This is what my mum says to me - what I'll get when I tell her how many films I have been watching at the London Film Festival each year.

In spite of having three days off for private reasons, I managed to squeeze in 66 films (63 and three shorts programmes) in about three weeks, (two official festival weeks and a week of industry previews before). And I know a guy who managed 93.

I ended up doing some of the review shows for Resonance FM radio in London, and decided, there should be some alternative view around, all the write-ups I've seen so far seem to have watched mainly the blockbusters of the festival and not very much of the slightly more unusual stuff.
And I decided to name my personal award after the "misunderstood" horror film director who, in the end, was played by Johnny Depp in a Tim Burton Film.

Step forward and roll up for The Ed Wood Memorial Angora Award ( copyrighted to Deadly Glamour Headquarters) 
London Film Festival 2009
And you'll get a few categories Hollywood has never heard about.

Starting conservatively:

Best Film on a Proper Budget
Mother by Bong Joon-Ho.
Excellent, deeply original script, actors, and execution, and not something where you think "oh God, I've come across this idea hundreds of times already, yawn". His previous festival film "Memories of Murder" was one of the films a few years ago which I watched by coincidence, having nothing else to do, and I was incredibly impressed. The guy fully deserves his season at the NFT in mid-November.
Runner-up: A Prophet by Jacques Audiard, which deserves every accolade it  will get. As good as The Godfather. Two and a half hours long, and I guarantee you won't be bored for a single second.

Best Film made on the filmmaking equivalent of a 50p Budget
Nymph by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang.
Two people in a tent in a forest, and a very special tree. On the surface, all is normal, but your imagination will go into overdrive. One of these films where you can't see a single spooky thing, it's all supposed to be happening in your mind..... and it will. And there's not even blood anywhere, and what you think is blood gets immediately explained as "Tree sap".

Best production design
Forbidden Door by Joko Anwar
This is the director of Kala/The Secret from last year, and he's out in full force again. Definitely from the David Lynch School of Production Design, spooky rooms, eerie lighting, weird camera angles, name it, he's got it. And not expensive either. And no idea how he gets his (occasionally quite strong) stuff past Indonesian censorship.
This is also the winner of the Exodus Award for most people walking out during the film..... (about 15, they all reacted to the same scene, I'm not giving anything away here, sorry)
BTW, he's looking for finance for his next opus, so, if you happen to have a few pounds/dollars/euros spare, contribute!

The "This needs a big screen, don't wait for TV broadcast" award
Enter the Void by Gaspar Noe
Manga Explosion in a Neon Factory. The Matrix for Junkies. Not for sensitive souls.  This will blow you away. Unfortunately, needs a screen of Multiplex dimensions to do it justice.

In contrast, the Best Understatement Award
Shared by Ander by Roberto Caston, Gigante by Adrian Biniez and Polytechnique by Denis Villeneuve
Proof that you can still make films which have something to say without being flash, brash, and in-your-face with a million special effects. The films couldn't be thematically more different, a gay coming-out drama, a surveillance camera love story and a true crime story shot in black and white. All very minimalist, they will catch you and make you think. Neither of them has any distribution in the UK yet, so hope for the ICA or similar to pick them up.

Best Actor (well, you should have that)
Thomas Turgoose in The Scouting Book for Boys
Playing a different, more insecure, character from his usual "northern lad with guts" offering, more shy, dreamy and easily embarrassed by his family.
One single scene achieved that: He's about to do something truly horrific to another person, and you can read his mind as clearly on his face as if they had put subtitles on the screen. All the feelings, forwards and back, no interruption, utterly brilliant.
And he's still so young, and has done only a handful of films. If he continues like this, he'll be the UK's Philip Seymour Hoffman for the next decade.
Runner up Anne-Marie Duff in Nowhere Boy. She and Kristin Scott-Thomas are the best thing about this ahem film. I won't say more.

Best Music
The White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights
Particularly for their cover versions of  "Jolene" and "The Wheels on the Bus" (sung on a public transport bus, yes)
And anyone who manages to get an interview of that much eloquence out of the notoriously private Meg White deserves an award anyway.

The Tears in your Eyes Award
Burning Down The House - The Story of CBGB
Hilly Kristal's battle to keep the notorious New York club open when the landlord tried to evict them for dubious reasons. The building is a fashion shop now and the club interiors are partially in a museum. At this point, Johnny Thunders should sing "You can't put your arms around a memory". Sniff.

Best Feelgood Movie
Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo by Bradley Beesley
Documentary about  female prisoners in Oklahoma (the state with the most female prisoners in the US, most in there serving for petty crime) preparing for the annual prison rodeo. Uplifting, entertaining, and you start rooting for the girls, who are generally from the wrong side of the tracks and never had a chance.
Runner-up MICMACS by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Take your date to this one.

