Review of the last week or two

I'm coming to the end of decorating our
downstairs cloakroom – it’s taken four coats
of paint to cover up the previous owner’s
hideous 1970s wallpaper – sepia brown colour,
terylene-shirt like finish (feel and sheen to
it), plus an anaglypta-like design. Mrs C
removed a mushroom coloured, fitted wardrobe,
(that took up a lot of space), revealing bare
plaster/bits of old wallpaper, which we then
wallpapered over with thick lining paper.

The end result looks very nice – just got a
bit more gloss paint to put on the radiator,
and the door edge (where one of our cats
brushed herself against the wet paint).

I’ve also been busy with web design (at a
fairly amateurish level). Learning how to
add bits and bobs of HTML code to this Blogger
site, mainly by trial and error, has been
helpful too - helped build up my confidence,
and a feeling of "Well, let's give it a go".

I’m not one for making lists of things on
this blog, but I thought you might be
interested to see what I’ve watched (or have
videoed to see later), in the past week.

Tuesday, last week…
The last part of “In Search of Mozart” – dealing with the
last few years of his short life. Familiar
stuff to me, as I’ve seen documentaries on
him before, but I thought this production and
the music were excellent.
“Alternative Medicine” – interesting
documentary about the Chinese practice of
acupuncture. One amazing sequence was seeing
a young woman having open heart surgery, under
light sedation and with the use of acupuncture.
Again familiar subject matter, but
fascinating to watch. I don’t fancy having
loads of needles being stuck into me – I’d
prefer to have acupressure instead.
“Shameless” – brilliant anarchic comedy – the
only person missing is the gorgeous actress
Anne-Marie Duff, currently appearing in “The
Virgin Queen” – a fabulous costume drama, we’re
watching too.

Wednesday… “Who do you think you are?”
Stephen Fry’s look at his own family history
– fascinating stuff, but some sad scenes when
Stephen found out the full story of what
happened to his mum’s family in WW2 – they
were killed in the Nazi concentration camps.

Thursday… catching up on stuff we’d videoed.
We gave “Hotel Babylon” a miss, having watched
the first episode the week before. Well done,
but trite. We thought Max Beesley was
brilliant in the recent medical drama,
“Bodies” – the best hospital drama we’ve seen.

Friday… a re-run of “A touch of Frost” – the
first ever episode, which we vaguely recall
seeing in the past. Excellent.

Saturday … a few glimpses of “Battlefield
Britain” (Boyne), which didn’t grab our
interest. Also, about 10 minutes in all of
“Dancing on Ice” – looked good.
“The Romantics” – fairly good look at the
British poets in the late 1700s to early
1800s, plus Mary Shelley of“Frankenstein”
fame. I disliked all the computer graphics.
Unfortunately, I slept through the bit on
John Clare. The poetry reading is brilliant.
And I heard a new slant on “Jerusalem”, the
traditional British song. William Blake wrote
it as a protest against the horrible
industrialised cities of our country (and the
conditions the workers had to live and work in).
Now it’s sung to glorify where we live.
“Rabbit Proof Fence” – videoed. We missed
it at the cinema when it came out in 2002.
“Dave Allen At Large” videoed too.

Sunday…Videoed “Boris Johnson & The Dream of
Rome” and “Lewis”. Watched “The Virgin Queen”
– brilliant

Monday (earlier this evening) … watched
“Life on Mars” – very good. Videoed “Northern
i” and “The thick of it”

I don’t usually listen to much radio, except
a bit of news on Radio 4 and some Classic FM,
but I really enjoyed listening to R4 while
decorating. I heard lots of interesting
stuff, and even listened to one episode of
“The Archers” (one episode every 5 years is
enough for me).

Mrs C managed to watch yet more TV in the
week than myself – all the episodes of “Coro”,
“Judge John Deed” (he's too pompous and
patronising for me), “Desperate Housewives”
(I watched all the last series, but I’ll give
this series a miss – I’m not desperate enough
to watch it), and “You are what you eat” – I
watch only a few minutes of it, towards the
end, to see how people take to their new
diets. We try out some of her recipes from
time to time.

Now wasn’t that interesting.