THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

"Watching coal miners at work, you realise momentarily what different universes different people inhabit"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Finished The Winds of War yesterday.  It was pretty conventional and predictable:  as with North and South, I kept guessing what was about to happen.  Like in this one scene where Robert Mitchum is playing chess with a German general and I'm thinking, "The German will put Mitchum in check but Mitchum will end up pulling a checkmate!" I wasn't mistaken.

Should I see the sequel War and Remembrance?  It's twelve hours long, and Youtube doesn't have all of it.  I think it can wait...

I finally got us subscribed to Netflix.  (I figured out that I had to go to the system preferences' network section and remove our old Unotelly proxy.)

This morning I finally finished Canadian History for Dummies, which had me looking at Canadian history in a new way! Now I'm focusing on The Road to Wigan Pier, and just read the chapter describing the extreme working conditions in a coal mine. (During WWII Ernest Bevin, the British minister in charge of wartime production, had some conscripts consigned to coal mining, and many of the "Bevin boys" begged to be transferred back to the army!)

Finished my Sackville article for Midwife and wrote another about living in Brighton, England, when I was four.

Cookie exchange

"The newspaper-canvassers were a type I had never met before.  Their job seemed to me so hopeless, so appalling that I wondered how anyone could put up with such a thing when prison was a possible alternative"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Seeing the result of a Warsaw air raid: "Those German bastards--my God, Byron, look!"--The Winds of War (Whose side are you on?)

Saturday night I baked another batch of gingerbread and raised the temperature another 25 degrees, but there was still a soft part in the middle.  Between the two batches, however, there was enough to bring to the cookie exchange. (And Moira likes the soft gingerbread anyway!)

The cookie exchange was a Baking Meetup event at High Park.  There was a big variety of cakes and cookies.  The people included a couple of Japanese girls, one of whom had fancy striped shoes she got in Japan. Assantewa showed up after I'd mentioned it to her mother. (She didn't have time to bake anything, but she's really into cookies!)

I've started reading George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, so on my way to the cookie exchange I read about a shop selling unappetizing tripe!

In The Winds of War there's a scene where Robert Mitchum comes back from being an observer on a bombing raid, and the young Englishwoman who adores him says, "It must have been hard!" and he replies, "It was long." That's the kind of line only Mitchum could deliver!

THE WINDS OF WAR

"I'm going to Warsaw!"--The Winds of War

Wednesday afternoon I met Midwife and talked about things like David Sedaris.  I've written her a short article about seeing Carousel at the English National Opera, and now I'm writing one about my hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick.

This afternoon I baked some gingerbread for the cookie exchange Sunday afternoon.  But it was a disaster (too little shortening?), and I may try baking it again tomorrow.

Tonight I saw the first episode of The Winds of War on Youtube. That's the 1983 miniseries about Americans at the start of World War II, up to Pearl Harbor. (It should have been titled "Welcome to the World, Uncle Sam!") It was a ratings hit at the time, though someone called it "the campiest show since Batman"!

It stars Robert Mitchum, who was one of the coolest actors ever, but he's a bit too old here. Ali McGraw was never much of an actress, but similarly she's way too old! (At least Jan Michael-Vincent has some life.) The female characters are rather brainless.  The bit where the woman gets killed by Nazi strafing and her infant child keeps saying "Mama!  Mama!" is especially shameless.  It's the sort of show that basically tells Americans what they want to hear about themselves.

Learning Korean

My Korean lessons continue apace. (The Teach Yourself language books are brilliant, for those who'd rather learn through books.)  The first lesson was about polite language and nationality, the second family relations, the third time and weather, the fourth shopping for food, the fifth ordering food in a restaurant. (The sixth will be about locations.)

I just learned that the Korean word for "rice with mixed vegetables" is "bibimbap" (비빔밥), which I find a nifty word!  I also learned about "Please be seated" and "This pork belly is too salty" and "Shall we cook it again?"

Sunday afternoon was the Reading Out Loud Meetup.  I read my translation of stanzas 19 to 41 of the first canto of The Lusiades, along with my translation of Pessoa's Alberto Caeiro poem, the part of Candide about the Lisbon earthquake and Pangloss going to the auto-da-fe, and the first pages of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. (I'd been meaning to read that here for a while, and finally got around to it.) Suzanne was really impressed by my Lusiades translation.

I just learned in Canadian History for Dummies that Amherst, Nova Scotia, near my hometown of Sackville, had a general strike a few months before the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919!

John and his family came over for lunch today, and I ate a vegetarian hamburger for the first time. (How good was it?  A burger is a burger...)

I'm still translating The Wizard of Oz into Portuguese.  I just got to the chapter where they find out the truth about the Wizard.

