Thursday 12 July 2007

Marie Antoinette

Having sweated like a ...sweaty thing all day long, the sky has now clouded over somewhat and the temperature has become more bearable.

Luckily, our local rag, whose job it is, nay DUTY to inform us what manner of weather we're enduring, today ran the headline, 'Heatwave!' followed by an article confirming that we are indeed having a heatwave, but without then adding,
'a tropical heatwave, the temperature's rising, it's hardly surprising, we're having a heatwave,' which, in fact, IS surprising because that's about the standard of their journalism.
At the end of the revelation, they remind people not to lock their pets in their cars.
And honestly - it probably needed saying.

Today I made dragon books - well, to be honest, our receptionist did the making, I just primped and fluffed the writing and illustrating a bit more. Tomorrow I collect our dragons, and I'm excited. Now I need the much needed rain to not actually arrive on Saturday. However, if it does, then it'll be payback for a little bit of astonished sarcasm I couldn't help on the phone t'other day.

A school phoned and enquired about booking a Park Interpreter for a tour. I gave her the details. She seemed surprised to learn that there would be a charge. She then more or less said that they'd bring the kids to the Park anyway, but not have the tour.
Fair enough.
But she'd need the picnic tables.
'Well,' I said, 'they are there for public use and our own summer schools who of course have priority, plus, there is some Park management going on in that area next week,'
'What does that mean?' she asked,
'Dead and dying trees which may be a hazard to the public will be being chopped down,'
'But we need that shelter in case it rains,'
'Well all I can do for you is the opposite of whatever a rain dance is,' I said.

In potentially horrifying news, U.S.TV are now planning to take another British sacred cow and suck all the humour out of it before sticking its original label back on and releasing it on an unsuspecting but desperate public.
At least this time, they can't possibly, POSSIBLY call it 'Little Britain'.

Hosanna! Green Wing, the formidably funny Britcom, is having a rerun on BBC Canada. Having a low boredom threshold means I tend not to be able to watch things more than once, but Green Wing, that I am happy to watch again.

And so to Marie Antoinette. We were sitting around talking one lunchtime, and Kris suddenly said,
'I wonder what happened to Marie Antoinette's children.' And then we both forgot to look it up, and so it continued, we'd think of it, then forget.
Until today, today I remembered to look them up and of course by doing so, read about the woman herself and decided that maybe she was a very much maligned woman.
Unpopular mostly for being Austrian, set up by some con artist so that the public believed her guilty of something she didn't do and finally executed just for being an aristocrat while the hoy palloy cheered.
THAT is the real meaning of the word 'racaille'. Rabble.

In her final months, and after the execution of her husband, Louis Vuitton, I'm just kidding, Louis XVI, she was imprisoned with her children. After her death, her son languished in gaol until he died of TB, but her daughter, later Duchesse d'Angoulême, lived on and exercised some influence during the reigns of her Louis XVIII and Charles X, her uncles.

So now I wish the same for Marie Antoinette as I wish for Anne Boleyn, that they could somehow, by some miracle, have known before they died an untimely and unjust death, that their daughters would survive and be great women.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

No! They cannot do that to Little Britain!!!!! Who are they going to get to act in it - Alan Thicke and Jared Leto? This can't be happening!!!!
We must protest.
- Karen

Schneewittchen said...

Doesn't bear thinking about does it.....

Sleepy said...

Little Britain DOES NOT travel!
They'll fuck it right up.

I got outvoted on choice of fil the other night and had to watch the Marie Antoinette film.
Surprisingly, once I stopped pointing out historical inaccuracies, I enjoyed it.

Schneewittchen said...

Yep, I'm thinking they will, unless, unless Lucas and Walliams are better even than we realised.

I might watch the MA film then, the historical accuracy thing really bugs me a lot in films, but, I do like Sophia Coppolla as a director.