Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • All American Boy

    Glen Powell in Running Man. My new not-so-secret thumping crush.

    Well not that new. Thumping crush developed in Guernsey Literary Potato Peal thing (though leading man gave him run for money). And got a big boost the Maverick. Bad haircut in Hitman was a blip, but nope, he is here to stay.

    He has the chiseled jaw and physicality of a boy brought up on the football field (though mildly obliterated by a strange rolling gate and then funny short, constipated steps as he gains momentum in his running about).

    I do like an American boy. The bloke Siorsha Ronan marries in Brooklyn is a case in point. Just lovely. Charm, manners, loves his Ma. Would that one of my girls would bring him home for Sunday lunch.

    Anyway, Running Man itself is another state of the nation peaon (sp?) imagining the US descent into existential nihilism (or something along those lines in lots of these things ). And there are lots of these films coming out at the moment.

    Hollywood’s liberal elite is sending out their best guns to try and drum some sense into the US electorate on such a regular basis Netflix is starting to resemble a school hall when someone has set off the fire alarm more than once in a week.

    And Powell is achingly good and wholesome as a working man who stands up for his team and for whom family is everything (wife and kid are equally beautiful and wholesome). He saves lives and then sets about killing lots of nasty men with big knives.

    Anyway, I recommend it as long as you remember that I got there first on the whole Glen crush thing. Rather like I had a Wee Pash for Hamish before everyone else jumped on the Robert Carlisle bandwagon 30 years ago. Finders keepers.

  • Historical Sub-Category

    Feminist ire has been piqued by FB post on the origins of the term “mansplaining” (after a seminal author had her own book explained to her by a man who continued to pontificate after being advised that he was lecturing the author herself).

    I am starting a campaign to term any historical account or discussion that looks at any event entirely or largely through a male lens as men’s history.

    This is as opposed to “history” which has been doing this for millennia.

    In this way we can clearly flag to the reader and/or viewer that the account has been created from a particular viewpoint. As do the widely accepted andused terms “Women’s History” and “Black History “.

    This should be common practice as a matter of course, as it is the next step in equitable representation. After all we do talk about “Men’s Health” in relation to prostate cancer etc.

  • Get On With It

    And govern, please.

    The latest bout of infighting, briefing, rumour mongering etc etc that has yet again engulfed the Labour Party is way too reminiscent of the Tories during the Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak years.

    Heads need to be cracked together at Millbank (Labour Party HQ). And in Downing Street, knuckles wrapped, send to bed without supper, the naughty step if necessary .

    As they so often like to tell us, MPs work very hard on our behalf. For a healthy pay packet. So it would be really nice if they did just that.

    Starmer has a personality bypass. So what? Steering probably does have closet ambitions. Let him wait. Burned has out and proud ambitions. And shot his bolt way too soon. Corbyn is showing his complete inability to organise a p*ss up in a brewery stage left. So blo*dy what???!

    Add to that newbies on the block who have failed to navigate the complexities of the tax system, property legislation, trusts and any manner of complex legal systems which the world and his mother stumble through on a daily basis. They have rectified their mistakes so should be allowed to move on. Would that we could give someone, somewhere, the benefit of the doubt.


    Personally, I am way more interested in whether my new knee will float into view sometime in the next year as I inch my way up a waiting list (once they have put me on it, which is dependent on whether I lose another couple of pounds, which is dependent on me avoiding the crisp aisle), whether useful action on getting young people out of bed and into school/training/work is taken, whether a tiny smidgeon of my disposable income will be redirected into essential funding for social care.

    With important debates happening on the sidelines, we seem to be having our attention directed to political shenanigans rather than progress in any direction. I think progress is happening. It is slow and bumpy. But I think it is happening.

    If attention is focused on said progress, we might trundle down that road a bit quicker. Because it would be really great to see the light at the end of a tunnel. Any tunnel. Don’t mind which.

  • Radio Silence

    The fizzing wrath of BBC News bods continues apace as Justin Webb positively spits out a request for someone senior to come out and defend the corporation on the Today programme. (Spot the person having a cup of tea while playing Spider Solitaire, in bed, with the cat).

