sigelphoenix

- Film: I watched a documentary, The Golden Spurtle, about the international porridge making championship held annually for the last 30+ years in Carrbridge village in the Scottish Highlands, and the film is an ideal combination of quirky Scottish villagers, international porridge-cooking contestants, and Australian filmmakers. 5/5 would watch again.

- Film: on 11-11-25 at 11am I saw Alan Bennett the Musical, sorry, I mean The Choral, which is about a northern English choral society in 1916. It tackles some (still) controversial themes, mostly class related, but also manages to comfortably embrace cliches such as The Scene Where Everyone Sings and, of course, Let's Do The Show Right Here. The themes are outsourcing of labour by the English ruling classes: the hardest and most dangerous physical labour historically demanded from the white working class, the emotional and sexual labour expected from women, and interestingly the outsourcing of conscience to homosexuals and non-white people. I have to admire Bennett's enduring passion for satirising hypocrisy, and his ability to be simultaneously amusing and devastating. My only reservation is the character assassination of Edward Elgar but I took that more as social commentary about selling one's soul to The Establishment in exchange for "honours", which Bennett has earned the right to make due to turning down at least two we know of including a knighthood. 4/5 but once was enough.

Quote of the film is itself a quotation: “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful [...]” - well-known German person Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

- Pleasing occurrences: Mr Crepehanger Radiographer who did my scan can kiss my optimist ring cos my next neurology appointment has been adjusted from only a two month gap to the more usual three. \o/

( - Accountability catch-up )

AAM was exciting recently!

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Armistice, by Paul Dehn*

It is finished. The enormous dust-cloud over Europe
Lifts like a million swallows; and a light,
Drifting in craters, touches the quiet dead.

Now, at the bugle’s hour, before the blood
Cakes in a clean wind on their marble faces,
Making them monuments; before the sun,

Hung like a medal on the smoky noon,
Whitens the bone that feeds the earth; before
Wheat-ear springs green again, in the green spring

And they are bread in the bodies of the young:
Be strong to remember how the bread died, screaming;
Gangrene was corn, and monuments went mad.

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* Yes, the same Paul Dehn as Mrs Ravoon - he had quite the range.

- Current reading quote: This is the season of ghosts. Their pale forms are invisible in bright sunlight. Winter makes them clear again.

- Pleasing occurrences: visited three different public lending libraries this week - all at least twice.

( - Habitat )