How pathetic; here we are, almost at the end of the first month of a new year, and I have managed only a couple of posts and have responded to no comments whatsover. Shameful. So I must start by thanking you for yours, for all of which I am grateful.
In December, I looked at my diary for January and saw that it looked, well, quietish and although there are always bills to pay and, ergo, an income to be earned, I rather relished the thought of a few breathing spaces. Except that it did not turn out quite like that. Does it ever?
First, many of the delightful owners who entrust their beloved dogs to me for day and holiday care decided that they had had enough of almost daily rain since September and were off in search of winter sun. Who could blame them? The breathing spaces became fewer.
Then there were very welcome meetings with friends, including one whom I hadn't seen for more than 14 years. Over an excellent lunch at The Bridge, Dulverton, we simply cast on where we had cast off all that time ago. (If, like me, you don't eat meat, I strongly recommend the Bridge's Heidi Pie . . .)
Two evenings a week are now taken up with a) making a deep, joyful noise with Exe Valley Voices and b) returning to the bliss of yoga with a brilliant teacher. I can just feel my body saying 'thank you' after each session.
I am also hard at work refining a new project that involves mentoring people who write and which I find extraordinarily satisfying. More anon.
So, no breathing spaces or at least hardly any. However - and this has come as something of a surprise - having watched less and less television in the last decade, I now find myself being drawn to any number of excellent programmes. I blame it on the midwinter sojourn and staying with my family in the Chilterns, when bracing country walks avec Labrador were interspersed with some fine home dining and catching up with two absorbing television series (Boardwalk Empire, Series 2 - only available to me when I stay with my family, as I refuse to subscribe to Sky - and The Killing on BBC4, about which everything has already been written. Suffice it to say, we were all hooked).
And now there is Borgen, from the same company that gave us The Killing, and which is utterly compelling. As a Guardian sub-heading pointed out: 'It's brilliant, it's Danish - and it's got knitwear!' (Or as someone on Twitter wryly observed: 'Some day, all television programmes will be made in Danish, with sub-titles.') At the heart of the (fictional) series is Brigitte Nyborg, Denmark's first woman Prime Minister, but forget any comparisons with our own version, who held sway here for 11 years from 1979 - Nyborg actually cares about women in society; ours didn't even believe in society, let alone care about women's place in it. If you're in the UK and you've missed the opening episodes, they are still available here on iPlayer. (Usual caveat about hurrying applies.)
I know that I always seem to be plugging iPlayer but, really, it is just the most useful thing. Without it, I would have missed Pappano's Essential Tosca, broadcast early yesterday evening, which went behind the scenes of last summer's Royal Opera House production (two perfomances only), with Angela Gheorghiu, Bryn Terfel and Jonas Kaufmann. (Actually, the entire production is available for anyone to watch here on YouTube. Goodness me - that's Monday evening taken care of.)
However, if you too are short on breathing spaces, you could just watch this . . .