    Meanwhile DT is now declaring that he simply has to sue because – apparently – he is doing this on our behalf. We have been defrauded by the butchering of his beautiful calming” speech, apparently. And suing for a billion dollars (a marginally less frightening figure if converted to our stronger pound) of our money is the way to de-defraud us, apparently.

    Can’t quite see how a line like “fight, fight, fight”, in whatever context, is remotely calming, but then perhaps DT has a better grasp of English than a native speaker (of English as opposed to American English) with an A’level in it and a PG Diploma in writing for newspapers.

    Apparently we need the great orange saviour to come to our rescue. I think not. We – the GBP – collectively probably think not. Please refer to previous pontificating on defence of our Sceptred Isle.

    Speaking of which, I think WordPress, on which I pontificate, needs to digest some Shakespeare for breakfast. It keeps underlining Sceptred as though I have misspelt it.

    Have I? Am now going to fish out copy of Henry V to check. When the cat and I have gotten up and had some breakfast. And hung up the washing. And thought about what to do this morning. Beyond trying to remember where my collected works are stashed (I have a set, don’t ya know, on a bookshelf, probably behind the telly).

    Now I have vexed my Yankee grannies in their graves with a slightly xenophobic rant and had a good boast I about my accumulated bits of paper that validate my progress through life, I am returning to my game of Spider. Ta-ta!

  • Somewhere in the Middle

    Lies the truth.

    I am a big fan of Katie Razzle – lately seen on the News, failing to conceal her irritation with the powers that be which run her employer, the BBC.

    She also does a podcast which pulls apart a current phenomenon. In this case cancellation culture.
    In Anatomy of a Cancellation she has a good go at giving all and sundry in the hoo-hah over Kate Clancy’s memoir on teaching, The Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me a hearing.

    It is fascinating.

    First we hear from Ms Clancy and listen to her bewildered pain and anger at the loss of reputation and career.

    Then we hear from the critics whose own lived experience of racism in the classroom inform their pain and anger.

    Just now, I have listened to the deafening silence of the publishing world who choose to play possum rather than engage with an important debate (only to be exposed by a selection of internal emails which shed a modicum of light on the whole thing – an no one comes up smelling of roses).

    I shall listen on my way home to the episode on the most important and central people in this, namely the students who featured in the book – unnamed but described in what many now see as problematic detail – and how they feel about their portrayal and the enormous fuss that has ensued.

    At the end of this binge listen, I will weigh it all up and conclude – I have little doubt – that people offend, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. People get cross and the nature of social media that this upset is frequently screaming with expletives and capital letters. But also that change tends to result from challenge, particularly when it is vigorous. There are casualties along the way, but a norm will shift and progress in one direction or another will be made.

    Or I may not conclude this at all. Being a white, middle aged woman, former teacher and would-be writer who has made many errors in navigating the modern world of education, largely without malice and usually with much reflection on what went wrong.

    This kind of piece is why the BBC and its journalists deserve our support. Because every once in a while they get to do long form, well-researched pieces that allow all possible parties to have their say. The rest of the time we can but marvel at their endless capacity to sum up major national and international events in a 90 second piece to camera, keeping us informed.

    And they strive for balance continuously.

  • Trump to the Rescue?

    Okay, there is some decidedly twisted logic in this one…

    The BBC is on the rack. The Conservatives and Reform are howling with vigorous outrage. Ed Davie is being sensible (though likely deciding against diving into a silo as an illustrative stunt). Phone ins are lit up by people who really do have better things to do, but welcome the distraction of waiting on the line for their 30 seconds of fame.

    The country is divided – like it wasn’t already – and BBC executives are holed up in wherever they are held up in these days, frantically waiting for the Board (on which I have already pontificated) to stop making a pig’s ear of this fiasco.

    I digress. Back to DT.

