My joking assessment that the end of the holidays would see me just ill enough not to be able to stay away from school in all conscience seems to have been quite prophetic!
I have now invested in a sirop mas fuerte to attempt to deal with my irritatingly persistent cough. I shall have to OD on it over the weekend to ensure a working and endurable snuffle for Tuesday.
My PDA (the old one) has now been given to MediaMarket together with a hefty payment of €100 as a deposit so that they can send it off to god knows where for god knows who to do god knows what with it. I only hope that the nicely spoken person in Coverplan who assured me that ‘everything would be fine’ if I got the thing repaired in Spain is true to her assurances and that money will flow in my direction when all of this is settled. I am not particularly confident about it all, but at least the first stage of getting the thing sorted out has started.
Paul Squared has just phoned to tell me that it has been snowing and later tonight it is going to again in Cardiff. Greater love hath no man than to phone a friend to reassure him that his move has been in the right direction southwards! I did manage to lie out on the balcony for a couple of hours this afternoon. Admittedly I was fully dressed and protected from the wind, but I was lying out in the sun. And there was no sign of snow!
I have now brought the case with the papers that I need, at least some of the papers that I need, to take a firmer hold on the planning necessary for school. As I type I know that they are in the case on the other side of the sofa. There is a whole seat and the arm of the sofa between me and the work. That’s a lot of no-man’s-land as far as I am concerned. I will have to send out a recce. to see if it is safe to cross such a dangerous space.
I am ashamed to admit that the recce. was not necessary. Work was safely interrupted by a film. Peter Pan would not necessarily have been my choice for a late night viewing but any old piece of celluloid if it keeps me from unpalatable effort in the cause of education. So, Peter Pan (2003) directed by P J Hogan it was.
My PDA (the old one) has now been given to MediaMarket together with a hefty payment of €100 as a deposit so that they can send it off to god knows where for god knows who to do god knows what with it. I only hope that the nicely spoken person in Coverplan who assured me that ‘everything would be fine’ if I got the thing repaired in Spain is true to her assurances and that money will flow in my direction when all of this is settled. I am not particularly confident about it all, but at least the first stage of getting the thing sorted out has started.
Paul Squared has just phoned to tell me that it has been snowing and later tonight it is going to again in Cardiff. Greater love hath no man than to phone a friend to reassure him that his move has been in the right direction southwards! I did manage to lie out on the balcony for a couple of hours this afternoon. Admittedly I was fully dressed and protected from the wind, but I was lying out in the sun. And there was no sign of snow!
I have now brought the case with the papers that I need, at least some of the papers that I need, to take a firmer hold on the planning necessary for school. As I type I know that they are in the case on the other side of the sofa. There is a whole seat and the arm of the sofa between me and the work. That’s a lot of no-man’s-land as far as I am concerned. I will have to send out a recce. to see if it is safe to cross such a dangerous space.
I am ashamed to admit that the recce. was not necessary. Work was safely interrupted by a film. Peter Pan would not necessarily have been my choice for a late night viewing but any old piece of celluloid if it keeps me from unpalatable effort in the cause of education. So, Peter Pan (2003) directed by P J Hogan it was.
It was a film that was easy to like from the inspired CGI to the equally inspired casting. Jason Isaacs in the traditional double role of Mr Darling and Captain Hook gave the sort of bravura performance as Hook which would have made the film worth watching for his time on screen alone. He was ably supported by Richard Briers’ Smee, but then everyone in this film pulls his weight even down to players in virtual cameo roles like Geoffrey Palmer as Sir Edward Quiller Couch.
For me this delightful film was disturbing because I am not a child. I am sure that my reservations about this excellent project arise from my age rather than my critical appreciation.
Jeremy Sumpter plays Peter Pan: an actual boy! Given the tradition of the Principal Boy in the theatre this use of a real boy is in itself a revelation. Rachel Hurd-Wood as Wendy Darling is a good foil for Sumpter but their tangible youth and vitality are exactly the elements that make this whole film problematical for me.
It all comes down to sex now.
Though it didn’t when I first read ‘Peter Pan.’ As a child I had no problems about the dubious quality of never growing up; of a grown man fighting a boy to the death; a girl child willingly accepting the role of a mother; that bloody dog as a nurse; Tinkerbell and the fairies; nightshirts and top hats and a crocodile with a clock still ticking inside his tummy.
Now, and perhaps especially with the boyishly attractive Sumpter as Pan his relationship with the Lost Boys, Wendy and even Hook seems overlaid with sexual tension. Wendy accepting her role of Mother is an uneasy concept to take lightly and makes one reassess her relationship with her own mother.
Peter Pan is a book which invites amateur sexual psychoanalysis and you can get lost in mixing and matching roles throughout the book in trying to make sense of what Barrie was attempting to achieve.
That way possibly lies madness; especially if you start dabbling in Barrie biography to support your thesis!
I suppose you have to keep telling yourself that this is a children’s story. I suppose. Keep adult thoughts out!
Missed the ending of Pan returning and taking away Wendy’s daughter, but I understand that this is available as one of the extras on the DVD.
Well worth watching, though if you can read this you are not going to find the experience of the film and entirely comfortable.
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