Best Documentary Subject
My Greatest Escape by Fabienne Godet, about French long-time prisoner Michel Vaujour. 27 years inside, 17 of these in solitary confinement. A very eloquent and thoughtful man, nevertheless. One of my colleagues was so distracted with reading the subtitles on the screen next to him in the DVD room, he forgot to watch the film he was actually there to see.

The "Learn A New Thing Every Day" Award (for topics you didn't have a clue about before you saw the film)
We Live in Public by Ondi Timoner
Internet pioneer Josh Harris, who invented the equivalent of the "Big Brother" show on TV in 1999, locking up a group of volunteers in a basement in New York with all free food and amenities and filming the predictably anarchic results (shades of Themroc here).

The "Nine Queens" Award for the film most likely to get a speedy US remake, which will be not necessarily better than the original
The Double Hour by Giuseppe Capotondi.
Crime movie. with more twists and turns than a mountain path in the Italian Alps. And great actors, especially Ksenia Rappoport, the female lead.

The "I wouldn't want to be an actor here" award for most uncomfortable looking set
The Road by John Hillcoat and Valhalla Rising by Nicholas Winding Refn
Mud and ice cold on both counts. They should give an award at the Oscars for surviving something like that. And remember, you can see rain on film only if it's really bucketing down..

The "Short Film Director who will get Serious Cash for a full-length feature in No Time" Award
The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers by Arran and Corran Brownlee
They seem to be already quite well connected, otherwise they wouldn't have a guest appearance by Keira Knightley as the fairy.... The film looks like Tim Burton via Terry Gilliam on absinthe.

The Gratuitous Nudity Award for light relief
The Men Who Stare At Goats by Grant Heslov. Both Ewan McGregor and George Clooney in hospital gowns, back open.
Hadewijch by Bruno Dumont. Julie Sokolowski, the female lead. Full frontal after a shower, and then walking around in the nude for several minutes. The only award this film will ever get. (See below)

Because now, it's time for the Turkeys.
Five films which totally missed the mark for various reasons:

Bluebeard by Catherine Breillat
I thought it would be shocking or at least unconventional somewhere. It was not. Director's day off, hope the next one will be better.

45365 by Bill and Turner Ross
The WTF award, I sat through the whole film, and still didn't have a clue what was going on. And not even good camerawork. (Watch Osadne by Mark Skop instead, if you get the chance, that one is a lot better and really funny)

Feast of Villains by Pan Jianlin
Bad acting, bad camera, and a plot you could tell in 5 minutes. To their excuse, made in Beijing on the dead cheap.

Hadewijch by Bruno Dumont
Loquacious, a lead who can't act and it's totally impossible to understand the motivations of the characters.
I tried to find the details for the Sri Lankan (South Indian?)Tamil Tiger film (in which the young female lead becomes a suicide bomber) in my records, to show how you can make a film to a similar theme a million times better. Failed to find it. It was in the LFF a few years ago, happy hunting throught the back catalogues!

And the absolute clunker was:
Cold Souls by Sophie Barthes
(Which, in contrast to all the other desasters above, actually DID cost quite a bit of money)
Pretentious, saccharine claptrap,  wannabe arty, and criminal waste of Paul Giamatti, who is actually a very decent actor.


I missed (unfortunately) Air Doll by Hirokazu Kore-Eda and Morphia by Alexej Balabanov. Both were really good according to independent opinion.
And I missed Trash Humpers by Harmony Korine on purpose, as I happen to think, if you have seen one of his films, you've seen them all and don't need another one ever again, thank you very much.

The mini-reviews of many more films I've seen are here on Twitter:
twitter.com/DeadlyGlamour

Some of my film reviews made it on the radio:
resonancefm.com/

See you all next year!

Last weekend, I was whacked about by an 18-year old boy who looked vaguely as if he could be David Tennant's younger brother.

In case anyone thinks I lost it, I went to Fightcamp 09, a Historic Martial Arts Event, in Balsall Common, near Birmingham.

With the medieval tent and the stall, combining the fun with a bit of work.

As there is no point in trading when all the 200 other people are in a class,  I went to as many as I could manage as well, trying to test fight styles and teachers I haven't come across so far, after all, I have been only to one bigger event before (Days of the Blade by Boar's Tooth  in Folkestone), and only go to one class a week and don't get that much more practice.

