Keeping hold

Sometimes it's hard to hold on to your joy. Sometimes people do things with the best motives but they do your head in. Sometimes those things nibble at the vision that you feel God has given you almost to the point where you don't really know if you want to carry on with it.

Things to do to hold on to whatever it is God has said to you
 

1.  Kind of in the way that The Beastie Boys advised you to "Fight For Your Right..To Paaarty" you may need to pitch in and fight for what you believe to be right. (In a totally non confrontational, Christiany  way obvs)
2. Keep doing the right things. Stick to the plan. If this thing was worth doing before, it still continues to be so, however disillusioned you may feel.
3. You are not going anywhere Jesus hasn't been before. People were always telling him he was doing it wrong. He wasn't.
4. Ask yourself if "The Advice" you have received has any truth in it. If there is something you can learn, you must learn from it. If possible without learning through gritted teeth and muttering about "know-it-alls" (even if they are)
5. Resove to be graceful if you know you are right. God has little time for gloaters who shout "Oh yeah! Oh yeah" while dancing and pointing in accusing way to the person who you have overcome.
6. Smile like Morecambe. It will sort itself. This will pass. Get on with the job in hand.

Feminism?

I don't think I would call myself what is sometimes charmingly referred to as a "rabid feminist".  (Although I would say you are a lady feminist if you are female and vote, or expect the same pay for doing the same job as a man, or expect your name to go on the mortgage if you pay into it or indeed expect that if your husband decides he would rather live with the chambermaid, you do not expect to be turned out into the cold without a possession or any of your children) Anyway I digress. It's just that something that happened this week that made me think - would it happen to a man?

There has been a post circulating on Facebook this week called "Her name was Reeva Steencamp" This is because in all the shouting about Oscar Pistorious and whether he did or whether he didn't and the debates about the effect it was all having on his life and his career etc etc - some reports haven't even mentioned her name. Some just call her his girlfriend or a lingerie model. Anyway her name was Reeva - Reeva Steencamp. The piece about her is here if you are interested. 

On a lighter but connected note. Can I just say that I have always liked Daniel Radcliffe? I haven't been too impressed by many of his films since his Harry Potter days to be honest but he's young and he will develop. He has almost made it on to the list of people who it would be acceptable for our daughter to bring home with a view to marriage. Almost but not quite but still a creditable try with this.

In case you can't read it, he picks up on a reporter who says he struggles to regard him as handsome after having watched him grow up in Harry Potter. Radcliffe replies that men do not seem to be having the same problem with Emma Watson. As I say, creditable sentiments and he came quite close to getting on the acceptable suitor list but Head of House has vetoed him - because I put in a vote for Roy Keane but that has also been deemed unacceptable. Honestly, young people these days.

Sparse

HOH has been out in the garden, cutting stuff back, pulling stuff up, digging things over. Our back yard doesn't exactly look dead glamorous at the moment. It suits my mood. It's ages off Christmas, a grand summer has come and gone, because we are saving for aforementioned Christmas and double glazing, we are skint. Everyone is working really hard with nothing much else going on. 
Do you think though, that this may be a healthy attitude? If your life is abundant all the time as Kim Kardashian and some tele-evangelists would have it, then do you forget how to celebrate during the special times? If there is no paring back and scarcity then surely you become clogged up and bloated. If we take our cue from nature which benefits from land that lies quiet and fallow for a while, then we should expect there to be quiet times, poorer times and slow times. I get annoyed with people in T'Internet who gabble on about how much they love Autumn and when you look further into it, it's because the new coats are out at Primark or because Yankee Candles have a half price offer on their "Fallen Leaves" range. They then post photos of themselves from a jaunty angle with a full make up face pretending to kick up leaves while not actually letting any leaves touch their new boots.
That isn't Autumn for me. There are lovely colours of course but they are the colours of nature drawing a veil, battening down the hatches and preparing for what is to come. That's not as bad as it sounds. We can, if we want to, slow down a bit. We can read a bit more, sleep a bit more. We can give more attention to our inner lives. Pray a bit more and don't be afraid to not be as busy. It is truly ok I think to let things go and be a bit less for a while. Trust me - Christmas will be here soon enough. Close your eyes and you can almost hear the sound of the Marks and Spencer adverts.