    If there is anything more likely to induce a volte face among the Great British Public (GBP) it is DT threatening a law suit. For one billion dollars no less. Not one to waste an opportunity to make some money, he has slapped a big figure on making a big fuss. In a state where the judiciary will take a sympathetic view of the anguish and trauma that he has “suffered”.

    As the BBC keeps telling us – in the gaps between Strictly and Casualty – it is Our BBC. If the NHS is our national religion, the BBC is our front lawn. The occasional weed doth pop up on occasion but it is otherwise a well tended display of what is best about our Sceptered Isle.

    Therefore we will indulge in a rare bout of national unity not involving a royal wedding or a football, and rally ourselves to defend Our BBC. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the skies… etc. And we are right to do so. Because it is an institution we should be proud of and protect.

    Of course, this may be an own goal on the part of DT. As it is an opportunity to rehash the whole January 6th episode and examine what he did say in that “perfect” speech (in which he came dangerously close to inciting sedition if not leaping over that particular legal bar) Americans may sit back with a furrowed brow and contemplate the precipitous slope they are trundling down.

    So let us gather our hoes and shovels (who has a pitch fork these days?) and sit in a traffic jam trying to get to the beach. Let us all cry England (Scotland, Wales, Nothern Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands…) for Harry (or Charlie) and St George, (St Andrew, St David, St Patrick… ). Enough inclusive crow-barring for the morning. You get my point.

  • Rolling Heads

    They have indeed! The BBC DG and Head of News have been allowed to resign (not sacked, you note). But I am curious as to the position of the commissioning editor of Panorama from whence the two key scandals of this year have emerged.

    An otherwise interesting and heart breaking documentary on the children of Gaza was blighted by editorial impartiality (though it would take a seriously determined ostrich to wilfully ignore the terrible trauma being inflicted on a generation of Palestinians).

    And why an incendiary speech clearly inciting violence on 6th January needed splicing is beyond me. Foolish if not downright idiotic.

    The Board needs to go in my none too humble opinion. They have dealt with this poorly and ineffectively. I am now listening to a bloke I was once on a student newspaper with, talking about what should be happening now. Failure of governance. Yup.

    But he has also made an important point. Namely, a huge news organisation will make mistakes. It’s inevitable. Where the senior managers have fallen short is in the way this has been dealt with. And that has been farcical.

    As the Royals have recently found. The response has been more of a problem than the original “crime”. The fizzing of journalistic wrath was palpable on last night’s news when two senior correspondents were quizzed by Jane Hill. Their reputations are on the line and they have been failed by the powers that be.

    Personally my measure of whether the BBC is getting the balance right is whether both sides of any debate are squeaking. They are. And that , if there is anything remotely resembling a light at the end of the tunnel, is a good thing.

  • Cannot Wait

    For the fashion for kinky hair to go out of fashion. I am currently watching Nobody Wants This on Netflix as my antidote to insomnia. Kristen Thingumy has one of these kicking haircuts. At 4am it vexes me in a quite irrational way.

    Do none of these women see that it makes them look like they went to bed with wet hair and/or took a pony tail out and didn’t apply a hairbrush?

    Many moons ago there was a fashion for smoothing hair in the manner of folically challenged man. I went to the hairdresser prior to presenting at a PTA event and met the results of the youthful salon artiste with dumbstruck horror. She had blithely delivered the latest fashion without a thought to my high forehead and thin, prone to frizz hair. I don’t know who was more mortified. Her or me.

    Anyway, for some reason I am coupling this foolish trend with the recent Vogue article which purportedly declares that having a boyfriend is embarrassing.

    Now, it is extremely important that no women is defined by who she spends her time and possibly her bed with. It galls me no less than anyone else when a successful woman receives praise for achievement in the same sentence as a quick aside on who she is married to.

    However, no one, categorically no one, should find being in any relationship of whatever sort embarrassing. That is ridiculous.

    By jumping on this bandwagon and declaring the person who – with any luck – thinks about you and what makes you happy more than once a week, to be an embarrassment, is a nasty, hurtful message . Namely, I am ashamed that I have a ‘“boyfriend “ because I am independent, self assured modern woman, so could you please duck behind a bush when we are walking in the park, and see one of my independent, self assured friends .

