I always thought that S&TC was a little bit on the egdy side, and really tapped in the New York consciousness. The only bit of the movie that I felt really mirrored NYC was when Carrie lost her 917 cell phone number and had to settle for a 614. There are a lot of people out there who think that is a BIG deal, and something that needs an intervention from Mayor Bloomberg to resolve. The film really needed one of the girls to be seen wearing an Obama tee shirt, and for Samantha to start caring about the planet and stop flying back to NYC when the girls manage to get a brunch reservatiion somewhere super trendy.  I guess the other thing that irked me (other than the painting by numbers plot) was the endless product placement. It ranged from SmartWater to all the big designers.

I would skip this at the cinema, and wait till it comes on TV because Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte are far more suited to the small screen.

I was catching up with my Mum over skype at the weekend and we ended up chatting about a holiday we had in Oxford way back when.  I should clarify a couple of things. Firstly, I use the term 'catching up' loosely as we talk on the phone a few times a week (snatched calls from conference rooms), and exchange emails through out the day. When you couple that with twitter and blogging we pretty much have small talk covered, and there are times I feel that some people are hardwired into my brain. Secondly, the trigger for this tramp down memory lane was my paternal granny (Grannie Butterfly) mailing my Mum a thank you letter that her mother (my maternal granny - Granny Moth) had sent Grannie Butterfly in the late 80s.

So back in the mists of time before iPods or cell phones Mum, Granny Moth, my brother and myself headed down to Oxford to house sit for my paternal grandparents for a week or two, and take care of their cat Emmet.  My brother and I didn't have pets growing up instead we ended up looking after our friend's cats, hamsters and tortoises when they went on vacation. This arrangement proved to priceless as we got a few weeks a year to play pet owner but without any of the responsibility, and the pets always stayed at their owners home so we didn't even have to make way for them in our home. I digress, I remember that the summer of the year I can't remember was hot and it was this climatic condition that led to our merry band having to spend an afternoon sitting on the roof of my grandparents extension.

When we got to Oxford we quickly discovered that the place was hooching with fleas. I believe that the piping hot temps had a part to play in the craziness of the flea situation that was engulfing the nation.  The cat was immediately banished to the garden, and my Mum dispatched to the chemist to buy every bottle of flea powder she could get her paws on.  Every inch of carpet was covered in a thick dusting of flea powder, and the house looked like Narnia had been seeping out of the wardrobe and infecting reality. Whilst the powder was doing its thing we were evacuated onto the roof of the ground floor extension with mugs of tea, sandwiches and reading material.  I wish we had photos of us picnicking on the roof, and chilling out till the fumes subsided.  Once the powder was vacuumed up all was well but that didn't stop my Granny Moth's inner shaman coming to the surface, and she got my brother and I to sleep with cloves of garlic in our beds.  

Once the flea situation was squared away we had a lovely stay in Oxford even though it was not as rich in jumble sales as Peebles was.