Reality Bites

For reasons that are too complicated to bother you with here, I have just spent a weekend dipping in and out of the X Factor and Strictly. As regular readers will know, I am more inclined to one rather than the other of these. FOW2 and my good self have just joined Strictly. I usually like to give it a bit of time to bed in and also, I do think that it goes on for an awfully long time these days. There at least thirty eight couples in the starting line up. There has been a bit of a hoo-ha today because Thom has been sent home and he is a reasonable dancer. The thing is, I don't get up too worked up about who goes though on Strictly. It's all a bit of a gamble. The public can be quite weird and will vote for people that they take a fancy to for no other reason than they just like the cut of their jib. I don't think the best dancer has won Strictly for years. The thing is that it doesn't really matter because the pros and the slebs are already in the game. They have "Showbiz"  careers (even if some may be a bit more successful than others) they know the game. They understood how it might be when they started and when they go they go back to slogging away at whatever branch of showbiz they have come from. (Again, some more successfully than others)
I find the X Factor more troubling. For a start, some of them look like children. When did we start lining children up and then rejecting them for our personal delectation and delight? Also, when they are rejected, they don't return to panto or Gardeners Question time or whatever. Most of them go back to the sausage factory from whence they came. Even winning the thing seems to be the kiss of death as far as I can see. I don't like it. I try to because, at this time of year, not liking the X Factor can leave me feeling very much alone but I can't. Also, can I just say, a lot of the singers are just rubbish? Is that acceptable? I watched some lad last night do things to "Try A Little Tenderness" that would have got him arrested in seven states in America. Also I'm pretty certain that the lyric is "shabby dress". NOT "SHAGGY DRESS" Good Grief.

Grim Up North

Look - you knew we would be going to see this. If you have spent more than 15 seconds looking at this blog you will know that HOH spent much of his twenties chasing Northern Soul venues around the country, buying records and looking for somewhere to dance to them. 

So this film was eagerly awaited here by at least a proportion of the inhabitants of Martha Towers. First of all I have to refer to the cinema we had to go to to watch the film because it was on a limited release. I have never been there before. I will not fight to go there again. There was enough of that going on in the foyer as far as I could see. I don't think I have ever been scared at the flicks before (unless you take into account how I felt when I realised that Tom Cruise's Cocktail had another hour to go before we were mercifully released) We stood in a queue with a lot of other slightly ageing soul type people, many of whom were on sticks or had dodgy backs (probably because of all that backdropping) while about a hundred drunk, grubby hipster/biker types pushed past us to get to their film. Well it felt like a hundred to me. I have no idea what they were seeing. I don't think that it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 
Inside the cinema, things did not improve. I did not know that they made screens that small. HOH had to wear glasses to see the film. The hygiene was not what you would call top notch. The toilets were actually in the room we watched the film from - raising the unedifying possibility of flushing and other noises during quiet moments. Also, I think I was sitting in something sticky. I don't know. I didn't look and my jeans went straight into the wash. Bijou vintage it was not.

To the film then. You would probably only see this if you knew what it was about, if you get my drift. If you love the music or remember the scene, you will like this. The scenes in the dance hall were fantastic, the best I have seen. It was truly exhilarating and I would have liked to see more of them. There were some great little moments where people were learning to dance and just going for it. Lisa Stansfield shouting "I were right shown up today!" in a very broad accent is a happy moment that will stay with me for ages. I think you can hear a "but" coming. At the risk of sounding like I know what I am talking about, I think it was underwritten. It needed a better script rather than people just saying things to move the story on. You know the kind of thing...

"Whatever you do - don't start injecting drugs - it's a mug's game" Cue toilet scene with needles

"If we get caught with these drugs it's ten years in jail" Thrill to totally unexpected blue flashing siren.

Having said all that, it was beautifully shot - in Bolton, I think a lot of it and it did capture perfectly a northern town in England in the 1970s. Although it was a bit grimmer than I remember it. That's probably because I am sooo much younger than HOH. Yep that will be it.