Fog follows fireworks?

Once I’d convinced myself that it was a squirrel pecking on my bedroom window, I got up and drew the curtains, to find fog, but no squirrel. (It was a bird in the attic, so I was close.) ‘Fog’, I thought. ‘Yes, of course, it’s the 6th of November. Has to be foggy.’

The Resident IT Consultant was banging and chasing the poor bird, which meant he obviously wasn’t out buying the morning paper, so I settled down with a magazine and my Weetabix. The first page I turned to had the whole story of the fog at Lützen on November 6th, 1632, when King Gustav Adolf of Sweden died on the battlefields in the Thirty Years War. Witchy, or what?

So, maybe fog is formed in the aftermath of lots of gunpowder? We certainly had a surplus of gunpowder in the air the night before the morning of the non-squirrel. Bet Lützen had lots of gunpowder, too.

The magazine went on to show a picture of the Gustav Adolf pastry which Gothenburgers eat on November 6th. The people of neighbouring Borås also eat pastries, as both towns were founded by good old Gustav Adolf. He wasn’t that old, actually. Only 38 when he died in the fog. And he was the father of Greta Garbo, so to speak, since she played his daughter Queen Kristina in the film.

This brings us neatly to church. My church, the Gustav Adolf church in Liverpool. In a few weeks’ time we will celebrate 125 years of worship at Gustav Adolf, which could soon come to an end. I’ve blogged about this before, but it seems that things are suddenly worse than we thought. Again. The ‘powers’ in Uppsala still believe they have the right to sell the church and kick us out.

That’s despite Liverpool City Council telling them that they can’t. And even if they are allowed to, who would buy a church in the current climate? It must remain a church, because it’s listed. Before, it seemed as if all that Uppsala wanted was to make money. Now they can’t possibly expect to make anything much from a sale, so I’ll have to assume they simply want us out. We are a thorn in their Christian sides.

Fittingly, the church has just started a blog to cover the story of our possible future. Let’s hope we have one.

(Photo by Kristoffer Morén)

Outlaws and In-laws

Good thing we finally know what Gibbs did with the blasted boat. Not that I really believe he could get it out even in two pieces. But it’s fiction, isn’t it? And if it wasn’t, we couldn’t have all these plots that implausibly involve the same people over and over. But we like that, because it carries the development of the characters forward.

Outlaws and In-laws was one of those Gibbs centred episodes that the DiNozzo/Ziva fans can’t abide. At least that’s what it looks like on the fan forum discussion board. Oh, well. At least we were reunited with a few characters from the past, and not all of them related to each other, either. I like Damon Werth better with hair, is what I’ll say.

If it wasn’t for the fun we get out of Ziva’s little language mishaps, I’d want to point out that they are the wrong kinds of mistakes. Us foreigners make lots of them, but tend not to get all the complicated syntax right, and then fall on stuff like sitting on babies, once in a blue lagoon.

I gather that Gibbs’s living room which we saw for the first time (just imagine; the man actually has a living room!) has already been dismantled again. Shame, because I think lots of us want to see more of the private Gibbs. How can the man not have a lock on his door?

The end was fun, and leaves some hope for the lonely people in this world. Not that Ziva is supposed to understand this, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that place.

(Photos © CBS)

Conditions

That Macauley Culkin child actor made a lot of money from his films, I believe. Whether he’s still got the money, or whether it was ‘taken care of’ by some adult in his best interests, I don’t know. But my understanding would be that someone got paid for his acting, and I’d think that the only condition would have been that he do a reasonable job of the acting.

Likewise, I have an idea that Emma Watson is very rich by now. I’ve even stopped minding. Like Hermione, Emma did well at school, or so the press like to tell us. If she’d failed her GCSEs or stayed at home with a headache too often, would she have made less money from her films?

I’m pretty sure that Tom Hanks gets his money, regardless of what he gets up to privately. Though, of course, he’s an adult. White. Male. American. He deserves his money. Just like Emma and Macauley.

Azhar and Rubina from Slumdog Millionnaire, however, will lose the money set aside for them (notice the words ’set aside’) if their attendance at school doesn’t improve. So, one can safely assume they didn’t merit being paid for that acting they did in the film? Once and for all, I mean.

The money they stand to lose is rather less than western child stars are paid. Maybe that’s OK, although I’m not convinced of that either. It’s good that people try to get them an education. But they’ve earned that money! Even if some adult goes and spends it all on drink or gambling on their behalf, I don’t see why they are treated differently.

Because they are not white, or from the west, maybe?

Perhaps we should remove the money Lindsey Lohan made from her acting? After all, some of her more recent behaviour hasn’t been totally sane or decent. Daniel Radcliffe didn’t continue with his education. I think it’s OK. The world has gained a wizard young actor, and he can always go back to school later, should he want to.

