Accents

My dear US visitors, please tell me - can you tell when a person playing an American in a TV show isn't?

Even with the best doers of accents there is usually a trace when Americans try to do British accents. Even Vincent! The best I ever heard was Richard Chamberlain. Even then, he didn't flatten some of his vowels enough. The worst has to be Dick Van Dyke's cockney. I don't include Mel Gibson, because he grew up in Australia and seems to have accents pretty well sewn up.

But tell me how Hugh Laurie does as House. His American accent sounds excellent to me, but I'm not American.

I was utterly amazed recently when Channel 5 ran a short interview with Simon Baker, and it turns out he's Australian. I had no idea. How does he do for you?



I've just begun watching The Mentalist, and quite enjoy it, but I cannot agree with those who consider Mr Baker to be eye candy. He's a pretty anaemic-looking short-arsed weed compared to the lovely Mr D'Onofrio.

Other than that, I have nothing against the man and wish him every success!

If only this were "it"

Jenz at Team 13 wondered if we had any theories on how they would get our detectives back in the squad. I'd had a few thoughts in a quiet moment last week and had begun work on a new story. I didn't get far, but it's over at:

http://aftermajorcase.blogspot.com

Coo - Gar!

Type-casting - he has sex again. The man is insatiable (I hope).

I wonder if the name Gar comes from the only sound a woman is able to make when having sex wiht him?

He also has some great equipment...

Beautiful Bill

We know there's more than one JoJo who loves him for his dick - but not only for his dick. Like the rest of us, who also appreciate all his other qualities.

V&A Day

The Victoria and Albert Museum is a massive museum in South Kensington in London. It covers 12.5 acres, and contains the world's largest collection of decorative arts and design.

In 1515, Pope Leo X commissioned the painter Raphael to design tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel. Over the next six years the cartoons he and his assistants produced were woven into tapestries by Flemish tapestry-makers. In 1623 the Prince of Wales, later to be Charles I, who lost his head in 1649, brought the cartoons to England. They have been on loan to the V&A from the royal collection since 1865.

This year, to celebrate the visit of Pope Benedict to the UK, the Vatican offered to send the tapestries to the V&A to reunite them with their cartoons for the first time in nearly 500 years. Not an opportunity to be missed. And today I made sure that I didn't miss it.

The exhibition was free, but it was necessary to obtain a timed ticket to ensure that entry to the gallery could be controlled, and to give visitors the chance to see the display without being overwhelmed by crowds. My ticket was for two hours after the time I queued for the ticket.

I had a peek at the fashion gallery, which includes items from history up to the present day, including an outfit of Princess Diana's, and a dress by the recently deceased Alexander McQueen.

But my main interest while I waited was the newly-revamped Medieval and Renaissance galleries.

For fans of The Da Vinci Code, this is a stained glass window from La Sainte Chapelle in Paris, where an important part of the action takes place. I have NO idea how it came to be in the V&A.

Equally impressive is this Leonardo Da Vinci notebook. There is more information from the plaque in the next photo.

The museum is so vast that it has, not just statuary and other decorative household effects, but whole chunks of building on display.





Sorry this picture is a bit blurred, but it does give you a sense of scale.

Finally the time for my visit arrived. The display is arranged so that you can turn from cartoon to tapestry and back to make comparisons. There are tapestries of 4 of the cartoons. I can honestly say that the cartoons are vastly superior, and that any changes made by the weavers did not improve the appearance, though I can see why they added so much red, to make the effect more vibrant. The haloes that are so delicate in the cartoons look like dinner plates on the tapestries.

Here is the tapestry of The Sacrifice at Lystra:

And here is the original cartoon:

No prizes for noticing that the weaving process reverses the picture.

The cartoons were cut into sections to be handed out to weavers, and in some places you can see where the tapestry sections were woven together.

I think our creative star JoJo might need a couple of lifetimes to complete one of these giants.

Gorgeous Gordon

ANother case of a mad woman choosing someone else over Mr Perfect.

If I didn't comment today

Sorry. I kept getting error 503 or something. No idea what it means, but a lot of my comments went down the drain.

Stuff the flowers

All I wanted was for my computer to be collected for repair. And maybe the gift voucher to make up for the expense of the extra phone calls I had to make because of incompetence. The flowers were nice, the chocolates too. But I would have preferred it if the computer had actually been picked up.

It wasn't. When I got home, I called the tech line, and asked if the courier could be diverted there. They called the courier company, and reported back that the courier had called at the address I gave at 1.30, and got no answer, so they left a card.

At 1.30 I was sitting in the living room at the address, just yards from the front door, discussing plans for my student's future. He was in his bedroom - which is next to the front door - with his nurse. None of us heard the doorbell ring ("if there was a doorbell visible they would have rung it") nor the letterbox rattle. The new dog didn't bark. There was no card.

Did they mistake the street for one with a similar name a few miles away? The techie repeatedly quoted the post code, so theoretically, if they fed that into their SatNav, there should have been no possibility of a mistake.

Or did they just lie?

Will we ever know?

The company chairman's office has another angry email in the inbox. So what do you think? More flowers? Or the service I paid for?

My Favourite English Teacher

I had some great English teachers at school. Mr Doherty was lovely, Miss Gibbons was an inspiration. But what wouldn't I have done for a teacher like Mr Webster?

Even with the picture proportions a bit "off".

Saying Sorry Never Hurts

On the eve of the day when my computer is supposed to be collected for repair, I arrived home to find a £20 Marks & Spencer gift card in the mail.

Later, the doorbell rang, and to my surprise, a young man delivered a huge box from which I removed these items:


The vase actually came with the flowers, and the choccies were also in the box. According to their website, the bouquet costs £30. Nice, but wouldn't be my first choice to spend that amount of money on.

Well, I suppose it's better than nothing. But I'll reserve my full reaction till I see what happens tomorrow with the computer collection.

Spoilt for choice

I have four versions of Naked Tango. The first one I acquired for a huge sum on Ebay before Vincent's older, less well-known films, started to appear on DVD.

The 3 DVDs range from one Diane told me about to a discovery of Jazzy's. Can't remember how the third one came about. Who cares?























From a different selection of pictures from an older DVD, ecstasy all round.