Which season is it?

There's a rosebud trying to bloom in my garden. But it's winter. Climate change? Maybe.

Post-retreat syndrome...

took on more vivid reality when I came home on Friday to a bomb scare round the corner from my house. Police, blocked roads, the whole schmeer. Lovely retreat though...

Goodbye, Adrienne Shelly

She was found dead in New York, in what may have been a suicide. I loved her performances in The Unbelievable Truth and Trust, and wrote my master's thesis on Hal Hartley. This sad news has just floored me, my thoughts are with her friends and family. She was such a quirky and touching actress, and a lovely woman, by all accounts.

*** It was probably murder, a construction worker has been arrested. How awful.

Red wine is lovely poison

Hello my dears. Sorry for the lapse in service, at my delicious birthday meal I drank a bit too much Sicilian red. It was like nectar, but I paid for it the next day! More on Sunday, after I get back from St Non's.

A big smoooch to everyone who has sent me presents, cards, e-mails, texts and kind thoughts on this, the first day of my 38th year! I smell more fragrant than Pepe, honest! Ah ze l'amour! Ah ze toujour! Ah ze grande illusion!

*** Have I got the numbers right?

"Courage is not the abnormal," wrote poet Jack Gilbert.
"Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
It is the thing steady and clear. The marriage, not
the month's rapture. The beauty that is of many days.
The normal excellence, of long accomplishment. Not
the Prodigal Son, but Penelope."

Penelope from The Odyssey, not Penelope Pitstop!
Click on the photo to make it bigger, if you so desire.