Dark and Stormy

It's a bit of a wild night here at the moment - our forecast was for sunny intervals but this afternoon the clouds scudded in and built up into a veritable hooley, with horizontal rain battering at the windows.

It's a noise that reminds me instantly of my childhood in the westcountry, that feeling of having battened down the hatches to ride out the storm.

Having run some chores this morning I settled down to a day of hard stitching in my final weekend to get my SIL's embroidery finished in time for her birthday and before she comes to stay next Friday. I had wanted to get all of the basic cross stitch finished this week but a combination of over work and more over work put that idea out of the window.

It is finally done, and now on the big unwieldy frame for the metallic thread, the beading and the backstitch. This is how it looked at the pre-prinking stage:



Some way to go as you see!

Today's stitching was accompanied by a whole raft of different films and TV. I started with The Battle of the River Plate which is a lovely classic, with lots of shots of real ships at sea, and some very poignant moments between a British Merchant Captain, and the Captain of the Graf Spee. By way of potted summary, it's based on a true story, the Graf Spee was causing no end of havoc to the Navy so they went in search, when HMS Ajax, Achilles and Exeter found her they conned here into believing they were bigger than they were, damaged her in turn and forced her to seek shelter in Montevideo where the Captain (presented as an honourable man) scuttles his ship rather than hand her over to the British. I've watched it time and time again, usually at Christmas and it never looses it's charm.

In contract, film number 2, High Society was new to me, although many of the Cole Porter songs were familiar, especially Who wants to be a millionaire? It's a very easy going, predictable storyline; girl is to be married to second husband, first husband still loves here, so does the new boy on the scene, she becomes a changed person (after getting terribly drunk) and re-married the first husband. Other spare members of cast also appear to be getting together. The high point is the cast, which includes Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, so the singing is great. It's not a film that I think I could watch without doing anything else at the same time though.

And finally, Brideshead Revisited (the TV version). It's been repeated on ITV2 or 3 over the last few Saturdays and I've been collecting the episodes up to watch, today was the finale. As a piece of writing I find it incredibly, well incredibly something, I'm not quite sure what the word is, possibly incredibly moving, I just find that if I watch it or read it it stays with me for the rest of the day! No potted history here - it just can't be done in a paragraph but I highly recommend it.

Now as it's past midnight I've missed the first day to try NaNoBloMo but as I haven't been to sleep yet, perhaps you'll let me off. If the next few weeks are anything like the ones just gone I'll be lucky not to fall off by Tuesday.