A Gentleman in Love
Jul. 8th, 2013 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyLast year I bought some cat thyme. I thought it might be a little treat for Percy. Was it ever. Even one little leaf of it turns him into a wild-eyed, tree-climbing loon. Potent stuff.
Because it was so tiny, I put it in a little terracotta pot and put it on top of the washing machine (which gets the sun) for a few days. Percy doesn't spend any time in the laundry as a general rule, but he knew that poor little plant was there. I spent a weekend lifting him off the washing machine and repotting the plant where he'd pulled it out. Monday morning, I thought, I can't leave him alone in the house with it, so I moved it outside. And moved it when he found it again. And moved it again. I finally found somewhere safe for it by hiding the terracotta pot in the middle of an overgrown parsley plant, and it has spent a few months recovering.
It rained heavily yesterday, so I brought all my little pot-plants in under the patio, including the cat thyme. This morning, it is on the ground, the pot is shattered and the plant is chewed. I can't blame Percy this time, because he was asleep on my foot all night, although he did work himself into a sniffing and rolling frenzy in the dirt when I was trying to re-pot the plant this morning. Poor little plant. So potent it lures passing cats in the night.
What else? Oh, television. My mother and John were in for dinner last night. My mother generally limits her television viewing to things that have the words 'Midsomer' and 'Murders' in the title, but every now and then she will get sucked in to watching something else. Right now it is a terrible, terrible show called A Place to Call Home. Even she says it's terrible, but she can't stop, and she made me watch it last night too. And it was terrible, yet weirdly addictive. It's set in rural Australia in the 1950s, about a wealthy family whose troubles are almost entirely of their own making and who talk in some of the most stilted dialogue I've ever heard. The most sympathetic characters were Gay Grandson and English Wife*, who wants to get away from the family (I hear you, English Wife); he doesn't want to leave the family home, but then he finds himself attracted to Hunky Farmhand who likes to lift bales of hay while not wearing a shirt, so he agrees to move away to avoid cheating on his wife. So she says, 'Let's go to Sydney!' and he's all, good idea, there won't be any hunky men there! I feel there is a flaw in this plan. But those were the two characters I liked most, so I will cut them some slack.
The worst characters were the two lady villains, who were villainous for very low stakes. These were not villains that you could watch and say, 'Oh, good point, lady villain, I admire your magnificent style.' One was annoying, the other one was horrible. The annoying one was the family matriarch, Controlling Biddy. She seems to be against anything she doesn't think of first. She was clearly meant to be impressive, but she was just a pest. She was more impressive than the other lady villain, though, who is some sort of old friend staying with the family. She wants to marry Widowed Son against Controlling Biddy's wishes, although Controlling Biddy is also against Widowed Son's relationship with Nice Nurse, the woman he is in love with. Now, a different, more subtle, show would make this an interesting development: will he marry Family Friend, or Nice Nurse? This is not that show. No. Nice Nurse is a Holocaust survivor; Family Friend marches right up to her and spews out an anti-Semitic diatribe, leaving us in no doubt as to whose side we should be on. It ended with Controlling Biddy telling Widowed Son that she would change her will to disinherit him and leave everything to Gay Grandson if he doesn't break up with Nice Nurse. He immediately rushed to the hospital to find Nice Nurse and asked her to marry him. Cliffhanger! (Actually, now I think about it, Widowed Son and Nice Nurse were also sympathetic characters; I think I was more drawn to Gay Grandson and English Wife because they didn't spend any time with Controlling Biddy and Family Friend.)
Also, all the male characters on this show looked alike. Widowed Son and Gay Grandson are meant to be father and son, so that's good casting, but Hunky Farmhand, Alcoholic Doctor and Italian Neighbour all looked like them too. It was as though a plague of chin dimples swept across rural Australia, and no man was safe.
