Bless me Father for I have . . . murdered someone

I had watched five seasons of The Good Wife – American lawyers – and three seasons of Silk – English barristers – and I thought I needed a little break from the law.

I have begun to watch Father Brown, a series about G.K. Chesterson’s affable murder-solving priest. I remember Father Brown well from my earlier reading of the short stories. In the murder-solving genre, he’s a bit like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple – an unlikely detective.

It’s just what I was looking for. The stories and the characters are gentle; there are murders but they’re genteel and the murderers are usually not evil and they often come to an accidental end before the Inspector can get his hands on them.

That’s a relief because the stories this time around are set in the early 1950s – in the aftermath of the war – and the death penalty was still in effect in Great Britain. Much better for our murderer to stumble on to the track in front of a moving train than sent off to be hanged.

Part of my enjoyment of the series is the beauty of the village and surrounding countryside where Father Brown tends his flock. At one point, I said to myself, I think I’ve been there!

I looked it up and sure enough, the series is filmed in different villages in the Cotswolds. Some of those villages were on one of the tours we took with The English Bus. As always with the tour, our guide – Colin, in this case – had much information and many stories about these beautiful villages and as we had in other places, we parked the bus and he led a walking tour to make sure we got the maximum enjoyment.

Here are some photos of our stop – two different stops, in fact. As always, remember to click on the photos to enlarge them.

William and I agreed that we could live in one of these houses (below) – if they had good Internet. (A standard requirement.)

Give us this day

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness –

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I stopped drinking wine quite a few years ago but I still can't resist fresh bread, right out of the oven.

I baked this bread today. Bread is one of my best things and I bake it regularly. I'm pretty good at pies but I don't think of myself as a baker – I don't bake cakes or cookies or squares, except at Christmas and even then, Dan does a lot of the Christmas baking.

My mother baked wonderful bread and rolls. When there was a bake sale at her church, there were customers hanging around the bread table waiting for her rolls to arrive. I remember it well: "Are Marion's rolls here yet?" For these occasions, Mum would bake many pans of rolls – dozens – and even still, some customers would go away disappointed.

I'm not sure my bread is as good as Mum's – it's a little different. Mum's bread was snowy white. I usually use some whole wheat flour in mine and I also keep a sour-dough sponge in the fridge that I use for leavening and for flavour. I occasionally use molasses or honey to feed my yeast where I know my mother would have used plain white sugar.

In warm humid weather, my bread molds much faster on the counter than store-bought bread but I like the fact that I know what's in it. On days when I know it can't survive, I've taken to slicing it and putting it in the freezer. It's nice. It can be taken out, one slice at a time.

Dad loved the home-made bread and grumbled if it ran out. He liked a little dessert and if there were no cookies or pudding, he would pour a small bowl of molasses and get a slice of bread and just dip. Mum herself, however, always kept a loaf of store-bought bread – Lane's Bread – because she preferred it for her toast.

I make other kinds of bread too but this is my basic one, the one I can do with my eyes closed.

I read somewhere recently that every major civilization throughout history had some kind of bread as a dietary staple. I enjoy thinking about that as I'm making the bread – that I'm part of a long bread-baking history.

A bird in the hand

The new bird feeder was installed today and the birds came back. They never seem to be far away.

These photos were taken last year but things look much the same today as they did then.

The timeless beauty of Oxford

It’s always a little thrilling to see a place in person that you’ve seen – often many times – in the movies or on TV. I don’t know why. I guess it’s one of our child-like characteristics.

It happens a lot in New York. You’re just walking along and suddenly, there’s Tiffany’s and you’re looking around for Audrey Hepburn with her coffee and croissant.

It doesn’t have to be New York though. See these steps? Those are the front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the triumphant music that accompanied Rocky on his victorious ascent.

One of the stops on one of our day trips in England with The English Bus was Oxford. It’s likely, unless you’ve never gone to the movies or watched TV, that you’re very familiar with Oxford.

I loved Brideshead Revisited, the 1981 11-part television series. (I also loved Evelyn Waugh’s novel on which the series was based.) The two young men, Charles Ryder and Lord Sebastian Flyte, met at Oxford and there are beautiful scenes, outdoors and indoors, of the time they shared there.

