friday again?

Where did the week go?

I'm off to somewhere in Northamptonshire with lots of lovely people from church for our students and 20s weekend away. I'm looking forward to it.

Life's rather busy at the moment. 2 weeks of term are left, I've got to do some serious essay thinking, which is what I ought to be doing this weekend, if I wasn't going away.

What are YOU doing this weekend?

head in the cluds, nose in a book

Both are true, for once. I'm reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. And I'm loving it. I've got to finish it in time to prepare a presentation for Monday evening, but I don't think that'll be a problem. The finishing it bit, at least.

It's an intriguing book, made up of 6 nested narratives. I'm only 3 in, and beginning to see connections, but I'm sure there's more to come.

I was amused by a reference to someone "breastfeeding a hangover". Now I'm fairly sure that's some lazy editor deciding to do and find and replace with a US English to British English lexicon (i.e. nursing = breastfeeding). But there's an important plot point in the same section that turns on the boot of a VW Beetle not locking properly (mine never did) and it's definitely referred to as "the hood" or "the trunk". Hmm. It's the sort of tricksy novel in which you're never quite sure whether mistakes are deliberate or not. Or perhaps I'm too suspicious minded?

yay!

Debs rang me up! Yay! So lovely to hear my sister's voice, all the way from the other side of the world. Well, sort of. She sounds like she's having fun.

I am less tired than I was, though still a bit sleepy. It's been a sunny day, though I spent most of it inside alternating between reading Edward II and seaming a cardigan. Off to watch Derek Jarman's version soon, in preparation for tomorrow's seminar. Should give us lots to talk about.

fuzzy headed pig

I think I need more sleep. I had a good weekend, but kept fighting off the feeling of being tired and tearful. The former is probably the cause of the latter. I did attempt to get an early night last night, but it didn't really happen. I'm currently considering going home to curl up in bed with a book or three and probably fall asleep.

It's autumn. It's cold and grey and the leaves are all falling off the trees. I like autumn when it's sunny, but on grey days like this, I'd rather curl up and sleep.

today it's the Debs wot flies

Debs is off to Texas today to stay with Blest. On a big plane, to a big state in a big country.

Bye bye my lovely middle sister! Have a fantastic time and let us know what you're up to.

pig tales (again)

Amrita asked why 'pig wot flies'?

Here's an old post that sort of explains. It's the pig what flies, misspelt in the manner of Chad. I've been the pig wot flies (and knits) for so long now I forget that it's an odd name.

ow!

This post is all about my begging for sympathy, but never mind, it's my blog.

I fell off my bike. :-(. Entirely my own fault. I was going too fast, had to detour round a pedestrian and skidded on some wet leaves. My knee was the first thing that hit the ground. I scraped a hole in my jeans, scuffed my new shoes and my leather gloves (although they did save my hands from scrapes, so that's good.) The bike needs a new front brake cable and the front mud guard wires are even more bent out of shape than they were. A nurse at the uni medical centre cleaned up my knee, which now has an impressive plaster (and a dressing with silver in. I thought that was rather cool) and Mike's Bikes are fixing the bike. I planned to have a productive morning in the library reading The Duchess of Malfi and preparing for my presentation on Thursday, but after sorting myself and the bike out, opted for sitting down with a coffee and the internet until I feel better. The knee seems to be bleeding still, I hope it stops soon.

Can I have an aah?

where does the time go?

I am suddenly very sleepy. It's been a busy weekend, packing, cleaning, unpacking, organising, doing some work in between. Suddenly it's nearly time for today's seminar and I'm not entirely sure where the day went. By some miracle I have read the book (The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas) and at least the minimum set reading. It's a powerful and controversial book, so it should be an interesting seminar. I just wish I was awake enough to appreciate it. What have I done today? Went to the gym, picked up some stuff I left at the old place, drove to Emmaus (a rather long and circuitous route. I wasn't lost, just using creative navigation techniques. Or something), failed to find a useful bookcase, but did buy 2 books (a little counter-productive then), came home and cooked lunch, bought milk and bananas, cycled into uni, checked email and blogs. Suddenly, it's time to move again.

Plan - seminar, then probably Ceroc, then collapsing into bed.

Maybe tomorrow will be more organised.

pig wot flies' moving day

Today I've been packing and cleaning and preparing to move (not very far, just across town). Debs and my parents came to help, which was brilliant. I hate packing, it makes me feel stressed. I'm not officially moving out until Saturday, but we shifted lots of stuff today. There's some left, but I think I can cope with moving what's left on my own.

I don't like packing, but I do like unpacking and rearranging in new places, so there's that to look forward to this weekend. There's rather less bookshelf space in my new room, but more drawers and cupboards. Should be fun working out where everything's going to go.

disappearing Debs

Well.

You may have gathered this by now, but Debs is off to Texas very soon (on the 15th) to stay with Blest and help look after her tribe of boys. Flights have been booked, insurance is being sorted, lists are being made. It's all very exciting.

Debs is going to be away over Christmas, which will very weird for us and I'm guessing for her too. She'll be gone until February next year. Hopefully she'll have a wonderful time, won't miss us too too much and will keep us all informed with blogging and emails and the occasional phonecall.

