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Ponds, Politics, Humour
Jul. 11th, 2020 08:56 am I said I wouldn't do any more work on the pond but it had almost run dry and the the dam was leaking so I did. I think I fixed it. There's now a depth of water in it and lots of little wiggly things are swimming about. I suppose they must be insect larvae. Sometime later this year I'm going to get someone younger and fitter (ie Julia) to have a real go at it.
The PM says we must all go back to work and wear masks in shops- and he won't quarantine us if we fly in from most places abroad (I guess the airlines must have been lobbying hard.) It all feels a bit random, a bit whack-a-mole- and I find myself wondering what the point of the lockdown ever was if we're abandoning it while the virus is still scything us down. Actually I know what the point was; it was to give us a quiet time in which to think and take stock- but that's the sort of esoteric thinking that is currently off limits to politicians and policy-makers.
I've been watching The Luminaries- the TV miniseries based on the Booker winning novel. It is beautifully shot in a beautiful place- by a cinematographer who must have been looking hard at the post-impressionists- but also confused and melodramatic and humourless- with an overlay of esotericism that doesn't mesh with the action- or make a great deal of sense. You can be serious- deeply serious- without eschewing jokes. Oh, for pity's sake, let your actors smile and laugh once in a while. People in desperate straits are always smiling and laughing- they do it every chance they get. It's how they survive...
...As Dickens knew. It happens that I'm reading Oliver Twist- which is one of the most scarifying novels in the canon- and also furiously, frenetically, irrepressibly comic.
The PM says we must all go back to work and wear masks in shops- and he won't quarantine us if we fly in from most places abroad (I guess the airlines must have been lobbying hard.) It all feels a bit random, a bit whack-a-mole- and I find myself wondering what the point of the lockdown ever was if we're abandoning it while the virus is still scything us down. Actually I know what the point was; it was to give us a quiet time in which to think and take stock- but that's the sort of esoteric thinking that is currently off limits to politicians and policy-makers.
I've been watching The Luminaries- the TV miniseries based on the Booker winning novel. It is beautifully shot in a beautiful place- by a cinematographer who must have been looking hard at the post-impressionists- but also confused and melodramatic and humourless- with an overlay of esotericism that doesn't mesh with the action- or make a great deal of sense. You can be serious- deeply serious- without eschewing jokes. Oh, for pity's sake, let your actors smile and laugh once in a while. People in desperate straits are always smiling and laughing- they do it every chance they get. It's how they survive...
...As Dickens knew. It happens that I'm reading Oliver Twist- which is one of the most scarifying novels in the canon- and also furiously, frenetically, irrepressibly comic.
