Not tonight Josephine

 I went to see Napoleon yesterday afternoon, the day it was released in Britain.  I didn't expect to be going but as I was in a position to get out of the house  I decided to go.  I hoovered indoors before I went which is something I hate doing.  I decided it would be nice to have a clean living room for the next few days.

I suspect Napoleon will be hated on blogs as it is hated by many critics  and I will be mocked for my view by one man elsewhere (who has no blog of his own)  because I thought it a Ridley Scott masterpiece and dared to say so here.  It won't be many minutes before he has picked this up.   I don't know particularly deeply  the history of the time apart from bare bones and  was not troubled by thinking about historic accuracy.    In fact even if I knew the history of the time well I doubt I would have been troubled with thinking about it whilst sitting in the Odeon watching a movie for a three hour escape from reality.    I saw it as dramatic fiction and a spectacle.  It was at times a little disjointed and jumped around making it give you a jolt that you were now at this point of time or that point of time but that didn't bother me, I was in the mood for it. 

The film is funny in a satirical way so have a laugh, relax and enjoy.  Joachim Phoenix is a great Napoleon showing all the right quirky Napoleon and never a smile and Vanessa Kirby is likewise a great Josephine and the sex is hilarious.   

If you're the sort who goes all serious about historical accuracy in movie dramas then you probably won't like this film.   On the other hand if you are fun loving, like films, entertainment, can appreciate scenery builders who can make a field somewhere in southern  England look like snow covered Russian battlefield,  enjoy the credits and having swimming savers listed,  and millions of other backroom people, then like me you should like it.  Oh and the number of stable staff to look after the horses was phenomenal.

Time line flows

 The poetry workshop was good yesterday.    We had a different tutor because our usual one was away on poetry business at a residential workshop I believe.

It was a much more vibrant class because the tutor had a different style of teaching and it was a good change.  At the end of class she thanked us and said that we were the best class she had had and we are much more volatile than her regular class. This came as quite a surprise to all of us I believe, well it certainly did me.  Why go and pay loads to do a Masters degree and then sit there quiet as a mouse?    It is hard to believe that we are any more vociferous than any other MA group.  However, she assured us that that is true. She is coming back to us again in two weeks time.    Even Hannah my hairdresser agrees that in the time I am there I should get as much out of it as possible and my crazy writing should be tried.  I am not the only vociferous one in class by any means I must add. 

I found going to the class was a great lift for me.  Spending several days on my own suddenly hit home that yes, I had been alone for two weeks apart from once to the hairdressers and usual visits to shops and cinema I had had no direct contact with any friends or family and have seen nobody.  It was exactly two weeks ago that I had the emergency in the bed, saw the doctor, couldn't see Potty and Sue, received a hospital appointment and so a lot has happened in a short space of time on my own.  

Today I have loaded my four poems on to the university portal which I am now so relaxed with I can  even juggle with PDFs and  Word docs and load successfully  and then Whats App mates to tell them the poems have arrived.  Amazing how it all seemed so difficult at first.  

Next post

 Post 2 of the same day.  I have done Wordle and made a pigs ear of it really doing it in 4 when I should have easily done it in 3.  I almost didn't even do it in 4.    I got some things off my chest in the first post which I don't think you will see because I will have to let it hide.  You can't let a bully bother you at all.  It did help me to write about it though.

The Houthis have the same slogan as Hamas which is death to all Jews. They are another Muslim Brotherhood off-shoot like Hamas.   (The Houthis fight the war in Yemen against the Yemen coalition).   The BBC once reported the war in Yemen when they would have focused lots of images over and over  but how many people study anything and think they have all the information sitting eating their tea watching the BBC 6 O Clock News?  "Well that's that dear, news has finished, what now darling, another glass of wine?"  The Houthis have been sending drones into targets in US bases in Iraq for some weeks  and now they have attacked an Israeli linked ship.   I wonder what the Jew haters in blog land think of this.  I doubt they even know what the Houthis are.  They are also backed by Iran.  

I wonder what would have been the view taken of Jews in Hitler's time if they had fought back.  Would it have been the same as now in that the Jews would have been hated across the world for giving as good as they got? It is a mystery.  (In the 1930s they were so tortured they had the skin torn off their backs, buttocks and legs overnight and were released out to get home after a few days, almost dead or dead).     

Keeping Occupied

 Today I have an appointment with Hannah in a short while so I am up early.   Hannah is the hairdresser. 

This afternoon I have to be fitted and tested with my new trial contact lenses and pick up my new glasses. 

Tomorrow I have the poetry workshop at the university as we are back off our half-term. 

Yesterday I went to see The Hunger Games, the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes  because my brother was unavailable to see me.  I needed to continue with getting out of the house.    

This is not the normal sort of film I would see.   The Hunger Games is a dystopian novel series with  a cult following particularly amongst very young adults/children.  It is a weird story about a fight that takes place every year or two where young members of the "district" take on a fight to the death.      Strange kind of storyline with children being chosen for the fight and the film is listed as a 12A rating which means that anyone 12 or over can go without an adult.  It seemed quite violent to me or even very violent although I believe the violence was described as "mild" in the blurb at the beginning.    On balance I unexpectedly did enjoy it and was able to follow what was going on coming into it cold without prior knowledge of the stories.   It did at least have a storyline to follow through to the end. 

