Three events

First, we have finally got to the end of the 1972 (or so) adaptation of 'War & Peace' by the BBC, first noticed here on the 25th January. Very good it was too, despite neither the Borodino episode nor Natasha working very well. Plus, BH thought that the closing scene of connubial bliss with Pierre & Natasha was all wrong. She couldn't see how the Pierre portrayed could possibly go for someone like the Natasha portrayed. Then this morning we read in the Guardian that the BBC are going to have another crack at it, this time in 6 episodes rather than 20, 6 hours rather than 15. I suppose one can't expect the BBC to put on something as lavish as it could manage back in the bad old days of lefties and extravagance in Bush House.

But I was puzzled by the Guardian talking of focus on the affairs of four families. I make it two and a half: the Rostovs, the Bolkonskies (one each) and the Bezuhovs (half). Maybe I will work my way to what they were on about over a good night's sleep.

Second, a session with the helpful BT help people. A pleasant and efficient operator got rid of the unwanted toolbar from my Chrome window very quickly. The trick turned out to be to uninstall it plus fiddle with a few settings. And despite spending a couple of hours faffing around the problem, it had never occurred to me to take a peek in the uninstall window of control panel to see if there was anything one might uninstall. A bonus was the reappearance of the search button in the other place (http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/).

Third, a viewing of the new 'Great Expectations'. Despite setting off from home with a positive outlook, by about half an hour in I was wondering how I was going to sit through it all. All far to fast, flashy and noisy. Painted far too loudly: Miss Haversham in a house the size of Buckingham Palace for one and London knee deep in pigs' heads and garbage for two. For me the story - about the only Dickens which I have read all the way through - see March 17th 2012 in the other place - is just a vehicle for a lot of generally gentle humour and human insight; all we have left here is a high speed version of the bones of the story. It leaves me wondering what today's BBC are going to make of a rather more serious book.

There was one odd thing about the audience at the Epsom Playhouse (how long will the cash strapped council be able to keep such a thing going? Will it be converted into some kind of a night space for youth, as so many cinemas have been already? Not least the once grand cinema in St Andrew's Street in Cambridge, now a Wetherspoons) and that was its domination by women with expensive looking hair dos, some of whom were dressed up too. The audience looked to be pretty much all pensioners like ourselves, which was fair enough for an early afternoon screening. But out of the thirty or so present - more than we often get - maybe five were men. Why do men shun Dickens? Or is it a golf time of day?

PS: we were rather put off by the notices of the recent 'Anna Karenina'. Something about the book being presented as if it was a play, inside the arch of a theatre. Wikipedia talks about somebody talking about there being 'no obvious method behind this production design madness'. I think I am inclined to let this film rest there until it appears on ITV3 - or surfaces in some car booter as a DVD. That way one is not trapped in front of the thing for how ever many hours it runs.