Tuesday, November 20, 2012

the soap with silk





jesu joy of man’s desiring


Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, King's College Choir, Cambridge & Sir David Willcocks

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What a bunch of greedy gutses we are.

Series 3 of Downton Abbey arrived and it takes a lot of discipline to limit ourselves to one episode per night.


Apart from the piddly number of episodes per season produced in a British series, the only other frustration is that no matter how well I know every note of a “tune” in a soundtrack, I’m hopeless at remembering the names of them.

The one above was a rare victory that only took an hour or so scouring YouTube.

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The good news is that each episode warrants a second viewing – to sort out the plot points missed; to re-live the best lines from Maggie Smith.




Next viewing is just for ogling the clothes.



Or the models.



What a lark it would be, being paid to act and to dress up in absolutely fabulous clothes.

I’m not a Dowager Countess I’m a Dowdy Countess, but if I lived in a world where this sort of dress was expected I would be in heaven. I would lose weight, grow six inches and dye my hair black just so they wouldn’t look stupid on me.



Unless stuck downstairs with only one or two frumpy dresses to my name, of course.
Slaving my guts out while the male servants stand around and preen in their suits and gloves.





An old Marty Feldman sketch [which goes something like this] pretty well sums up the class distinctions:

Duchess: Please Robert, not before the servants!
Duke: [stops smooching up to his wife]
             Sorry Carstairs... after you.


Upper class or lower class, the one chap we can count on to hold it all together is the butler:







2 comments:

  1. I lost a bit of interest in the second series. The third sounds better.

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    Replies
    1. Perhaps there were too many bad characters with no redeeming features. The third is more positive in outlook, and the 1920s fashions more attractive.

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