*sigh*

[winterbadger]

It's HARD not to be a night owl!

I just naturally stay up late (and get up early and potter about...) Here I really meant to go to bed at 11.30 and it's after 1.30 am...

Of course, when I get up at 6.30 a.m., then work until 7.30 pm, dont't get home until nearly 9 pm...

I watched the last two episodes of Oliver's Travels this evening. I'm not quite sure why I love that series so much. Maybe it's because most of it is set en Ecosse (look, I'm so afraid of being Brooke's Mom that I'm using foreign languages to mask my mania...) Maybe it's because it seems so wonderfully harmless, despite being about a murder (well, several). Maybe it's because I love the cast so much, and because I'm enchanted by the little bits of trivia (historical, personal, and geographical) that it throws in. There was road sign that said <-- Aberdeen A9/John o'Groats A9 --> in the background of a shot, and I had to pull ot the road atlas and see where the probably filmed that scene. (My theory is that it was along the north shore of Cromarty Firth, though I could be wrong.)

Part of my current fondness for the programme is definitely its celebration of life and love, and the very obvious message that you don't have to be young or beautiful or rich or serious to be happy. Maybe that's so bloody obvious that I'm singular in rejoicing at that message, but I don't think so. I love Alan Bates's character, arch, clever, goofy, gentle, well meaning, intelligent, silly, light-hearted, in his 60s, winning the beautiful, slightly more serious but still sufficiently eccentric, 47-year-old Sinead Cusack and persuading her to go along on his madcap ramble through England and Sc*tland to the Orkneys. Kirwall and Magnus are old friends after several readings of King Hereafter. Scapa Flow and the Royal Oak are familiar touchstones. The Italian Chapel I learned about the first time I watched this. (Of course Eilean Donnan I knew and have since seen in person...) The Ring of Brodgar now I have to see in person.

And I'm taken by a new fancy, that the quiet country of the north might be a wonderful pace for writing...

Comments

[astartesyriaca.livejournal.com]

Hmm... but do the not-so-beautiful women get gorgeous men?

I was noticing the other day that there were so many commercials on TV that depict the "happy family", where the guy is middle-aged, pudgy and balding, and the mom is younger looking, thin and very neat and pretty.

What's up with that crap?

[winterbadger]

The fantasies of pudgy, balding, middle-aged ad execs? :-)

[azbound.livejournal.com]

Any smart woman worth her salt knows that it's the middle-aged, pudgy and balding guys that are worth their weight in gold.

[winterbadger]

Well, as a middle-aged, balding, pudgy guy, I would like to think so. But I realise that not everyone sees it that way. :-)