Dear Diary: oh, what a shaman!

A curse upon the house of (James) Frazer! Ever since Albert’s rain chants have succeeded in bringing down torrents of water, fire and air upon our heads, Albie has been insufferable, comparing himself with every ancient luminary, real and mythological, from Albertus Magnus to sky-god Zeus himself. He has taken to painting a zig-zag across his forehead (too Harry Potter, I tell Albie) and wearing a garland of oak leaves (courtesy of Corn Dollies) upon his head. To crown it all, he insists upon creating booming sounds by slapping Marcia’s motor-tarp across the wall, at intervals.
“Why bother with the tarp?” asks the less successful shaman, Steven. “The larder is filled with baked beans." Actually, beanus haricotus is the extent of our diet nowadays, so intent are we upon gathering the wherewithal for a house deposit. Marcia herself is working 25 hours a day in her care home job, with barely time for a comfort break. And I? Gentle reader, do await the next entry.

A Tribute to the Magnificent Whale

On Sunday night, the Legend channel (formerly Horror), aired the Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) as part of its Vintage Vault series. When I had finished screaming and hollering with delight, I concluded that BOF is one of the best little movies to emerge from Hollywood in the past 100 years. From its opening moment, the plot veers on a roller coaster from the heights of sublimity to the depths of ludocrity, and back up again. Overall, it is a feast of visual jokes, gothic cliches and an array of characters worthy of a Dickens’ novel: the rather pompous Henry (changed from Victor) Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who is desperate to be seen as the victim but really is the instigator of all of the mischief. Valerie Hobson plays his beautiful girlfriend, Elizabeth, while Dr Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) is the new evil genius. The irascible servant Minnie (Una O’Connor) delivers marvellous comic asides and needless to say, the inimitable Boris Karloff sparkles darkly in his original role as the misunderstood Monster. Highlights include the tender scenes where the all-too-human Monster, longing for food, warmth and friendship is drawn into the cottage of a blind old man and bonds with him, the fabulous steampunky apparatus that elevates the female cadaver to the lightening storm, and the moment she emerges from her bandages, her hairdo a combo of Egyptian queen and Marge Simpson gone wrong. We even get to meet the ghosts of Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester), her husband the poet Percy Bysse Shelley and their friend Lord Byron. When the Bride rejects her intended spouse, the Monster’s bitterness is palpably human. But I won’t spoil all the surprises: do see this masterpiece of classic cinema from the magnificent Whale.

Cracking down on...

I don’t know who first coined the phrase or whenever it fell into common currency, but according to the received wisdom of the English lexicon, “crack down” is a phrasal verb that means “to take severe action against”, a subject, presumably a person or organisation that is engaged upon activities of a dubious or criminal nature. But nowadays, the phrase has become the go-to term that expresses the merest rumblings of personal discontent, every bellyache and grumble with life, to grave political issues. While in the supermarket, I heard a woman stating that she was going to crack down on her partner’s excessive use of toilet paper. I ask you. When my brain had finished its 1001 boggles, it set about a whistle-stop tour of those finer verbs, more subtle in intent, that could be used in place of the insidious CD: discourage, explore, investigate, inhibit, modify, prevent, probe, question or simply offer an alternative. Best wishes to my consumer companion and her tissue issues.