A DAY WITH THE MISTRESS BORGHESE

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

A PLACE TO CALL HOME

If you have been a visitor here over the years, you'll know I don't watch but a small handful of American tv shows. I have always watched my shows on PBS or on the BBC channel I get. Some of my favorites are almost all of the Brit comedies....Waiting for God, and Last of the Summer Wine among my favorites. I also enjoy Ballykissangel, Father Brown, Doc Martin, The Tunnel, Call the Midwife, Last Tango in Halifax, Little Britain, Luther and Grantchester, And I love me some re-runs of Rosemary and Thyme and Midsummer Murders. I also watch three Austrian shows that we are behind a couple season of here. The Doctor Blake Mysteries is pretty good, but I recently came upon another recently called, A Place to Call Home. They just started airing the first season here. Have any of you seen it?

A Place to Call Home is an Australian television drama series, set in rural New South Wales in the period following the Second World War, it follows Sarah Adams, who has returned to Australia after twenty years abroad to start a new life and ends up clashing with wealthy matriarch Elizabeth Bligh played my the lovely Noni Hazlehurst.

Noni plays the headstrong and stubborn matriarch of the Bligh family beautifully. She is at first rude and cruel to Sarah because she is Jewish, and having an affair with her son, but she grudgingly mellows over time. But what caught my attention was the character of James Bligh, the only son of George and the late Elaine, who marries a woman named Olivia, but is tormented by the realization that he is gay. James ends up having a brief romantic involvement with a guy named Harry Polson, but when much of the village learns of Harry's true nature, he leaves Inverness for a new life elsewhere. These two had great chemistry....and it doesn't hurt that both actors are easy on the eyes.

This is Harry

Harry and James

Harry pops a question....

While it's only season one, I understand the storyline of James is a fascinating one, and I will look forward to watching it. James will experience everything from forbidden love to family disapproval and even horrific “treatments” including electroshock. I already have knowledge that James falls for Doctor Henry Fox, the doctor who helps to save his father George's life after he is shot. Henry then goes on to befriend James, and they realize their mutual attraction to each other is stronger than mere friendship. And I hear that Harry returns also in a later season, and that James and Henry will hit the sheets.

The three actors are quite amazing in their roles.

David Berry

Dominic Alburn

Tim Draxi

Have any of you seen this show? I'm hooked already.

TODAY'S CHUCKLES

Did I tell you I went to the opera and ran into Trump ....who flashed me?

The poor Lad was shopping recently.

You know it's what's she's thinking.

My kind of vending machine.

Dorothy Zbornak gives Trump the best advice yet.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard this.....

Have you seen my new door shingle for when the Mormon's or Jehovah Witness drop by?

Monday, April 16, 2018

SONNET 98

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.