I continued with the coffee in Wetherspoons after the film and continued annotating the poems ready for class tomorrow. 

I was glad to get out of the house yesterday and be occupied in the cinema, entertained and taken away from the world for at least a little while.   I have a few things to occupy me today and tomorrow.

Stand Up

I do not allow Anonymous comments on my blog.  I have not done so for about 10 years.  Anonymous comments were almost always  nasty ones.  

How can you hold a conversation with someone who identifies themself as "Anonymous".  I can't.

Then there is the allowance for those to type in a name instead of being Anonymous.  It is one of the options that you let in when you have Anonymous comments allowed.  So you get the black lettered names that appear. 

Again they are  Anonymous people, pick any name, no profile, no blog. 

It used to be possible to follow the IP address of these people and all commenters and still is but a  few are now choosing to use a proxy IP address.   I have a troll who does this under a Google account so Google accounts are not 100% fail safe but they are as near to damn it what I can get here to identifing friends. 

Some like to say that blogging is as  penfriends  we had when we were at school.  Yes, in many ways it is and I can say that for 90% of the people who leave me comments it does feel that way.  However there is at least a 10% visitation of lurkers and unknowns who only show up rarely.  They have Google accounts but don't give much, if anything,  away and don't have profiles and definitely don't have a regularly updated blog.

Some bloggers who have been blogging for donkeys years refuse to enter into any emails with readers.  I think that is a bit mean and there is one who used my blog not long ago to talk to me about something that would have been wholly appropriate for an email.  It was totally inappropriate to appear on my blog post as a comment.   The subject matter had no connection with the particular blog post.    I deleted the comment.  He has a blog that has been in existence for about 20 years but there is no reveal of an email contact address.   One can only assume that by leaving what he wanted to say as  the comment instead of emailing me was saying "well I am going to tell you what I think of you and personalise it but you are damn well not going to be able to have my email address to respond".   (My email address is available for all on my blog).

If I enter into conversation  with someone on my blog then I like to know a little about who I am talking to.  

It takes about 5 minutes to open a Blogger account.  At most you will need to give an email address to do so but surely that isn't giving too much away.  After all when it comes down to it nobody has empty email inboxes so they are giving their email address to plenty of  people and organisations and on-line what-have-yous so I don't accept it when people say they don't want to create a Blog because they don't want to reveal their email address. 

By creating a blog one can then give a profile and share a little about general location and interests at the very least.  

However, most of this doesn't apply here because I don't accept Anonymous or non-Google visitors anyway.  I like a conversation with someone I can identify with and be familiar with their visits. 

I read an anonymous comment on Weaver's blog last night.  Later the commenter returned and identified herself saying she had forgotten to do so.  Fair enough.   I was tempted, but didn't, to say to her I hope she loved me, and everybody else,  a little bit more as was a pertinent response  to her comment about love overcoming hate.  When I woke up this morning she had changed her mind and deleted her identity.  There is nowt so strange as folk. 

Shadows and strife or was it strikes

 Well Wordle was quick this morning.  I got it in three in about 15 seconds.  My first word was trend.

It is raining here.  Yesterday was bright and sunny as my photo of the river shows, well at least good light. 

While I was sitting in the car park at the station the hospital rang me and I have an appointment for next week. They gave me a choice which I thought was remarkable and very nice.   They also said I can drive, and park,  so no logistical worries which was one of my main concerns.   

It is extremely grey here with the rain.  Not sure what I will do today.  Puzzles and writing maybe.  I think I have seen all the films I want to see and not ready to go and see Saltburn again yet. 

I noticed National Rail told me via my phone yesterday that Aslef are striking again.  My lovely Aslef train driver who used to talk to me at the station and always blushed right down to his Greater Anglia  shirt collar whenever I mentioned Aslef drivers striking has retired to his house in Spain so I don't see him anymore. 

Here are yesterday's photos again. 

Not Saltburn-by-the-Sea

I attended the cinema again today and I went to see Saltburn on its opening day.

This is a superb film and one not to be missed.   To you streamers and renters see it as soon as you can or go out and have fun seeing it in a cinema. 

The film goes into the darkly funny side of toffs and although I am not a toff exactly it matched some words I wrote in a poem recently about one small part of  the afternoon my father died.    15 minutes after my father had been declared dead and the visiting doctor was leaving one of my brothers asked my mother when tea would be ready.     She immediately got it to the table and we all sat down and we had tea with my father's body in the other room. 

The film is a darkly comedic story.    You get the drift I hope.    

If you see only one film and don't fancy 3 hour long ones see this one at two and half hours.   It is directed by Emerald Fennell, of your Killing Eve fame, something I could never watch after seeing someone so ugly in it that I could not look.   As in Saltburn, some of us cannot bear to look at ugly people. 

I continued checking through my fellow students poems again whilst drinking my coffee.   This time I did it before the film rather than after.   I left my house early and had my tyre pressures checked, returned home briefly and then went for a train.   I did not wish to be here. 

The photos are today's.  I sat in a different chair by a different window.