Frosted front door

I don't normally get much time to write alot in December; it's the busiest time of the year for my business. However, today has been a bit of a freebie, I was planning to be doing an extra day on the Art & Craft Market in Cambridge but the weather forecast was so bad and as only seven stalls turned up on Thursday, I'm pretty certain it was cancelled. I let the Market Manager know I wouldn't be there and I imagine I will find out tomorrow if anyone braved the cold sleety rain. The forecast is fine for tomorrow, even if it wasn't, I would still probably be there on the last full Saturday before Christmas.

So I've used the "extra" time to do some Christmas preparations (shopping list and hemming a new tablecloth I've made). I've also got a ton of ironing out of the way and made some more jewellery stock ready for tomorrow. When I'm jewellery making and ironing, I tend to watch films and TV programmes on DVD using my Lovefilm account. Today, I saw Julie & Julia. It's a marvellous film, I watched it twice and then watched Nora Ephron's Director's Commentary too.

The film is a true story about a girl in a job she hates who decides to cook her way through Julia Child's classic cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" which consists of well over 500 recipes. She sets herself the deadline of one year and blogs her daily experiences. The film intercuts with scenes from Julia Child's life in France during the 1950s, the time before she wrote the cookbook.

I was a little horrified when Nora's commentary describes bloggers as "predators sitting watching their own life" and refers to the people who are mentioned in others' blogs having their "privacy totally invaded". Um, I hope I don't do that!

There are lots of things that happen in my life and those around me that I specifically DON'T blog about for that very reason, plus other things that I think aren't remotely interesting to anyone else and others that are too private.

People who read my blog don't really know everything about the real me, I prefer to think that my readers get a partial view. Edie Sedgwick described Andy Warhol's films (some of which she is in) "It's like watching Henry Moore sculpture out of focus".

I was pondering whether this was a good analogy for my blog, (I like pondering, I do it a lot!) when I walked past my front door which has a lovely pattern of frosting in the glass, when it's daylight, some of the garden shows through but the frosted part makes the whole indeterminate - I'd therefore like to use this picture of my rented (and totally gorgeous!) front door as a metaphor for my blog. 

Fellow bloggers of the world, don't let Nora's opinion of bloggers put you off watching the Julie & Julia flick, it really is a brilliant film and Meryl Streep is just great in it. I can't wait to see her (and of course, Anthony Head) in Iron Lady when it comes out on DVD!

The Railway Children

An item on the radio this morning reminded me of something that happened one Saturday on my stall earlier this month.

Apparently the Railway Children is 40 years old and there is going to be some kind of party at Waterloo station to celebrate it. The Railway Children is a special film to me because it is the first one that I can remember going to see at the cinema (yes, yes, when it first came out - that dates me!)

Anyway, on this particular Saturday, at lunchtime when I was popping to the shops to pick up some bits and pieces, I saw Jenny Agutter (who starred in the Railway Children) going into a restaurant in Cambridge City Centre. I recognised her immediately, she looked very stylish and elegant. I don't know if anyone else saw a series called The Invisibles a year or two ago, she was excellent in that as well starring opposite Anthony Head's character as his wife (very very jealous!) Of course she's been in loads of things inbetween as well.

Anyway, a little later on, at the end of the day after packing away all my jewellery, I always send my mum and dad a text as they like to know how I got on so I mentioned it in my message and .... spooky pause ... guess what mum was watching on TV at the time my text came through?! The Railway Children was being run on BBC3 or something. It's normally, my sister Sandy that does the weirdo stuff like this but some of her wicken power must have rubbed off on me!