Movie reviews and dinner

I’m happy to say that it is warmer today. When I left this morning, we already had 10°C which was still a bit painful – especially my knees, they don’t like it when I walk in the cold – but we’re expecting high of 17°C and no rain.

I’ve had trouble with my knees for most of my life. I fell awkwardly when I was in my late teens and something got damaged or dislodged or something. At the time I went to an orthopedic surgeon – BIG mistake! He scheduled me for surgery the next day ... no ‘this is my opinion’ or ‘is it ok with you’, just booked a bed and scheduled the surgery. I asked for the bathroom ... and kept walking (or limping, at the time) and never went back! I wasn’t twenty-one at the time, but I had full medical aid. Need I say more? Anyway, I managed without treatment. I did limp – at times quite badly, especially in winter or when it rained – but eventually it sort of set itself. Ok, so it took a couple of years – but there was very little pain, so, no problem. Before this job I worked at a reception – where I was stuck at my desk full-time. When I started this job and had to walk here and there – the first month I seriously worried I might have to quit, as I was in a lot of pain, each step was very unpleasant (no, not agony – I’ve been in real agony, and this was nowhere near!). I gritted my teeth and kept walking. After about a month I could feel the pain moved to only the muscles, that’s when I knew I’d be ok! That was quite a relief! I’ve always enjoyed walking, so getting away from a stuck-at-the-desk job was a delight!

I watched a Miss Marple movie last night ‘The Body in the Library’ with Geraldine McEwan. I can’t say I liked how they adapted it from the book. In the books, Miss Marple is described as gentle, well-mannered Victorian gentlewoman – not the aggressively pushing-herself-into-the-foreground I’m-smarter-than-the-police show-off; though I’m exaggerating a bit here. I feel that by portraying her to be smugly steering the police investigation somehow takes away from the character, it somehow lessens her. This need to shine diminishes Miss Marple. Margaret Rutherford pulled that off, but she completely redesigned Miss Marple – and somehow it worked for her. But then again, those movies didn’t claim to be more than ‘loosely based on’ the character created by Agatha Christie. I always liked how, in the books, Miss Marple never felt the need to push herself to the center, how her gentle suggestions or questions merely opened the police investigation to possibilities they might not have considered – without the smug self-satisfaction attributed to Private Investigators in sixties and/or seventies movies. And in the books, Miss Marple is also human, and doesn’t know whodunnit right from the start, although she may have an idea.

Another change from the book was the introduction of a lesbian relationship; which – as such – I thought a great idea. Her books certainly show many homosexual characters – although owing to the times, they are mostly in the background and not specifically or clearly homosexual. However, where the movie went horribly wrong, in my opinion, was to have the mother of a teenager strangle a teenager. In the book, the murderer had no children – and a male character strangling a female teenager is believable; but a mother of a teenage son strangling a female teenager, someone’s daughter? That didn’t work. At least not for me, it somehow tainted the whole movie.

I still have this idea for a story buzzing around in my head. Strangely, it feels like a novel rather than a short story. In the past, I’d get this idea for a short story, a point with characters and a bit of background which I’d work into a closed story. But this time it feels like a world is forming in my head – all background, collecting details, weaving a tapestry waiting for ... what? I’m still missing the whole point. Is it a quest? Is it a mystery? What is it to be about? Characters are forming, taking shape, developing traits. But it still feels mostly blank – like there’s a large A1 sized picture coming together, but all I’ve caught are glimpses of a few of the pixels. I’ll have to wait and see.

For dinner tonight, I’m planning to go through my stock in the fridge – I have mushrooms, green pepper, celery, tomatoes, carrots – and see what I can come up with. I’ve thought about taking some meat out of the freezer, but opted to go meat-free, since there’s such a lot and such a variety of vegetables already. I’m thinking along the lines of Stroganoff, since I also have some sour cream. I trust my culinary creativity to come up with a good combination. Timing is going to be a bit tricky, since today is also the day for taking the garbage outside – and I want to go through everything before I take it out.

At least I won’t have to water the garden, there were still puddles this morning from yesterday’s rain. A lot of earth also washed down the path alongside the flat. When it rains, an ankle-deep puddle forms at the bottom of the stairs – the whole my neighbour’s cat uses as a TV is meant to be a drain; you can clearly see it was an after-thought; i.e. not considered when the wall was built. It doesn’t really work, though, since the water pools at the lowest level – it doesn’t flow uphill to go through the ‘drain’.

I got home to find a strangely hooded figure wandering around my garden – the supervising cat identified the figure as my neighbour! The wind was unpleasant and the ground wet, so she wrapped up warm to see if the torrential rain had washed any of her plants off the rockery. She was so overjoyed to see everything still in place, and busy adding more plants that she didn’t even notice that she hadn’t tripped once. Seems I did a good job removing the stumps. Then we went for an inspection of the rest of my garden, she approved of the cactus trimming – sad, but it was unavoidable. We picked two tomatoes – a little one (which look more like gooseberries than tomatoes, and also taste fruity rather than like tomato) and a big one, both of which I gave to my neighbour, as I still had a stockpile upstairs.

Someone had lent me the movie Pacific Rim, which I decided to try watching tonight. I’m afraid, it was disappointing. All cliché with a completely predictable story line – after twenty minutes I knew the whole plot … and I wasn’t wrong. Expensive special effects, but nothing else to commend it. Two hours of empty flashy visuals, what a waste!

Dinner, on the other hand, turned out very well! I sliced just the mushrooms, one green pepper and my home-grown tomatoes, fried the mushrooms until they had produced some sauce, added a vegetable stock cube, basil, garlic and a few drops of truffle oil, let that cook for a bit then added Tagliatelle, Tomato Paste and when the pasta was done, stirred in the sour cream – your mouth should be watering by now! Such a pity, FLM is such a crap store – I was looking at something called Parmesan, which would have been awesome for tonight’s meal. From the way it was labelled, I couldn’t tell whether it was real Parmesan or one of the many cheap substitutes on the shelves nowadays; nor could I find a price … then I banged my noodle, so I left. Anyway, dinner was so delicious, I had two helpings, then cleaned the plate so not a drop of it would go to waste. And there’s enough for another dinner tomorrow night!