Go my Debbie sister! I'm very proud of you for being brave enough to go miles and miles away (on a plane! First time on a plane and it's a long haul flight and changing planes and everything) to stay with people you've never met in, in a HUGE and unfamiliar place and not freaking out too much. Big big hugs.

stars of page and screen

Last week I read and adored Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Yesterday I watched and liked, but didn't love, the film of Stardust. It's easy to moan about how films never get books right and how they left all your favourite bits out and he just doesn't look like that. Films and books are different animals and there's no point expecting what you see on screen to be like the pictures in your head. Rather, I want to muse on the differences between the two Stardusts and the reasons for them.

Inevitably there are compressions of time. The book Tristran takes a year to wander Faerie and get back for the fair, where the film's Tristan has a week in which to bring back Victoria's birthday present. Characters and events are lost and the story becomes simplified to its essential details. We'll leave aside the silly camp pirates and the unnecessary Ricky Gervais cameo (the pirates were OK. There's a wonderful sword fight set to Offenbach's Can Can which is deliciously silly. Ricky Gervais I just don't like.)

One thing I did find interesting was that the film managed to be both less menacing and less innocent than the book. In Gaiman's Faerie, no-one is safe. People die, sometimes bloodily and it's a shock when they do. This creates a real tension and fear for the central characters. The usual fairytale guarantees that the good will end happily and the bad unhappily seem to be in doubt all the way through. The film puts back those conventions and there's no shock or real fear that the wrong person might die. Yet, there's a sort of innocence about the central pair of characters in the book that gets completely lost in the film. From the off, they're confidently exchanging insults and arguing and there's none of Tristran's tender standoffishness that I liked in the book. Inevitably, when they realise their love for one another, they fall into bed in a way which just wouldn't occur to their page-bound counterparts. Not that Gaiman's book is coy about sex, quite the opposite, but most of the earthier bits get cut out completely, which means in one case the death of one of the would-be Lords of Stormhold happens via a sub-Princess Bride scene of poisoned and switched goblets, rather than to the accompaniment of a barmaid's willing seduction.

The film's denouement is of course dramatic and full of explosions and swords and broken glass. The book's clever, but less dramatic end just wouldn't work for Hollywood, which is fair enough. And the good end happily and the bad, unhappily and all is well forever after, as you would expect. Still, on the whole, I think I prefer books to films of books, however good the latter are. There's always the shadow of 'The Book' hanging over a film of a book, which just isn't there with an original film. Unless the book is dreadful, in which case the film can only improve on it. Can you think of any examples where that is the case?

mutability

Whenever I go clothes shopping, I feel like a shape shifter. For one thing, I am smaller than I used to be. But still, guessing which size I am now and therefore which garments might fit is always tricky. In one shop or brand I'm one size, in another, something different. Add in the fact that I'm more than common tall, and sometimes it feels like nothing looks right. With each new top or skirt or pair of jeans, my body seems to shift and grow or shrink like Alice. I know it's the clothes that are variable, rather than me, but still, it's an unsettling feeling, as if my limbs and torso don't quite belong. A cropped jacket, for instance, looks totally ridiculous, flapping somewhere at the level of my bust and making me look like an overgrown toddler. Jeans that gap at the waist or bag at the crotch or are too short or (wonder of wonders) too long or just plain wrong.

I went shopping for jeans and failed to find any I liked. I did, however, find a hooded sweatshirt that was miraculously long enough in the arms and body and, though it has a kangaroo pocket, it's placed low enough that it doesn't look silly (sometimes they're placed so high they start just under the bust on me, most unflattering). And I bought new pyjamas, which are blessedly easy to get to fit, since they're fairly baggy and I don't care too much if the arms and legs are the right length.

you like me, you really like me

Aw, thanks guys. It seems you like the random mixture of things that appear here.

I shall endeavour to continue in randomness. :-)

trying to be sensible

This has never been a very sensible blog, has it? It's such a random mixture of moans and pictures and thoughts and questions. I wonder what it's for. Perhaps I should have more of a vision for what I want to do with it. Perhaps I should start a new blog for the sensible stuff (assuming I have something sensible to say about anything, which I'm not entirely sure I will). Perhaps I should just post things here.

I'll have a think. Does anyone have any comments? Why do you read pigwotflies? Is it because you've met me and/or are related to me and want to see what I'm up to? Because you find it amusing/intriguing/are dazzled by my insightful writing (I think not somehow)? Adrian got me blogging because he thought I'd like the intellectual discussion side of things. I've stayed out of the theological discussions he gets into, mostly because I don't think I've got much to add. But there are things I like talking about, books, art, science, philosophy. The discipline of turning a random thought into a short, coherent blog post might be useful.

Perhaps it's time to raise the bar of what makes the blog, rather than waffling on. And then, paradoxically, I might write more. Or I might intimidate myself and write less. Either way, I'd like to blog to some purpose, I think.

sunday night

I'm feeling better, thanks for the kind words and encouragement.

I like Sunday afternoons, anything feels possible. I've been for a walk along the river, admiring the autumn colours and the sunset. Now I'm listening to the Archers and soon I shall make some food and settle down to knit or watch Henry VIII or read something.

