Caught sight of this poster on a Tube platform today and realised how much I've been craving colour. Still a few days to wait until the exhibition opens at Tate Britain.

Very weird. Very long. Very German.
Apparently, the last German comedy on general release here was Good Bye, Lenin! which was funny and completely delightful. It's been a long wait since then ...
Toni Erdmann is likely to win the Oscar for best foreign film (which does make me wonder what all the other foreign films were like this year!) Did I say it was weird? I'm not saying there weren't some laugh out moments. (Along with lots of false teeth - yuck - lots of very Germanic nudity - and a scene that I sincerely hope will be the grossest Bad Sex scene I see this year. Or for the rest of my life. It involves petits fours. You don't want to know. And please don't tell Mary Berry.
Reviewers seem unanimously to have loved it. I'm just relieved that the director is so against a Hollywood remake because, believe me, it would be lost in translation. There's a trailer here.

Sunday morning cinema has become a habit ... I suppose it's easy on cold mornings, grab a slice of toast, 10 minute bus ride and you're up and doing something that doesn't require much effort. And sometimes it nudges me to see a film that's out of my comfort zone.
I wasn't sure if I'd be able to stomach Hacksaw Ridge but the reviews were so good that I gave it a try. It's a fascinating true story about a conscientious objector who volunteered as an army medic and the first half of the film is fine ... we see him growing up in Virginia, his drunken father still scarred by his experiences in WW1, his romance with a pretty nurse who gets why he's different, then his struggle to get the establishment to allow him to serve without touching a rifle. And then he gets to Japan ... what happens on Hacksaw Ridge is not for the faint-hearted and this is the bloodiest war film I have ever seen. But it is undeniably very good. I wasn't quite sure about Andrew Garfield's Forrest-gumpish portrayal (sweet, gangly and innocent) of conscientious objector Desmond Doss - but then the real Desmond Doss appeared in footage at the end (he died in 2006) and it seems he caught him exactly right. There's a trailer here. I'm glad I went - I was gripped by the story - but I had my face buried in my woolly scarf for the worst bits. The cinema was full; you could feel that this was a film that had the whole audience by the throat.

This was another book that went on my list as a result of Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes series; I thought it sounded intriguing. It was serialised as a very successful bit of Daily Mail scare-mongering in 1906. (Clearly nothing changes!) News vendors were kitted out in Prussian greatcoats and spiky helmets and every edition carried an update of the parts of the country that were now at imminent risk of German invasion ... and, of course, the readers lapped it up and circulation increased by 80,000 copies a day.
(Actually, I do love a good newspaper stunt!) The Government of the day tried to suppress it as dangerous for national morale.

Sounds exciting? Well, the trouble is, it's rather a dull read. There's no characters to bring it to life. It's just a list of military manoeuvres as the Germans invade in a shock attack on the east coast and go on to take London. I don't normally hold with the idea of separate genres for men/women ... but this is a boys' book. The Riddle of the Sands is a far better read.

Looking at my reading list for 2017 so far, I haven't exactly stretched myself, have I? Two children''s books, one comic classic that I've read many times before ... but my first proper read turned out to be so gripping that I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be my Book of the Year. Why haven't I read this before? I can't recall what gave me the nudge to get it out of the library before Christmas and even then it sat on the pile, not quite appealing enough to get me started ... all those Icelandic names, too many sons and dottirs, and my deep-seated prejudice against well-reviewed first novels written by 20-something blondes. Grrr.  (Do publishers realise how many books get rejected out of hand by resentful old bats who take against an author's glossy blow-dry?)
Well, I admit it, I was wrong ... Burial Rites has been the cause of several late nights when I couldn't put it down, I was so immersed in the story (based on historical fact) of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a servant held on a remote farm (there were no prisons in Iceland) while awaiting execution by beheading for the murder of two men. I could feel that oppressive landscape weighing down on me (I've been to Iceland in January!), feel the gloom and loneliness and the stale air of the communal badstofa . In many ways, this reminded me of His Bloody Project but whereas my interest in that flagged, Hannah Kent kept me on tenterhooks. Looking back on what I wrote about His Bloody Project, I wanted to move along a bit faster ... not this time, quite the opposite, I wanted to put the brakes on, to hold back time, knowing that every passing day was relentlessly bringing Agnes to the end.

Feeling the need for some light relief, I've also been reading this country house novel by Angela Thirkell (though my second-hand copy has a far less attractive cover). It was grabbed from a pile at the crack of dawn as I needed something lightweight - in both senses - for a train journey. It served its purpose but I'm not sure I can be bothered finishing it. It would be better had it been written by Nancy Mitford. Must say, it puzzles me why Virago had a Dorothy Whipple-line below which they they wouldn't stoop - I'd have a Thirkell line.

It meant leaving the house at 5am and a bitterly cold day as the damp of centuries seeped into my knees and bum, but what a treat yesterday to be a flea on the wall and see this Tudor kitchen coming to life with preparations for a banquet.

No matter how many times I read it ...

I spent an evening last week re-reading Mr Pooter for the umpteenth time. I suppose these days, he'd be writing a blog or instagraming his red bath-tub.

This time it struck me that he looked rather familar.