Hawt

My mother (a youthful 76) complains as soon as Adelaide's temp reaches 28C. But when presented with these extremes she's like a Londoner in the Blitz. She adopts a near-gleeful stoicism: its little old lady vs the elements, where parsimony & determination ultimately trump the forces of nature....
TFA

Thus said one of Pav's commenters recently.

It struck a chord with me, because I am usually the first to whinge when I'm hot. A couple of years ago, as regular readers will remember, I whinged mid-Woodford to Best Beloved that if he REALLY loved me, he'd take me south instead of north at the hottest time of the year. He did, he does, he took me to Tasmania last year (where I had a meek little whinge in the middle of the night at Cradle Mountain when we were freezing in a tent in January and the airbed had just gone down, but nothing major: I loved and appreciated the cold).

But this heatwave has brought out the same qualities as TFA's mother: I am rallying and being the soothing voice that jollies along a VERY grumpy BB as he rails fruitlessly against the heat, c**ksucking meteorologists and our lack of aircon. I find myself getting cheerier and chirpier in the face of his bad mood. It's one of the weirdnesses of our marriage... if I'm grumpy, he'll get grumpy and join in. If he's grumpy, I'll cheer up and try to jolly him out of it. I wish he could play my way, then we'd have fewer fights, as I'm very easy to pull out of a bad mood.

So I have sent a cranky BB off to the movies today while I try to wrangle a couple of websites. He has gone to two movies in a row -- we are working our Club Dendy cards hard, so he's getting one movie free. I think he's gone to see The Wrestler and Valkyrie. I'm surprised at the latter choice; I guess his personal ban against all things Cruise has been overcome by his fascination for all things Nazi.

Yesterday we went to see Milk. I ran into Crit on the way in, and got to stroke the gorgeous soft head of her baby as she sat next to me in the movie foyer, trying desperately not to have to go out in the heat again with him. We had to line up a bit to get a good seat, because despite it being the first week of such an excellent film in a city with a very strong gay community, Dendy put the movie in one of its little theatres, and of course it was sold out. Tuh.

I highly recommend Milk. Julie Rigg said on this week's RN Movie Time that she's never seen him play such a personable character, but she'd obviously never seen I am Sam. It's true, though; Penn's Harvey Milk is adorable: compassionate, intelligent, strategic, and everything you want a politician to be. If the real man was half as nice, it makes what happened to him twice as tragic.

One of the things I loved as well was the typography in Milk's campaign ephemera. I'm sure it's wonderfully accurate (I'm sure many San Francisco households still have their Harvey Milk souvenirs), and the use of stark, sans serif wood type on the posters was stark yet stylish. Touches like that make movies really enjoyable for me.

I came away from the movie sad and cranky (as I always am when I am reminded of The Twinkie Defense) but highly energised. It's a fabulous movie, now my second favorite next to Slumdog Millionaire.

I'm counting down the hours: we get Bumblebee back tonight! He has one full day at home before school starts on Tuesday. I think he's going to want to spend at least some of it in my studio with his Warhammer gear...

I'm going to leave you with wishful thinking about somewhere cold: