Trying For A Night Out.... The Rise And Fall of The City Of Mahagonny..... At The Cinema

Well... Not tonight, you understand. That would be too much.... For us to go out on a Saturday night.

But our "Scottish friends" (do sound like that play... The Scottish Play... don't it) say that they have swanned off to the opera via their local cinema and it was an all right thing. So we are trying it too and I've got tickets for a live broadcast of Weill and Brecht's "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" at one of our local cinemas. If this works... we may be on the town all the time!

A love of Kurt Weill music be one of our early bonds... The Old Man and me. I made an impression on The Old Man, decades ago, with a quick Surabaya Johnny in the foyer of a concert hall....but I'm too old for that kind of thing these days. And of course we have seen "Mahagonny" before. And we did listen to the Covent Garden production recently on the radio. But this will be a chance to see the production. I am quite excited. Possibly over-excited. We do now have a quiet life, you know.

PS. The Old Man  Speaks.
This morning I be a bit grumpy over breakfast while The Old Man do chunter on. Finally  I sigh and do say: "Oh...barble barble barble... that's all you do!"
Indignantly he do say: "I have been quiet all night!"

I Could Eat A Horse..... Mushroom

I am on a diet. And this is my first day.
I have chosen to try the trendy 5:2 diet... 5 days eat normally and 2 days.... a lot less. I am hoping to look like Georgie Osborne by the end of it. I shall brush my hair forward and pop on a smart little suit and tell everybody how wonderful life is for us all.

Anyhoo!
Breakfast is a memory and so I turn my head to look longingly towards the bowl of miso soup with vegetables and mushrooms and some (please?) noodles that I shall construct for supper. Mushrooms appear to have virtually no calories at all. So I may purloin the entire fridge supply.
The Old Man will have to be independent... so he has hauled in some meat and is contemplating curry or pie.
I shall slurp my spoon and feel virtuous... and a little weak and furious.
Bish Bosh Bash.... let me put the kettle on. Blimey... I must dash to the kitchen. Suppose The Old Man fancies beef and mushroom pie?
Hey! Hold on there.....

Spring Day Out: Charlestown

Oh yes. A beautiful spring day at last and we do drive out to mid-Cornwall to visit a dear niece at her friendly place of work.... and to buy a few plants... hellebore... celandine... wallflower. Shoo the bees off cos I do want the plants for myself. Then we wave goodbye as she gives us the directions to find Charlestown.
Now this is a place near St. Austell that The Old Man has wanted to visit for some time. And one you may catch a glimpse of in the current TV series of "Poldark".
Once a fishing village, it was developed for the export of copper... and later found its trade with china clay... now it does a good line in film work! Privately owned, sailing ships and all... it is a picturesque place... slightly decrepit... and beautiful on a spring day as you can see.

Do We Need A Spoon?

....You may think that this is a question posed by The Old Man when considering the precise relationship between man and technology.
Wrong.

It is the phrase that The Old Man do utter hopefully whenever he lays out the cutlery for the evening meal.
Yes, folks. The Old Man do have ruined guts from numerous bouts of illness and a consequent regime of drugs and their side effects. Nevertheless, he be like a gaped-mouth chick in the nest... mouth wide open.... and always hoping for that extra sweet something for afters.

Mother's Day

Mrs D says hello to her Mum... and Mrs D's Mum says hello back......Weird.

Mother's Day from Mrs D on Vimeo.

Coming Soon To Cornwall: English Touring Opera - The Wild Man Of The West Indies

For one night only as they say... but I have my tickets in my sticky little hand for we rarely get a chance to nip out for an opera. So - at Truro's Hall For Cornwall... which sadly be not a theatre but.... a Hall really. The English Touring Opera and Donizetti's The Wild Man of the West Indies - now rarely performed - for whichever reason we shall soon find out.
Mar 18th. 7.30pm.

And Tuesday 17th is their production of Puccini's "La Boheme". But we thought we'd take a chance on something we have never seen before. Cos we are adventurous like that.
Adventurous... but nowhere to go! And we did enjoy the ETO's production of "Paul Bunyan" last year, so I'm up for this one too.

Happy International Women's Day....