So, I ended up trying quarterstaff fighting (Swetnam), the dagger techniques of Joachim Meyer (from 1570),  Fiore (Italian Renaissance) style wrestling, Bartitsu (from the late 19th century, as quoted by A. Conan Doyle in Sherlock Holmes), and a combative handgun class (think CSI Miami, close-up shooting and avoiding that the person grappling you gets your gun).
And bare-knuckle boxing.

I ended up practicing with a guy I had chatted to briefly in the beer tent the night before. Small, very slim, really young, reminded me a bit of my cousin, the biology student. In the evening, the guy had been walking with a stick  -  "did my knee in", and, so far, everything went as usual in class.
That is, until we started doing practice punches. At which point I realised that A) he really had a lot of experience (he had mentioned the evening before that he had tried all kind of martial arts and the damaged knee was from a fight in a pub gone wrong), and B) he was a lot stronger than he looked (he had a biceps not unlike the young Bruce Lee, and you could see the veins in his shoulders when he hit), plus C) he was fast as anything. He would do a handful of slow moves, and then speed up to full.

As long as we were practicing with the pads, all went swimmingly.  But, after a bit, you practice on each other. And I got the whacking of a lifetime. On my left lower arm while blocking punches, one big bruise near the wrist, and four parallel knuckle marks just above the elbow.
Some more of the same on the right arm. Then I got a round on the forehead (while wearing a mask) which already made my eyes water, but, hey, I'm not made of icing sugar, so, continue.

And then the accident happened.  We were supposed to punch past each other's head and then hit with the left from underneath, towards the ribs. I did accordingly, and he jumped past my right side, and, as we were barefoot, due to the flooring in the hall, he caught (probably) the heel of his right foot on my right big toe, and bent it backwards. It made a loud click. The advantage of all my yoga practice and the flexible joints showed, it went right back in again, which didn't prevent it from swelling up immediately and hurting like b#ggery. The trainer ran for an icepack, and I had to lie down, because my eyes were watering so much.

It all helped, I didn't even want to take a painkiller, just to make sure I wouldn't inadvertedly damage the whole thing even more, and two hours later I decided to go to the next class, the Bartitsu one , and surprise, D (Bruce Lee Junior) was in there as well, with his two mates. And, to his credit, he offered me to hit him properly, while just standing there. In the Solarplexus and the stomach, one-two style, and he didn't even flinch, and said "you can do that harder, you know..." (I did. He still didn't move.)

On the next day, I had a ring-shaped purple bruise all around the toe joint. And a new idea. Because I wasn't the only one with bruises, and most people were positively showing them off (also fingers in splints, two dislocated fingers immobilised with tape, a bb pellet gun mark at the back of the neck, and a bitemark on the arm), I took some more photos of other people's marks.
Including the truly spectacular ones who won a prize at the end of the event. And the winner was a girl.

So, anyone who thinks that dom females are really a bunch of wusses who can't cope with pain themselves, can think again.

As the work at Deadly Glamour Headquarters is currently not as plentiful as I would like, and there's only so many hours you can fill with designing new things, reading, knitting and the internet, I created some more fun for myself. And it has grown legs.

Speaking of Beer Tent Hall of Shame. Go to reenactment events, and take photos in the beer tent of people in advanced states of inebriation and merriment. Post them on facebook, so more people get aware of you (and, if the financial situation of the planet improves, they might even buy some jewellery....) 
Watch people tagging themselves and their mates. And somehow, being female, you get loads of men (and occasionally dishy ones, who are in theory almost young enough to be my kids) to flash their bottoms. Jeez.

I have done three sets now, and an extra one at Kelmarsh Festival of History, the sauna of the Russian WW2 reenactors next door. Visited by a group of elderly ladies dressed up as nuns, walking from camp to camp, and taking confession from the all and sundry. Hilarious.

And in that beer tent, I realised I have a problem. This was my first event with reenactment after WW1. I bumped into a group of guys dressed in full Third Reich Nazi soldier finery with swastikas and all the bits. It made my hair stand on end.  Particularly because one of them tried drunkenly to chat me up, in German......On the next day, I realised, I'm not the only one, a German trader I was next to at another event told me he had turfed one out of his tent earlier:  "I don't want your business, get lost". He's an old punk, and he drew the line, to the detriment of his wallet.
I have to add that, in Germany, anything that sounds of "glorifying the Third Reich" is illegal, and would give you a trip straight to the slammer. You would be allowed to wear the uniform, but no insignia. (I collected an insult in the winter anyway, with my grey UK Buck House Guards greatcoat - "Nazi coat" - Not joking. It doesn't even look vaguely similar, just the colour was enough)

Which made me think: where do you draw the line re: tasteless at reenactment....
The Nazis? Complete with added concentration camp?
Pol Pot?
Gaddafi?
Saddam Hussein?

