feather_ghyll

Week 5 (?) ( Read more... )

Quarter final week/British and Irish materials

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Semi-final week/World sewing week

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Finals week

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It’s been interesting that when I tell people I’ve been watching this, a lot of them reference the pottery throwdown show and say how much they enjoyed that.

In other news, I am feeling liberated, because on Friday night, I decided to give up on a book that had taken a direction I didn’t want it to. I had avoided it for days and was just thinking I’d have to force myself to finish it before moving on to something more enjoyable, when I realised that no, I didn’t. The bookmark was taken out on Saturday and the book put in the bag for the charity shop.

Now that the tennis is over, I can turn my attention to what I made of the final stretch of The Great British Sewing Bee.

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I've been following the athletics world championships in Beijing via the BBC for the past 10 days, either by watching the night sessions live or via the highlights programme. What will I do without it?

Of course, the whole thing has been clouded over by the claims about doping over the summer, and a little voice wondered how many of these medals will be taken away over the next few years. But I nearly teared up as Jessica Ennis-Hill underlined her dominance in the heptathlon in the 800m; I enjoyed watching Bolt win it, speedy Price-Fraser and her incredible hair, smiling Schippers, smooth Felix and many other sprinters.

I also really enjoyed many field competitions, well, the jumps, anyway. The more we saw of them, the more they created their own dramas, especially with the run up to the pit in this fast stadium. Generally, it was great fun to have the build-up of heats and semis for the track events, where you could watch who was doing well and try to gauge how much they were holding back. Although it's weird to have three heats in 'semi-finals', the usual top two plus two fastest qualifiers felt fair. After all, if you just needed to run fast enough to win, that's be as fast as you would run, but people who had run well under that time had proved they deserved to be there too. When British athletes were in that fastest loser spot, it became quite nervy.

I presume that budget cuts led to the main studio being in Salford, with some commentators then flying back early from Beijing. Steves Cram and Backley were impressive, as ever. I mostly like Gabby Logan as a presenter and Michael Johnson is a class act (although the producers over-rate him as a voice over guy. He has a resonant voice, but he doesn't quite know how to use it like an actor would.) Yes, there was a lot of repetition and padding while there wasn't any live athletics on, but, overall, I enjoyed it.

I have started watching the Great British Sewing Bee from the beginning this series. ( Read more... )

I cught two matches from the ATP Tour Finals at the O2. That is, I half-watched Del Potro vs Federer and the crowd battling it out to reach the semis on Saturday. ( Read more... )

Apparently there is going to be a film of Swallows and Amazons with Dan Stephens (aka Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey) playing Captain Flint. I have no issue with Stephens playing James Turner...in several years’ time. I couldn’t find much online on the project, filming seems to have been delayed and it’s described as ‘in development’ on imdb. I was wondering if it would be an adaptation of the stage musical, but I think not now, based on what I've seen about the project.

On Monday night, in what was not a shock, despite Sue Barker’s loyal championing of Federer, Nadal vs. Djokovic, the top two players in the world, playing in the final. I didn’t begrudge the doubles players, exactly, but I did wish the singles match could have started sooner and that there hadn’t been an hour of filler in the studio. I was, again, half-asleep for the last two games.

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Since Saturday, I’ve been catching bits of the IPC Athletics World Championships and enjoying it a lot. ( Read more... )

NOTE: I have tried to be thoughtful in my word choice and have redrafted this, believe it or not. If anything about my language or tone offended you, please comment and suggest alternatives. My intent was to write about something I’ve enjoyed over the past few days and to try to look into why.

I just watched the hour-long documentary 100 Years of the Girl Guides, which aired on BBC4 on Sunday on iPlayer, where it can still be watched by residents of the UK until Sunday night. Past experience suggests that it will be repeated on BBC2 at some point.

I was never a Brownie, Guide or Ranger, but read about them from enthusiastic proponents like Mrs Osborn-Hann, Ethel Talbot and Catherine Christian (or is it Christine Chaundler? perhaps both). The programme, a mixture of history with talking heads: former Brownies or Guides all, but some being celebrities or notables talking about their experienc/view of what they learned or women talking about certain experiences that they'd been through. It made me tear up, to be honest, ( Read more... ) Anyway, if you were/are one of the huge numbers who were/are involved in the Guiding movement, or just a reader like me, I'm sure you'd find it fascinating. There was no mention of guiding books, although they used clips of Guides' footage.