Return of the native

Really thoughtful article here from the BBCs Stephen Sackur on his return to the UK after 15 years of foreign jaunts.

Until I was 18 years old, I had never met a black man or woman. Nor, knowingly at least, a Jew nor a Muslim.

I was a farm boy born and brought up in Lincolnshire – among the whitest of white English counties.

I remember the stir in my primary school when a family of Vietnamese refugees was housed in Toynton All Saints.

We stared and we prodded and we mimicked because these were people with whom we could make no meaningful connection. They might as well have come from Mars.

They were not threatening, they were not aggressive, but to us they were overwhelmingly weird.

For the past 15 years I have been living far away from my homeland – in Cairo, Jerusalem, Washington and Brussels. And while I have been gone I know that things have changed.

Watching and Reading

Watched Shaun of the Dead last night, an Amazon Rental DVD. The only one of the three that arrived on Friday without a crack in it.

Shaun of the Dead

Still, it was an excellent, funny film and I recommend it.

I emailed Amazon on Friday night about the bust DVDs, and got an email back saying replacements were sent out on Saturday, which means I should get them Monday, which shouldn’t be too bad I guess.

Am reading Chaucer by Peter Ackroyd now. It’s interesting stuff and really well written, and delightfully short, so I will hopefully get it finished today.

Chaucer, Ackroyd

Bowes Museum

A friend mentioned today that she had visited The Bowes Museum in County Durham. Quickly googled it, and what an impressive building it is:

Bowes Museum

The reason this cropped up? The Raphael painting The Madonna of the Pinks is currently on a national tour and is resident at the Bowes until June 26.

The Madonna of the Pinks

ITunes Frenzy

Just bought a few tracks on ITunes:

  • Razorlight’s brilliant new single Somewhere Else
  • A few tracks by mid ’90s brit poppers Shed Seven: On Standby, Chasing Rainbows and Where Have you Been Tonight?
  • The Boo Radley’s great Wake Up Boo!

There will proabably be more…