Downton v Corrie

"But you watch Coronation Street!" was my  brother's indignant riposte, when I dared to criticise Downton Abbey (he's a DA fan, of course).

Well, for us, there's no comparison. The clunking prose, the anachronisms, the slow-moving plot (is there one?), the wooden acting...I think Downton is terrible. Lady Mary looks as though she's been impaled (vertically - I'm trying to be delicate here) by a broom handle, and apart from Maggie Smith, everyone sounds as though they're reading through their lines for the first time. And oh, those lines...

"She is bruised and broken. We must wrap her up and protect her" (his lordship, about the bereaved Lady Mary, who incidentally  looks as though she's never experienced an emotion in her life, let alone grief).

"I love you with every fibre of my being" (his lordship again - he seems to be cursed with the worse lines - quite out of the blue, to one of the maids. Last series).

Whereas Coronation Street is, I think, marvellous. Okay, so some of the plots are a bit off the wall - it's hard to keep going week after week with credible plots - but some of the acting is wonderful. The present story of Hayley's terminal cancer has brought out some of the best scenes (between her and husband Roy) I've ever seen on television.

And before anyone attacks me, yes, we do watch DA. We find it vastly entertaining, for all the wrong reasons. We don't care what happens to anyone, but are constantly astonished that so much money has been thrown at the production of something so soulless. For us, the Emperor that is Downton is stark naked.

But we're in a tiny minority, so feel free to ignore us.

A Death Row Journal

My Death Row correspondent has asked me to post this entry from the journal he tries to keep. I think he writes brilliantly. I'd love to know what you think. Every word and all the punctuation are as he wrote them.

The Row I've Hoed Bears Bitter Death

Sometimes the rain falls and I'm never aware of it. I'm sound-proofed from the world. Cursed to witness but not participate. Sometimes the sound of thunder is lost in the cacophony of shouting men screaming their grievances to apathetic guards; their prayers to an indifferent deity.

The only time I hear rain is when it leaks through the cracks in the ceiling. It's not the melodic symphony of water dancing off of the leaves or earth or man-made edifices. No, this sound has more of a dull metronomic quality as it slaps the stone floor. Each drop is a tiny defibrillator that shocks me back to reality; the needle that pierces all my dreams.

After the rain has fallen I plug up the concrete sky, shut off the light that became my fluorescent moon and stars and finally sleep.

This is where my life's journey has taken me and dropped me off, like a child on the first day of school...kicking and screaming. A ten by six cell where I play at being god. Creating, destroying, rearranging and likewise becoming indifferent to the world.

Irving Davis

Recently, he had to be transported elsewhere. He was returned late, and couldn't understand what all the little lights were in the sky. He finally realised that they were stars. He hadn't seen stars for eleven years. He never received the book I sent him; a harmless book he had asked for. It was refused him because of one sentence. I shall never know which.

The Virgin on the blanket box

This is the hardest of all, not least because it doesn't come out well in the photo. But for years, I've seen this figure in a dark skirt (slightly to the right), with a circle of stars not quite round her head (well, actually to her left) on the pine box we use as a coffee table.

And because of this, some time ago I wrote a mad novel called The Virgin of the Hen House, which was (rightly) rejected by my publisher. Without the Virgin the novel would have been quite sensible. I blame the blanket box.

And that's the last. I promise. Well, for the time being, anyway.

The fox on the bathroom floor

This one needs a bit more imagination, but if you disregard the line running across its nose - voila!

The dragonfly on the bathroom door

In a recent post I mentioned seeing faces in odd places. Well, this isn't exactly a face (I'm not sure whether these creatures have them), but this is an unadorned and un-tampered-with dragonfly in the grain of our bathroom door. And I seem to be the only person who's noticed.

Foxes on the floor next time.

Magpie 187

WHY IT'S A BAD IDEA TO IMPERSONATE AN INSECT

I like to pretend I'm a moth,
But it's not very comfy, becoth
When I cling onto lampth
That are more than two ampth
They make me feel prickly and croth.


(With thanks to Tess at Mapie Tales for the picture)

Seeing faces (a displacement-activity-post)

 

 

I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing faces in things. I've been looking at this little face on our bedroom light switch for years, and finally decided that it just needed a mouth. Voila! John likes it, so I'm afraid it's staying for the time being.

There are two fox faces on the ancient wooden floor of our bathroom, and years ago, there were rows of little faces in the floral curtains. The trouble is, once you've seen a face, you can't un-see it. It's there to stay. So those curtains were never quite the same, peopled as they were with all those tiny pink faces instead of flowers.

That's all. And yes,  I have got better things to do. I'm just not doing them at the moment...