I'm not sure I agree..

Just been watching Rococo on BBC iplayer, and on talking about Canaletto's paintings of Warwick Castle the narrator Waldemar Janusczak has said that you only get skies like that in your dreams in Britain. Have to say I don't agree, you do get sunshine here. It's rare, and the transport system goes nearly as daft as when it snows, but we do get at least a few days of blue skies every year. No snow though, in 2013-14, and I'm very disappointed.

Also where is Waldemar from? He sounds so terribly British (even to the point of whinging about the weather, every Brits' prerogative.) that the name is a surprise.
Anyway, it turns out he's from Basingstoke.

Home Counties Drear, if that were only a movement.

My brother nearly decided to live in to Basingstoke once (he worked for Arding and Hobbs before they went bust and there was a big store there.) so I'm reasonably familiar with it. I think I'd take a deep intoxicating dive into the  baroque and rococo if I were from there as well. There is an old town core, with a church and so on, but sometimes that's more depressing than a new town made from nothing.  At least then they've only insulted the wheat fields by plonking an invading new town on top, not a nice little place that might have grown quite organically if it had only been left alone.

I have no clever finish to this blog entry. Write your own.

Good old Auntie

Just watched Horizon, The Secret Life of Cats, and am now struggling not to use the word meh for the first time in my online life. It's not that there was anything wrong with the programme as such, but didn't Horizon used to do proper documentaries? Germ warfare, Mars exploration, that sort of thing? I felt sorry for the narrator, trying to ramp up the tension over cat stand-offs and murdered voles.

Even the setting was cosy. Shamley Green, a pleasant village in leafy Surrey, where all the cat owners seemed to know and tolerate the foibles of each other's cats, and the village hall could be rebranded Cat HQ for a week without anyone much minding.

Or perhaps it's me. Perhaps there's a lot to be said for the visual equivalent of a big mug of Horlicks and comfy sofa. Certainly it's better than the reality show format, where programmes are edited to show as much conflict as possible, and some gits behind a desk say cruel and cutting things to some poor bumbling sod who stands before them, his hopes and dreams shattering in his hands.

Perhaps the other kind of thing; cats, baking, knitting, are what we really need to see us through these times of recession. Auntie only has our best interests at heart after all.