Three Hundred Plus.

I've mentioned the film 300 a few times on this blog. It's a film I have a soft spot for,  for several reasons

1      Everyone in the family enjoyed it. This is a rare thing.

2      It is known in this house as Tre Hundra, from an incident that took place in a Norwegian lesson.         It's been Tre Hundra, rather than Three Hundred for us ever since.

3      It featured David Wenham in a fairly major role. I may have mentioned my admiration for Mr   Wenham's acting abilities here too. On the odd occasion.

4      It was beautifully directed. So stylised, so greek urn, so original graphic novel. Loved it.

So when I heard they were making a sequel I was quite excited. And when we realised it was on in Sheffield when we were down there for the funeral and we had a spare evening with all the four of us there it seemed like a good idea to go.

 

In the event it wasn't a total success. This was partly because of the price of the tickets. I know we get out of touch here in Orkney with the price of things south but more than £10 a ticket? Really? How do they justify that?

 

It was mostly to do with the film though. Derivative, badly acted, thoughtlessly scripted and not nearly as well directed as the original. It was also a bit of a gore fest although I didn't mind that so much. After 300 I was expecting that there would be gore.

 

I have to say that the women generally acted better than the men although there were only two of them really; Lena Headey and Eva Green. Headey was OK, although I thought she channelled Cersei from A Game of Thrones a bit too much. Green  acted up a storm, and was gorgeous into the bargain.

 

On the upside it was a bit of an historical  romp, and when you're in an unhappy situation, which we were, historical romps can have a lot going for them.

 

Overall recommendation - rather than pay,  wait for it to hit the telly screen.

Been Away: Now Back Home

We've been south to Sheffield, for the funeral of the OH's brother. It was fairly grim, although what other sort of funeral is there really?

Brother-in-law, Peter, was a Professor at Sheffield University and when we arrived at the Crematorium we were all overwhelmed by the number of people waiting outside to attend the service. There were friends and colleagues and students and former students from Sheffield, from all over the UK and from further afield.

 

Son no 2 had been asked to do a reading; he was quite upset on the day and I worried that he might not manage, but in the event, the acting training kicked in and he made a good job of it. The text was 'Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep' which is not a personal favourite but the OH had been asked to choose something and that was what he picked so that was what was read.

 

After the service there was a reception at the University and several people gave very moving accounts of the way Peter had touched their lives, whether as researcher, supervisor or colleague. It was comforting to know that he had meant so much to so many people and also that the work he had done was so ground breaking and important. Sadly none of that really makes up for the fact that at 61, he really was far too young to die.

Prats on Planes

I thought this post might be basically about bruised knees, because it is a family joke that every time I do  a long distant flight I am always behind the only person in the row in front who throws their chair into full recline mode without so much as a by your leave and I end up with many hours of painful pressure on my knees while desperately trying to do the exercises they recommend you do with your feet to obviate the risk of a DVT.

 

(As a digression I used to wear those travelling socks that they said also helped, until I read something that said actually unless they were specially made to measure to fit your own particular legs then they increased rather than decreased the risk. Hmmmm.)

 

The trip back from Sydney was no exception. Before the flight even got off the ground the woman in front with the tangly hair and the strangely rigid expression had stuck on the Qantas headphones, belted herself up and then pressed the button in the arm rest and bounced onto my knees. I was not impressed. But actually she pales into insignificance.......

 

because when we got back on the plane after a refuelling stop in Dubai there was this eejit two rows in front, who refused the air stewardess' request that he switch off his mobile phone. Not once but several times. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but eventually she said she would have to get her supervisor. The moment she walked away he took the phone out of his shirt pocket and switched it off. The supervisor came and when the passenger said he had now switched off the phone, the supervisor asked him to get it out so he could check. The passenger refused. Over and over again. By this time we were taxi-ing towards the runway and eventually the staff member said that neither he, the pilot nor air traffic control had the time for the argument. If the passenger wouldn't show him that the phone was switched off then there was no alternative but to take the plane back to the parking rank. The passenger made some reply to the effect that 'Ha, that wasn't going to happen', and the supervisor took himself off to the internal phone and called the captain.

 

At which point the passenger took the phone out of his pocket, waved it at the supervisor and graciously allowed the steward to check that he had indeed switched it off. And we continued on our merry way.

 

So, what was the point of all that grandstanding? At no time did the guy appear to have any justification for his actions other than some sort of in-bred desire to be truculent. All he did was make lots of his fellow passengers cross and himself look a prat. People do occasionally astound me, in a bad sort of way.

 

I Know - I Shouldn't be Here

But I am. We had to cut our holiday in Oz short and come home because the OH's elder brother died.

This was not totally unexpected, to the extent that the bad news to which I referred earlier in the year, was that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and had only months to live. The subsequent trip to Sheffield was all about visiting him.

