Hello everyone. I hope that you are well. We are fine. Sometimes, I wish that I could come on here and tell you about my trek across the Andes or attending Paris Fashion Week, but I didn't do anything like that, so here we are. I did clean the fridge out at work, so I may well have found a cure for Dengue Fever clinging to the back of a shelf. How do people get to be so disgusting? I bet they wouldn't do it in their own homes, as my mother would have said.
I suppose that we are all ticking off the weeks towards Christmas now. It is creeping up. HOH has been measuring up the dining table and was not surprised to find that ours is too short. So we will have to pinch borrow one from work. Living in an apartment works very well for us until it comes to be time to squeeze other people in, and then it needs some organising, or it can all go pear-shaped very quickly.
We went to the pictures on Monday. It was Silver Screen day, so all of us old biddys got free cake and coffee. We went to see The Choral, which is by Alan Bennett. It's set during the First World War and covers a northern choir in a mill town. There is a growing dread as young men wait to be sent to the Front and as the postman delivers telegrams on a regular basis. I saw a critic who said that it was textbook Alan Bennett - as if that were a bad thing. I really loved it and cried twice. But you must do you as the young people say.
Yesterday was Messy Church. Our table was meant to give the children little boxes to put together and then decorate. It turned out that you needed a degree in engineering to make the boxes, and the children lost patience very quickly - running off to throw balled-up newspaper at a replica of Mount Sinai (and the slightly fraught attached adult) instead. As the adult supervisor, I took it upon myself to make the boxes up on their behalf, so all they had to do was attach stickers and plastic jewels. Then they had to colour some cards in so they could play pairs with them. For those not in the know about pairs, you put all the cards face down, and then you take turns turning two cards over. If you find a pair, you can keep it, and you have to try and remember where the cards are so you can turn up pairs. (Then you divide that by the square root of all the numbers in your birthday, and it gives you the date of the Second Coming or something. Possibly. The whole thing seemed quite complicated.) At one point, I looked and one of the mums was sitting quietly in a corner with a full set of felt pens colouring in a card very carefully. They are supposed to stay with the children, but I felt that she possibly needed this more and anyway her little boy was perfectly happy wammying newspaper balls at the ladies looking after the big Mount Sinai. So the whole idea is that you remember God's goodness. At least I think that's what it was for. I was talking to a chum outside at the beginning, and by the time I got into the main hall, all I could see was a tiny Moses holding up some Commandments on the back of a cornflake box in front of thirty puzzled but fascinated children, so it could also be about remembering God's Commandments. I'm not completely sure, but it works both ways. The next Messy Church is Messy Christmas. I told you that it was creeping up.
Finally - apropos of nothing in particular - I wanted to mention today how much I love the BBC. They are obviously not mistake-free, and maybe, in a bid to make sure that they are in touch with the things that matter to people these days, they have got themselves entangled in an agenda that has done them no favours and needs sorting. I'm also a bit puzzled by their unending fascination with Nigel Farage. However, when I see Orla Guerin making her way through a war zone to ask some dictator difficult questions or listen to Social Affairs Editor Alison Holt chasing down a story about awful care in a secure mental health unit, I begin to take it very badly if someone calls these reporters 100% corrupt. And that's just the telly. Radio 4 journalist Nick Wallis is the man who fought long and hard to bring out the injustice of the Post Office scandal into the public consciousness. And don't forget who Emily Maitliss was working for when she interviewed that Andrew chappy. And obviously, it's not just news. This week, we are in the middle of Strictly, Riot Women, Gone Fishing, Celebrity Masterchef, Morse (on Radio 4 extra), The Black Swan documentary, a programme about Turner, Jane Eyre, Kingdom, Daddy Issues and a strange but excellent programme on the iPlayer about Barbara Pym. Now, I'll be honest - not all of this is for me, and some of these are repeats (although some of them can easily stand repeating. The Jane Eyre is an excellent version, and I am VERY particular about Jane Eyre.) But I am finding that I am very defensive about the BBC and wouldn't mind signing something to stand up for it. We all need to keep an eye on this one, I think.
Anyway, I have to go now. The scaffolders have arrived, and they are reaching our window, and I am still in my dressing gown. Also, HOH has just arrived back from sea swimming, and he is shivering like mad and muttering about me killing a bear so he can get inside it to get warm. The extreme cold can make him very weird. Have a good week.
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