From Ancient Greece to distant worlds

In a last ditch attempt to regain my sanity and pass next week's exam, I have booked a week off work. And to avoid addling my brain with the finer points of The Nineteenth Century Novel, I've planned a few diversions too.

The Song of Achilles is proving to be extremely diverting, and I may finish the book a little more educated about Ancient Greece than when I started.  More about that in my next post.

The Ridley Scott film, Prometheus, was my daughter's idea. A team from Earth sets off for deepest darkest space, to discover the origins of mankind. Inevitably, they find rather more than they bargained for.  But you really do need the proper trailer, in that very deep film voice...

As sci-fi films go, I do like the Alien series rather more than most.  Prometheus asks questions about our need to know where we came from and who made us.  There's lots of shooting and special effects too, of course.  And as for the aliens themselves, I never know whether to laugh or scream when they leap out at you.  Mainly I peer out from behind my hands and enjoy the thrill of it all.

This morning, it's a brief appointment with Henry James's 'The Art of Fiction', before heading off to Blackpool for an under 11s cricket match.  The sky is a rather uncertain grey, so we will be armed with a flask of coffee, waterproofs and suntan cream, since you can never tell with an English summer.  Watching cricket is a joy, providing you approach it in the right spirit.  A picnic is required, as well as warm clothing and a good book.  I've never quite mastered the Pimms and cucumber sandwich style of cricket spectating, but perhaps I'm just not that kind of girl.

And so the week will go on, with a subtle blend of sport and literature.  I'll finish the week off with Sabbat, a play about the Pendle witches, at the Dukes theatre in Lancaster.

Exam? What exam?