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Patching up each day
The last day and a half have been much less fun and productive than I was hoping, because I got reinjured during a PT session—which strikes me as the precise opposite of the intended effect—and therefore I have spent far more time than planned lying down under a pile of sheep. Fortunately, some of the time I have been able to do so on a couch in front of which is a TV playing the 1967 BBC The Forsyte Saga.
Agatha Christie's By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968) is well-named; it's a mystery, but it builds like a horror story, gathering half-remembered urban legends of children who were lost or mothers who went mad into the reality of a village scarred by a never-solved spate of child killings which may or may not parallel the suspicion of a sequence of murders at a nursing home, female figures flickering in and out of the recollections of various characters as if some weird maiden-mother-crone is presiding over echoes of the historical event that must lie at the heart of the puzzle into which our protagonists stumbled for the most prosaic and yet thematically apt of reasons, visiting an elderly aunt. There's some business of a crime ring, but the key is a house in a painting that looks as though no one has ever lived there, even though some people demonstrably do. To my knowledge, Christie never wrote much straight supernatural fiction beyond the collected stories of The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930), but she would have knocked it out of the park if she had made it her specialty.
As we appear to have all three requisite forms of sugar in the house, I am going to see about making cinder toffee.
Agatha Christie's By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968) is well-named; it's a mystery, but it builds like a horror story, gathering half-remembered urban legends of children who were lost or mothers who went mad into the reality of a village scarred by a never-solved spate of child killings which may or may not parallel the suspicion of a sequence of murders at a nursing home, female figures flickering in and out of the recollections of various characters as if some weird maiden-mother-crone is presiding over echoes of the historical event that must lie at the heart of the puzzle into which our protagonists stumbled for the most prosaic and yet thematically apt of reasons, visiting an elderly aunt. There's some business of a crime ring, but the key is a house in a painting that looks as though no one has ever lived there, even though some people demonstrably do. To my knowledge, Christie never wrote much straight supernatural fiction beyond the collected stories of The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930), but she would have knocked it out of the park if she had made it her specialty.
As we appear to have all three requisite forms of sugar in the house, I am going to see about making cinder toffee.
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I've made it before! Just not from this recipe, which uses more sugars.
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And Then There Were None is terrifying though not supernatural. She has a handful of supernatural short stories; they're creepy.
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It is creepy! And it has an explanation, but it almost doesn't need one, because it's built up all the slant rhymes, the half-correspondences that you get in horror and weird fiction where things hang together not through linear narrative but nightmare logic. I am used to suspenseful atmosphere from Christie, but this was actually different. I must have read the novel before because it's one of the Tommy and Tuppence, but I didn't remember this aspect of it at all. (To be fair to past me, I would have read it in high school when I read almost no horror; I would have had no gauges by which to evaluate it at all.)
And Then There Were None is terrifying though not supernatural.
I have not read that one in years; I should. I remember the conceit and the cause, but almost none of the details.
She has a handful of supernatural short stories; they're creepy.
And they've been collected, too!
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I recommend it!
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Oh no! And indeed. :-/ *sends very careful internet hugs*
Fortunately, some of the time I have been able to do so on a couch in front of which is a TV playing the 1967 BBC The Forsyte Saga.
<3
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Much appreciated!
<3
We are three episodes in; I am enjoying it very much. Without reference to the novels, I understand that there are many other, more abstract themes in play, but I don't feel it would be totally unfair to say that we are watching a generational saga of people who feel very strongly and can't communicate for beans. The number of conversations which consist of people failing to hear one another, people refusing to hear one another, and people talking past one another despite sincere effort on both sides makes any conversation in which people just talk stand out like a rocket. Every interaction between Jo and his father, I want to get them a translator. (Family therapy is a good half-century out of the question.) And I am fascinated by Soames' courtship of Irene because he fucks it up so badly; it would never have had a good outcome in the conventional sense because it is obvious even before Irene spells it out for him that he will never have with her the kind of marriage he has suddenly discovered he wants—not a practical merger, but a passionate union; how mortifying to discover he's more like his cousin Jo on that point—but he is a full-fledged adult who should have been able to figure out for himself that it would not satisfy him on any level that matters to marry a woman who felt nothing of the same toward him and then again he's a full-fledged adult who really looks as though he's been T-boned by human attraction for the first time in his life and is consequently incapable of seeing that his behavior around Irene is a mess of classically limerent magical thinking and the rational faculties on which he so prides himself just short out whenever he thinks of her. I am skeptical that they could ever have married happily with such a disparity in attraction and expectations. But damn, Soames, the relentless pursuit can't have helped!
