We can all learn from Alice

'Dahling Alice, this is all very well my deah, but is this really the right time to swan about off your face on morphine, seducing all the neighbours, banging away at your ukelele, swathed in jewels and keeping a black panther when the country doesn't even have a Prime Minister?'

'Yup.'

Loyal readers will remember the obsession I have with the mystery surrounding the murder of Lord Erroll in Kenya in the first half of the last century and how unspeakably dull and hectoring I can become on the subject at the drop of a pith helmet. Well, it would appear it was Alice de Janze wot done it - portrayed with glazed and dirty elegance by Sarah Mills in White Mischief. For the past week or so, I have been glued to this book every waking minute. She was riddled with madness and style, abandoning her sons and adopting a baby leopard. The writing is a little wooden, but her fascinating story is gripping and well overdue.

Which is a shame, because while I have been hiding in Happy Valley, we have elected a schizophrenic Government, Greece is in economic and civil meltdown and Freddie's school swimming trunks are now budgie smugglers. He told Edward 'Mummy bought them three years ago and they're so small now. I'm worried I might hurt myself.'

So I need to get my maternal finger out and save his manhood, my professional finger out and go to Wales for two days and organise training on some hijusly dull bit of obscure legislation then my culinary finger out for two lovely weekend houseguests.

Then I am shoving my cloche hat on, parking my arse on the verandah, under a leopard, shouting at the houseboy to bring me gin and opium and shooting dead anyone that annoys me.

No changes there, then.

"He's in the attic!"

"Sweet baby Jesus, say it ain't so." "Yup, gals, 'fraid Ah have it on the best authoridee." "No! Those college-type fellas that blahg about fancy clothes dress like that?" "Shore do, hun." "Why, Ah jest feel so cheap."

Two words: Dorian Gray
Two more: don't bother.

As the bots say, hijus.

Ben Chaplin delivered the perfomance of a Mme Tussaud escapee, but with less range. Colin Firth, popping in from Improbable Pointy Beard land en route to the lockjaw doctor, delivered every line as though he had the runs and needed urgently to dash off set. With smirking. As for the rest of the stellar British line-up, all completely forgettable, apart from Rebecca Hall inexplicably reprising her role in the lovely Starter for 10, contemporary sneer, Doc Martens and ciggie included.

The dog rather enjoyed the special effects.

It did, however, set us up perfectly for the amazing Up in the Air. Do see it, whatever you do, and especially if, at the moment, you feel you don't do much. It was thought-provoking and impeccably acted and just went to show that all the usual British suspects plus fabulous costume department do not a watchable film make without a half-way decent script and some commitment.

Also, if someone who smells stale and looks shiny creeps out of a cinema doorway and offers you free tickets for Have You Heard About the Morgans, run away fast as you can, screaming at the top of your lungs till you find a policeman or a nice family to look after you.

Christmas Tradition, Part One: Barbados

We had a huge casurina branch with paper decorations on it. These people clearly have either no soul or scads of dosh.

Christmas church attendance was compulsory - even the year we moved to Barbados. We lived on the wild and beautiful East Coast where everyone knew everyone else and nobody ever locked their doors. We were invited to the Christmas morning service, and walked along the winding road to the church in the hot sun, feeling most un-Christmassy and grumpy that our stockings were only half-opened. We were joined on the way by the rest of the village, dressed to the absolute nines. My father, in his khaki safari shirt and shorts, looked seriously underdressed; the men wore three-piece black suits and dazzling white shirts - they all wore ties and hats. But they were merely the backdrop to the magnificent starched ruffle of colour that was the women. Bajan women tend to be large and they love, love, love to laugh. They swept us three blondies up, weeping hysterically at the paucity of our plain cotton frocks and my poor brother's ironed shorts. Their kids were properly dressed; ice-cream coloured dresses held aloft by multi-layered petticoats, white socks and shoes that shone like stars. And the ladies' hats! Great cartwheels studded with garlands and gardens of silk flowers and all of them wearing gloves and carrying enormous shiny handbags.

Hitherto, we were relatively dour Church of England; our experience of church was Easter, Brownie Parade and Remembrance Sunday, with a polite Carol service at Christmas - subdued mutterings of unintelligible, very short prayers, a couple of familiar hymns and then out into the graveyard to shake hands limply with a morose vicar.

Blimey, we didn't know what had hit us, December 25th 1977. Ushered to front-row seats, as befitted newcomers and a teacher, we were bang in front of the choir. My mother fixed us with a gimlet eye and we looked sternly down as they began to sing. They sang gospel songs, urging us to get up and feel the Lord's spirit enter us. My Dad, eyeballs heavenwards, got up first, and clapped along awkwardly, my mother gamely joining him and for once, not even attempting the descant. The vicar shrieked and made lots of reference to Satan, bellowing at us to cast out our sins. We sat like stone mice as all around us, the congregation let the Lord, noisily and with a completely foreign display of emotion, right into their hearts. Every so often, and for no discernable reason, someone would yell 'AaaaaayMEN!' and everyone would join in with gusto.

