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Heating up
Took the eiderdown off my bed and put it away for the year, a rather rash procedure prompted by a series of nightmares (usually a sign that my sleeping temperatures are too high). Also a non-trivial one that requires quite a lot of furniture-shifting in order for me to be able to pull the bed out far enough past the chest of drawers and the radiator so that I can access the storage underneath, so it's not a choice that is reversible at a whim. But I have been sleeping for some time with the eiderdown thrown back so that it only covers my feet, and that is obviously still too much.
I have taken one of the blankets off for good measure, as I found myself sweating while trying to remake the bed -- the sun has come round far enough to heat my room in the afternoons now, and the temperature in there after dark with the window open was still on its way up towards seventy :-O
But I haven't put the blanket away, so I can retrieve that easily if necessary.
I also took advantage of the warmer temperatures to set up some more jars with damp newspaper for the sweet peas as I did last year (though I see that last year I presoaked the peas, which I had forgotten about and didn't do this time round!) I have done one jar using some of the remaining commercial seed and another jar with half a dozen seeds from the end-of season pods, and if I can keep them distinct we shall see what colour the next generation comes out...
Marie Antoinette has managed to pull off its usual trick of giving even the most unsympathetic characters moments of humanity, which is one of the things that is so good about it; in this (7th) episode it dawns upon the unspeakable Duc de Provence --too late-- that he has gone too far and caused serious damage where he intended only a little mild mischief, and that he does after all have some sense of responsibility towards the welfare of his country and some instinctive family affection for the brother he so much resents :-(
Meanwhile Louis, driven beyond endurance, suffers the classic weak man's reaction of both trying to impose his will by force and being very bad at it, thus sabotaging all the moments at which he might conceivably been able to get himself out of his situation. And Marie Antoinette finds herself thrust into the position virtually of being Regent as the result of her husband's collapse.
I can even sympathise, unexpectedly, with Josephine and her thwarted lesbian affair; what simply does not work for me, I'm afraid, is the idea that Marie Antoinette is supposedly having an open love affair (to the degree that nobody is in the least surprised to enter her chambers and find her lover ensconced there at her feet or soothing the weary brow) and bearing a succession of his children, and that yet this is still supposed to be a secret that could overthrow the monarchy. Which makes it more than ever an obvious *stupidity* on her part, and not one that is made credible by a sense of irresistible passion sweeping the characters away despite themselves -- there is just no relationship there. There were a couple of scenes that I think were supposed to be moving, where the bereaved father talks about burying 'his' baby and where she sends him away in order to be able to devote herself to propping up her husband, and I found myself feeling nothing but annoyance :-(
Since I am watching this on the catch-up service rather than on initial broadcast, I have the disadvantage of this time knowing for certain that this is the penultimate episode and therefore that all the remaining plot threads will have to be pulled together in the next one. And with both famine and the Estates-General on the horizon, things are looking pretty final...
(The plot-thread of the Queen's compromising letters, set up ominously right back at the start and teased in various episodes since -- the irony being that they were in fact pure fantasy on her part, written to an imaginary correspondent with no intention that they would ever be sent-- appears to have been resolved in a weirdly cursory way off-screen, although this may be an illusion.)
I have taken one of the blankets off for good measure, as I found myself sweating while trying to remake the bed -- the sun has come round far enough to heat my room in the afternoons now, and the temperature in there after dark with the window open was still on its way up towards seventy :-O
But I haven't put the blanket away, so I can retrieve that easily if necessary.
I also took advantage of the warmer temperatures to set up some more jars with damp newspaper for the sweet peas as I did last year (though I see that last year I presoaked the peas, which I had forgotten about and didn't do this time round!) I have done one jar using some of the remaining commercial seed and another jar with half a dozen seeds from the end-of season pods, and if I can keep them distinct we shall see what colour the next generation comes out...
Marie Antoinette has managed to pull off its usual trick of giving even the most unsympathetic characters moments of humanity, which is one of the things that is so good about it; in this (7th) episode it dawns upon the unspeakable Duc de Provence --too late-- that he has gone too far and caused serious damage where he intended only a little mild mischief, and that he does after all have some sense of responsibility towards the welfare of his country and some instinctive family affection for the brother he so much resents :-(
Meanwhile Louis, driven beyond endurance, suffers the classic weak man's reaction of both trying to impose his will by force and being very bad at it, thus sabotaging all the moments at which he might conceivably been able to get himself out of his situation. And Marie Antoinette finds herself thrust into the position virtually of being Regent as the result of her husband's collapse.
I can even sympathise, unexpectedly, with Josephine and her thwarted lesbian affair; what simply does not work for me, I'm afraid, is the idea that Marie Antoinette is supposedly having an open love affair (to the degree that nobody is in the least surprised to enter her chambers and find her lover ensconced there at her feet or soothing the weary brow) and bearing a succession of his children, and that yet this is still supposed to be a secret that could overthrow the monarchy. Which makes it more than ever an obvious *stupidity* on her part, and not one that is made credible by a sense of irresistible passion sweeping the characters away despite themselves -- there is just no relationship there. There were a couple of scenes that I think were supposed to be moving, where the bereaved father talks about burying 'his' baby and where she sends him away in order to be able to devote herself to propping up her husband, and I found myself feeling nothing but annoyance :-(
Since I am watching this on the catch-up service rather than on initial broadcast, I have the disadvantage of this time knowing for certain that this is the penultimate episode and therefore that all the remaining plot threads will have to be pulled together in the next one. And with both famine and the Estates-General on the horizon, things are looking pretty final...
(The plot-thread of the Queen's compromising letters, set up ominously right back at the start and teased in various episodes since -- the irony being that they were in fact pure fantasy on her part, written to an imaginary correspondent with no intention that they would ever be sent-- appears to have been resolved in a weirdly cursory way off-screen, although this may be an illusion.)