Monday morning. back shuffling papers around on my desk... makes me look busy! So looking forward to getting out of here and doing something entirely different... will March the 21st ever get here?

Watched a couple of good films this weekend... had a very solitary time, but as both Josh and Jake are returning from Plymouth today I tried to relish the silence and peace and tidiness!! Knowing full well that by about thursday I will have turned into a nagging haridan! Why is it they really haven't developed the ability to place used crockery inside the dishwasher rather than relying on osmosis to make plates etc pass through the semi-permeable membrane that is the kitchen surface and the top of the dishwasher??? I struggle to understand?? see I'm getting worked up about it already and they are not even back yet!!!

so the films watched were Goodbye Lenin and Cinema Paradiso

I actually got Goodbye Lenin out on friday but ended up watching it saturday morning and found it a delightful study of the changes that occurred to East Germans during the time of unification in 1989... it brought back reminders of all those magazines that my father used to get from the DDR with shiny pictures of smiling Young Pioneers... flag waving, glossy, heroic images that belied the more sombre queing for food and drabness that really defined the era. I visited Leningrad in 1972 and remember thinking it was more like visiting an entirely different decade, as if I was actually time travelling and going back to a more austere post-war period than simply another country... the film, though, also showed that not all the changes were positive and many in East Germany were left with a bitter taste of capitalism. Many of the older people had lost all that they had ever held to be ideologically true and this was the same for my father at that time too. As a longtime member of the communist party in the uk his world-view was shattered by these events..