Nanny McPhee's Triumphant Return

This past weekend, I went to see Nanny McPhee and I can tell all you NMc fans that her Return was as good as the original. And, this time out, Nanny has even more screen time. The new cast of characters are a hoot, especially Eros Vlahos as cousin Cyril. Vlahos plays him as a sort of miniature, self important prig who delivers sarcastic verbal barbs with Oscar Wilde-like precision.  This kid deserves an Oscar nod.

Of course, Maggie Smith is wonderful as the dotty Mrs. Docherty, and the piglets steal the show.

This time out, Nanny’s got a window putty eating crow, Mr. Edelweiss.

One of the funniest scenes in the first film was when Nanny tells Colin Firth that she’s a “government nanny” who has been sent to his aid. He seems to accept this, then sits down to read his paper and after a few beats looks up and says, “A government nanny?!” This time out, Nanny McPhee passes herself off as an “army nanny.” That’s all I’m going to say, as I don’t want to spoil the film for all of you who will be flocking to see it. Suffice it to say that my husband, who was a decidedly reluctant companion going in to the theater, found himself shedding a tear or two at its conclusion.

“When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay.
When you want me, but no longer need me, I must go.”

I'm a Big, Fat London Pig

My withdrawal from London was quite acute back in late July, when I found myself browsing the internet for flight deals back to the Old Smoke. Bear in mind that this was just a scant month since my whirlwind London/Waterloo tour with Victoria. However, the symptoms were all there – daydreams of walking down Piccadilly, a nostalgic longing for a pint and a proper serving of bangers and mash, the almost constant urge to throw up my arm and hail a black cab. At odd moments I’d hear a voice in my head urging me to “Mind the gap. Please mind the gap.” Aaarrrggghhh!

And then I found it – Continental Airlines, Newark to London Heathrow . . . . . $345. What!? Okay, that was each way, but still, seven hundred round trip was a bargain. It was at that moment that a small, cheeky devil appeared at my left shoulder. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill devil dressed in a red suit, with a pointed tail and holding a pitch fork. Oh, no. This devil was dressed in Regency garb and holding a snuff box. He looked uncannily like Beau Brummell.
“Press that button, my dear. The one that says “Buy Now.”

“Don’t be silly. I can’t. I just went to London. My planning another trip to England would be nothing short of greed in piggy proportions.”
“I’ve never found anything wrong with greed, myself.”
“Ha! And look where it got you.”
The devil sniffed. “Be that as it may, I still maintain that you should push that button. Go on,” he cajoled, “push it now.”

“Stop it!”
“You know,” he began, his voice a blend of honey and warm oil, “you could take your husband with you this time. After all, you’ve already been to London twice since you’ve known him. Really, is that fair? I believe he deserves to see the City. . . . you’d be doing it for him.”
This was a novel way of looking at the situation. A very Lucy Ricardo way of looking at it, I might add. He had my attention.

“And,” the devil continued, “you could schedule the trip around Christmas. It could be your Yuletide present to him. In fact, your wedding anniversary is in September, is it not? You could make it a joint anniversary and Christmas gift. Only consider how much more thrifty that would make the expenditure.”
Thrifty? Hhmmm. My husband would like thrifty.
“Push the button.”
“Look, pushing that button is a big deal. I’d be committing myself, and my poor unwitting husband, to a trip to London.”

“Oh, poor dear! London. Such a sacrifice.” The imp removed a miniscule amount of snuff from his tiny snuff box and inhaled it. Once he’d stopped sneezing – into my left ear – he continued. “Push the button. Do it for your mother.”
“My mother? What’s she got to do with it?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, you’re hopeless at greed justification, aren’t you? It’s a good thing for you I deigned to show up and help you with this. Look, if you go to London, you’ll have to fly out of one of the major New York airports. Yes? Or perhaps a nearby major airport. Say . . . Newark?”

“Right,” I allowed.
“And who lives but a scant few miles from Newark airport, hmmmm?”
“My mother.”

“Got it in one! So . . . you back out your departure date and instead fly into Newark a few days before Christmas. You spend the holidays with your mother and daughter, thus making their holidays joyous whilst removing the onus of their having to travel down to you for the festivities, as they usually do. You, my dear, kill three birds with one English stone. You make your mother, daughter and your husband all happy beyond their wildest dreams. In effect, you wouldn’t be going to London for your own greedy delight in the least. Instead, you’d be going in order to make them happy. And, you and your husband would be in London for New Year’s Eve. Whilst still being thrifty, of course.”
My mouth hung open. Why hadn’t I thought of this? It was nothing short of brilliant.