At last, everyone got up again, still swaying their hips and clapping wildly. We kids shot to our feet and joined the throng for the door, minds on our half-ravaged stockings. As we emerged into the sun, we became aware that the choir was behind us, still belting out the hymns, and they had been joined by steel drums. It was a parade. We danced and sang all round the village for a good half-hour before my parents eventually, as we passed our door, thanked everyone and wished them a Happy Christmas before plucking us skipping children, who by now were punch-drunk on calypso and evangelism, out of the rainbow throng and into our house.

We stood in the gloom, shell-shocked for a minute. Then we threw open a shutter and sat watching this flock of musical birds wind their exhuberant way back up the hill through the breadfruit trees on the other side of the valley. Our stockings lay half-opened on our beds for quite a while. AaaayMEN.

Sunday Sonnet*

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

Another silly summer job was being a torch lady (nope, not belting out Gloria Gaynor in drag)  - a lovely old-fashioned role, showing people to their seats in a cinema. I saw Hannah and her Sisters about 150 times that summer, and was word perfect. Not quite so enraptured with Karate Kid II; then I passed the time accidentally landing snogging couples in the full searchlight of my little torch. Anyway, I thought that the bookshop scene and subsequent reading of ee cummings was the most romantic thing I had ever seen in 19 years. Gorgeous film, gorgeous poem.

*Am assuming you're over this by now

Be happy for a moment. This moment is your life.

One of the best films I have seen over the past few years was Unfaithful, from the pretty reliable stable of Adrian Lyne. (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal). A stylish remake of Claude Chabrol's 1968 film La Femme Infidele, the story details the fatal consequences of an affair. Diane Lane and Richard Gere are convincing as the Edward and Connie, a suburban couple who have it all - apart from their desperately irritating son (the usually endearing jug-eared Erik Per Sullivan). Part of this film's charm is the absolute credibility of the affair. OK, you've got Richard Gere keeping you in Martha Stewart style - (so haulage is far from sexy but it clearly pays) - passing perfect clapboard days doing charity work, having facials and choosing cashmere sweaters. So far, no reason to stray.

Then enter Olivier Martinez, words any red-blooded woman would enjoy rolling slowly around on her tongue most days of the week. The tornado imagery is perhaps a little overworked as Connie staggers through SoHo streaming balloons and plastic soccer party bits all over the sidewalk, but as she is blown into the arms of Martinez (Paul, a French book dealer) and into his apartment, the obsession really begins.

For me, the show is stolen by Paul's SoHo apartment, a bibliophile’s fantasy land. Stacked floor to ceiling with tempting antique tomes, arranged in a maze of shelves and interspersed with fascinating global objets d'art, I defy anyone not to be instantly seduced. Connie is, pretty much. She farts about primly for a bit in the face of this exotic European sophistication, but soon she’s hooked and embarks on a fantastically observed sexual awakening.

Edward knows immediately that there’s a rabbit off, even without the clumsily drawn arrow on Connie’s stomach, and Gere captures perfectly the bewildered eyes and winded expression of a man fighting an unseen enemy.

Unseen until he boffs Paul to death with a glass paperweight, that is. A paperweight that Edward gave Connie and which she, with all the forethought of a woman in the thrall of sexual obsession, has blithely given her lover.

The final third of the film doesn’t disappoint. Shared history, family ties and terror all combine to draw husband and wife closer than ever as they try to patch up their once perfect lives and play their roles in a horrific murder investigation. A more ambiguous ending than the original, the final scene haunts and provokes thought in equal measure. Do see this film. Alone, if you want to avoid awkward coversation afterwards.

Why have I come over all Barry Norman? Last night, I watched Nights In Rodanthe, which promised Gere and Lane reprising their on-screen chemistry. Not to the naked eye, they didn’t. Gere smirks, Lane twitches and the whole film is stolen by her stroppy tattooed teenage daughter, sulkily observed by Mae Whitman.

If you can't get Olivier Martinez round tonight, I recommend instead a candlelit bath, good book, Moroccan coffee and this on the stereo. Much safer.

Meyoorie Puppens

Image from here

One of the things about my pre-DVD childhood (who am I kidding - pre-betamax. Three channels. Well, two really as ITV wasn't educational enough) was the rolling around of Disney films in the cinema, in particular Mary Poppins. Dick van Dyke's eclectic approach to cockney vowel sounds, the whirling excitement of 'Step in Time' and the utter heartbreak of 'Feed the Birds' - I really thought London was just like that. Pretty much up till I moved there in the late 80's and learned the hard way about paintings on pavements.

Anyway. These rare cinema outings and the odd Christmas telly airing were always wrecked by my dad. Professional Northern Socialist, the whole Edwardian upper middle class thing was a personal affront, and not one he took quietly - as the policeman returned Jane and Michael "bloody toffs, can't even look after their own kids" - Glynis Johns huskily parading her suffragette credentials "Clear your throat you stuck up tart" - the children sweetly describing their ideal nanny "Christ, give me STRENGTH" and Mr Banks going proudly off to work "bastard".

I sat down recently for some bot-bonding over the Disney TV show that features a pair of foppy-haired muppets.I had a pretty lukewarm reception. What? They grimaced a bit then, in VERY silly voices, said "get a haircut, you two". "What, they live in a HOTEL? Blimming Americans, got no handle on reality". "She's based on Paris Hilton, you know. Vacuous little madam"

Oops.