* I didn't understand why Gay Grandson is married to English Wife, but my mother said that Controlling Biddy forced him to marry her (English Wife) when she (Controlling Biddy) realised that he was in love with English Wife's brother. English Wife only found out about this after the wedding.
Because it was so tiny, I put it in a little terracotta pot and put it on top of the washing machine (which gets the sun) for a few days. Percy doesn't spend any time in the laundry as a general rule, but he knew that poor little plant was there. I spent a weekend lifting him off the washing machine and repotting the plant where he'd pulled it out. Monday morning, I thought, I can't leave him alone in the house with it, so I moved it outside. And moved it when he found it again. And moved it again. I finally found somewhere safe for it by hiding the terracotta pot in the middle of an overgrown parsley plant, and it has spent a few months recovering.
It rained heavily yesterday, so I brought all my little pot-plants in under the patio, including the cat thyme. This morning, it is on the ground, the pot is shattered and the plant is chewed. I can't blame Percy this time, because he was asleep on my foot all night, although he did work himself into a sniffing and rolling frenzy in the dirt when I was trying to re-pot the plant this morning. Poor little plant. So potent it lures passing cats in the night.
What else? Oh, television. My mother and John were in for dinner last night. My mother generally limits her television viewing to things that have the words 'Midsomer' and 'Murders' in the title, but every now and then she will get sucked in to watching something else. Right now it is a terrible, terrible show called A Place to Call Home. Even she says it's terrible, but she can't stop, and she made me watch it last night too. And it was terrible, yet weirdly addictive. It's set in rural Australia in the 1950s, about a wealthy family whose troubles are almost entirely of their own making and who talk in some of the most stilted dialogue I've ever heard. The most sympathetic characters were Gay Grandson and English Wife*, who wants to get away from the family (I hear you, English Wife); he doesn't want to leave the family home, but then he finds himself attracted to Hunky Farmhand who likes to lift bales of hay while not wearing a shirt, so he agrees to move away to avoid cheating on his wife. So she says, 'Let's go to Sydney!' and he's all, good idea, there won't be any hunky men there! I feel there is a flaw in this plan. But those were the two characters I liked most, so I will cut them some slack.
The worst characters were the two lady villains, who were villainous for very low stakes. These were not villains that you could watch and say, 'Oh, good point, lady villain, I admire your magnificent style.' One was annoying, the other one was horrible. The annoying one was the family matriarch, Controlling Biddy. She seems to be against anything she doesn't think of first. She was clearly meant to be impressive, but she was just a pest. She was more impressive than the other lady villain, though, who is some sort of old friend staying with the family. She wants to marry Widowed Son against Controlling Biddy's wishes, although Controlling Biddy is also against Widowed Son's relationship with Nice Nurse, the woman he is in love with. Now, a different, more subtle, show would make this an interesting development: will he marry Family Friend, or Nice Nurse? This is not that show. No. Nice Nurse is a Holocaust survivor; Family Friend marches right up to her and spews out an anti-Semitic diatribe, leaving us in no doubt as to whose side we should be on. It ended with Controlling Biddy telling Widowed Son that she would change her will to disinherit him and leave everything to Gay Grandson if he doesn't break up with Nice Nurse. He immediately rushed to the hospital to find Nice Nurse and asked her to marry him. Cliffhanger! (Actually, now I think about it, Widowed Son and Nice Nurse were also sympathetic characters; I think I was more drawn to Gay Grandson and English Wife because they didn't spend any time with Controlling Biddy and Family Friend.)
Also, all the male characters on this show looked alike. Widowed Son and Gay Grandson are meant to be father and son, so that's good casting, but Hunky Farmhand, Alcoholic Doctor and Italian Neighbour all looked like them too. It was as though a plague of chin dimples swept across rural Australia, and no man was safe.
* I didn't understand why Gay Grandson is married to English Wife, but my mother said that Controlling Biddy forced him to marry her (English Wife) when she (Controlling Biddy) realised that he was in love with English Wife's brother. English Wife only found out about this after the wedding.