The Price

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Yessss!

    I totally just found The Price (1985) on youtube!

    I did last night, anyway. The joy has not worn off yet. I watched the first episode with my sister.

    YOUR HAIR WAS SO AMAZING AUGH.

    You were wearing a FEDORA.

    And you wore a white suit with a WHITE BOWTIE. And you looked RIDICULOUSLY ADORABLE.

   You managed to make the line "I can't stand the way you brush your teeth" sound like SERIOUS BUSINESS.

who is a fox? you is a fox.

    I've wanted to see it since I read about it and the whole kidnapping scene thing in your book Other People's Shoes, which was a while ago!
    So happy.

Paton Walsh

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    An innocent friend of mine who knows I love Dorothy Sayers has gotten me A Presumption of Death for Christmas, along with another couple books.

    I probably could have been a little bit more gracious about it. My brain just snapped into "hrrrrrmmmm" mode.

    Hrrrrrmmmmm.

    She meant well. I know those books get good reviews a lot of the time. From the professionals. I've never met any fans who actually like the things. Actually I've seen some pretty strong dislike coming from fans.

    Lack of fan enthusiasm is actually the reason I haven't read any of Jill Paton Walsh's attempted Lord Peter books yet, that and picking Thrones, Dominations up off a library shelf, reading a couple pages in the middle and getting extremely bad vibes. Something is wrong here, I thought to myself. Subtly but seriously, seriously wrong.

    I s'pose I'll try the book. I didn't have to pay for it and I don't have any library deadlines, at least. I know it's terribly bad form to trash a book or series of books without giving them a chance.

    But still. Hrrrrmmmm.

Cat Among the Pigeons

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I watched Poirot: Cat Among The Pigeons with my sister last night because you were in it.

    My sister was like "I want to go to the school where Harriet Walter is the headmistress"

    And I was like "and they wear those awesome uniforms"

    and she was like "mmmm"

    and we were in perfect accordance.

yes please.

                                                    


(screencaps from here)

holiday bread

(written at a previous date)

    I can smell orange peels boiling. The smell is coming from a large pot on the stovetop; the lid of the stove is steamy and sitting askew.

    My mother must finally be making her holiday bread.

    I'm knitting a soft scarf. The half-finished scarf is red, deep red. It has lttle wavy ridges and lovely little yarnover holes.

    I'm secretly afraid that I will never be able to fall in love with a real person because I will always be thinking in the back of my mind, "he's just not Fred Astaire."

    I've never been in love with anyone real.

rotten

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Leaving aside such independent variables as tiredness, cold and hunger, is there any fouler way to be in a truly rotten mood than both being in a truly rotten mood and having "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" stuck in one's head?

    I have serious doubts.

sleepwear

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Damp pajama bottoms are horrific. It's a kind of betrayal. One spends fourteen exhausting hours in too-tight clothing and one wishes to slip into one's super-comfy tartan lumberjacky jams at the end of the  day, and then they are insufficiently dry because one's sister did the laundry this time and failed at it.

    Fourteen hours in the wrong bra is also horrific.

Star Trek

 (written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    One of my favorite things to do is as follows:

    Step 1: Go over to my best friend's house.
    Step 2: Watch an episode of the original Star Trek series with her (she's seen almost all of those) and/or her sister and/or my sister as well.
    Step 3: Come home and, when I next see my mom that evening, say to her, "So we watched an episode of Star Trek at Best Friend's."
    Step 4: Mom always, always says "Oh yeah? Which one?"
    Step 5: Fail to remember the episode title and summarize the episode in the absolute sparest, vaguest terms I can think of. (Such as "Like, there were alien shenanigans and Kirk and Spock went back in time and there was this girl," or "There was this alternate universe and Spock had, like, a goatee.")
    Step 6: See how long it takes her to figure out which episode I'm talking about and declare the episode title. (She was a huge Trekkie back in the day. Huuuuuge.)

    The last time I did this, the conversation was like

    Me: So we watched an episode of Star Trek over at Best Friend's.
    Mom: Oh yeah? Which one?
    Me: Umm, I dunno what it was called*, but they were, like, abducted, and then there was this guy in a silly coat.
    [three seconds pass]
    Mom: TRELANE
    Me: Yeah that was it

    I love what a nerd my mother was in her youth.

*This is honest. I hadn't been paying attention at the beginning of the episode due to knitting difficuties.