Enjoying this new BBC adaptation of The Country Girls on Radio4 - but it'll be a long wait until we get to the second book of the trilogy The Lonely Girl in October.

I'm still here ... hot and grumpy this afternoon as I'd convinced myself that autumn was here and, honestly, it suits me far better! I'm a summer person in my head - in practice, I'm lily-white and wilting.  Bought my first bunch of gladioli the other day and they're wilting, too, they didn't even open.
So do I disappear to the beach for the hottest weekend of the year ... no, I disappeared into the cinema with a like-minded friend. We must be a minority because even though cinema tickets were free last night at the local Odeon, it was only half-full. (Well, you had to buy a lottery ticket - but that's £2 for a lottery ticket v £15 for the cinema, even though we only managed one number between us. I gave up on lottery tickets when they doubled the price and introduced 'even more lucky numbers' to choose from - because I'm innumerate, but I'm not quite as innumerate as that!)
Anyway, we loved Once Upon a Time .. In Hollywood. Won't say more in case I spoil it.
To my surprise, I enjoyed it more than our Friday outing to Pain&Glory because I got the teeniest bit bored with Almodovar's film director and all his aches and pains. Possibly because the seats at the BFI are so damn uncomfortable that I had aches and pains of my own.
Oh well, they're both films about the pain of ageing ...
What the ladies with the bus passes really wanted to know, though, was what happened to cheap cotton housedresses like Penelope Cruz wears?



No movie today but I have at last finished Circe by Madeline Miller - not that I wasn't enjoying it, but  work got in the way. I've never had much interest in Greek mythology but this could easily end up as my best read of year.


As for sexed-up Sanditon ... well, I'm enjoying Anne Reid as Lady Denham. But as for the young lady who lost her innocence before she was old enough to know a prick from a pencil ...
Was it really necessary???
What I'm really looking forward to is this adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials which looks very promising indeed (especially after that truly dire film with Nicole Kidman.)
This documentary (coming up on TV) also looks interesting - I'd never realised that, during his wilderness years, Churchill was employed (very lucratively) as a screenwriter and historical adviser in the movies.

And has anybody been listening to Heartburn? My tea-break series of the week (with recipes thrown in ... but the temptation to rise from one's desk to make a key-lime pie can be overwhelming!)

As this post turned into a round-up, I should also mention Never Look Away which is far and away the best film I have seen all year. Three hours long - and I didn't blink! Only one other couple in the cinema and as we emerged into daylight the others confessed that they'd brought three bars of chocolate for sustenance - but been so gripped that they hadn't even opened the first one! Brilliant, as you'd expect from the director of The Lives of Others. Sorry, for this rather too late recommendation but you might still catch it if you're quick. I'd have willingly seen it through again - but might have needed a bite of that chocolate!

I was up on a stepladder at midnight - having enjoyed the BBC documentary about Edna O'Brien - trying to find my old Penguin copy of The Country Girls ... alas, it wasn't there. I'm a messy person but my books are in alphabetical order and this shouldn't happen! I felt a bit sad as I don't want any old copy of The Country Girls, I want the copy I read in 1978 (the next two volumes are named and dated in my still neat schoolgirlish hand!) with a surge of recognition ... recently escaped from the clutches of Irish nuns, I was waiting for Life to begin!
Hard to believe that Edna O'Brien is nearly 90.




After a gloomy French film - based on a gloomy story by Dostoevsky - at the ICA (grey, gloomy and life-sapping but a nice caff!) ... I rescued the morning with a visit to the best ice-cream shop in London where I perched on a pink stool that matched my strawberry and peppercorn sorbet and soaked up the lurid Cinecittà posters. And I was thrilled to see that they were selling (and using) this inspirational book by one of my heroines.


Yesterday afternoon it seemed like every American tourist in town had tickets for The Starry Messenger (that means there's a higher than usual chance of sitting behind the 7ft man who's as broad as he's tall - and sure enough I was!) The play was ... looo--oong.

Not so sure about this one ... I plodded through to the end but it did feel unremittingly grim (and a bit boring and repetitive!). The premise is, what would have happened had Anne Frank survived the death camps and been reunited with her father and her diary? I'm not convinced that anybody has the right to take ownership of Anne's story ... let's leave her the truth of her own life and death, at least. She could conceivably still be living today.
The atmosphere of post-war Amsterdam was interesting, though - and the extraordinary fact that the Franks might well have been deported back to Germany.

I hadn't realised that Xinran was Mary Wesley's daughter-in-law and was inspired by Wesley's writing on women's love lives during the war to record the true stories of Chinese women across a turbulent century. I was completely riveted by The Good Women of China when I read it last year. The Promise begins with a story that must have been irresistible to any journalist (and Xinran used to host a groundbreaking radio show in China) ...  a husband's dying request - and this only happened in 2010, not in the dim and distant past - for his wife of more than 60 years to have a virginity test. The story of that marriage is heartbreaking - I was hooked from the first page - and Xinran then goes on to make contact with three younger generations of women from the same extended family. Perhaps it's not quite as good as The Good Women of China but that still means it's very good indeed.  I have some catching-up to do as I realise from the jacket notes that Xinran has written several more books;  the only other one I've read is Sky Burial, also highly recommended.

Ladies, you will see many glowing reviews of this film (starring Tilda Swinton and her daughter). But I will tell you the truth. It is two hours of unutterably pretentious tedium and I would have walked out except I was stuck in the middle of a row and didn't like to disturb people.
So why did I go???
Well, you know when there's several screens, and you're a bit on the last minute and there was a queue at the bar, and it was Screen 1 wasn't it??? And you're kind of bemused to find Screen 1 (or was it 2?) packed to capacity and the woman beside you says there was a waiting list for tickets ... and the penny is just beginning to drop when it starts and you think, oh well, sounds like it must be good if all these other people are so keen to see it ... Ladies, I am a dope, I went to the wrong bloody film!

This is one of those annoying recommendations of a film that was on for one night only in London, part of the ongoing French literature festival at Ciné Lumi ère, which always throws up something good; it left me wanting to read Marguerite Duras's war memoir. Some reviews have been lukewarm but I was gripped - and realised that I knew almost nothing about the immediate aftermath of liberation when France awaited the return of prisoners from the camps. There's a trailer here. Sorry, seems I was wrong and this is now on limited release elsewhere and is on in London until July. 



It has been ages since I've been really engrossed in a book - but I couldn't put this down. After I finished, I came across this report claiming historical inaccuracies - the bit about penicillin had jarred on me as I was reading, I admit. But I do think it's rather harsh - the book makes no claims to be authoritative history and it's based on interviews with an 87-year-old man. And I say that as someone who loathed the well-meaning trivialisation that was The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.