Another year older..

Martyn's birthday yesterday, but we had a pretty lazy day until early evening, whe we went out for supper followed by a showing of Victoria and Abdul at the local bug hut.  Quite a sweet little film, with the usual impeccable acting by Judi Dench.  A sort of Mrs Brown 2, I suppose, but a shade less convincing than N°1.  Ali Fazal's smiling Bollywood stare was captivating (if implausible in the context), and his delicate handling of the role was pretty good, but a lot of the surround was rather stilted and caricatured.  Well, a sort of feel-good film, which never does any harm.  I see that the Hindustani Times slams it for glossing over the wholesale massacre of Indians during the Raj.  Perhaps we shouldn't just treat these things as entertainment.

I slapped some water colours about at yesterday's class, remininding myself of my utter incompetence in the medium.  One or two decent clouds using wet-in-wet, but the few other decent results were scarce and modest.  It's a bit like skiing, I suppose.  If I could wake up one morning muscular, supple and skilful enough to tackle the black slopes, I'd like skiing.  As it is, I'll eschew the slopes - and the clever water-colour stuff

Bad news of our friend Sheila, recently widowed.  She was evidently helicoptered in to hospital in Carcassonne the other day suffering what sounds like acute kidney failure.  She was on line yesterday reporting on the state of said kidneys in somewhat anglo-saxon terms. Early days - let's hope for the best.

Modest gardening efforts today: the storms are getting pretty lively, so I've hacked down the long stems on our 'sentry' roses either side of the garden steps, and done some modest dead-heading on the old faithful penstemons.  The grass is getting rather long, but I plan to leave it [sic] until there are a few more tons of leaves on it.  There are a few more days of strong winds from the west, so with luck next door's oak leave will land in their garden, but our goat willow and cherry, and the neighbours' silver birches, will provide some exercise.