It somewhat surprises me that, for all I like to think of myself as a culturally astute young lady, until yesterday I’d never once been to see a ballet.  I used to go to ballet classes when I was young but, as my ever-encouraging teacher was so fond of telling us, we were “about as graceful as a herd of elephants” (in case anyone ever needs to know, this is exactly the right way to make a bunch of five year-olds despise ballet dancing, if not develop group eating disorders).

But childhood scarring aside, I think the main reason I’ve never been to the ballet is that I have a bit of a thing about story lines.  I like to follow them near-obsessively, somewhat like a devoted sniffer dog at a baggage carousel.  If I become even temporarily lost or confused by a book or a film I’m liable to crossing my arms and huffing.  I’m definitely not the best at sitting back and letting something wash over me.

But ever since I saw The Artist a couple of weeks ago I’ve become slightly more open to the idea that you really don’t need to have dialogue, or a narrator, to follow something.  That actions really can speak louder than words, if you’ll mind the cliché.  The Artist was incredibly easy to follow as it turned out – the music, the facial expressions and the movement all played their part in ensuring the audience wasn’t left in the dark.

And the same, by and large, goes for the ballet.  Although there were a couple of moments yesterday where I found myself thinking, “but wasn’t she…?” or “but why is he…?”, on the whole, I got it.  And small pockets of minor incomprehension were not even remotely capable of spoiling the fun I was having overall.  Because therein lies the other thing about ballet: it’s just so pretty to look at that it doesn’t really matter if you’re just a wee bit lost, some of the time.  In fact, the storyline almost becomes irrelevant, so profoundly enjoyable is it to sit in front of a live orchestra and to watch colourful tutus, lithe limbs and pointed toes as they leap and float around a stage.

I was amazed by how much I loved it.  Ballet?  A. Good. Thing.

What new stuff have you tried recently?

Image above from here.

I eased myself back into work this week by climbing into bed at 9pm each night with my laptop, a hot drink and the BBC’s recent 3-part adaptation of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Despite “studying” Great Expectations at high school, I’ve never actually read it.  Aged 16 I was far more interested in boys than literature so I skimmed the beginning, the middle and the end of my copy and scraped my way through the assignments.

To tell the truth, even now I’m not much of a reader of the period classics.  I just find the characters too irritating (what, you just sit around all day dressed in a corset and five hundred petticoats, waiting for a man?  Seriously?) and the storylines are always too thin for my easily distracted mind.

Great Expectations, however, couldn’t be more enthralling.  It is a haunting, beautiful story about so many different things: family, love, madness, kindness.  And this TV adaptation was wonderful.  The casting was perfect and Gillian Anderson, who I’d previously not really rated as a serious actress, really stood out as Miss Havisham.  It was just brilliant, in so many ways: the costumes, the dialogue, the music…  If you have a spare three hours to play with this weekend I’d seriously recommend giving this a go (it’s on iPlayer).  It really is the best thing I think the BBC has shown in ages.

What TV did you enjoy over the festivities?

This post is dedicated to the general awesomeness of my local library.  Or rather, to the general awesomeness of the tiny “mobile library” that sits outside my local library while said library undergoes a year-long renovation (yup, year-long.  I keep thinking that there must be some really special reason for this.  Like the council has commissioned a herd of tiny, artistic goats to paint frescoes depicting the best scenes from all of my favourite books on the walls in there.).

So anyway, courtesy of the mobile library, yesterday I got my hands on a copy of Bossypants by Tina Fey.  Which was only published this year.  A slam dunk for all of us who believe that libraries are hip, happenin’ places stuffed full of new books that we actually want to read and not dimly lit hovels groaning with tattered newspapers from the nineties and decades-old copies of Mills & Boon (I’ll deliberately not take up my “save the libraries from spending cuts” rant here).

Now let me take a moment to confess my love for Tina Fey.  I adore this woman.  I first came across her in the film Date Night which came out last year.  Since then, I’ve discovered that she wrote Mean Girls, the chick flick that’s not actually a chick flick but a clever, ballsy, hilarious story about growing up that everyone can relate to.  Tina Fey is also the brains behind the Manhattan-based TV show 30 Rock.  Also clever, also hilarious.  You get my picture.

And the book is brilliant.  It’s sharp, it’s sassy and it really did make me laugh.  Tina Fey is a real person.  You can imagine her snorting when she laughs, or eating cold pizza for breakfast and not actually giving a damn what anyone thinks about it, which I love.  In case you remain unconvinced as to why you should join me in making this woman your first (and possibly only) celebrity role model, here are five of her pearliest pearls of wisdom, courtesy of Bossypants:

• “By nineteen, I had found my look.  Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts and wrestling shoes.  To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack.  I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever.  The shirts allowed me to express myself with cool sayings like “There’s No Crying in Baseball” and “Universität Heidelberg,” the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the fanny pack held all my trolley tokens.  I was nailing it on a daily basis.  Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible.”

