Categories: book-review, places, film
Tags: film review, conference, York, book review, family, home
Date: 23 April 2007 16:07:35
A good weekend when my bowels eventually allowed me to get down south - my prediction of an 8 hour journey was pretty much spot on (and, for those of you interested in such things, the Eddie Stobart score was 60, which was pretty respectable and not too far below my record for that particular journey).
HD arrived a day after me, and on Saturday evening we did the obligatory outing to Stoke Bruerne, which is a pretty little village on the Grand Union Canal with a pub by the waterside. I think everyone who comes to stay goes there at some point (in my family's defence though, it was my suggestion this time).
Yesterday we headed up to the city where we're getting married, where the shop I wanted to go to was closed, so we went to the cinema instead and saw "Curse of the Golden Flower", which is really sumptuous visually, I loved the colours, although there were a number of scenes where I did shut my eyes (I'm not very good with screen blood and gore). Blood and gore aside though, it really is beautiful to look at, well worth seeing. I still haven't seen "The Lives of Others" (or whatever it's called!) - I would have liked to have seen it yesterday, but we arrived too late for one showing, and the next one would have meant I'd have missed my train.
And now I'm back at work. Today I finally lurched into the 21st century and created my first ever Powerpoint presentation, for the talk I'm giving at a conference down south later this week. I think it's going to be OK.
I'm off to my book group tonight, for the last time until I'm back in October. I haven't finished the book this time, as until yesterday morning I had it in my head that we were meeting next Monday, not today. So I had a big reading spurt on the train yesterday, but it wasn't enough. The book is Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent", which is based on the biblical story of Dinah (which merits a passing gruesome mention in Genesis). It's basically Biblical chick-lit, and whilst it's not the most intellectually taxing thing I've ever read it is a good read, I'm enjoying it. I think what I really like about it is that, when you read about the peripheral Biblical characters who only get the slightest of mentions (or, for example, the lists of huge numbers of soldiers slaughtered in Joshua, or the huge numbers of nameless concubines or whatever), I often wonder about them, and remember that God knows their stories even though the writers of the Bible chose to concentrate on other people. This is basically the story of people who only get a bit of a mention in the Bible, and gives them a life.