We hadn't expected him to die while we were away - otherwise we would never have gone. When we left the word was 6 - 8 weeks, so to learn that he had died less than one week later came as something of a shock.

We were then plunged into the nightmare of trying to make arrangements to get home early, although in the event the funeral isn't for another ten days or so. So we have a wee while at home to sort ourselves out before that.

 

Not the best of homecomings ever.

Au Revoir!

I won't be blogging while we're away so no point looking for anything new until the end of the first week in March.

 

I have almost murdered OH several times today and I think another time, either I do his packing or I go away on my own. Much less stressful for all concerned.

 

It is blowing a gale just now and I hope it blows itself out by tomorrow morning when we need to catch a small plane to Edinburgh.

 

We're doing all the travelling in one long journey; Kirkwall - Edinburgh - Heathrow - Sydney which is fairly awful to do but it gets you there without you having to faff about with overnight stays and hotels and taxis and so on.

 

And worth it in the end.

 

 

 

Stressed? Moi?

Now why would I be stressed?

True we are leaving for Australia in a little over 36 hours, which is quite frightening as circumstances haven't really been conducive to calm preparation and the slow build up of excitement.

Here at home my bathroom is still without heating and the problems with the bath side panels have still not been sorted. Because of this we have not been able to  finish decorating in there.

The work in the bedroom is still not finished. We thought the joiner was coming today to fit the skirting board which would have allowed us to move some of the furniture back in there. As it is, our bedroom furniture is currently shared between the spare room (or Guest Room as all the property porn programs that I watch on TV would have it) and Son No 2's room. Sadly the contents of our wardrobe, to which we will need access for packing, are piled up on the bed in there, which is at the far end of the room.

 

However this is perhaps academic since we do not have enough flat floor space in a dust and/or cat free environment to put down the suitcase in order to pack it.

 

We made a list of things to do before we went, which was as long as a giant's arm, and quite a lot of it has been crossed off, but given that the postman kept bringing stuff that needs to be dealt with, we

haven't quite got to the bottom of it yet and I am entertaining doubts that we ever will. 

 

When I get back I have three weeks to produce 3000+/- quality words on 'my poet' and tragedy - although it's not as though I haven't thought about it quite a bit already.

 

I am worried about my blood pressure because for a while now I have been feeling dizzy when I got up from a sitting position and moved around. Which to me says low blood pressure. Equally over the past three days I have been having small spontaneous nose bleeds which sort of says high blood pressure. I comfort myself with the thought that the two cancel one another out. And the dizziness I think is to do with my deteriorating middle distance vision, and one of the multifarious things I did today was to make an appointment to see the optician almost as soon as I get home. So that should be sorted.

 

I shall cheer myself up by posting another picture.

 

 

Australia - gotta love it.

 

 

 

Pictures! Knitting! Pictures of Knitting!

It's been a while since I did a knitting round up, partly because a lot of knitting toward  the end of last year was destined to be presents, so I couldn't post it up. And then of course you sort of lose the impulse. But spurred on by finishing and photographing a pair of socks today and then getting round to uploading lots of knitting pictures to the computer here I am and here is the latest knitting.

 

 

 

 

Back and front of the grandson's Christmas cardigan - taken on different cameras, hence the difference in colour between the two.

 

 

 

Socks for Christmas for my friend R 

 

These fingerless mittens were also for my friend R; she works at the local Foodbank and thought it might get cold in there - she was right!

 

I bought some sock wool from someone on Ravelry at a very reasonable price, although I thought it was going to be terracotta and denim rather than pink and turquois-y. However they still look very nice and I dashed them off quite quickly on a couple of rainy days in December. It was interesting to see how quickly I can  churn out a pair of basic socks.

 

I got this yarn in a swap and was going to use it to make a felt bag as there was a pattern included to do just that; however on further examination it turned out that to do that  I needed twice as much yarn as I had, and I couldn't get any more here. So I made another broken rib scarf and it's my first contribution to the 2014 Asylum Seekers party. (Thinks, must get it in the post.....)

 

More socks, this time part of my daughter-in-laws Christmas present. I wish I could get hold of some more of this wool as it is a beautiful mixture of soft purples and greys, the picture really doesn't do it justice,  and I fell in love with it as I knitted it up. Sadly it was a limited edition and it hasn't proved possible to get my hands on any more.

 

And here are the ones I finished today. This was the January yarn and pattern from the Knitting Goddess Once Upon a Time 2014 Sock Club. As I loved both pattern and yarn I think it was lovely of me to make these  for the OH. He was very pleased with them and to be fair I can't make a dozen pairs this year all for me. Actually I probably could. But I won't.

 

There are one or two other bits and pieces, but this is probably enough for now.