War does not tend to produce saints and angels, and Cromwell was decidedly not the nicest person in the book,  so, is this different because: a) it was not mass murder and b) it was a few hundred years ago, and not just half a century?

I have no problem with the WW2 Russians, as above, although I have been to the Soviet Union when it was still 100% communist, before Gorbatchev. And I have loads of relatives in what used to be the GDR, and visited regularly. And my grandfather was a POW in Siberia and came home with some of his fingers and the best part of his mind missing.
No problem with Mel Brooks' output either. Or any other films about the period. Just drunk English guys who think dressing up as a Nazi is fun and then don't get changed into something more entertaining for the beer tent either, many reenactors do, there's always one or two themed parties going on after the MOP's (Members Of the Public) have left.

I'm running out of ideas here, and am a bit speechless, will discuss this with a few more experienced suspects, and leave it like that for now......

Signing off.

After all the weird and wonderful things in this blog, and the (probably) general opinion that Ms Deadly Glamour is a party animal who lives on gin and tonic, dresses up 24 hours a day and spends every free waking hour polishing her collection of 120 pairs of very high-heeled shoes, here comes the shocking revelation:

A knitting pattern. For a pair of socks. O my god.
Whatever next? Recipes for jam? (don't worry, I can do that as well, and my Strawberry and Lime Daiquiri jam is legendary, but not yet...)

Anyway, I knitted these for the Ravelry Sock Knitters Anonymous June 09 project.
And somebody liked them.
So I wrote the pattern down, and hopefully other people will like them and knit them as well. They are dead easy to knit (hence the name), even a complete beginner in the art of knitting socks could cope with that pattern.
The original leg pattern is based on "Easy Stitch 22" on page 126 from the pattern book "Knitting Stitches" by Mary Webb, my edition published by Quantum Publishing, London in 2006

ATTENTION: This sock pattern is only for private use, if you want to make them for commercial purposes, you will have to contact me first. This includes etsy, ebay etc. Or me and my toolkit will come down on you like a ton of bricks. I mean that.

DEAD EASY SOCKS

You will need for size 5 1/2 to 6 (38/39 continental)

- 100g of sock yarn (420 m per 100g, or 459yds per 2 1/2 oz), i.e. Regia 4 ply, Schoeller Fortissima Socka, Cherry Tree Hill, Malabrigo or similar. I knitted the pair in the photos with Zitron Trekking XXL. If you are using up some yarn from another project, I needed exactly 66g.

- A set of 5 dp needles in size between 2 and 3 mm. I used 2.5 mm.

- Two stitch markers would be useful.

Tension: 42 rounds and 30 stitches in stocking stitch will make a square of 10cm x 10cm / 4" x 4"
The pattern is very stretchy, after all, it is a kind of rib, the socks fit very snugly and hold up very well.
It may look tight, but it is not.....

Knitted from the leg down.
Cast on 60 stitches and distribute on 4 needles, 15 stitches on each, close to a round. Start of the round is at the centre back .

Knit cuff:
* k2 p2 * repeat to end of round.
Repeat for 14 more rounds.

Leg pattern: Repeat 12 rounds
Rounds 1 to 6:    k2 * p2 k4 *, repeat between * *,  k the last 2 stitches in the round (this centres the pattern)
Rounds 7 to 12:  p1 * k4 p2 *, repeat between * *,  p the last stitch in the round.

Repeat the leg pattern for 4 more times, and once rounds 1 to 6.

Next round k all stitches on needle 1, continue in pattern on needles 2 and 3 (the front of the leg), k all stitches on needle 4
Knit one full repeat of the pattern.

Heel pattern: (it is easier if all 30 stitches of the heel, from needles 1 and 4, are on one needle)
K all stitches on needle 1. Turn
K first stitch, p to end of needle 1, continue in p to the stitch before the last on needle 4, k last stitch. Turn

Front side:  K first stitch, * slip 1, k1 *, repeat to end, k last stitch. Turn.
Back side: K first stitch, p 28 stitches, k last stitch

Repeat these two rows 14 more times. You should have now 15 small knots (made by the k stitches on the edge) on each side of the seam. These will be used to pick up the stitches for the foot.

Heel turn flap:
Knit to middle of right side (15 st), k1, ssk (Slip 2 st separately knitwise on right needle, transfer back to left needle, knit together, creates a decrease turning to the left), k1, turn.
Slip one purlwise (yarn in front), p3, p 2 together, p1, turn.
You should now have on your needles: 11st - gap - 6st - gap - 11st
Slip one knitwise (yarn in back), k4 until the stitch before the gap, ssk this stitch and the one after the gap, k1, turn.
Slip one purlwise (yarn in front), p5 until the stitch before the gap, p tog this st and the one after the gap, p1 turn.