A new week is starting.

who stole my gorm?

Give it back, I need it.

I have no energy today, it's cold and wet and rainy and I've not really accomplished much today through lack of gorm.

I hope a good night's sleep will help.

happy birthday to me!

HP is staying for the weekend to celebrate with me, I'm having a party tonight, people are coming, we will have fun.

I like birthdays!

Nothing but curious pleasures

A certain BFC (aka big fat/fine cat aka my uncle Jon) asked about how I found Pericles etc, so here's the promised post.

I did finish reading Pericles. It's a bit like The Winter's Tale with added shipwrecks and no bears. I think I read it a little too fast to appreciate it properly. I'd like to see it performed. The structure's interesting - narration from Gower and dumbshows to show us what's going on. Most of the really dramatic action seems to take place in the dumbshows, except for the storm at sea in which Marina is born.

The main point of looking at Pericles for the seminar was the choices made in editing and we had a go at editing a bit of the beginning of 2.1, which was trickier than I thought, if you're going to worry about the placement of every jot and tittle as well as try to guess whether the apparent mistakes are due to misreadings, mishearings, uncertain spelling, archaic words or something else. I think my attitude would probably be to change as little as possible and work out the details in performance, repunctuating or substituting words as necessary to make sense of it. The way different editors differ over the placement of commas or the interpretation of ellisions sometimes seems a little far away from the text's first incarnation as a performance. But then, punctuation can make a huge difference to meaning, so it's not unimportant.

Yes, I did read all of Titus Andronicus, not just the fly-killing scene. It's a pretty gory piece of work. Again, I feel I need to see a production or two to appreciate it properly. I can't help wondering how things like "Enter the Empress' sons with LAVINIA, her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, and ravished" would be staged. The fly-killing scene (3.2) is a later addition to the play. I saw it as a private family scene, in contrast to the more public scenes that surround it. For some reason it my head it's like a scene from a film, very claustrophic and dark, with the Andronici gathered together, eating, because they need sustenance, comforting each other and gathering strength for their revenge. The camera plans along the table and flicks from face to face as they react to Titus's pouring out of his heart and attempted comfortings of Lavinia. The killing of the fly is like a summary of the entire play - "How if that fly had a father and a mother?" - that's the problem with killing people: their families generally want revenge and in this play that pits a father, Titus, and a mother, Tamora, against one another for revenge for their respective offspring. But of course "it was a black ill-favoured fly/ Like to the empress's Moor" so it had to die. There's the personal element of revenge and the tricky character of Aaron the Moor (also a father, in his own violent way). It's all wrapped up in those few lines. Hmm, perhaps I have more to say about Titus Andronicus than I thought?

And Cymbeline. I love Cymbeline! I really must read it. (And Jon, you MUST let me read your thesis). Yes, there were some bits that cut in the last production we saw that were included this time, notably the doctor with his suddenly remembered details, the comic jailers, Posthumous' family and Jupiter appearing from the heavens (actually appearing swathed in a giant silk parachute, rising out of the box which was the main consituent of the set. People found their costumes in it, props were taken out of and put into it, Iachimo hid in it, obviously. Actually I think it disappeared for a bit in Wales, which missed a few tricks, it could have been the cave, or the grave, or a boat, or cover for the battling armies.) Some other bits got missed out. Imogen's speech to the headless body of her (supposed) husband was even more truncated. It was a fun production, played for (even more) laughs than the Barbican production, with a wonderfully devious and scheming Queen. Although she did seem to go off her head rather too rapidly. Cloten began almost every one of his scenes by hurling his doublet to the ground and lived up to his name (definitely Clot-en).

On to this week. I'm currently supposed to be reading Dr Faustus, Mankind, extracts from Mediaeval morality plays and some scenes from Henry VI 3, King John and Macbeth. And it's pouring with rain and nothing could be nicer than curling up with some books and Radio 3.

ETA: I think part of the problem with the film of As You Like It were all the bits that got cut in the final scene, particularly Hymen (fair enough, no-one knows who Hymen is today anyway and what would she be doing in 19th Centuary Japan?), with some lines reassigned to Rosalind. Unfortunately they cut most of the 'If I were...would you then.." lines that explain how each character then reacts to the revelation of Ganymede's identity as Rosaline, so to have everyone suddenly understanding when she appeared dressed as herself again made very little sense. I don't think As You Like It makes that much sense to start with, but it's a comedy and believing in the character's rather unlikely deceptions is part of the fun.

head in a spin

It's been a bit of a stressful weekend. We've been trying to find a third person to share our house for ages, to no avail. So many people have come and looked and liked and then decided to live elsewhere. A solution of sorts may have been found, but it's not all sorted yet. If you're the praying kind, please can you pray for wisdom and God's direction in knowing what to do? Particularly that if what I'm trying to sort out right now is the wrong thing to do, that God will firmly shut that door.

Sorry to be cryptic, I just don't want to tell the world everything.

apologies

To the dozen or so people who sent emails to my gmail address. Emails which I have only just discovered because I hardly ever check that email inbox.

I think I have too many email addresses.