What I have done for me lately.



Life  Just for a change...

(1)  I've just totted up the number of films I've watched so far this year and it's currently standing at two hundred and fifty-two (252).  I don't know if this is average although I know it's above average for someone for whom it isn't their job.  It averages out at one film per day and would be higher if it wasn't for the weeks when I was reading instead or travelling out to the Lake District to look at some paintings for five minutes.

(2)  This afternoon I travelled out to the Lady Lever Art Gallery to look at some drawings for about half an hour as I finally reached their Rossetti's Obsession : Images of Jane Morris exhibition.  Rossetti's never, whispering, really been my favourite of the pre-Raphaelites, his figures always having a slightly vacant look and that's certainly true of some of these drawings of Morris.  The real benefit of the exhibition is being able to compare his draftspersonship with photographs of his model and the way it simply and sympathetically charts their relationship across the years, saying as much as it needs to across the three rooms about their connection and William Morris.   If anything it feels too small.  A much larger exhibition in a greater space would have room for his paintings (assuming they could be loaned) and a greater sense of chronology with the works put in the order of the date of their creation rather than, as here, how they work best aesthetically.  Nevertheless I was very pleased to have visited before it closed (I really have to stop leaving these things too late) and it has added an extra complexion of understanding for me about his work and his muse.

(3)  Yesterday I wrote about visiting Tatton Park

(4)  On Tuesday I visited Tatton Park

(5)  Monday I wrote about visiting Tullie House.

(6) The Tour of Britain began on Sunday with eight laps passing in front of my house:

After having watched the start of the race and first lap on television I rushed down and stood on the side of the road for the next pass. As I expected this amounted to the roar of police motorcycles, then the first lot of support cars, then the four leading cyclists, then a gap, then the peloton then what seemed like a hundred more support cars with television cameras in between, then nothing.  I clapped all the way through and wore a bright green Kelly Services t-shirt which hasn't fit me for twenty-years (originally given to me when I worked at Headingley cricket ground clearing rubbish from the terraces in the mid-90s) so I could spot myself on the television playback as all of this whooshed past.  But in general it was about as I'd thought, which is that watching a road race from the side of the road is a rubbish way to watch a road race.

(7)  On Saturday afternoon, Matthew Sweet quoted me in his Sound of Cinema programme about Memory on Radio 3 from the tweets I sent him about John Brion's score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  You can listen again here or download the podcast.  He mentions me about about five minutes before the end.

(8)  Saturday night was Doctor Who night and we're all caught up.
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