MONTEREY POP

This afternoon I tried to find a Classic TV Meetup in the Regent Park area, but I went to the wrong building entrance.  Too bad, Dawna the organizer was posting about the '50s TV series The Adventures of Superman and I printed out the photo above.  It's of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, but don't they look like Clark and Lois on that show?  I also wanted to mention the bit in This Boy's Life where Leo di Caprio was watching the show with his teenage friends, and someone made a dirty suggestion that made them all laugh. Narrator Leo: "That broke the tension, and we settled back to watch dorky adventures..." Sure hope I can find them next time!

Yesterday I went to Sobey's to get their Friday afternoon fish & chips special, but they're no longer selling it there! Fortunately, Loblaw's now has a similar special.

This evening I went to see Monterey Pop yet again, in a 50th anniversary release, at the Bloor. Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, it's one of my favorite rock concert movies!  I like the moment during Janis Joplin's show-stopping "Ball and Chain" when we see Cass Elliott in the audience, clearly impressed! (Several performers would die much too young.) My favorite part of all is Ravi Shankar's long sitar number at the end.

BLACK ROBE

"Our soldiers defended themselves like soldiers of the pope:  they all knelt, threw down their arms and asked the pirates for absolution in articulo mortis"--Candide

Tuesday night I went to the first meeting of John Snow's book club in its new format, focusing on translated French novels. There were just four people there, but that's twice the number that were at my book club's first meeting!  We discussed Candide, and John was impressed by my calling it a "burlesque" in an earlier post.  Afterward the weather was nice so Brenda, Neeta and I walked from Sherbourne to the Yonge subway.

Tuesday I misplaced Canadian History for Dummies, but it turned up today. (It was in a window sconce.) I'd just got my hair cut that afternoon, so I thought I'd left it in the barber shop.

Yesterday afternoon at Jimmy's I met Anne and her Aspie daughter Assantewa and we discussed her new literary project.

This evening I saw the DVD of Bruce Beresford's movie of the Brian Moore novel Black Robe (for the second time) with the History Meetup.  It's a gripping, beautiful drama about a Jesuit in New France going west to be a missionary among the Huron nation.  Funny that it took an Australian director to make the great Canadian epic!

This afternoon I went to Tap Phong in Kensington Market and bought an ice-shaving machine.

Just now I've been reading The Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots.

CANADIAN HISTORY FOR DUMMIES

"'Oh, here's a Cicero!' said Candide. 'Surely you never tire of reading that great man!'

"'I never read him,' replied the Venetian. 'What does it matter to me that he pleaded for Rabirius and Cluentius?  I have enough cases of my own to judge.  His philosophical works would have suited me better, but when I saw that he doubted everything, I concluded that I knew as much as he did, and that I didn't need anyone's help to be ignorant.'"

Saturday I finished Candide and started reading Canadian History for Dummies, which I found at the Oakwood Village library. (I keep forgetting that it's south of Rogers Road rather than north!)

Written by Will Ferguson, Canadian History for Dummies is a good read with lots of humor.  I especially like that he doesn't neglect my home region of Acadia!  I'm now getting close to the fall of Quebec in 1759.

Saturday I planted the peas and beans and carrots and parsnips. There's still space for the head crops, which I'll transplant once I get a bit less lazy.  I hope we can fit the onions into the space where Moira had an herb garden last year.  Father found the hose in the basement and now I can water it.

The fourth chapter of Teach Yourself Korean is about shopping for groceries, and I've learned "sagwa joosu" and "chohkoh ooyoo," which mean apple juice and chocolate milk. I've had some trouble writing out "won," their currency unit--like Chinese "yuan" and Japanese "yen"--which is written like this (원), because I thought it was written like this (온ㅓ). I've been noticing a lot of grammatical features that have parallels in the Japanese language.

CANDIDE

"'Is it true that people in Paris are always laughing?' asked Candide.

"'Yes,' said the abbe, 'but they're burning with rage at the same time.  They complain about everything with gales of laughter, and they even laugh while they commit the most abominable crimes.'"

I'm in a good mood because Jeremy Corbyn defied expectations and took away Teresa May's majority in the British election.  Corbyn's the kind of politician we need these days!

I've started reading Candide for the second time. (The first time was back when I lived in London in 1995, and I read it during the long commute to the Public Record Office in Kew.) It's something of a burlesque.

Wednesday night I saw Francois Ozon's Frantz with Miriam at the Mt. Pleasant. (Hadn't been there for a while.) It's a pretty downbeat movie about a German woman whose fiance was killed in the Great War and meets a French veteran who knows something of the dead man.

Last night I went to another ESL Meetup.  I met a Korean girl and managed to say to her, "Je sang'il-un Iwol o'il ieyo," which means "My birthday is February 5th." (Which it is.) I told her that I liked the Korean movie Taegukgi:  The Brotherhood of War, and she said it's famous in Korea.

