WhatADifferenceADayMakes

By Veronica

Pylon in pylon

Given my obsession with interest in pylons, I don't know why I've never done this before. But it's a good thing I haven't, as every new idea is welcome when you can only blip within 1 km of home and you have already taken hundreds or even thousands of blips within this radius. The extra is a rubbish photo, but it's a game of "spot the buzzard". Earlier a smaller bird of prey, maybe a kestrel, had flown very low and fast across my path just a few metres away, but I didn't even have time to raise the camera, let alone take a photo.

I went to the market in the morning. It really doesn't feel like lockdown -- plenty of traffic on the roads, and although the market wasn't as busy as last week there were still queues at many stalls despite the poor weather. However everyone was wearing masks. I think a lot of people, like me, are trying to support local businesses rather than going to the supermarket. I rounded off my shopping at the organic shop and the producers' coop.

We enjoyed What a Carve Up! last night. It can be a bit dodgy seeing a film of a book you love, but the playwright, Henry Filloux-Bennett, hadn't even tried to stick closely to the book. He upended it, starting with the end of the story, eliminated some plot strands to make it more of a whodunnit, and updated it by adding two younger characters in the present day, looking back on the events. Despite being set in the 1980s, it feels very topical -- none of the problems Jonathan Coe raged about in the book have gone away, far from it.  It was a bit repetitive at times and I'm not sure you could have followed the ins and outs of the whodunnit if you hadn't read the book, but still, it kept us engaged.

It was filmed mostly under lockdown conditions, but they had been very creative with archive footage. It wasn't a play, but it wasn't a film exactly either; I couldn't imagine going to a cinema to see it. Kind of like a radio play with illustrations. It's good to see creativity flourishing despite the constraints.

We were glad to have had that to amuse us. I woke early today, couldn't get back to sleep, and had to check the Guardian liveblog. After all the hope, it's so upsetting to realise that millions of Americans have had four years of misogyny, racism, corruption, putting children in cages, mismanaging a pandemic that has cost hundreds and thousands of lives, and thought: "Yep, I'll have four more years of that." Even if Biden wins eventually, this problem doesn't go away.

Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.