“Do you really think so?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I do. Truly. Push the button.”
Reader, I pushed the button. And just like Lucy Ricardo, I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut until my anniversary. I’ve already told my husband who, thank the Lord, is thrilled to bits, which means that the only fireworks we’ll be encountering will be those over the River Thames on New Year’s Eve.
Oink, oink.

On the Shelf: Remarkable Creatures

Victoria here. I picked up the latest Tracy Chevalier novel with a bit of trepidation. Again she was working in my period.  I liked her earlier works until it came to Burning Bright, a novel about poet William Blake–which didn’t work for me.

However, I truly enjoyed Remarkable Creatures, a story set in Lyme, and based on the life of Mary Anning, the woman who discovered many interesting fossils and played a role in the developing science of biology as well as in the roots of the theories of Darwin.  Elizabeth Philpot, a collector of fossils, and Mary became friends and colleagues. Neither female could break out of the restrictions placed on women in those days, nor could they totally overcome class differences in their situations. 

The novel is set in the pre-Darwin period of the early 19th century. However, fossils were well known and raised many questions for those trying to reconcile the fact that some living things had become extinct, a concept which clashed with conventional Christian interpretations of the creation of the world as told in Exodus.

Mary Annning and Elizabeth Philpot were real people and their heritage is honored today in their home town of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England in Dorset. The local museum in Lyme is known as the Philpot Museum and contains more about the lives of local fossil hunters and how they contributed to the development of the knowledge of evolution.

Right, part of the fossil beaches near Lyme. Popular today with fossil hunters, the beach gives up new finds frequently.  Some make their living by guiding hunters to potential sites.
Lyme Regis is also the setting for several well known scenes in other novels.  Jane Austen set her famous stair-jumping silliness on the Cobb at Lyme in Persuasion. John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman used Lyme as a dramatic background.
Tracy Chevalier’s most famous novel is probably The Girl with the Pearl Earring which brought her great fame and was made into a film starring Colin Firth as the artist Vermeer and Scarlett Johansson. Other novels included The Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, The Lady and the Unicorn, and Burning Bright.      Happy reading!

Do You Know About Doc Martin – Series Four?

In a prior “Do You Know About? post, we introduced you to a television series called Doc Martin – surly, tactless, self-centered, Doc Martin’s reception room is never-the-less crowded since he’s the only doctor in Portwenn, Cornwall. We wanted to let you know that Series 4 of Doc Martin is now available in a two disk set. Hurray!

The action picks up a few months after the wedding day disaster, when Doc Martin and the pretty school teacher Louisa realized, literally at the last moment, that neither could go through with the ceremony. Dr. Martin Ellingham (Martin Clunes, Men Behaving Badly) is even grumpier and ruder than before. His former fiancée, Louisa (Caroline Catz, Murder in Suburbia), has left the village to avoid embarrassment. The doctor himself plans to return to London as a surgeon – if he can conquer his fear of blood. Even a pin prick’s worth of the red stuff makes him gag.

Matters quickly become complicated when Louisa moves back with startling news.

Meanwhile, Martin’s old flame, Edith Montgomery (Lia Williams), takes a job at the local hospital and sets her sights on the doc. Sparks and rumors fly as patients crowd his office: a shouting oil rigger, the inept local constable, a woman who sees her dead husband’s ghost, and a man who eats his own hair.

Through it all, Doc Martin is gruff, impatient and abrupt. Hard to believe that Doc Martin could be so attractive to two women, no less, as well as to the stray dogs who continually try to get into his surgery.

Actor Martin Clunes had this to say about his return to the set:
“As I drove back to the location there was a sense of anticipation of being back there. We have been able to rent the same house just along the coast from Port Isaac where we have always stayed. The views from the house along the coast are stunning. It took a little while to get back into the character and into the rhythm of single camera acting. Suddenly you realise it is sort of a second skin and it just lovely being back. The doc’s sharp suits and severe haircut help me to get back into character. But it is his trademark curmudgeonly approach to his patients which is the key to playing the role again.”

