Pheasants, shoplifting and fanatics

Finished yesterday, Ottoman Fanatics, Dixons at the front, Hinchliffe with the sword & shield.

"Come and get some if you think you're hard enough"

Phil the pheasant has returned after his summer away.

Most of the day he just sits in the middle of the border, as though hiding, an activity for which he is very well camouflaged. He makes the occasional foray to the feeders but otherwise remains very quiet and still. One morning I went out to collect the feeders and he rather awkwardly limped away, not very far. He has an injured right leg, so maybe the injury and the quiet sitting in the border are linked. Out in the fields he got an injury and he has come back to recover.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Cityscreen Cinema in York to see this Japanese film. I knew it had some wonderful, glowing reviews and that it was a Cannes Film Festival winner. I was not disappointed. It is a delightful, small film based around a family that is on the edge of society and the economy and they are struggling to survive. That survival includes day labouring jobs, precarious cleaning jobs, the sex industry and shoplifting. There's no CGI, no car chases or gratuitous sex and violence, just a massive secret at the heart of the family that slowly unfolds. I am agreeing with those wonderful, glowing reviews.

Alan Bennett and Mike Leigh

"When sorrows come they come not single spies but in battalions"
Hamlet

This week has been a good week for going out.

First, on Tuesday, B and I had an evening out at the Theatre Royal in York to see Alan Bennett's double bill of spies. This was preceded by a very good dinner at a new North African Kitchen (whose name escapes me). Very good nosh, the merguez sausages and butter beans dish was particularly good.

The double bill of spies is called "Single Spies". It is two short plays, "An Englishman Abroad" about Guy Burgess living in Moscow, and "A Question of Attribution" about the naming of (Sir?) Anthony Blunt as a Russian spy. Great performances, entertaining and real, given by Theatre by the Lake company.

Tuesday was a very satisfying night out.

Later in the week I went to Cityscreen Cinema for an afternoon showing of Mike Leigh's new film "Peterloo". The news media has been carrying stories that not many people know of the events at St. Peter's Field that became known as The Peterloo Massacre. I was born and went to school in a cotton town and St. Peter's Field is on the other side of Manchester from us, so we were told about the Peterloo Massacre at school. Estimates are that around 100,000 people gathered on the field to demand voting rights and representation. These days the meeting would be described as a pro-democracy event, similar to the Arab Spring. The meeting was charged by the local Yeomanry and other troops, 18 people were killed, hundreds wounded. Mike Leigh takes his time in getting to the event, using the film to tell several different strands of stories of how people got there, the orators, the families, the authorities, the journalists. For me, this is first class history telling, real people, real events.


And it were grand to hear folk talking proper.

BBC TV - Assad documentary

This morning we had a free morning, no visits, no horse duties. After breakfast we decided to watch a programme on television. Looking through our list of recorded programmes, we chose the first episode of a BBC tv documentary, "A Dangerous Dynasty : House of Assad". This was so good we watched episode two. Then, after showers and dressing, we watched the third and final episode.

This was one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. The current president of Syria, Bashir Assad is the second son of the dictator Assad and was not expecting to take up a political role, he was an eye surgeon working in a London hospital. When the first son was killed in a car crash, Bashir was ordered home. The documentary shows how a doctor becomes a butcher and mass murderer of his own people  and why he has taken the decisions that have ruined Syria.

We strongly recommend this three part series to anyone interested in history or politics.