Feeling like a hermit!

I like to sleep with the bedroom window slightly open. A little bit of fresh air makes for a much better sleep. This morning at 3.30, however, I had to get up and close my window as the wind had clawed it wider open than anyone would find reasonable. The curtains were blowing around and the wind was howling round the room. Not good! This is what I have to put up with at the moment; the world outside has become a wild, wet and windy place into which I venture as little as possible. 

If this continues we will turn into the kind of recluses who only sneak out occasionally to buy essentials, eventually not even opening the curtains and spending the whole day in dressing gowns! 

As it is, apart from Saturday and Sunday when we buy proper, i.e. printed on paper, newspapers, much of our contact with the outside world is via electronic media. This must stop! But in the meantime, I am snug inside my little shell, well away from the wild, wet and windy weather! 

As protests go on in various places about the recent events in Paris, our politicians are making their presence evident. This is hailed as one of the first steps in the election campaign. They must not be seen to be making real political hay out of it (Nigel Farage has been roundly criticised for doing that)). They must not be seen to argue with each other; a respectful agreement that the events are horrible will suffice. But they need to be seen. One newspaper expressed it this way: " Such occasions reward incumbency (assuming the incumbent is up to scratch) and make politicians momentarily intriguing, compelled as they are to express what we are feeling, rather than to fight one another. That is one reason why Cameron has been persuaded by aides to post short video clips, not much longer than a minute, on social media. “We know that the spotlight has a much higher wattage since last week,” according to one senior Cameron ally." 

And so, everything becomes a media opportunity! "The spotlight has a much higher wattage" indeed!!! Another reason to withdraw further into our hermit cave! 

In our hermit cave, as well as working on translation projects, we have been catching up on watching TV series we missed in the past. For a largely non-violent pair, we have watched a fair amount of violence, ranging from "Deadwood", Wild, Wild West violence with a prodigious amount of swearing, to "The Shield", American cop-corruption violence with slightly less swearing but more blood! 

In between times we have watched a couple of beautifully made, much less violent films. The first was a Danish film, "A Royal Affair" set in the reign of the somewhat deranged King Christian VII. (Oddly we recognised certain actors from Scandinavian drama we have watched in recent years. I also recognised bits of language. I wonder if I could learn Danish or Swedish from watching films and TV series.) The other was Jane Campion's interpretation of the Henry James Novel, "Portrait of a Lady". Now I feel the need to go and read the book. 

Our latest foray into series catch-up has been "Sherlock", a 20th century version of the old detective stories, where Sherlock uses nicotine patches instead of a pipe. The ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, much acclaimed as one of the attractive men of the moment, looked a little odd to me as Sherlock. I found myself wondering whether they had done something special in the make-up department to make him look strangely waxy of complexion, thus making him seem even more different from "normal" people. Still, it is an interesting enough piece of nonsense. It makes a change from out and out violence and swearing. 

Stuck in the hermit cave, I shall watch more of it!