(I understand now, however, how it was that
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LOL! And Eric Porter is, yes. As I said, it's undeniable that while it's very much an ensemble piece of amazing actors, it really also is his (and Susan Hampshire's) show.
but he is a full-fledged adult who should have been able to figure out for himself that it would not satisfy him on any level that matters to marry a woman who felt nothing of the same toward him and then again he's a full-fledged adult who really looks as though he's been T-boned by human attraction for the first time in his life and is consequently incapable of seeing that his behavior around Irene is a mess of classically limerent magical thinking and the rational faculties on which he so prides himself just short out whenever he thinks of her.
I think it's this sort of thing that was what makes my head go round in circles in ways my brain is not always up to. But: <3<3,3 (There's a bit even in the end segments that I was watching that is very much the latter aspect still; I thought of it immediately when I read your words.)
Btw, there's some bts bits at the end of my DVD and your comment about him experiencing human attraction for the first time is more or less how Eric Porter summed it up in that, although not in those words.
I hope the move will permit you to continue to enjoy it. It is something I really do want to watch again properly some time!
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I am impressed by the way that anyone who is any kind of main character on this show is complicated: sympathetic, difficult, capable of admirable action and equally capable of causing the audience to want to rattle them like castanets and always understandable, which is not the same as excusable, which is irrelevant because the narrative doesn't seem interested in judgment rather than observation; so far this is holding true of the female characters as well, which strikes me as slightly unusual for the decade, but then again calling a marital rape by name strikes me as even more unusual and good for it. I imagine I am going to need to get hold of the books after all. The way in which information is structured in each episode interests me enough that I want to know how the source material conveyed it.
(I spent about forty-five minutes describing the story so far to
(There's a bit even in the end segments that I was watching that is very much the latter aspect still; I thought of it immediately when I read your words.)
I will look for it when it comes around.
Btw, there's some bts bits at the end of my DVD and your comment about him experiencing human attraction for the first time is more or less how Eric Porter summed it up in that, although not in those words.
Oh, neat! I don't believe there are any extras on the DVDs we're watching, although it's hard to tell because they came from the library and have a wrapper from a random part of the original booklet. I wonder if I can find them elsenet. [edit] Well, I found a different piece of an interview with Eric Porter in 1967: "As regards the lines, I have the fortune or misfortune to have a face which is a bit like Clapham Junction . . ."
I hope the move will permit you to continue to enjoy it. It is something I really do want to watch again properly some time!
My mother has stated in no uncertain terms that I cannot just leave her with twenty episodes to watch by herself.
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TFS is exceptional, in ambition and scope, but at the same time, this is kind of the default for serious Brit TV drama of the day, and the observational (leaving the audience to make the judgments) over pressing the judgements on them continues, and is still being seen in things like EatD and Mr Palfrey, and it does extend to the female characters, over and over. I mean, I don't want to paint it too rosily, this also means some awful things go by without commentary and you're just going ???? and, of course, there is still plenty of sexism as soon as you look at the numbers and often types of roles the female actors had (and no doubt far more yet off-camera), but it's why I get so frustrated when I try to watch random 60s films, and with the ITC serials, because those are just so frequently much less satisfying for the women, and yet regular TV was doing it just fine every week, all the time. It varies as to what it was and is not constant, but the very theatrical style of working seems to have allowed it.
But that said, Galsworthy is a very observational writer. I was too young when I read the books, so I didn't have much patience with them, but I think they would be very interesting.
nd the thing that seems harder to explain than experience is that it isn’t a downer even though almost every installment has been driven by the terrible decision-making of one or more persons
LOL, again, see: Why My Depressing B&W/Beige TV Is In Fact, Not Depressing, A Life. XD But, yeah. It's one of the things I find so addicting.
And of course, TFS, is exceptional in scope and length and cast and budget and so much else. And it's a very good adaptation. It was a complete passion project for the producer Donald Wilson, of the "They said it couldn't be done!" type. It was either going to be a disaster or it was going to launch BBC2 in glory for them and nothing in between.
but then again calling a marital rape by name strikes me as even more unusual and good for it.
It was one of the TV events of the decade, both for being seen as very shocking thing to have in this kind of drama and also for the huge debate over the matter it sparked off across the nation, with plenty of people (as you say) still ready to take Soames's side.
Well, I found a different piece of an interview with Eric Porter in 1967: "As regards the lines, I have the fortune or misfortune to have a face which is a bit like Clapham Junction . . ."
Aw, that is rather lovely. What a great find! And he is beautiful to watch, he really is.