Continue like this, always k respectively p to the stitch just before the gap and k respectively p these and the one after the gap together, k or p one more stitch, turn.
When you have reached the edge of the last p row, you should have 16 st on the needle.

Start to knit in rounds again.
K to end of heel (stitches 1 to 8 are needle 4, stitches 9 to 16 are needle 1).
Pick up 15 st from the knots on the heel side with needle 1, k needles 2  and 3 in pattern (starts on a row 7), pick up 15 st from the knots on the other heel side, k 8 st from heel flap on same needle.
You should now have 23 st each on needles 1 and 4  (15 from the side, 8 from half of the heel) , and 15 st each on needles 2 and 3.

The sock now continues with needles 1 and 4  (the sole)  in stocking stitch only,  needles 2 and 3 (top of the foot) in pattern.

Sole decreases:
Needle 1: k 7 st, k 2 tog, place marker, k 14 st
Needle 2 and 3 in pattern.
Needle 4: k 14 st, place marker, ssk, k 7 st.
Knit one round in stocking stitch respectively pattern, according to needle.

Next round - Needle 1: k 6 (to 2 st before the marker), k 2 tog, slip marker, k 14,
Needle 2 and 3 in pattern
Needle 4: k 14 st to marker, slip marker, ssk, k (6 st) to end of needle.
Knit one round of stocking stitch respectively pattern.

Continue like this until 15 st are left on each sole needle. The heel flap and decreases should form a lozenge shape in the centre of the sole.

Again, the pattern on top of the foot is repeated  in total 5 times and once row 1 to 6 for the foot.
Foot length: (for size 5 1/2 to 6) 18 cm from end of heel to start of toe.

Toe decreases:
Needle 1: k to last 2 st, k 2 tog, Needle 2: ssk, k to last stitch
Needle 3 as Needle 1, Needle 4 as Needle 2
Knit 1 rd stocking st.
Repeat these 2  rows 5 times more ( 9 st on each needle), then decrease in each row, until there are 2 st on each needle.
Close toe with Kitchener Stitch.

Finished! Weave in ends.
The second sock is made exactly the same way
.

From left: Both socks finished, a closeup view of the pattern, the heel and sole decreases.

This project is called Glowworms on Ravelry, and the photos there are bigger.....
Any questions, remarks, typos found, etc, pm me there.

DeadlyGlamour

Things that go bump in the night, or something around there.
I have never seen a ghost.

However, I know loads of people who have.
Just like last weekend, for example.

HysgraceTheDuke and myself on another swapshop reenactor trader lift (I get a lift with my tent for free in the huge van, he gets two meals a day) up to a medieval event just outside Manchester.
Thanks to another traffic jam just outside Stoke we miss the event organiser by a few minutes, and don't know where to set up exactly. Moving two tents of that size is not a good idea, so let's wait until Friday morning, we got a whole day spare anyway.
The guy who looks after the place is still there, and lets us kip in the office/shop, which is located in an old brick barn on the site. They sell souvenirs in there, have a freezer for icecream lollies which kicks in on a regular basis and makes noise, and a handful of wooden benches for visiting school classes, and big display signs on the wall about the history of the place.

So we have dinner, TheDuke finds a bottle of Vitis's yummy products in the van, which gets emptied, and two reenactors fall in their respective sleeping bags and doze off, tomorrow will be a busy day.

I sleep like a log through the night, occasionally slightly awaken by the noise from the freezer, never mind, off again.
TheDuke is wide awake at 3AM or so. And it feels to him as if the whole room was full of people. And he can hear the voice of a little child "I can't sleep", and an older woman answering "Go back to bed".
Which, unless I have developed the most extraordinary ventriloquism talents in my sleep, is a bit peculiar.

If there had been anyone outside, I would have woken up, I'm a light sleeper. But there was nothing making any noise besides that icecream machine and the resident brood of Dorking chicken in their coop around the back of the building.
Weird. I refuse to believe that either of us was drunk, half a bottle each of Vitis Black Beer and Raisin fruit wine is nothing to a seasoned reenactor.