    Getting the nuance of this kind of debate is essential. “Embarrassing” and “embarrassment” are negatives. No one should be made to feel the first or suffer the latter, whatever their gender. It’s an easy adjustment.

    Namely, I am happy to be on my own, doing what I want to do without having to check in with anyone else or credit him with holding down the fort while my career scales stratospheric heights (which you would likely be expected to do without credit the other around…).

    And it is fine that when and if I meet someone who I want to argue over the dishwasher with, I will still be independent and self-assured and available for anyone who needs supporting while smashing the glass ceiling, this Tuesday week or next. You never know, you might even persuade him to hold the sledge hammer while you climb the ladder.

    I slightly struggle with the empathy demonstrated by some men who express support for women and make the arguments to their fellow fellows. So long has this been my cause celebre that I still struggle to hear such protestations as genuine and heartfelt. However, I am turning over a new leaf this week and am going to give these young whippersnappers the benefit of the doubt. And stop laying private bets that they still take their washing home to mummy.

    Must find that Vogue article and read it…

  • Second Sleep

    After reading Robert Harris’s – not up to his usual standard – book a year or two ago and then a BBC article on the sleeping habits of medieval Brits, I am obsessing about the concept of the Second Sleep.

    Primarily this is because I wake up at roughly 4am almost every night and fail to go back to sleep.
    If I was a medieval huswyf (just made that up) I would be doing some household task and getting ahead of the game. Rather than sitting on the sofa, trying to find something other than the shopping channel to watch while I have a cup of tea and play on my phone.

    I have decided to accept this nightly ritual and stop fretting that my eight hours has been interrupted yet again. I am embracing a BBC News travel programme on Mozambique and its renewal after decades of civil war, pictures of which littered the nightly news as a child.

    Oooo someone is about to be charged by a bull elephant. He’s 40+ years old and doesn’t like cars because it reminds him of the civil war and rampant poaching. A fascinating take on “elephantine memory’’.

    Now we are hearing about a programme to show school girls that there are other options out there other than early marriage and children born from children. A female park guide is busily recruiting the next generation of wildlife wardens at a school where the students joyfully engage with learning.

    What a hopeful piece of journalism. Reminding us that Africa is a huge continent which isn’t mired in conflict, foreign exploitation and famine, everywhere, all the time. In a lots of parts, maybe. But not everywhere and not forever.

    And it’s back to Stav and the weather. Plant some bulbs tomorrow methinks. Or today, as is.

  • Expensive Promises

    Are the purview of left wing politicians. Universal childcare and free buses are the new order of the day in New York following the victory of Mandan.

    These are not promises that will be easy to deliver and may indeed be impossible to deliver. The electorate may know this. Or they may be delusional in thinking the magic money tree can be shaken and gold will rain down. Rather than migrate to the Caymans where the gold can sit in a shiny pile earning even more money.

    But were they voting for the idea of greater fiscal equality and an end to the punishing expense of living in America’s gateway city? Was this a resounding chorus of “Enough, already!” as the president adorns his toilets with marble and solid gold sinks?

    I hope it is a signal. That you cannot promise the earth to the electorate and then deliver only unto yourself and your equally wealthy friends.

    Now a major coastal metropolis built by and occupied by immigrants is a different kettle of fish from small town rural America where immigrants parked their wagons 150+ years ago.There are still plenty of Trump fetishists who think chaos is running through the streets of Portland and Chicago and the antics of ICE are entirely justified.

    But it is an important signal. To the Democratic old guard who seriously need to consider whether they have too much baggage and too little speed and agility to give DT a run for his money.

    Baraka Obama sailed to the highest office of the land because he was a new, fresh face, with energy and ideas that moved the m country forward.

    The electorate may have been disappointed in the end as promises were either not fulfilled or only fulfilled in part, but they were still signalling a desire for change.

    And that is the end of this bout of pontificating. My parking is about to run out. Tatty-bye.