A Most Unusual Ordinary Week

I have been in my New Zealand home for 6 days.  I can't believe it.  

I haven't taken a meaningful photograph for 6 days.  I can't believe it.

I haven't made some phone calls that I should have made.  I can't believe it.

I made dinner for The Family and 7 of us sat down last evening as if there had never been 6 months since we had last done so.  I can't believe it.

Until this evening, apart from One News at 6pm, I've not watched any television.  Now that I can believe because on the whole New Zealand television has precious little that I find worth watching.

So this evening I watched two television programmes - Ice Road Truckers recommended by Anna before I left Glasgow and 50 Greatest Harry Potter Moments originally shown on UK TV of which Monica at Beyond The Lone Islands would, undoubtedly approve.   It was also Monica who mentioned that she wanted a DVD of, amongst others, Bright Star: a film about the relationship between Fanny Brawne and John Keats.  Now, as it happens, I fell in love with Keats' poetry when I was a young teenager and have never lost that love.  So I had to watch Bright Star.  I have just done so and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It is an intensely emotional and moving film. 

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.