Azhar lost his father recently, and has been off school because he was upset over this. So let’s take his money away.

But by all means, let’s treat people from India less fairly. (Or have I misunderstood things?)

Jinx

I enjoyed that! You won’t normally find the witch watching CBBC, now that Offspring are very, very old. Well, not of CBBC age, anyway. But Jinx, which started on CBBC on Saturday happens to be based on the Lulu Baker trilogy of books by Fiona Dunbar, and we like Fiona’s writing and we like her sense of humour. So we watched. (That’s a royal ‘we’, btw.)

Not having read Lulu Baker, I don’t know how much of Fiona’s books there is in Jinx, what with this ‘based on’ thing, but it was very funny and felt really Fiona-ish. I sat down with the first two episodes (of 13, I believe) this evening, as they are broadcast Saturday and Sunday mornings.

I do feel they miscalculated the start date, however, as the very hilarious zombie episode would have been perfect for Halloween, but I suppose a day later is OK, too.

Basically, we seem to be dealing with the step family problem, with Lulu and her Dad ‘marrying’ the lovely Stepmum and her son Torquil, who is a little challenging. This is humorous fantasy, with a fairy Godmother whizzing round, helping confuse matters. If things can go wrong, they will.

Some series like this can be too light in the script department, but Jinx feels well scripted, with none of the embarrassing stuff you sometimes have to put up with in children’s television. One small niggle would be that it’s too colourful, like most modern series, from Tracy Beaker onwards. I feel it makes programmes less attractive to adults (maybe that’s the point?), and could be seen as part of dumbing down for children. If it’s not exploding with colour, it’s not child friendly.

I’ll watch some more.

An NCIS Halloween night in

Ever the realist, I knew we wouldn’t manage three, let alone four, NCIS episodes on Halloween, even with our enthusiasm. So we watched Chimera the day before, because it’s ‘only’ spooky, and not really Halloween. And the question is whether that early bit of vomiting goes all that well with lunch? At least I don’t feel seasick by association, or I’d have had to join McGee with his travel sickness pills.

So after lighting the pumpkin in the front window we settled down with another two Halloweeny sessions. First the season four Marilyn Monroe episode,Witch Hunt, which is always good. Ducky looks particularly handsome in this one, I think, when he has tea with Ziva in autopsy. Although you can tell the tea cosy is brand new for the occasion, and not one he uses all the time. There’s a bit I still don’t entirely understand, towards the end, but I will one day. The line ‘he’s doing a lot of driving for a dead guy’ is good, though. Also need to brush up on my Klingon knowledge.

Not wanting to overdo things, we finished with the current Code of Conduct. After all, we might have missed something the first time round.

(Photos © CBS, and H Giles)

Sarah Jane all over the place, except possibly here

I’m really annoyed now, and that’s annoying, because it’s taking away some of the enjoyment of Sarah Jane. I thought when I blogged about the new season of Sarah Jane last week that I had finally grasped the how and the when BBC was doing things. But, oh no. Still got it wrong, and were it not for iPlayer we would have missed half of it.

So, it’s two episodes a week, Thursday and Friday, is it? Well, that could have been made clearer. A lot clearer. A lot earlier.

Daughter and I like to watch every other time; i.e. saving each ‘half’ episode to watch them together. To do this it helps to know not to miss the Friday second half. Even a half witted witch can smell aliens when the second half appears to be about something totally different.

Tip to the BBC – now you can change your broadcasting pattern, to make us miss Sarah Jane in some other way.

I could do without the lengthy and rather OTT start to each episode, however. Dear Clyde is sweet, but he is no James Bond, and for people who watch every episode of Sarah Jane (however hard that is proving to be) it gets – well -repetitive in the extreme.

On the other hand, having both David Tennant and Nigel Havers at once is quite something. So I’m in a sufficiently good mood after Sarah Jane’s sad love affair to be slightly less annoyed. (Not forgiving anyone, though!) I was so hoping Nigel Havers would turn out to be good (=the opposite of evil), because I do quite like him. I was about to say despite him being blonde, but he looked pretty dark/grey this week. Was he a fake blonde, back when?

In a way it’s really annoying that even a witch not under the spell of David Tennant goes all gooey at the edges when the good Doctor shows up, and on the wrong show. Oh, well, I’m all for people appearing in related programmes. The more the merrier.

Code of Conduct

Dare I assume that even CBS expected to air episode 5, Code of Conduct, this week instead of last? It just doesn’t make sense to have an ‘eve of Halloween’ story eleven days before the day. To broadcast it on the Tuesday before Halloween would just about work.

Sorry, just being a bit Aspie about it. Suppose I hadn’t quite got into a Halloween mood last week. NCIS haven’t done a real Halloween episode since season 4, I think. But this time of year makes for good background to a little bit of gruesome murder or whatever.