There's always the theory that when you awake from deep sleep, your brain hasn't quite adjusted yet and comes up with peculiar things. However, the two following incidents happened early in the evening, while it was still daylight, and taking your tent down while sleepwalking is a bit on the impossible side:

I asked him if he's ever seen or heard anything unexplainable before. Answer: "Well, Bosworth Field (battle in 1485, where King Richard III. died) is haunted like f##k." He has heard horses in barding (horse armour, and believe me, a reenactor knows what this sounds like) when there was absolutely no horse anywhere in the neighborhood, and two other reenactors had seen a knight in full armour standing in the middle of the plastic campsite. They chased him, almost caught up and the knight disappeared into thin air in front of a hedge.
And the Tower of London. Besides loads of squaddies playing pranks, there's a considerable amount of absolutely unexplainable stuff going on.
Strangely, nothing has been ever seen at Tewkesbury reenactment, at least not by anyone I know, and the battle there is almost on the genuine original site as well.

However, you don't need medieval battlefields for resident ghosts.
The Man at Home used to work in a posh hotel in Oxfordshire (not old, built in the 1960s or so), as a nightporter respectively barkeeper, and he has seen his share of unexplainable things. This included a cat which dissolves into thin air, but leaves indentations in the bedspreads, and giant big kitchen shelves, which would need two people to push them over, keeling over in the middle of the night with a full load of steel pots and pans clanging on the floor, still spinning, and nobody is there.
He developed his special system for dealing with that. He gave the ghost a name, after the name of the suite things happened most frequently in. At the beginning of the shift, he would say loudly something in the direction of. "Good evening..., how are you today?" and at the end of the shift he would say "Finished with work for today, see you tomorrow". If he was going on holiday, he would say "Off on holiday, see you in two weeks". And it worked. He never had any problems again.

Makes sense, be polite, and the ghost will be polite as well...

I have one every day now, and occasionally twice.

And it scares me.

The ones with the dark red blood are not so bad. They stop after one or two minutes. However, there are light red ones, you can really see the difference, and they go on forever. It feels like putting your head under water, and then inhaling, slowly, and the blood is rising inside your nose, you clean it, and the amount in the tissue is as big as a fat oyster. And then again, and again.
The only thing that helps is lying flat on the floor, putting a cold wet cloth in the back of the neck and wait. And not panic, it makes it worse, as your blood pressure goes up.

All my clothes have had bloodstains, that's why I wear usually black, it's easier to clean off. All floors, carpets and bedding have had some as well. Sometimes I get one at night when I'm asleep, and my hair is stuck to my pillow in the morning. Normally I notice now, even in my sleep, and turn on my back, so it runs down my throat and the bedding stays clean. Organised as anything.

It's a genetic thing, called Osler-Weber-Rendu Syndrome. Wikipedia tells us all about it:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_hemorrhagic_telangiectasia . Yummy long word.

I'm the third generation now. My grandmother had it, had two children, my father and my uncle, and lived to age 60 or so, she died when I was a toddler. I remember her hands, covered all over with purple blisters.
My father had it as well, and I saw a bit more of the unpleasant mental side of things, and I didn't even have much contact with him from age 20 or so, and none at all for the last 8 or so years of his life, he died aged 59, after a giant stroke and two weeks in a coma.

Because, the nosebleed is the stuff you can see.
But, you get the broken bloodvessels everywhere else as well.
As: in your head, for example. You might get visions, weird ideas, or just get really forgetful. Every time I forget something I was supposed to do, I think: is it starting properly now?
And you get bruises like nobody's business just from banging your shin against a chair.

My advantage is: I know what's going on. I don't have any children (the weight gain during pregnancy is not good for you), nor am I really overweight, which is also dangerous (my father had the top weight of 120kg at a height of 1.75m).
I eat healthily, don't smoke and drink only rarely.  And, as the female hormones keep things down somehow, I'll go on HRT as soon as my menopause starts.  And I go to hospital once a year to get checked, just in case.
But I still get nosebleeds. Of course, you can get your nose cauterised, which really hurts, and you get peace and quiet for a bit, and then the next blister just develops next to it. And after the next few rounds or so, the cauterising will burn a hole in your septum and you'll look like that actress, or the notorious Chaos Clown Pete M with his giant septum piercing, who used to clip his keyring in and bang his keys around the nose as a party trick. Fun.

The worst thing is, in Germany, people are concerned about you, and run for tissues, ask you if you're OK, and here in England, everybody just thinks you're a fuckin' cokehead who overdid it last night.
Every job I apply for, I think, the first big one, and I'm toast. It doesn't really help that I'm quite energetic and talk quite loud and very fast.
But what should I do? Declare myself as disabled? I'm not. I just have nosebleeds all the time. If I put it down in my CV, people will just think, haha, great excuse for overdoing it, very funny.

The only advantage is, all the bloody tissues go on the compost heap, and my plants grow like demented....
And my sister didn't get it, she's healthy, and has a child, she always wanted children, the other way round would have been worse.