• “How can I give her {Fey’s daughter} what Don Fey {Fey’s father} gave me?  The gift of anxiety.  The fear of getting in trouble.  The knowledge that while you are loved, you are not above the law.  The World-wide Parental Anxiety System is failing if this many of us have made sex tapes.”

• “I think the first real change in women’s body image came when J-Lo turned it butt-style.  That was the first time that having a large scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty.  Girls wanted butts now.  Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them.  And then, what felt like moments later, boom – Beyoncé brought the leg meat.  A back porch and thick, muscular legs were now widely admired.  And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realised that all shapes and sizes are beautiful.  Ah ha ha.  No I’m totally messing with you.  All Beyoncé and J-Lo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful.”

• “It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good.  I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”

• “We should leave people alone about their weight.  Being chubby for a while (provided you don’t give yourself diabetes) is a natural phase of life and nothing to be ashamed of.  Like puberty, or slowly turning into a Republican.”

Convinced yet?

I was up super early (as in, 6.30 early, woah there!) for the carboot sale this morning.  I hurried along there in what was only a mild drizzle at the time, eager to snap up the bargains before the hoards came flocking in.  Sadly for me, however, that light drizzle which I hadn’t thought would be a problem was straight up and down heavy old rain by the time I arrived.  Consequently, I got soaked, AND all those sellers I was hoping to find had evidently taken one look at the rain and decided to hit the snooze button.  Boo.

Not to be totally defeated, however, I picked up some bits for breakfast on the way back, and have since spent a happy couple of hours working through my Google Reader, drinking coffee and eating scrambled eggs, spinach and tomatoes.  Heavenly!  Here are some bits from around the internet this week…

• This article about women’s relationships with anti-depressants made me really quite irritable this week.  Probably because statistics show, time and again, that depression is not a gender-specific issue.  Far from it.  What’s your reaction?
• These pillowcase dresses from A Sewing Odyssey are both gorgeous and made with a good cause in mind.  I love it, and am already feeling inspired to try them myself.
• This makes my heart do a little dance of joy.  So simple, yet so delightful.  Via Amusing Planet.
• Yummy-looking recipes I’m bookmarking for trying (skin-friendly ones at that!): chicken and lentil stew from Lady Smaggle and tomato and herb frittata from Rose Taffy.
• A list of books to read on holiday, categorised by destination.  Helpful, no?
• Perfectly aligned sunsets in Manhattan at the moment – weirdly poetic, I think.
• OK this has just shot swiftly to the top of my ‘to visit’ list.
• I love this post by Amanda Lee on Sunday Tea.  I’m particularly attracted to the ‘no phones’ rule…

That’s all I got today!  Hope you have lovely Saturdays, whatever you’re up to!  I’m off to take advantage of free listing on eBay before heading out for dinner and drinks to celebrate a friend’s birthday later on.

Happy weekending!

Image above from We Heart It.

It’s my long-held belief that when life becomes difficult, all those little things that cause us to smile, however brief those smiles may be, must be noted down, kept under lock and key (or password protected) and never allowed to escape.  Last week was very hard for me in a very personal way, but writing this list of highlights has confirmed that it certainly wasn’t all about sadness…

• Reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer in a single sitting last night.  Such a brilliant book (substantive post on this later in the week).
• Cycling along the Water of Leith in the rain on Saturday.  Finding ourselves so tired after the outward journey that we decided to sip takeaway coffees and push our bikes home instead.  Following up our lazy cycle with a lazy takeaway and a lazy film.  Nice.
• Wandering up into the Pentland Hills on Sunday afternoon.  Reaching the top of one of them in pouring rain and rolling mist but sitting down on the grass for a cup of tea and a biscuit anyway.
• Eating risotto and cheesecake and drinking two bottles of red with friends on Friday night.  Setting the world to rights over wine is probably one of my favourite activities of all time.
• Obsessing over eBay.  Not really a highlight as such, but a constant source of distraction and, at times (like, when something sells), entrepreneurial elation.
• Organising Summer trips with my girls.  Caravanning!  Festival-going!  Book club!
• Trying out the cycle from home to new (as in September) workplace and finding that a) it’s mostly downhill and b) probably because of a) it only takes 30 minutes.  Deliberately not thinking about the cycle home for now!
• Watching my lovingly sown herb garden shoot to life.  I now have basil and coriander seedlings on the rise (come on parsley, what you playing at?)!

What was great about last week for you?

Image above from We Heart It.