Opinionated

 

Hello. I hope you are well. Let's face it, no one is well at the moment. I don't know anyone without some level of a cough. Apparently, it's reduced immunity or some such stuff. We all stayed in for two years and now we are like tiny little aliens crawling out of our spaceships after they crashed on earth, only to be felled by a virus that usually just makes you sneeze twice and then toddle off to work. These are funny times. 

I had my first full morning helping at Messy Church on Saturday. I am still picking the glitter out of my beloved cashmere scarf. (The scarf was my mistake. I take full responsibility). Then we went to see Aged Parent who has, once again, survived what was apparently a brush with death with the aforementioned chest virus. She was dancing with her walker when we arrived and stopped only to point at a perfectly nice lady who was minding her own business and say "See her - she's massive she is." This is accompanied by hand gestures to back up the "massive" statement which I try desperately to cover up by shouting "Are you dancing again?" I think we got away with it.

I thought I might do a couple of reviews this week because let's face it, most of us have done very little other than stare out of the window at gale-force wind and rain while wondering idly if it will get light before 1pm. We did make it out to the pictures. We now have a Cineworld card which enables us to have free entry to the pictures for a year. Unless you want to watch something in the IMAX or that one where you sit in a chair and it shakes you about like you are in a car crash and squirts water in your face. I shan't be troubling it I don't think. Never trust a cinema seat that comes with an instruction not to enter if you have a weak heart or a bad back - I'm trying to watch a film not audition for Mad Max Thunderdome. So we were really pleased about the money we saved and then we promptly blew it and paid £6.80 for cinema chocolates. When we used to take young children to the flicks I would arrive with a backpack big enough to trek across the Saraha. I would then distribute Orange Juice, Magic Stars, Cheesy Strings and other non-noisy sweets and save us a fortune. I no longer have "mother of small children" levels of organisation and it can work out expensive.

By Unknown - IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72062744

Back to the film. We saw "A Man Called Otto." Tom Hanks is just brilliant as a widow who is nowhere near coming to terms with the death of his beloved wife Sonya. His sorrow makes him unpleasant in the extreme, and he is determined to join Sonya as soon as possible. However, he is also loved by those around him and he begins to reveal more of his real self as the movie unfolds. The film is lovely. Old fashioned. Full of sweet and sorrowful moments and just a joy to watch. FOW2 who works in the cinema says that most people who leave when it is finished are blowing their noses. It's not experimental. It doesn't push the boundaries. No one ends up tied under a bridge. It just made me so happy that I had seen it.

Has anyone read The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley by Sean Lusk? I am a woman of very narrow boring tastes and this was a step out of my comfort zone. I'm still not sure if I liked it. I think I liked it. It's difficult to describe. It's about a man and his young son. His son has a tragic accident and is nearly blinded but he also has a supernatural gift. The father makes automatons - some are life-sized. Are you still following this? There's adventure, Constantinople, the Plague, love, death, a tiger, cross-dressing and that's not the half of it. It's well written and a page-turner - I found some bits made me go "really?" and not in an entirely positive way but still, I couldn't put it down. If you are after something a bit different... ta-dah!

I don't really do book reviews. I read quite a lot of books but, if I don't enjoy them, I don't really mention them. Loving a book is a subjective business. However, this is a bit of a not too brilliant review. I like a cosy murder mystery. I usually slam through them pretty quickly and that's fine but this Christmas Murder on the Christmas Express book which came with good reviews everywhere, I found to be a bit lazy and predictable. It made the Richard Osman books (which I really like) look like Middlemarch (which I also really like but you get my meaning.) There were spelling mistakes and, in one case, a sentence that I could not make any sense of. Personally, I would rather have fewer Kate Bush quiz questions hidden in the text and a bit more plot that hangs together. Sorry. 

See, I feel bad now. I'm not sure I'm cut out for book reviewing. 

Anyway, Vera is back tonight, thank goodness so I'm off now. Have a good week