So, I just continue as before, try to live now (the concept of "jam tomorrow" does not really exist for me), and watch. But I'm still scared. And I don't save for a pension, or plan for retirement.

I think I might just have won a prize.

The one for most exceedingly stupid accidental stalker on the road.
And I need either new contact lenses or preferably a new brain, straight away.

Location, ye medieval reenactment near Cardiff, a walking distance away.

It is Saturday afternoon, the tent is set up, the stall is set up, all repairs and fixes I wanted to do are done, the sun is shining, and I decided on a little walk along the coast.
I love the sea, ever since my childhood and that sailing boat.
So, setting off (in medieval clothes, with trainers, can't be ar§ed to get changed), in the other direction from the day before, for a change.
On the coast, the tide is out, and there are loads of cuttlefish shells about, great for casting metal things in, so I'm collecting them.
For a better overview over the beach, I'm going up on the coast path for a bit (maybe 2 metres higher up), which goes around the back gardens of some quite chic houses with manicured gardens, some of them with a fence, some not.

And all of a sudden I register one with a pool. No water in it yet, but the day is hot, the forecast for the Bank Holiday weekend glorious, and the chance is quite big it will be filled before Monday, so the owners can enjoy it over the weekend. The idea needed half a second to materialise: Sunday or Monday night (or rather at 2 to 3 AM), I'm going to go for a swim here. The fence is not even waist-high, no spikes, a granny could jump over that one. The sea is no good there, outside Cardiff, nothing new. And there's no shower at the place where I'm staying. Decision made.

Back in my moderately misspent youth, I had acquired a bit of a hobby. To my lame excuse, some other ne'er-do-wells got me into it. (Step forward, S, G, and M, the most rockin' hotel maids in the whole of Southern Bavaria. If you shouldn't know that already, hotel maids know everything. And then some.)
Otherwise known as "climb over the fence and go for a swim". In private pools in the middle of the night. (Most of them holiday houses, so unoccupied, but definitely with neighbours).
This was the olden days of the late 80s, early 90s, no CCTV anywhere, safe as houses. And I do not think anyone ever clocked what we did. We never damaged anything or took anything. Innocent fun, of the "dare you" kind.

All these thoughts needed just a few seconds, from one end of the garden to the other, where the gate is.
And all of a sudden there's movement. A good-looking guy of vaguely my age comes out of the house, wearing a T-shirt and chinos, with a battered football in his hand, and three doggies whizzing around his legs, one black and white Jack Russell and two Spaniels, one tan, one black.
You might know from the description where this is going. I didn't.
The dogs are whizzing around my skirts for a change, and I bend down and scratch the Jack Russell behind the ears, dog jumps up and down, runs off, and the guy and me are walking in the same direction, towards what turns out to be the local sports field. I like dogs, a lot, so I'm complimenting him on the dogs, talk about other Jack Russells I have met (Spandex, Dog of Alex), explain my outfit (hey, I'm not a nutter from a religious sect or so...), and recommend the reenactment (more public - they might go shopping...)
Guy explains that he has to take the football along, otherwise Jack the dog won't go for a walk (me: "yeah, our Newfoundland was the same, always with a stick..."). Lovely.
On the sports pitch, guy turns right, kicks the ball for the dogs, and I go straight ahead, there's a cricket match on, and I've spotted a bench. With Peter B planning that kinky cricket party next year (no kidding!), I need all the education I can get.

With the match finished,  I decide to go slowly back (cook your own dinner time), and past the guy and the dogs, and a few metres on, on the slip path of the local sailing club is another Jack Russell, with her owners, an elderly couple. Other Jack Russell sniffs curiously at my skirts (other dogs? yesterday's cooking?), so there's more talking about dogs, I'm advertising the reenactment, old lady explains to me the local sights (educate the foreigners), we get onto motor racing (Lewis Hamilton's latest drama), and then the guy with the three dogs shows up, too, they run towards the water, in and out, conversation turns to "how to transport a wet dog in a car", (I volunteer Newfoundland advice: "Don't.") The guy's Jack Russell deposits the ball in front of me: "kick that", I oblige, the black Spaniel is soaking wet and manages to miss the jump from the gravel up on the boat slip and boings himself (no damage, Spaniels are very resilient, and normally a bit daft anyway, at least the ones I encountered so far. )
Guy walks to the edge of the water, out of hearing.