Stephanie Cole returns as Aunt Joan . . .

Ian McNeice is back as restauranteur Bert Large . . . .

and Katherine Parkinson reprises her role as the often lethargic and slightly looney receptionist, Pauline.

Having just watched this Series, I can tell you that the show is just as funny, the characters just as endearing and the plotlines just as engaging as the first three seasons.

Watch a clip from Espisode 1 of Series 4 here.

Don’t tell anyone, but a 5th Series has been commissioned, but won’t begin filming until 2011.

Victoria's Report on the Angela Thirkell Society Meeting

I spent a wonderful weekend with fans of British author Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) at the University of Wisconsin, Madision, August 13-15, 2010.  See more about her books here.

Our conference began with a visit to the Rare Books Collection of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library. Curator of Special Collections Robin Rider and her staff assembled a fascinating array of volumes which we eagerly explored.

Since Mrs. Thirkell was the granddaughter of Edward Burne-Jones of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, we saw books related to his work, including many editions published by the Kelmscott Press, founded by William Morris. The volume at left is one of a limited edition of Chaucer, illustrated by Burne-Jones.  Many other Kelmscott books were on display as well as volumes written by women travel writers of the early 20th C. (of which Mrs. Thirkell was one) and a volume of bird plates from Australia, where she lived between 1919-1929.

After dinner Dan and Jerri Chase presented an illustrated talk about all the vehicles used in AT’s Barsetshire novels, from donkey carts and horse-crawn carriages to a RollsRoyce Silver Ghost.  Dan provided the technical data (his hobby is working with old cars) and Jerri read excerpts from the novels, in which cars are occasionally — well, shall we say — misused by certain rascally young men.

At the conclusion of the evening, Kathleen Fish, organizer of the event and treasurer of the society, invited me to read a bedtime story from a collection of children’s tales written by Angela Thirkell about 1935.  I was delighted to be a participant in the festivities.  I should also point out that President of the AT Society in North America, Barbara Houlton, had welcomed us all to Madison, even in the middle of a wild rainstorm and severe thunderstorm alert, positively the worst of midwestern weather. Luckily conditions steadily improved until the loveliest of sunny summer days bid us goodbye on Sunday.

Seven excellent speakers presented talks on Saturday, investigating the many dimensions of AT’s life and work.  At right, Sara Bowen speaks on AT and Jane Austen.
 If I tried to summarize the talks briefly, I could certainly not do justice to the excellent content and variety, so I will skip ahead to the Costume Dinner and Saturday night, in which each participant dressed as a character from one of the AT novels.
  It was hilarious as we all tried to guess each other’s identity.  I apologize for missing some of the participants and catching others in unflattering poses; you may email your disapproval! Left, Jerri Chase and Dan, who really was not asleep.
Edith and Norman Fearn of Buckinghamshire in the UK, joined Dan as below-stairs characters in the Upstairs/Downstairs theme of the program.
Tom Childrey of Coral Springs, FL, charmed (?) us as the overbearing housekeeper Mrs. Stoker.

l-r, Kathleen Fish, Sara Bowen, and Susie Fish as Laura Morland, Miss Austen, and again, Mrs. Morland (note the two sweet pea corsages).

Diane Smook of New York wore her mother’s authentic WWII&nb
sp;Red Cross uniform.

L-r, Sunny Gwaltney as Lady Cora, Kathleen Fish, Sara Bowen 

Barbara Spieker of Plymouth, WI, scowls as the irascible Aunt Sissie Brandon.

l-r, Victoria Hinshaw as the lady novelist Mrs. Rivers and Dr. Penelope Fritzer of Florida Atlantic University as the lady in the awful green hat! Sorry I have forgotten the character’s name.

l-r, Penny Aldred of London as Mrs. Rivers, special guest Simon McInnes (grandson of Mrs. Thirkell) of Ottawa, Canada, and Alasdair Neil of London, as the butler.

After breakfast on Sunday morning, we held a business meeting and a closing quiz with many, many prizes.  All in all, everyone had a great time.

For those of you missed by my camera, you will probably consider yourself quite luckly to have escaped!! 

The North American branch of the Angela Thirkell Society will gather again in 2012, probably in New Haven, CN,  at Yale University, where Mrs. Thirkell’s papers and first editions are collected at the Beinecke Library.  I look forward to the day!