Too Long No Blog

I know I really need to get the hang of this blogging thing, not to mention 'tweeting'. Although it made me feel better when I had a conversation with an eighteen year old who was having difficulty getting her head around it too.Yay!There is hope for me yet. I picked up The Times at the weekend and read the supplement with thirty great poems everyone should know. I was familiar with the majority yet the one that stood out for me was'Invictus'by W.E. Henley.Then I read that Bill Nighy ( yes my TWC Bill Nighy) was recording a reading of it. I've listened: it's lovely, so is he.For me the last two lines resonate and represent what I need to remember if I am going to push myself to achieve my goals in 2012 :

 'I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.'

So onwards and upwards as they ( whoever 'they' are) say.

I'm wondering what my critical writing friend Cath is up to.Rumour has it she has just been on a road trip , by way of a coach, with another writing friend, freeing me up to make merry with my commas( sorry I went to a medieval banquet last night and indulged in a lot of  'wassailing').
I am so looking forward to hearing tales of no doubt mass destruction of the itinerary, not to mention caricatures based on fellow travellers .Little do the latter know what they were letting themselves in for when they assembled at the crack of dawn outside some dark and brooding religious edifice, cold fingers clutching coach boot battered cases.These people may never set foot on a coach again for the rest of their lives. Then again they will be a lot richer for having the experience of meeting my mad writing friends and may well become lifelong buddies. We'll see. The writing class await their return to the fold on Monday with baited breath ; I may even be early for a change.

Thinking Woman's Crumpet Time......

Hmm.I have pondered a long while on my next subject. It's the mouth you see. Again. What is it about mouths?I guess you focus on them a lot when the subject is an actor. This man came into my life when I was a teenager and like so many of my contemporaries I possessed several  iconic shots of James Dean, mainly, if not all in black and white. Of course I loved Rebel Without a Cause, yet it was Giant that really drew me in: watching his performance and how he aged on screen.The irony being that we never saw him age in real life of course.
James Dean is such an obvious one that I mention him merely in passing to my real subject:
Stephen Mc Hattie, born in Nova Scotia in 1947.He is a film and tv actor with many performances under his belt including some of the most popular tv series.In 1976 McHattie played James Dean  in the film  James Dean: Portrait of a Friend, a tv adaptation of the biography written by James Dean's friend and writer Bill Bast. At some point I came across this film and it has stayed in my memory all these years, Stephen McHattie has stayed in my memory as he was then : the sculpted cheekbones, the thin lipped curve of the mouth which verges on the edge of a snarl, yet teases you with the smallest hint of a smile, the piercing eyes. Check him out on wikipedia/google. He may be in his sixties now, but I say the man still has it: in spades.

Bill Nighy

 Disclaimer : No commas were harmed in the writing of this blog


So I googled Joan Bakewell  who many years ago to her dismay was christened the' thinking man's crumpet' by Frank Muir. I then spent half an hour looking at Cheryl Cole's new hairdo nestling atop a  Victoria Beckham frock( I do love that word), celebrities in a variety of little black dresses and oversized shoes ( four year olds clunking around in mama's high heels anyone?) and an assortment of strangely shaped and wrinkled knees, not to mention Pippa Middleton's scorching red halter neck dress and a quick peek at the X factor - yes I know but at least I'm honest. It's no wonder I never finish anything......My critical friend( as in the one I am sharing my writing with) Cath says I'm like a butterfly oh and that I use too many commas,oops there goes another one, make that two. So sorry if you get short of breath but I'm trying to economise on them  in case there's a world shortage.....ok Cath?
I did eventually return to Joan Bakewell  in case you were wondering how far my talent for being distracted extends,(comma alert Cath) the irony of this distraction being all too apparent to me.In my quest to discover what made JB the 'thinking man's crumpet' I have been insidiously drawn into celebrityville in all its A to Z list glory .How did that just happen? Focus girl!.
Now back to Bill .Mr Nighy. A contender in my quest for the ultimate TWC. I don't normally 'do' blonde. Well except for and maybe because of one long legged  bass player with a boyish grin who turned out to be bottle blonde and that's another story( how are the commas doing Cath?).But Bill. Mr Nighy. It's not just the voice, although that helps, or his acting ability or the way his hair flops in a certain way or the gentle gleam of his eyes through heavy rimmed black spectacle frames.It's in the curl of his lip.It's so subtle but when he speaks the words hover on that curl and when the rich tone spills from those lips its mesmerising.
Great pair of legs too.....