...for I am of that age and generation of women who do remember having to have our consciousness raised.
Well.... I did not have to... as such... but as I recalled things what made me feel gloomy and stuck... I found that attending workshops and reading certain magazines and books do help me move my depression into plain old satisfying stroppiness.
Magazines such as Spare Rib and Women's Review (about which I can find nothing on Google except ebay ads!... and I do still have some issues lying around because I am that kind of girl.)
The workshops invariable involved sitting in circles, celebrating the moon and spelling WOMEN in as many interesting ways as possible...Womin, Wombin, Wymin, Womyn... you name it, bless us, anything to reinvent. Sorry. That's a patronising thing to say (wash my mouth out with soap). It is understandable. It is valuable. Some of this stuff was like water to a woman dying of thirst.
I mean, you try sitting in a student seminar while some idiot male fellow student tells you that you should not be here... being educated... cos there be no point... cos you is only capable of having babies and looking after babies and MEN (what be big babies).
In my case, being a nicely brought up, polite girl, I didn't say anything. Nor did I say anything when a table full of lechers... sorry "lecturers"... do tell me that I am really "quite intelligent". No dear, I smiled on... until I fell down, struck all of a heap. And after some time I did have my consciousness raised and got very, very, angry... as did a lot of other ladies.
One time... in the 1980s, The Old Man do recall, ... he went into a Women's Bookshop to buy me a present and got told that this was not the place for him! He be wounded by this.

A lot of people get angry about discovering who they are... or who they think they are. It happens now... as lost young people find their "identity" and their "anger" and "who is to blame for it all".

Anyway.... for those of you who are women... or would like to be... may I wish us a very happy day... all of our own.

Animated Discussions: "The Congress" by Ari Folman

Just watched The Congress on DVD - a combination live action/animation film. Now I couldn't find it in the shop under "Animation"... but I did find it under "Sci-fi". And that sci-fi hating Old Man did watch it. Mainly because it is another film from Ari Folman whose full animation "Waltz with Bashir"  (based on memories of his own and of friends who were soldiers in the Israeli army at the time of the Shatila Massacre).....he do like.

The Congress stars Robin Wright... as Robin Wright, a middle-aged film star facing the choice of accepting her final contract... to be digitally scanned and become the property of the film company. She must not act or perform in any way for the duration of the 20 year contract, because the film company Miramount owns the character Robin Wright. She finds this an outrageous offer but her son is ill... and as an "aging" Hollywood property she has no prospect of work. What follows is a long exploration of identity, choice, reality, fantasy not to mention the Hollywood machine.
I found it a quite difficult but fantastic film. It is layered with allusions... even the animated sequences refer to different animation styles, including my favourite Japanese master, Miyazaki. Towards the end the film reminded me of "Solaris"... the Tarkovsky version... it had the same flavour of psychological journey. Then when the credits went up I saw that it was based on The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem, the author of the originating novel of Solaris. Which sends The Old Man scurrying to his bookshelves to see if he has it.... cos he do like Lem. But No. Have to get on the internet and see what we can find.

For me The Congress is a feast of a film which left me pondering for some time afterward.

Greenpeace's Coastal Champion Tour Sets Off From Porthleven

The Old Man and I do go to Porthleven on Saturday to see Greenpeace launch (absolutely) their Coastal Champions Tour from Porthleven. Rather grey and brisk weather but people cheered when the boat hit the harbour water and plenty of kids were face-painted.

Local Lib Dem MP Andrew George was there to speak as were Green candidate Tim Andrewes and Labour candidate Cornelius Olivier. No sign of Tory or Ukip candidates... of course... nor of Mebyon Kernow candidate...
(Edit: Rob Simmons -Mebyon Kernow candidate- couldn't make it. See his comment below)
.... Nor of the MP for Camborne & Redruth - George Eustice - our current Fisheries Minister.

Andrew George does get out and about and pushes forward with his own campaigns and issues. You may have seen him ploughing his lonely furrow with his Private Members Bill on Affordable Housing on Michael Cockerell's BBC2 series "Inside the Commons"... being filibustered and harangued in the charming manner of this great institution.
Anyway Saturday was the start of the Greenpeace Tour taking their fishing boat Rising Tide to various ports around the country raising awareness of theirs and NUTFA's campaign to get politicians to sign up to keeping local fishing viable and sustainable.