another day, another year

To mark the fact that I am another year more ancient we went to Norwich, Norfolk is full of gnarled old peasants so I don't stand out too much.
I bought three vests with my birthday money, need I say more?



Apart from wandering round shops thinking, I am so old I don't really need to buy any more anything, we went to the flics to see Made in Dagenham, a British film about how the lady workers in the Ford car plant struck for equal pay. This was 1968!




I had heard it wasn't strictly accurate but was amusing and informative. Largely it was neither, unless the sight of large women working in their huge bras amuses you [because the machine shop was swelteringly hot in summer, freezing in the winter and leaked all year round].
The women who did actually strike were on news programmes of the time and shown at the end, nothing like the skinny young actresses taking their part.
A borrowed pillar box red dress, supposedly from Biba had a part in the fiction, looked nothing like the stuff I used to save up to buy from Biba at the time. Hairstyles seemed to range from perms to beehives with a page boy for the star, basically I hated it.
I grew up on a council estate [but not in a cardboard box] surrounded by Fords workers telling tales of men falling into the molten metal in the foundry shop. We lived out of the women machinists catchment area I guess, as they would cycle or bus to work, so no tales from the sweat shop of the time.
Happily we got a taxi back and the driver was a London cab driver transplanted into what he regarded as the sanity of the countryside. We had a good rant about it all.
However it got me out and about after midnight [only one late showing, though Norwich has 4 cinemas] which is an extremely uncommon occurrence so basically a tick.

Next day we went to the castle, thus the tapestry at top.
There is an strangely hung exhibition there of Art of Faith thru the ages. From medieval paintings to patchwork quilts. The pagan wheel was interesting, wrapped twigs and ribbons, sat somewhat uncomfortably with the other more formal stuff.


Back home, as everywhere, the leaves are going yellow, orange, bronze, bang, as they crash down It is going to be a quick autumn. Took Hatters for a walk this morning after the hail storm and got all the way round before the next deluge.

Should have gone to a tutorial yesterday [doing this creative writing course - always wanted to so I thought I had better get on with it while I can still tap a key] but the other dozen or so students in this region are young and effusive, judging by their on line comments. I know I would just have sat up the back and grumped and come home with a headache so decided to remain a recluse.

My next piece is possibly going to be about Lady Chatterly publication and Sabrina [not Arthur Askey] and the non sex life of teenagers before the 60s....................