Things in my head

Sorry I haven't blogged for so long. Working lots of overtime lately which is going to make an awesome July pay cheque but not good for keeping up with superfluous extras.

House purchase is going okay. We're getting a bit lost in all the legal jargon and stuff but we have a pretty nice mortgage broker and have instructed a recommended solicitor now. There's a pile of paperwork building up on the dining table that I keep meaning to read through. Urghh.

Florence and the Machine's first album is coming out on 6 July. I don't normally keep up with modern music, not being very cool (MySpace describes her/them as "Grindcore / Acousmatic / Tape music / Melodramatic Popular Song", I don't really understand any of those terms) but Florence Welch's amazingly powerful voice caught my ear.

Ben's birthday is coming up in next month (it's all about July today which seems weird, June has flown by without me realising) and he said he'd like to go on the London Eye. I was looking up ticket prices for trains and other things to do and thought it would be cool to see Harry Potter 6 at the IMAX cinema in 3D - I don't know WHY that hasn't occurred to me before! Mega excited :)

I've been thinking about lots of things lately including reading the book How to Win Friends and Influence People and how to improve my people skills especially at work, wondering if I really want to stick out church boringness, and other things. It's all such hard work and my brain is tired. Oh, and I'm supposed to finish my never ending interior design course by the end of July. Thus as per normal a month after our holiday I need another one!!

The Painted Veil

Next on my reading list is The Painted Veil. Having watched the film a few days ago I highly recommend it. Full of good acting (Ed Norton and Naomi Watts), haunting music (Satie's Gnossienne No. 1 is the theme) and a brilliant plot.

The film is based on the novel by W Somerset Maugham - a story made into a film three times since its publication in 1925. It was inspired by a tale in Dante's Divine Comedy which tells of a man who suspected his wife of having an affir. As punishment he took her to a place where she was likely to catch a deadly illness. She didn't die soon enough for his liking so he pushed her out of a window. The film doesn't follow its inspiration exactly, rather it portrays a rather surprising and smoulding love story.

Mother Superior played by Diana Rigg, had a few lines that have stayed with me over the weekend:

I fell in love when I was 17... with God. A foolish girl with romantic notions about the life of a religious, but my love was passionate. Over the years my feelings have changed. He's disappointed me. Ignored me. We've settled into a life of peaceful indifference. The old husband and wife who sit side by side on the sofa, but rarely speak. He knows I'll never leave Him. This is my duty. But when love and duty are one, then grace is within you.

The title The Painted Veil is taken from a poem by Shelley:


‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.’

(My crude interpretation - Walter Fane, a man who lifted the veil, was looking for things to love and thought he'd found this in Kitty, but sadly there was nothing in her of which he could approve after she was unfaithful. The painted veil hid their loveless marriage from the outside world and tricked everyone into believing that they were in love, that Kitty followed Walter into a cholera-infested land out of devotion, when in fact Walter, like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, found that he was searching for a love that didn't exist).

Incidently, Shelley's biography is quite interesting. He abandoned his pregnant wife and child for Mary Godwin (later Shelley, authoress of Frankenstein), who he married after his first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. He died at just 29 years old yet has become one of the great English poets, influencing the likes of Tennyson, Byron and Keats.

Revolutionary Road

I don't often get excited about films but I'm really looking forward to this one:



(Ha! I managed to do that all by myself!)

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace tells the story of William Wilberforce's fight to end the slave trade in the 18th century British Empire. It's an uplifting and inspring film - I enjoyed watching a man with strong convictions live his faith in a very real and pratical way that benefited thousands. I'm reading the book of the film at the moment, a great way to get myself out of the chick lit rut!