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The scene: Christmas Eve in the kitchen of Blogs Cottage. Mr Blogs is holding a bag of nuts and the following conversation ensues.

Mr Blogs: What are these?

Me: What do you mean?

Mr Blogs: Well, are they food or something for cats?

Huh? Nuts for cats?You know, I do wonder about him sometimes.

Currently listening to: Radio 5, who are discussing nominations for the best looking footballer of all time. I’m going for David Ginola.





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1) There are many shops in Doncaster, but nearly all sell some variation of perfume, handbags and designer lookee-likee clothing. Surely, if the council want the town to become the shopping mecca of South Yorkshire they could try providing some variety, preferrably of the sort which caters for male people over 10 who don’t smoke pipes, wear Old Spice or like zip fronted cardigans. Oh, and do something about those Christmas trees,  they look like rolled-up carpets.

2) It is not a good idea to wear 5 layers of clothing when you are shopping indoors on a warm day. My apologies to any sensitive souls who were alarmed by my partial striptease.

3) Teenaged boys may get underfoot, but they are really quite sweet. I came across several who were buying gifts for their mums. All together now, aaaw.

4) On the other hand, old ladies are vicious. I have been physically attacked by several this afternoon, and for nothing more than simply trying to enter/leave shops, reach for items on a shelf or press a button in a lift. Now, I see why there are so many news reports of grannies with ASBOs.

5) I can do a fine impression of Margot Ledbetter when confronted by shop assistants who would rather chat to their friends than let me pay. I’m not proud of this, but it did get better results than my usual, Barbara Goode style, tearfulness.

6) The makers of water-proof mascara lie. It does run. And you will arrive home looking like an aging groupie for The Cure. Or maybe that last bit is just me.

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The problems with the new comment system persist. I discovered (via Liam) the Intense Debate plugin prevented the blog from loading in IE, so I’ve uninstalled it again – and now there is no comment link on old posts. I’ll try to fix that, but if you want to leave me a message in the meanwhile, you can post something short to the blog wall in the near sidebar.

Updated to add: Problem solved, you can talk to me again, well, assuming you want to LOL

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The Devil’s Whore finished last night. I won’t say what happened in case anyone hasn’t seen it yet.

Overall, the series was pretty good, but I do think it could have been longer, with more emphasis given to the causes of the Civil War. The outdoor scenes were bit odd because the series was filmed in South Africa, and the scenery did look like, well, South Africa. It was very nice, but slightly jarring when one expected to see rolling English countryside. Also, the lead actress, Andrea Riseborough, bore a really strong resemblance to a friend of mine, and it took me until halfway through the second episode to stop thinking ‘wow, she really looks like Jen’. I suppose I can’t blame the producers for that though, they can’t be expected to only cast actors who don’t resemble people I know. Oh, and the CGI Devil, what was that about?! It seemed unnecessary.

On the plus side, the storyline did revolve around characters such as John Lilburne and Edward Sexby who made a significant contribution to our history, but who have subsequently almost disappeared from it. Hopefully, this will encourage people to find out more about them. The depiction of Cromwell was well balanced, he tends to be portrayed as either a demon or a saint, when obviously he must have been somewhere in the middle*. He was over-shadowed by the star of the series though. John Simm, completely stole the show as Edward Sexby – I didn’t even recognise him at first – a very different character to the one he played in Life on Mars.

Overall, The Devils Whore is well worth watching, and, it’s success might encourage commissioning editors to produce a longer, more in-depth series about the period.

The video above is not connected with the programme, but it seemed to fit.

* He’s not exactly my favourite person, alive or dead, so typing that neutral statement was difficult. If I’m being honest, he was a warty toss pot.

. . . for some reason the ‘post comments’ link isn’t visible, or at least not on my computer. If it is the same for you, you won’t be able to leave a comment. I think something has gone wrong with the template and I will repair it, but it will have to wait until the morning because it’s 12.12am here, and I don’t have my coding head on.

Normal service will be resumed asap. Good night x

Updated to add: I’m not sure what happened but I uninstalled Intense Debate, then reinstalled it and the comment box is back, but only on single pages, which is a bit annoying. I’ll have to try to find out why that is happening.

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