Agent David is finally with us, and it feels both good and slightly weird. Tony was back to being an idiot, and Palmer was incredibly brave in hoping to be kissed by the boss.

Gibbs was surprisingly light hearted and seasonal. You just never know when that man is going to be fun, and when he’ll slap people’s heads. All part of the charm…

And I knew immediately who the murderer was. Clever me.

(Photos © CBS)

Wallander-Krister

You have to love Swedish tabloids. Well, you don’t, and I don’t, but as I googled Krister Henriksson, I sank low enough to read the tabloids, as well. And they don’t just write a few ‘facts’ about the actor, they look him up properly, red tape and all, so now we know how much money he made last year. Really!

Krister is the Wallander everyone raves about these days. Sorry, Branagh! My first Wallander was someone else again, Rolf Lassgård, so when Krister suddenly turned up on the box, I watched most of the episode not realising I was seeing Wallander himself. Oh, well.

On reflection Krister is Wallander. I’d never heard of the man before that embarrassing Wallander mistake, but I gather he’s done quite a lot. It’s he who shouts ‘Hermione’ in such a strange and Swedish manner when he reads the Harry Potter audio books. And he owns a theatre.

For reasons I needn’t go into here, I’ve just read a 16 year old interview with Krister, which is interesting. It’s well before any Wallander, for one thing. It also seems that he was getting fed up with playing boyish types, on account of looking so young. Now that he is close to retirement age, that feels odd, but we were all young, once.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Henning Mankell wrote ten Wallander novels. We now have season 1 of Krister’s Wallander films, comprising 13 episodes. And season 2 is being filmed, with at least another seven. So I’d guess it’s the old ‘based on the characters of’ thing. But at least everyone loves them, and maybe one day they will be allowed to graduate from BBC4.

I can hardly go anywhere without people enthusing about Wallander. And you lot are getting so much better on the pronunciation front. Hope Branagh is listening.

(Photo from www.inspector-wallander.org)

The spider web tattoo

Around here we like to give people what they want. Within reason.

Who’d have guessed people would clamour quite that much after spider tattoos? But you are, and you are most likely here because you want one. The sensible ones will only want it for dressing up, and we all want to dress up to be Abby Sciuto, don’t we?

It’s not easy finding good photos of Abby with a clear view of the spider on her neck. Ever dutiful, I have taken it as my task to go through some episodes of NCIS to grab a tattoo as soon as I see a good one.

I don’t think it counts as stealing. Mr Bellisario should be pleased we like his creation so much. Just borrowing.

Being a little short on time, I have decided to publish photos bit by bit. After all, watching almost 150 episodes would take a while, even for a dedicated soul like the witch.

So enjoy these while you wait. Halloween is almost here.

(Photos © CBS)

Imperial War Museum North

I love architecture, and the whackier the better. I tend to love most new arty buildings, which up here in the wastes of Manchester includes the Bridgewater Hall and The Lowry. Until yesterday I had only ever admired the Imperial War Museum from across the water by The Lowry. Up close, I’m not so sure.

Hard to find the way in. It’s whacky and arty, but getting in has some sort of useful functional feel to it. It’s why you’ve come all this way. When you have an asymmetrical warehouse, why skimp on door size?

The staff were lovely and helpful, so it’s not the human side of things I’m grumbling about. The shop is well lit and well stocked, so you can see to spend your money. The toilet is not as well lit as it could be, and with black doors and a mirror that makes you think the place is twice the size, you could go wrong.

Lovely views over the water should make the café really attractive. But the first thing I noticed, before I’d even climbed all the stairs up, was the smell of school dinners. Second, it’s dark, despite the large windows. It’s noisy, with excellent acoustics if listening to the clatter and din from other visitors is high on your agenda. You can barely hear the person sharing your table, which could be quite useful in many relationships.

Main exhibition hall is very dark. When it comes to preserving old paintings I’m all for darkness. Here I can only guess it’s meant to make it more warlike and atmospheric. The drawback with so much atmosphere is that oldies like me can’t see very much, which almost defeats the idea of looking round a museum. Also whacky and asymmetrical enough to make you get lost, which could add to the fun you have.

And I did say the shop was well lit, didn’t I? It was still slightly tricky to find the exit, which doubles as the entrance, so you have already come through the doors once, and it should be plain sailing. Though, as soon as you’re close enough, they open automatically, which is a useful hint. I’d be willing to pay not to go up in the lift in the tower by the almost non-existent doors.

Other than that it’s OK.

The jukebox is wonderful!

The event organised by the Manchester Literature Festival on Sunday, with children’s war novelist Michelle Magorian was excellent. If a wee bit dark.