There are a few extras on the last disc of my set, but obv idk if that is true of the R1 version as well. I was just rewatching the little "From the Rehearsal Room" one which was evidently shot when they were just making "Encounter." Kenneth More was talking about playing the only nice Forsyte in it and that he hopes he's getting more like Jolyon as it goes on, but he doesn't know how everyone else's loved ones put up with them if that's the case, because they're all horrible! :-)
But there's also another one I saw before and I remember one of the (two) directors, David Giles being practically quite distraught at the limitations of the one camera system and if that meant he may not have done his cast true justice with it. <3
My mother has stated in no uncertain terms that I cannot just leave her with twenty episodes to watch by herself.
Aww. Well, no. <3<3<3
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Most of my experience of the decade is in film rather than TV. I am not going to argue conversely that it was wallpaper misogyny because the past is always more complicated than the received version of itself and I have seen personally seen women on film in the '60's who were just people as if it were the most natural thing, but the fact that it's all of them in The Forsyte Saga still catches my attention. A lot of media seems able to handle one or two complicated women and then sort of decides it's done its due diligence and goes home.
(I don't find observation rather than judgment an unusual mode; it just happens to be the one I prefer. I am not the target audience for much didactic literature of any decade even when I agree with its point because I feel as though it should still do its audience the minimal credit of letting them try to figure it out for themselves.)
But that said, Galsworthy is a very observational writer. I was too young when I read the books, so I didn't have much patience with them, but I think they would be very interesting.
Good news: I could start reading the entire saga tonight.
Bad news: I actually hate reading novels off screens. To the library it is.
and also for the huge debate over the matter it sparked off across the nation, with plenty of people (as you say) still ready to take Soames's side.
It's fantastically staged: it goes for maximum emotional violence over physical display and part of what makes it so upsetting is that it isn't a cold assertion of ownership or pure jealous rage, it's mixed up with Soames still wanting Irene to love him, which is the last thing that a violent assault will effect. "You're my wife," he’s shouting, so desperately that his voice cracks, "you're my wife," as if he's trying to prove it on both of their bodies and it's not just an awareness of failure in his face as he watches her inconsolably sobbing afterward, it's a kind of shock at himself; cool motive, still rape.
Aw, that is rather lovely. What a great find! And he is beautiful to watch, he really is.
I shallowly enjoyed the fact that he smiles more than once during the interview.
Kenneth More was talking about playing the only nice Forsyte in it and that he hopes he's getting more like Jolyon as it goes on, but he doesn't know how everyone else's loved ones put up with them if that's the case, because they're all horrible!
And some of Jo's decisions also make me want to rattle him like a castanet! I appreciate it.
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Even on my limited film exposure the whole New Wave thing, at the point where it merged into kitchen sink drama and starred Rachel Roberts a lot would also count as that, and also fed very much into 1960s TV drama (although less so the classic lit end, which was very much theatre), so yes. And I've seen some pretty awful things on TV as well, but by and large, if it's counting as serious drama, in my experience so far the main failing is lack of women not them not allowed to be real and complicated when they are there. (It depends what type - serials and less serious things were a whole other matter, but even there it varies.) There's a sort of backflip with all the 1970s Euston Films type things, but even then a lot of regular drama continued to do really well. (That's why I can't stomach The Professionals, which I saw only the first season of - it's probably not the worst, but it was made in 1977, and I could be watching Doctor Who with Leela or Romana, who both put it to shame, or Poldark or The Duchess of Duke Street or any one of a dozen other things that didn't have to be misogyny 101. But, hi ho, even B7 has its Ben Steed, and Survivors had that one writer who was weird about pregnancy.)
So, yes, I'm trying to generalise, which is always dangerous - and far too many of those film were just dodgy things that contained Alfred Burke, and as we both know, that category is sadly unworthy of the man. XD
I am not the target audience for much didactic literature of any decade even when I agree with its point because I feel as though it should still do its audience the minimal credit of letting them try to figure it out for themselves.
Me neither. I can put up with it if it offers me enough other entertainment, but it is tiresome, and even more tiresome when the too many people seem to think that unless it is stated aloud, it can't possibly mean it. /o\
I shallowly enjoyed the fact that he smiles more than once during the interview.
Having only rewatched the latter part where he was, as he said, hunched and with grey moustache and lines like Charing Cross, it was just charming to see him free of all those things, but the smiles were nice!
And some of Jo's decisions also make me want to rattle him like a castanet! I appreciate it.
Shake them all!
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I am glad to hear that the complication of the female characters is not one of the rarities of The Forsyte Saga, then. You've seen more television from the period than I have; I have probably seen more films. I actually deal a lot better with narratives that don't include women than with narratives that handle them badly.
or any one of a dozen other things that didn't have to be misogyny 101.
