poliphilo

The bird that's been attacking the kitchen window is still at it. I think he must have a nest nearby.

The BFI Player has L'Avventura and La Notte, which I watched last night, but not L'Eclisse- which is mildly annoying. I missed out on Antonioni when he was really hot (though like everyone else of my generation I saw Blowup when it first came out) and find I like him a lot. Although the great films of his maturity never stray into fantasy they have a dreamlike quality.

Talking about dreams... We were sitting in foxholes, sniping at the enemy when we conceived the bright idea of recruiting very young children into an anti-fascist militia. The man with the baby elephant was the expert on such matters so I went to him for advice. "I'm not bothered about the girls," he said, "Because you can't start indoctrinating them before they're four or five." This was discouraging because all the kids we'd enrolled thus far were female, but I registered silent disagreement and held my peace. "By the way," I asked, "How much does it cost to buy an elephant?" "More than you'd think," he replied, "Fifty to sixty thousand pounds."

There was a light frost overnight and one of the monitors says the temperature is 4 degrees and the other says it's zero. Nevertheless the sun is shining.