Showing posts with label Edward and Wallis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward and Wallis. Show all posts

Monday, February 24, 2025

Special notes to special folks

 The first M**k e-mail, there may be more, went like this

This is in response to the Unelected Felon's demand that Federal employees all submit five bullet points of their activities last week. Quite a few other unauthorized  people accepted the invitation to flood the box.  At this point agency heads are instructing employees to ignore the demand. So maybe they'll get largely trolling messages instead of whatever they expected. 

At home I'm sorting through the results when Gary eventually leaves, deciding if and how I can manage here, as an owner,  without his help, all aside from the loss of such an interesting neighbor. I wonder if he's realized he'll be cut off from chocolate cake?

If I move to rent, where? My current house is worth a whole lot more than I paid for it, so selling it would yield good $$. But the idea of moving.. Anyway there's time. And options without moving.

Meanwhile I ordered thermal drapes for kitchen and front door. They arrived last night, in fact Gary brought them in from the step. I tried them. Too short for the front door, too bulky for the kitchen, and the color was too grey.  Aside from that they were fine.  Quite a time installing and uninstalling, and by 10 am they were on the way back to the seller. I tried. The return process was the best part of the project.

Meanwhile I'm drowning my sorrows in watching a TV series about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, whose troubles were pretty much up there, too, though with nice clothes and jewels.

It's very well acted, great cast who even resemble the real life people. Wonderful Nigel Hawthorne playing legal adviser Walter Monckton, and on. 

This is a time my parents remembered very well. They had great sympathy for Edward,  as working class people did. They  found him very likeable and appreciated his concern during the depression and unemployment. They hated the Prime Minister, Baldwin, and thought he was out to get  Edward.  Much emotion over that period of constitutional crisis.   

The finer points of law escaped most people, I'm guessing.  Also his Nazi sympathies went unreported in the mainstream media, and that could have made quite a difference in understanding the delicate balance at the time.It would certainly have affected his popularity.

So you could say I'm coping with the present personal and general upheaval with the story of another upheaval, in true Greek classic theater pattern. 


This is a highfalutin way of saying I was in it for the dresses, wonderfully bias cut and fabulously constructed, great colors, and pounds of jewelry. 

Furs galore, there must have been a lot of naked animals around then. The makeup, too. Beautiful women. Patricia Hodge playing Diana Duff Cooper, remember her as the glamorous Phyllida in Rumpole? Edward's clothes were sharp and edgy, pushing the envelope in fashion. Apparently he was very interested in fashion.  Anyway, I found it on Freevee, and recommend it.

Happy day everyone. Today's about soup and tuna melt, taking advantage of the sliced cheese I ordered by mistake.  Sometimes you can see a downturn as an upturn. It takes a bit of doing, admittedly.








Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Escape into hats

Since my Christopher Guest film festival is waiting for the next offering, Princess Bride, to come in to the library, I thought I'd branch out into the frivolous (!)

Royal stuff.  Mainly about the 1936 excitement of the English  abdication when the King wanted to marry Mrs. Simpson.  There's a lot of constitutional history wound into this, and the second World War plays a role in the real life version, but the movies don't usually get into that very deeply.


No, we're in it for the hats.  At least I am.  Wallis' clothes are wonderful, and the interiors, and the cars, and the men's fashions, even, since Edward was a bit of a clotheshorse, too.  So this is my critical analysis and comparison and contrast of these three major artworks, and their production values. Or something. Hot chocolate may be involved.

I think I already saw Wallis and Edward on YouTube, but never mind. Anyway, if I have time in the evenings, I'll be watching them.  My evenings seem to get used up with reading and emailing and spinning and messaging and keeping in touch with people, and various other things.

Including baking.  In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving, I baked a dozen pumpkin cupcakes.  Just the usual old banana bread recipe, only cooked and mashed pumpkin substituted for the bananas. Jury's out on these. The pumpkin may work best in soup.

The flavor is not as good as the sweet potato, but the texture works okay.  I think Handsome Son will like them, because they're not too sweet, since the sweetness of the banana was absent.  And, for once, I omitted inclusions, since I have walnuts in the house and I'm saving them to use in the Giant Cookie for Thanksgiving Day, whichever day that turns out to be for us.

He's working on the day itself, as usual, so we'll just fit in wherever we can.  I hope it's not Monday, since the cleaners are coming that morning, but even if it is, I expect we'll manage. And there will be a clean house, no matter which day we celebrate, always a Good Thing tm.



I said a dozen, and eagle eyed readers will note that there's one missing. That's the cook's privilege, first try.  Usually eaten too hot, can't wait.


Still reading Maisie Dobbs, yet another.  This one A Lesson in Secrets is excellent, and I hadn't read this one before, a plus right there. It's set in Cambridge University, and involves not only the Secret Service and the police force, but the powers of academia, too, all very complex and interwoven.