Water Meter/Maigret

[poliphilo]

Yesterday we had a water meter installed. You know, saving water, doing our bit to save the planet, saving ourselves a few bob.

Today we had no water.

This sort of thing freaks me out. I Ihate to feel powerless. I start to pace the room...

The emergency guy came to fix it within a couple of hours. Seems like the the meter had a broken part. You'd have though the guy who installed it would have noticed, wouldn't you?

It's been raining all day. I think there's irony  there somewhere if you care to join the dots.

And on a different subject altogether I'd like to praise the old (early 90s) version of Maigret with Michael Gambon. It never made a big splash- and I suppose it's not as fantabulous as The Brett Holmes or the Suchet Poirot-  but its still very nicely done. They filmed it somewhere in Eastern Europe, which explains why the buildings aren't quite right and there are wooded hills coming down to the banks of the Seine. Gambon is lovely- austere, formidable and fatherly. Tell you, what he's most like- he's most like a priest- a good priest,  treating the Paris underworld as his "little flock", comforting the wounded, eliciting confessions and handing out absolution and/or penance to the offender.  I wonder if Simenon had read  Father Brown?

Comments

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I've never seen the Maigret series, but I'm prepared to take your word for it and Gambon--after seeing The Singing Detective I decided that Michael Gambon was one of the best actors alive, if not the very best. It was a beautifully sustained and emotionally shattering performance.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Singing Detective is brilliant. I think Gambon is seriously under-rated- though I guess his role in Harry Potter is beginning to change all that.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

You're tragically right--if talent was matched prominence, Gambon would be the most famous actor around. I'd rather watch him than DeNiro or Pacino, or pretty much anyone else. If they ever make another film of King Lear, I want him for the part (or Sean Connery, but that's another story).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Connery as Lear would be very interesting. Gambon has played the role on stage, I think. That's why he's not as famous as he should be; he's predominantly a stage actor.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

Lear is pretty much the only interesting role left to Connery at this point--he's too old to be romancing Catherine Zeta-Jones or shooting people in action movies. Since he's played Shakespeare on stage (he apprently was a good Hotspur), he might do well in the role. But Connery says he's retired...

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I loved that series. I thought Michael Gambon inhabited the part much as David Suchet inhabited Poirot.

You know what I noticed about him, physically? He has the most beautiful hands,with very elegant fingers.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's right. An artist's fingers, a musician's fingers...

He's also, by all accounts, a very engaging, larky character-

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I once had a man from Beaver Sewer repair a broken sewer pipe that led to the street from my house, and the man forgot to cut a hole in the pipe for my neighbor's house!

The poor neighbor came home and innocently flushed his toilet, which promptly backed up and flowed all over his floor.

The Beaver Sewer man was outside digging by moonlight for several hours, watched by my furious neighbor.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.

One small fault in the plumbing and you're back in the Dark Ages.

It's scary how close we stand to the abyss.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I sometimes read about pioneer life and think, "I couldn't have done it."

I really couldn't have. I would have died of squeamishness.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And how about 19th century dentistry....

No fishing magazines.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they just got you drunk, then yanked.