Happy Birthday Vincent D'Onofrio

I wish I could be there to share your celebrations, Vincent, but instead I've put together a few slideshows to astound all of us Vixens with your exceptional beauty.

Knole House

Though there have been many "modernisations" and renovations in its history, most of Knole House in Kent is Elizabethan in style. It was given to the Sackville family by Elizabeth I. The house is huge.

Vita Sackville-West, the writer and gardening guru, was raised in the house. She had an affair with Virginia Woolf, who based her book "Orlando" on the family, and the character of Orlando on Vita herself. (The film of the book starred Vincent's Thumbsucker co-star Tilda Swinton in a real tour-de-force. She starts as a boy in Elizabethan England, falls asleep and awakens as a woman, living 400 years. Tilda was believable in both parts of the role).


The house is set in a deer park. Even though it was a VERY wet day on Friday when I went for a visit to the house and park, (a fact belied by these photos I took in a sunny moment) the deer were about in plenty.

On the way down on the motorway there was such a downpour that it was almost impossible to see ahead of you. It was worse than thick fog, and really scary.

As car parking in the deer park is on grass, my car managed to get stuck in the mud. My friend (who always dresses in floaty skirts) had to push the car backwards, and as the tyres gripped, the car shot back, and Susanna almost went splat into the mud. Unfortunately I was too busy driving the car to get any pictures of this event!

The Subway - update

I emailed the ITV duty office, and they say they think The Subway might be due for screening on July 19th. (They only have the schedules 2 weeks hence, so he's done well to get us an answer so quickly).

Rocketman

There may not be any slideshows, but Picasa is really quick. Trouble is, it's all stored on the computer, not online.

 

 

 

 

Look Out For The Subway

UK Vixens, Homicide - Life On The Street is currently showing on ITV4 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Tonight they show the second part of Blood Ties, with part three next Wednesday. The Subway should be the next episode, but the blurb doesn't look like it. Nevertheless, I think it should come up soon - I believe that when the season was originally shown it was not broadcast in the proper sequence.

Maybe we should email ITV4 and impress on them the importance of their showing this episode.

Picasa

I forgot about Picasa! Here's a collage I made from Want.

 

It gets bigger if you click on it.

Abbie Hoffman - tongue-licking good!

I'm so sick of BotoPhucket I'm looking for other image hosting sites. I found a site that rates them, and the Bucket does NOT do well. A lot of people have rated it with 1 out of 10 just because of the deletion problem, and say you should not trust precious pictures to them.

Dumb, dumb dumb dumb, dumb

OK, I boobed, it was the script for My Good Name not Endgame. The link didn't work from The Reel, so I just went in and searched. I assumed the one that came up was THE one, didn't really look. But hey, if it's got HIS signature, what the hell?

I've also got a black vest/sleeveless t-shirt coming by accident because the bids didn't go high.

Hey-ho!

There's one born every minute...

London Bridge was the first bridge across the Thames, and the first London Bridge dated back to the Roman occupation, in the first 400 years AD. The bridge was rebuilt many times, but the most famous one was there during the Great Fire of London in 1666. It had huge piers which slowed down the flow of water and allowed the Thames to freeze in a couple of very cold 18th century winters. It also had buildings all the way across it.

When it was rebuilt, the main concern was to allow larger boats to pass underneath, and to ease the flow of the river, which was driving boats into the piers. Boat owners and their passengers were perishing in the many accidents the swirling waters caused.

The last time the bridge was rebuilt, about 40 years ago, the authorities in Arizona bought the old bridge to span one of their rivers.

They THOUGHT they were getting this - Tower Bridge.

What they ACTUALLY got was this:
Doh!

The Write Stuff?

I thought I'd whack in a bid for the LOCI Endgame script despite the "caveat emptor" posts on The Reel - after all, I could always challenge Ebay afterwards if it turned out to be a fraud. I thought it would spiral way beyond my $50 maximum bid, but no! The closing price was just $15.95. So it's mine. If it's real, I'll be over the moon. If it's fake, even if I can't get it rectified, I won't have lost a fortune.

We'll have to wait and see.

Which do you suppose might be Vincent's signature?

Sneaky

As Photobucket's wimps are still plaguing me and my Guy and Hotel Paradise collections (my slideshows are completely GONE!) I thought I'd reload them elsewhere under disguised, innocent-looking names. As I create slidewhows from them I'll email them back to myself so they don't get "lost". (The original files are safe on my computer). Meanwhile I have repeatedly emailed the geeks at Photobucket and told them to stop interfering with my pictures. They have given themselves the right to censor out perfectly legal photos that offend their pathetic little selves. Talk about being arbitrary rulers in their own little universe. Petty Hitlers one and all. You can imagine words like "willy" and "wee-wee" offending their delicate sensibilities. My last reply to their nonsense is to ask if they often got their heads shoved down the toilet when they were at school...

Emmetts Garden

In the mid-1990s I volunteered to be a helper for The National Trust during the six-week school summer break. I didn't feel like being shut inside a building as a room warden, and as luck would have it, they were trying out having garden wardens at Emmetts Garden.

The house is uninteresting, and is leased out to private residents. Apparently at some stage the roof on the original two-storey building had the roof cantilevered up to allow for the building of another floor.

This is the highest garden in Kent, South East England, and the views over the surrounding countryside are breathtaking. My own photos are much better than these googled ones, but they are not on my digital cameras, so I could not upload them in a hurry.

In spring the woods are covered in bluebells. The autumn colour of the trees is stunning. Unfortunately the uncertain timing of the seasons for the past several years means that the gardens have often closed to the public for the winter before the trees have turned, and the bluebells' appearance is unpredictable. Even though I go there several times most years, I've never seen the Davidia involucrata in bloom. (It's known as the Pocket Handkerchief, or Dove, Tree because of the large white flower bracts, and it's very rare in the UK).

In October 1987 there was a hurricane in the south of England, and whole swathes of woodland were flattened. Ide Hill, where Emmetts stands, was particularly badly affected. Below is a google picture of the aftermath. The large tree on the left of the picture below is a giant redwood, and it has the highest treetop in Kent. As you approach from the north via the M25 motorway, you can see it in the distance like a giant lollipop.

When I was performing my garden warden duties, some American visitors asked me why it was called Emmetts - was it after the family that built the house? I told them that Emmett is an old word for ants, and the place was so-called after the many anthills on the site. They didn't believe me!

Next time I'll lie.

Suspicion of Innocence

Poor, sweet little Davy Baylor. Another tour de force by the lovely and talented Mr Vincent D'Onofrio.