Since we returned from England, we’ve seen the movie Testament of Youth, based on the pacifist Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I. Vera also went to Oxford and it was nice to see her there so soon after we had been there ourselves. This is a scene of them making the movie.

And just in the last week, watching the legal drama TV series called Silk, I saw Oxford again when one of the barristers travelled from London to Oxford on a case.

Oxford, made up of 38 separate colleges, is considered to be the oldest university in the English-speaking world. There are records of teaching there that go back to 1096.

What follows are some of my favourite photos of the time we spent in Oxford. The first is, I think, the most commonly seen venue in the movies and on TV. (Don't forget to click on the photos to enlarge. You won't be sorry.)

The Sheldonian Theatre, built by Sir Christopher Wren

See William and me?

The genius of hip hop

I get a little impatient – not that I ever show it, mind you! – with people who make such sweeping statements as, “I don’t like jazz.” Or, “I don’t like classical music.” Or its subset, “I don’t like opera.”

There is so much jazz, so much classical, so many operas. How is it possible to dismiss such vast swaths of music? I hesitate to put it this way but it shows a willful ignorance to throw out such generalizations and it shows a kind of close-mindedness that is not admirable.

Having said that, I know there are music-lovers who agree with me on jazz and classical but who would never criticize someone who said, “I don’t like hip hop.” Oh yes, much easier to go along with that one, isn’t it?

There’s a lot to dislike in a lot of hip hop – the violence, the misogyny, the hatefulness – and yet, like other branches of music, there’s something to love too.

Which brings me to Buck 65, whom I’ve loved for a long time. Buck 65 – also known as Rich Terfry* from Mount Uniacke, NS – is a hip hop artist who’s a treasure. He’s a poet and a humanitarian and an astute observer of the human condition. He’s eloquent and funny.

We went to see him last evening in concert with Symphony Nova Scotia. It was a wonderful combination – our superior musicians paired with the poetry of Buck 65 made for a memorable performance.

We’re grateful supporters of Symphony NS and we choose a diversity of concerts over the season. We usually try to do at least one concert in the “pop” category. Last year, it was genius fiddler, Ashley MacIsaac. This year, the genius of hip hop, Buck 65. It’s always an eye-opener to see these artists in combination with the symphony. I recommend it if you get the chance.

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*Listeners to CBC Radio – I stopped listening to radio a few years ago – will know Rich from his hosting duties on CBC Radio 2.

TV or not TV

I don’t watch television the way some people do – that is, tucked up on the couch, feet up, snacks at hand, ready to watch the show from beginning to end. I used to, of course, because that was the only way there was to watch TV. I remember it being quite stressful.

You’d settle in to watch, let’s say, a pivotal episode of one of my all-time favourite shows, Brideshead Revisited. You just knew that as soon as you’re absorbed in it, the phone will ring. Or someone will knock on the door. Or – God forbid – there’s some kind of emergency and the news team interrupts your broadcast.

No, no. Much better to have some control over what you’re watching. The VCR started us on the road to be able to pick and choose what we watch and change keeps happening. No going back!

We have a big TV in the living room. The truth is, William uses that TV with the PlayStation and it’s rarely used for anything else. There’s a small TV in the kitchen which I can see from my computer chair (I can see the big TV too) and on rare occasions, we’ll have both on – maybe for a big game or election returns or the Oscars.

We eat late so it's usually early-to-mid evening when I go to the kitchen to start meal prep. I turn the little TV on to one re-run or another. I can’t see the screen from where I’m working so a re-run is just what I need. I know everything that’s going to happen! As TV is visual, there are times when no one is talking but there’s a lot of laughter and I may have to take a few steps over so I can see what’s going on. That’s okay though.

I leave the little TV on all evening, usually at a low volume, just for background and the occasional laugh.

But my real TV watching has shifted to morning. I watch Netflix, first for a little while before I get out of bed, then while I’m moving around getting ready for the day. I love the small tablet I watch on; I enjoy the intimacy.