Always a good life decision.
So, yes, I'm trying to generalise, which is always dangerous - and far too many of those film were just dodgy things that contained Alfred Burke, and as we both know, that category is sadly unworthy of the man.
I absolutely can't imagine Night Caller's female representation is anything to write home about except to make another person understand what you just went through watching it. Speaking of legendarily terrible movies, however, I finally realized last night that where I primarily recognize Kynaston Reeves from is the mad scientist part in Fiend Without a Face (1958).
Me neither. I can put up with it if it offers me enough other entertainment, but it is tiresome, and even more tiresome when the too many people seem to think that unless it is stated aloud, it can't possibly mean it.
"I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards."
Having only rewatched the latter part where he was, as he said, hunched and with grey moustache and lines like Charing Cross, it was just charming to see him free of all those things, but the smiles were nice!
I'm still in the earlier phases where he looks like himself, but he looks miserable most of the time, so the smiles really stood out! (I also enjoyed watching him shift his body language by three or four decades as he explained it, because I enjoy that sort of thing.)
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It started out quite well with Patricia Haines, but then somehow it ended up as "It's okay to kidnap women if it's for Science!"
I also enjoyed watching him shift his body language by three or four decades as he explained it, because I enjoy that sort of thing.
Yes!
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What the hell. May the sheep bring healing.
Clearly it is time re-read this. I read something like 80% of Christie in my distant youth but have not returned much in the last decade or so.
I have never heard it called cinder toffee, but that is clearly its true name.
I can't help thinking of Cinderella.
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Thank you. If all goes well in the next twenty-four hours, I will soon be able to lie under a cat, too.
Clearly it is time re-read this. I read something like 80% of Christie in my distant youth but have not returned much in the last decade or so.
Same! I can remember reading everything that was in the house when I was in high school and then only intermittently returning to her since. My mother was re-reading the Tommy and Tuppence novels recently, so I picked them up, so here we are.
I can't help thinking of Cinderella.
I can understand that.
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There are a few details that are also call-backs to other Christies- the old lady with the glass of milk is a recurring image in her work, and there’s a bit where Tuppence, trying to pin down one of her own memories, recalls that she was wearing a dress with a print of cornflowers, which is enough of a clue for her to work out the occasion and therefore the geographical location of the memory. Wallpaper with blue cornflowers often occurs in Christie as an example of the persistence of early memories— several characters comment that it was their childhood nursery’s wallpaper (as it seems to have been Christie’s) and that they can still clearly visualize it.
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And I forgot completely that I had commented on your post: thanks, 2020.
It is very close to folk horror, especially the sense of smashed and lingering time, not just in the sort of precipitated ghosts of the village, but in Tuppence's description of the way that village memory preserves events all out of their archaeology: "There are just bits poking up here and there, if you know what I mean." That's like no man's land.
the old lady with the glass of milk is a recurring image in her work
Do you think she was a nightmare of Christie's? I mean that literally: an image that haunted her, and because it frightened her, kept turning up. It's even in the text, in the final interview with Tuppence: "She felt that she was in rather a crazy kind of dream."
Wallpaper with blue cornflowers often occurs in Christie as an example of the persistence of early memories— several characters comment that it was their childhood nursery’s wallpaper (as it seems to have been Christie’s) and that they can still clearly visualize it.
That's so neat. I love seeing the constellations of a writer within their own work.
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...between the Tommy and Tuppence and the Murder She Wrote I feel I may be aging toward my mechutenista.
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I think I first heard of it as "honeycomb toffee."
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Making cinder toffee sounds fun.
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Thank you. (I'm so sorry! I don't think it should happen!)
Making cinder toffee sounds fun.
It hasn't actually happened so far today because I have been running around buying things, but I am adamant that it will!
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For me, sometimes it is worse when I am doing the right thing and it backfires versus accidentally doing something wrong to start with.
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Thank you. In this instance, I think it might not have happened if the physical therapist had heeded me when I said more than once that something hurt, so we will see how things pan out.
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What, if I may ask, are the three types of sugar. (... I know I can google it but conversation is fun--and maybe you will have a different set of sugars from the random recipe I will turn up if I google)
A mystery that builds like a horror story--that sounds cool indeed.
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In this recipe, granulated or caster sugar, demerara sugar, and golden syrup. I've made it before, but not with the three-sugar blend.
A mystery that builds like a horror story--that sounds cool indeed.
I think more mysteries should.
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I would be surprised if it were this one because it's very well constructed, it's just constructed more like a work of weird or horror fiction than a standard-issue unsupernatural mystery.
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I'll brace myself.