Tuesday 30th December
Watched a very amusing French film this evening. 'Gazon Maudit'. It prompted a discussion between the different pronunciation between the French word for rabbit (lapin) and the French for bread (le pain).
Ian said he thinks the French word for bread should be a feminine noun, as he explained this, he made 'kneading' movements with his hands! hmmmm.
Can't argue with that, in fact, it inspired me to write this little homage to 'Le (la) Pain'
Le Pain
A woman is like
a loaf of bread
waiting to be
kneaded
© Justine Tennant 2003
Wednesday 17th December
DGPS Christmas social. About 20 people turned up, only about 4 or 5 people performed tonight. More informal than normal and as we got a lift, we could both have a drink. I took full advantage and had quite a few JD's and coke. Went to kiss Aaron Murdoch's hand on leaving and staggered, knocking over a glass and smashing it. Made a hasty exit, thoroughly embarrassed! Will I ever be able to show my face again!? ;-)
Saturday 6th December
My God, did I really have such a boring month last month, why haven't I made any diary entries??? I think I've spent most of my time reading, writing, watching films and generally feeling miserable about the shorter daylight hours!
We went to a quiz night at Halton Lea library last Weds. The only other person to turn up from our readers' group was Mark, the librarian. The rest were from the Runcorn reading group and some paranormal group in Runcorn, or so Mark said.
The quiz was supposed to be based around the top 21 books in the "Big Read" although the questions were tenuous to say the least! :-)
e.g. one of the questions supposedly related to "Wind in the Willows" or was it "Gone With the Wind"??? anyway the question was, 'what is the highest and lowest scales of weather on the Beaufort scale' !?
We came last, but after 2 glasses of cheap plonk on an empty stomach, frankly my dear, I didn't give a damn :-)
I have just finished reading 1984 for the first time. Most people find it amazing I've managed to get to 33 and not read it or seen the film! I watched the film recently, with John Hurt and the book is definitely much better. The film is like a synopsis of the book and misses out so much. I saw a film last night that had a lot of parallels with "1984" and "The Matrix". It was called "Equilibrium". I'd recommend it. We also watched "Les Pactes Des Loupes" which seemed to go on forever! Maybe I was just tired. I have to say, the "beast" loses it's edge once it is finally revealed, up until that point it was really frightening!
Tonight we watched "Baise-Moi" which was like an extremely violent "Thelma and Louise"! and "Claire's Knee" which said on the cover was erotic and witty, it was neither! Both pretty uninspiring choices. We went to Borders today to see if we could get "South Pacific" for my dad for Christmas and to have a humous and crunchy veg sarnie and a coffee at Starbucks ;-) They didn't have SP but we succumbed to the urge and bought the aforementioned dvds! "Claire's Knee" was £19.99, wish I'd bought Jess Franco's "Justine" instead!! They have a really good selection of foreign films.
Just finished reading "To Kill a Mockingbird". So that's where the Boo Radleys got their name from! :-) It was a fantastic story and the characters were so alive! They had a copy of the film with Gregory Peck at Borders but I decided to postpone buying it in favour of the other films! Damn!. From reading the book, I can't imagine a better choice for the role of Atticus. I'd be interested to see how Scout is portrayed. I believe the book is partly autobiographical and the character of Dill was based on Trueman Capote!
Speaking of autobiographies, I am currently reading "Cider With Rosie". I'm up to the part where Loll has just started school and he comes home really upset because the teacher promised him a present and he didn't get one! The teacher said to him, "You're Laurie Lee aren't you? Well, you sit there for the present" and so he waited all day for his present! He also hits a girl with very fuzzy hair on the top of the head with a stick, just to see what would happen! It's full of lovely touches of humour like that and I'm really enjoying it so far.
Wednesday 3rd December
we went to the monthly open mic night run by the "Dead Good Poets Society". Held in the third room of the Everyman Bistro on Hope St. Trying to find somewhere to park was a nightmare! The "third room" was downstairs and must have been a cellar at some point, small and intimate but a good atmosphere. Quite bohemian really! There were several performers, some really good, some mediocre and one or two quite dire! I'm not naming names because I'd quite like to go again and fair play to them, it takes guts to get up and perform! :-)
During one set, a table at the far end of the room could be heard talking quite loudly. Quite disrespectful to the performer and the audience who were trying to listen, in my opinion! The M.C. asked them to be quiet. After his set, the disgruntled poet had some words with the people at the table and it soon degenerated into a row, with some rather unpleasant name calling! A woman at the table, defending her companion, stated quite loudly "This man has won an award!" and "This man is a published author!". She might as well have said "Don't you know who this man is!?". It came across as so pompous, it was almost farcical. We didn't hear all of the conversation though, so I have to remain unbiased ;-) The general gist seemed to be that they were having a conversation because they thought he was rubbish!?
After the impromptu entertainment, things got back to normal and the people at the table exited stage left.
The rest of the evening followed without incident and we got chatting to a couple of the poets sat at our table. Ian thinks I should perform at the next one but I don't think I have the bottle! Not sure I'd like to risk the derision of the table at the end of the room! ;-)