MONDAY MONDAY

 

YOU EXPECTED THIS

The Old Girl's 'back at work' today after having had (for her) quite a long holiday break.

Her holiday has been at home where she worked all last year. The holiday being in not having to turn her work computer on and to work on-line since Christmas Eve. We didn't go anywhere and she spent her holiday organising the clearance and replanting of the garden, spring-cleaning the house and repainting all of the window and door surrounds that I had painted. I think that she enjoyed that and the wheelbarrow, garden mulch, tools and sack barrow I bought her for Christmas and her birthday.

'Back at work' today means that she once again takes over the study and I get booted out to the lounge. 

It's a bit of a grey and rainy day so I won't be playing golf or doing outside things hence the blogging.

As you can see I've got the laptop out of the cupboard and set it up again. 

Once I've done a couple of posts I'll retire to the lounge at the end of the house and see if I can find The Spy Who Came In From The Cold on one of the TV platforms we connect to. I've just finished reading Le Carré's book and like to then watch a TV series or film of it afterwards. I just did that with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, having read the book and then watched the 6-part TV series followed by the film. After Christmas I read A Murder of Quality and then the book. I've also read A Small Town in Germany and Call For The Dead but haven't found the films made from those yet.  I've just started The Looking Glass War and will try and find the film made on that. Next on the list will be The Honourable Schoolboy followed by Smiley's People.

Just some of John Le Carré's novels

As you may well surmise I'm a John Le Carré fan. I've just finished reading Adam Sisman's biography of him which is very enlightening in his personal history and the background to the writing of each of the novels and how some were made into TV series and films.

The process of publishing is explained in detail and I learned how a young Le Carré was bullied by publishers into onerous contracts but, as the books were so successful, he was later able to control the publication of his books and to research and write them as he saw fit. The dramatisations of them was a different matter though and some were ruined by ignorant producers and directors - The Little Drummer Girl is a case in point where the casting was totally wrong (putting Diane Keaton in as the lead was a disaster) but fortunately this was fixed later by the excellent 2018 TV series.

The BBC produced a couple of outstanding series - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People back in the 1970s and in recent times there have been great series like The Night Manager and the film The Constant Gardener. I'll watch these immediately after reading the books which I'm doing in chronological order.

If it's still raining this afternoon, instead of a walk I'll spend some time on the exercycle and can do this while watching the film. This is what The Old Girl does every day, doing about 40 minutes while catching up on films and TV series. She's been watching Marvel hero films over the holidays. These are a film genre that I can't stand so she's welcome to watch them on her own. It's meant that at night when she's watching these, and romcoms, I can watch film noir  and foreign language series like the Scandinavian thrillers of which there are so many. I've found excellent French, German, Belgian and Spanish ones as well along with some very good British and American series.

How's your day going?