And then the little old lady drops the bomb: "Do you know who that is?"
Me: "no?"
Old lady: "Do you know who John Barrowman is?"
Me "yes?"
Old lady: "This is his partner,and their dogs, they live in that house there with the pool...."
Hence the brain failure.
I knew John Barrowman has dogs, (I always thought, only 2), and that he lives somewhere around the area.
I just always thought people like this live somewhere a bit more, well, secluded (and with a better fence), than next to loads of other houses, and a coast path where everybody can look through their giant French Windows in their living room, and with a pool with a view (by everybody else), and they don't take their dogs for a run on the cricket pitch and the beach.
And I didn't recognize his partner, although I have definitely seen photos of him, because I have a memory like a sieve for faces. I do remember my customers after years and years, but everybody else is, well, difficult.

So, I narrowly avoided going for a secret late-night swim in John Barrowman's pool. Ouch.

I'm just thinking, thanks to every available protection deity, that pool was not full, and I was there as and when, to find out who owned that pool, otherwise chances are quite big I would have gone for that swim there in the middle of the night (sign "dog in garden" notwithstanding), and you can bet that there would have been a movement detector or infrared or similar, and I would have spent a night in the next police station for stalking/breaking in at Torchwood Celebrity HQ.

And, advertising as I am, I mentioned the "Deadly Glamour" name already before I knew who I was talking to.
Which means, if any of the suspects thinks about googling this, they might show up here.
So, this needs the:

Open Letter:

Dear Mr B and Mr G!
You have no idea how absolutely marvellous your pool looks like to a poor little reenactor, who likes to swim and is stuck on a reenactment site in a museum for five days with no shower.

Honestly, in all these years, I have nevereverever damaged anything and am as invisible as technically possible for a 5'9" woman in full medieval finery.

And I won't probably be in the neighbourhood for the rest of the year anyway, so your pool is safe from me, for now.

However, if you feel your pool won't mind a reenactor going semi-secretly for a swim in the middle of the night, contact me and I would be seriously, utterly, terminally grateful...

Yours, extremely apologetically
DeadlyGlamour

PS
And all your dogs are as cute as technically possible!

PPS to the general reading public:
No, they didn't show up at the reenactment....
And business was absolutely crap.
The story is worth it.

And a bunch of scurvy reenactor pirates dared me to ask the pool owner about potential use. This will need preparation.

It is official, I need more money, i.e. more work.

The Man works weekends these days, and I'm not insured to drive our car anyway, it would cost a fortune, my driving licence of 23 years standing is from the wrong side of the road.

So, we had an idea at the last Cosmeston reenactment: I'm getting a lift, at least to the next one again (hello Wales), with Hysgracetheduke, as he's on his own these days at most events and has a giant Ex-Parcelforce van with spare space.

All I need now is a spare Terminator to set up that tent. Or a smaller authentic tent, which I haven't got the cash for anyway.

And more customers.

The advantage of  doing more reenactment gigs, is, that reenactors tend to understand better that nice and high quality stuff which was a lot of work tends to be a bit pricier than Topshop or Claire's Accessories.
Unlike the Members of the  Public, in general.

I am working on that overdue website now, honest. Really.

No, it isn't me.

I'm back with the family for Easter, and the usual thing happens. Otherwise known as Marion and Holger's roof terrace.

We have here: two busy people with a five-month-old baby, no time and quite a bit of spare cash. And loads of fancy garden suppliers on the internet. Holger orders (we're talking container-plantable fruit trees here, not geraniums), like it was going out of fashion tomorrow. And the plants will arrive, hopefully before Friday next week, i.e. while I'm still there, otherwise, in spite of some kind of planting instruction being supplied, they will be planted as and when they find the time. By then, two thirds of the plants will be dead or dying. Two years ago they bought the most amazing old-variety pompom dahlias, dark blood red with white edges. Only, they didn't take them out for winter and store them frost-free, as you should. They all croaked, of course.... They bought the most amazing historical roses a few years ago, and you should see the sorry state they're in now...

And we get that each and every time I'm there, again and again. I come on holiday, and spend two to three days weeding, cutting and getting things to general shipshape quality. And when I come back next time, nobody has done any weeding since I did. Or Holger feels inspired and, as he can't distinguish weeds from herb seedlings, rips it all out in one go.

(Note: I'm not busybodying or offering to fix things, they just say "it looks so awful, what could we do?" - and I say, "OK, there's this and that...." In theory, I'm on holiday.)

The other problem is the watering, This is a south-facing roof terrace, with full sun the whole day, if it's shining. Which means, water twice a day. There is a tap with a hose on the terrace, so it wouldn't mean lifting heavy watering cans all around the roof.
They water once a day, maybe, and then they drown them.

It's not that I would mind what they do with their own place, but I feel sorry for the plants....

Page selected, picture selected, thoughts not selected....
Hell, you can't have everything.