Today I had lunch with John Snow at the Schnitzel Hub again. (He generously gave me copies of a couple of French books his book club will be doing soon.) I seemed to leave a bit abruptly and he later wondered if I was mad at him, but I explained that us Aspies are often giving the wrong impression!

After a fortnight, I've finally got rid of my email backlog.  It took a while because I was also dealing with the new emails that arrive every day.

It's supposed to be a hot weekend, and I bought some ice for our freezer.  Now I'd like to find an ice-crushing appliance...

FORBIDDEN PLANET

On landing on a foreign planet: "Nothing to do but throw rocks at tin cans, and you have to bring the cans!"--Forbidden Planet

I was just reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Canadians, part of a funny series of books they sell at Foyle's in London.  It's already finished, so now I can start on Candide for John Snow's book club.  I thought we had a copy, but I couldn't find it and had to get one at the Lillian Smith library.

Last night I went to a Movie Meetup screening of Forbidden Planet (for the third time).  It's handsome-looking but a bit awkward.  Anne Francis was a babe!  I brought a British book of the world's worst movie posters, and showed the others the lurid-looking Forbidden Planet poster.

Yesterday I finished preparing the garden, and this morning Moira and I went to Fiesta Farms and bought seeds and stuff. (They didn't seem to have broccoli or brussels sprouts.)

SCORE

Saturday I joined Miriam at the Karelia Kitchen for a Vintage Clothing Meetup. (I had a cheesecake with pistachio crust.) We visited some boutiques, and ended up at the Dundas West street festival.  I'd just finished Cold Comfort Farm, and lent her my copy.

Yesterday Moira joined me at the ESL Meetup at the Midtown Hub, and quite enjoyed it.  We were helping immigrants with English idioms, and some of them were pretty tough. (With "Add insult to injury," I ended up saying, "That one isn't important, you don't have to know it"!) Some of the immigrants were Korean, and were impressed that I could say "Annyong haseyo" (hello). We walked there and back along St. Clair Avenue.

Last night I saw Score at the Bloor HotDocs. (I renewed my silver membership.) It's a documentary about movie composers, something like Visions of Light did with cinematographers back in the '90s.  I wish they'd spent a bit more time on classic composers like Maurice Jarre and Miklos Rosza--I'm never satisfied, am I?

With Cold Comfort Farm finished, I started reading the short book Xenophobe's Guide to the Canadians, one of the books I bought in London.

I've been trying to subscribe to Netflix, but they won't accept my credit card and when I try to pay through Paypal I get a message that the payment system is down. "Please try again later."

Dufferin Mall

"It was one of his disagreeable duties as a State psycho-analyst to remove the affections of his patients from the embarrassing objects upon which they were concentrated; and focus them, instead, upon himself"--Cold Comfort Farm

Today I finished forking the garden and started deepening the surrounding ditch.  When I'm finished with that and level it out with a hoe, it'll finally be ready for planting!

I was going to meet John Snow for lunch, but there was a misunderstanding about the day. Oh well, we'll meet next Friday.

In the evening I went out to Dufferin Mall.  At the Bell store I got a USB cable so I can connect the Iphone to my desktop and post the photos I took in London. Then I went to Walmart and bought new socks and undies, along with several towels for the bathroom.

I read over thirty pages of Cold Comfort Farm and should finish it on the weekend.  I'm also close to finishing going through the email backlog.

I just bought another cheap Ebook, about New York City in the 1960s.  I don't know when I'll get around to reading any of them--I still haven't finished the Tom Swift book--but they do sound fascinating!

I had a very strange dream last night about being among a group of people who hung onto ropes under an airplane and went all around the world without touching the ground.

Bits and pieces

"Flora was desperately sleepy; she felt as though she were at one of Eugene O'Neill's plays; the kind that goes on for hours and hours and hours, until the R.S.P.C. Audiences batters the doors of the theatre in and insists on a tea interval"--Cold Comfort Farm

My Korean is slowly progressing. I've been learning to write their syllables, and the only part that still resists my facility is these vowel formations like "wa" and "wo." I've been writing out the conversations and such in my Teach Yourself book, and also making a glossary.  It helps to know some Japanese, whose syntax is similar in some ways.

I got a new ATM access card, but the first time I used it the machine rejected it, so I had to go to the tellers to get it straightened out.

Finally started forking the garden to prepare it for planting.  And just as I was getting underway, it started raining!  Ain't it the way?

Tonight I went on Betty Anne's art walk in the area near Dundas & Dufferin.  One of the places we went to was a lingerie boutique!

Last night I dreamed of being near the front line of the American offensive against Japan in the Pacific war, running away and passing the Marx Brothers on tour.

I have about 300 emails left to open...