Depending on my position and what else is going on, I might use ear-phones. There’s something about it that reminds me of the very first transistor radio I had when I was a teen, lying in bed, listening to music that only I could hear.

I also watch programs on my tablet while I’m walking on the treadmill. I tried reading books on the treadmill but I found it difficult. Too much up and down.

I’m not at all a binge-watcher. I’m fairly moderate and although I might watch every day, it probably only amounts to a couple of hours – out of 24. I often watch in fairly small increments but that's what makes it so satisfying to be in control. I watch when it suits me.

Broadchurch

In no particular order, here are some of the dramatic series I’ve watched: Damages (an American legal thriller television series starring Glenn Close); House of Cards (US) (an American political drama television series, an adaptation of the BBC's mini-series of the same name); The Politician’s Husband (a political drama series about a marriage between two politicians, and what happens when the wife's career starts to overshadow her husband's); House of Cards (UK) (a British political thriller television drama serial in four episodes, set after the end of Margaret Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister); Bloodline (a dramatic thriller that explores the demons lurking beneath the surface of a contemporary American family in the Florida Keys); Downton Abbey (I don’t have to tell you); Call the Midwife (a view into the colourful world of midwifery and family life in London's East End during the 1950s); The Good Wife (an American television legal and political drama); Broadchurch (a British television crime drama); Silk (a British series about life at the Bar, the dilemmas and problems that modern day barristers have to face, and what it means to become a silk.)

I liked all these series but my absolute favourite was Call the Midwife. I liked it so much better than (sacrilege warning!) Downton Abbey. I found the lives of the midwives and the people they interacted with so much more significant and important than the nobles of Downton Abbey. I also found it to be better TV. Downton Abbey, in my view, was quite predictable and structured according to a formula and never managed to live up to its TV ancestors, e.g. The Forsyte Saga or Upstairs, Downstairs.

I also watched comedy: Episodes (a show about a British husband-and-wife comedy writing team who travel to Hollywood to remake their successful British TV series, with disastrous results); The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (a show about Kimmy who was rescued after 15 years in a cult and decides to reclaim her life by venturing to New York, where she experiences everyday life with wide-eyed enthusiasm); Grace and Frankie (their lives are turned upside down when they learn that their husbands have fallen in love with each other and want to get married. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.)

I found Episodes hilarious with so many believable premises and such appealing characters. I recommend it.

And then there was Mad Men – but that’s a whole other story for another time.

Pass the remote

I watched the Emmys a couple of weeks ago and realized that I’ve come full circle. It used to be that I was familiar with all the nominated shows and all the actors and I could follow an awards show as one of the in-crowd. There weren’t that many channels and most of the people watching the Emmys were in the same boat as I – we watched these shows because. . .they were on.

Television has changed. There were and are lots of jokes about having 500 channels-and-still-nothing-to-watch but in fact, there is plenty to watch. Television became a medium of niche-watching – something for everyone. If you didn’t like sports, there was cooking. If you couldn’t be bothered to get used to new shows, there were channels and channels of re-runs.

I have been all these watchers but particularly the last one; it’s so easy just to keep watching Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Columbo and The Simpsons. I continued to be a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

However, society was changing and I wasn’t keeping up and so over a number of years, I could watch the Emmys and not know a single program that was in the running. (I would know of them because I’m culturally-adept. I just wouldn’t have watched them.)

As time went on, there were also a number of new players in the game of making TV shows – most notably HBO but also AMC, FX, Showtime, Netflix. They were off the regular channel list so they were much more graphic – violence, language, sex. It changed the Emmys again and I was falling further behind.

Then, last Christmas, I got a small electronic device – a tablet – and I started opening it in the morning and watching Netflix. I started with movies but then I graduated to TV series.

Before I knew what was happening, I had become a dedicated viewer of the Golden Age of Television.

I’ll continue in this vein because TV is fun to talk about. I also looked back at all the previous winners of Emmys since the awards were first instituted and it’s possible I might re-think the designation “Golden Age of Television.” I don’t know; they made some awfully good television back in the days of Four Star Playhouse, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Playhouse 90 – and many others.

They made some bad TV too but “boob tube” probably doesn’t really apply to the majority of programs.