UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

On fashion magazines: "What was in them was promise.  They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point.  They suggested one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another.  They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love.  The real promise in them was immortality"--The Handmaid's Tale

I've subscribed to Britbox channel, for Moira as much as myself.  I've been watching reruns of Upstairs, Downstairs, the series about masters and servants in a London household that made Masterpiece Theatre almost 50 years ago.  Still love it. (I've heard that servants in those households actually didn't see much of each other, but who cares?)

My favourite character is the butler Angus Hudson (Gordon Jackson). He was always strict with the servants below him and deferential to the masters above him, but he wasn't a toady.  He really believed in the system he was part of, which is a bit sad.  He was one of those Scottish people who become more English than the regular English, like Colin Firth and the Queen Mother.

I've been watching the fourth season, the one set in the Great War when things got turned upside down.  Last night I saw the episode where Georgina volunteered for nursing and got in over her head for the first time in her life!  Also, James was moved back from the trenches to the staff after his criticism of the government's handling of the war got into the newspapers, but he wanted to be back in the front lines.  Hazel didn't want him in danger, but she ended up speaking to his colonel and getting him sent back.

There are a lot of good stories in this season, like when Hazel had an affair with a pilot who soon got killed, and she consoled Rose over the death of the latter's sweetheart as a way of dealing with her own bereavement.  Or Edward the happy-go-lucky footman joining up and suffering shell shock, and they were going to send him back anyway so he tried to desert but Hudson made him return!  I like details like Hazel receiving a telegram from James saying he'd soon return and thinking it was a cable reporting his death, or the flowers in James' convalescent room having a smell that reminded him of mustard gas.

Finally started my reading aloud of A Little Princess.  So far it's only Jacqueline and me, but great oaks from little acorns grow.

The lockdown's getting to me

"Is fashion such a serious consideration?"

"Among those who have nothing more serious to consider."

--The Age of Innocence

I told myself that I was adusting pretty well to the COVID 19-related isolation.  But lately it's been getting harder.  I've been spending a lot of time on Twitter quarrelling about British politics...

Last week I lost my glasses (that's how careless I've been getting), and I don't know how long the replacement will take.  Oh well, I don't need them so much since I'm watching the computer instead of going to the movies.

We were laying concrete in the new cellar, like last summer, and once again I couldn't quite keep up with the others and in the end they had to take up my slack because the flow couldn't be stopped.  I hope we don't have to do it again!

My Cipralex ran out, but the drugstore had to confirm refilling with my shrink, meaning a gap of several days. (My dreams have been getting more vivid again.)

Last week my History Meetup discussed New York City and the watch party showed Martin Scorcese's The Age of Innocence. (We'd shown Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky the previous month.) I'd forgotten that was Richard E. Grant as the gossip!  Next month's subject will be Hellenistic civilization.

I've been getting behind with The Handmaid's Tale. (It isn't a barrel of laughs.) I've also been reading Scott O'Dell's children's book Island of the Blue Dolphins, because it's actually a paper book I can take on the bus, instead of an Ebook.  

The Short Story Meetup just discussed four more de Maupassant Stories: "The Necklace," "Maison Tellier," "Clare de Lune" and "Miss Harriet." (I didn't have much to say about the last one because I hadn't had time to read it!) I remember reading "The Necklace" for the first time three decades ago about the time the Berlin Wall fell, and I saw a parallel.  I'd elaborate, but that would mean spoiling the story's classic twist for those of you who haven't read it.  If you have, maybe you can guess the connection...

Dragon Ball GT took a weird turn around Episode 25.  Goku, Trunks and Pan were off on foreign planets collecting dragon balls and encountered Baby, this alien monster who can infiltrate people' bodies and take over their minds like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  So now Baby's gone to earth and brainwashed the whole human race!  Goku just ended up in this realm where he's in a life-sized board game. (I think Japanese TV has game shows like that...)

Yesterday's launch of Jeremy Corbyn's Peace & Justice Project gives me hope, but I couldn't help thinking of an incident in the Civil War.  General Sheridan rode forth to rally his retreating troops, who were so pleased to see him that they started shouting "Sheridan!  Sheridan!  Sheridan!..." He said, "God damn you, don't cheer me, fight!" Don't cheer Corbyn, fight Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer and everything they stand for!

So/Farewell then/2020

"A chair, a table, a lamp.  Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out.  There must have been a chandelier, once.  They've removed anything you could tie a rope to."--The Handmaid's Tale

"Who ever heard of a church without walls?"--Hawaii

Christmas and New Year's are past.  On New Year's Eve I watched Cat Ballou again--I first saw it on another New Year's Eve when I was eight or so.  Except for Lee Marvin's brilliant turn as the decrepit gunfighter, really, it's pretty lame. (Lots of "naughty" humor of the sort that would look mild in the near future...)

My watch party showed Scrooge on Christmas and Hawaii on New Year's Day.  Or I would have shown them, anyway, but I'd rented them on Apple TV and for some reason I couldn't share the screen, just the sound!  I had to watch those movies by myself.  Couldn't sit through Scrooge--I'd heard Leslie Bricusse's songs were tuneless, and they were. (The Muppets version actually had better songs!) 

Hawaii, from the James Michener novel (which I saw for the second time), was a long sit but food for thought.  It's about the first missionaries who came to Hawaii in the 1820s, many of whom ended up rich colonists as the indigenous population was decimated by diseases like measles.  The Max Von Sydow character was a non-compromiser--my mother told me her father was something like that.

How do I feel about missionaries?  Well, the missionary movement overall has a mixed record:  in some places it bears responsibility for colonial abuses and cultural genocide such as in Canada's residential schools for First Nations children.  Yet to this day a lot of them have done considerable good.  The missionaries in western China, whom I learned about researching my Ph.D. thesis, come off pretty well.

I've started reading The Handmaid's Tale for my book club. (Several chapters have the title "Night.") In the first chapters Margaret Atwood depicts her fundamentalist dystopia with a dry, almost clinical tone.  Should be interesting!

I'm such a Dragon Ball completist that I've started watching Dragon Ball GT!  I heard it wasn't very good, and it isn't.  A grownup Trunks, a Son Goku who's physically been made a child again, and an annoying girl called Pan are in a spaceship seeking Dragon Balls around the universe.  I miss the wide range of amusing characters like Bulma and Krillin and Piccolo.