Picos Gemeos

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is probably one of the best children books ever written. It starts out like it means to be a high gothic drama, with spoiled little Mary losing her family in India and being sent to live with distant relatives in a dark and cold mansion on the Yorkshire moors. She's left to her own devises in the large house because nobody has time for her - especially not the serious and remote Lord of the house - and soon she's hearing strange cries in the night from one of the bedrooms. But all of this is just suspense wisely used to hook the reader. It's when she meets the gardner and starts spending more time outdoors (something she never did in India) that sun literally pours in and the book turns into a homage to Yorkshire's beauty.

There's a particular garden on the grounds that nobody has been inside for ten years - a secret garden that doesn't even have a visible door anymore. Mary discovers its entrance with the help of a bird and soon she's enlisted a local boy (who talks to animals and smokes pipes) to help her clear it.

I felt as happy finishing this read as I did when reading Pride and Prejudice. Only I now have a really strong desire to get back into gardening!

View all my reviews

My family bought its first VCR in 1985, when I was ten years old. Our building had an inhouse cable TV channel (very modern for the time) which showed two films at night (picked by the building manager); but we lived right by a large film rental shop and had wanted for a while the option to choose our own films. The weekend routine was for me to pick five films (this would allow us to keep them until Monday morning) - one comedy, one drama, one action/thriller and two horrors.

The first two films we rented were Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and a B-movie horror from 1983 called The Lift. Indiana was my brother's choice while The Lift was mine. Afterwards, I invented a game with my friends in the building where everyone was trapped in a space (say, a part of the playground that was made up of three walls) while one person played the killer lift (arms for wires that snuck through the door, latched onto legs and dragged them out to their death.)

This memory came back to me today as I was waiting for my tower block's elevator. There's a sign by it that says: "don't throw any garbage in the elevator. CCTV is in full operation." Pointless: you can find all sorts of things in the elevator, from chewed chicken legs to napkins and candy wrappers, and as far as I know nobody has ever been penalised for this. The elevators are new too, installed just last year at great expense to all property owners, but they are already keyed, scratched, spat and battered.

I toyed with this private fantasy as the elevator rose, of it coming to life as someone was defacing it, the walls slowly starting to close in on them as the light flickered and they desperately tried to get out (to no avail). Squish.

The version of The Lift I watched back in 1985 was dubbed in Portuguese - I somehow always thought it was an Italian film. Just discovered that it's actually Dutch and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.

Here's the trailer with a Marc Almond lookalike for the hero:

This is for beeorkendurkey <333

I lived with all my brothers and sisters in our father's mansion. We had any room we could choose, but somehow we chose to sleep together in the same bedroom - a row of bunkbeds for children of all ages. Our mansion was on a hill, part of a grand estate that was used by local walkers and visited by international tourists.

Some of us had been in the car accident that killed our father. I asked my brothers how old I was then. None knew too well but they thought I'd been three years old. I was one of the children in the car when the collision happened. I couldn't remember how he died. It was a national tragedy that people still spoke of years later.

Here's my nephew riding a horse for the first time (which he loved.) He's 14 months old. My mom just told me they have a video too, which they'll send me shortly.

That's his grandfather (from my sister-in-law's side), by the way, who is a pig farmer and owns the horse (before you start wondering who's that crazy man letting a little toddler horseback ride).

My nephew's name in the original Greek means "friend of horses". I wish I lived closer to my family.

On Saturday, after I came back from the community garden's harvest festival, I noticed the tower block next to ours was cordonned off, with two investigators in suits having a chat while a cop stood nearby. I just found out from my landlord that they were there because of a nine-year-old girl who fell from the 15th floor. They think she may have been leaning too far out to speak to a friend when she fell. So so sad.

My 10-year-old cousin wanted to hear songs that I like because she doesn't know anything other than Brasil's style of country music (Sertaneja). So I played her Alkaline Trio's "Don't Say You Won't" (got a bounce and some air guitar) followed by a-Ha's "Take on Me" (excitement).

I'm now going to show her some music videos and ask her to rate them from 0 to 10. First three up are:

- A-ha's "Take on Me"
- The Cure's "In Between Days"
- The Smiths' "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before"

Which videos do you think she MUST see? Is the PG rated version of Gaga's "Telephone" appropriate?

Star Trek, Dir. J. J. Abrams, 2009
I saw this with my film club (Kevin, desayuno_ingles, sushidog) and Victor from Big Brother 5. From our seats a few rows behind Victor, I noticed he was as horrified as me by the constant conversation and noise in the cinema. That's because most people couldn't contain themselves with the action and humor on screen, which I guess is a testament to the film's success. I kept thinking "oh, I wonder what will happen in next week's episode", to then be reminded that all this character introduction and set up will only be continued next year. Spock stole all the scenes, Simon Pegg had bad timing, and Kirk was a mixture of Luke Skywalker, Luke Perry 90210 and a punch bag. The action scenes were brilliant and the special effects (black holes, planets, space ships) were frequently gorgeous to watch. While you wait for the sequel, why not watch Star Trek: Phase II (a.k.a. the future of television).



The Innocents, Dir. Jack Clayton, 1961
Why haven't I seen this before? Why, why, why? And why did I watch this by myself at night? Spooky mansions, creepy children, a sexually repressed governess and a screenplay by Truman Capote that lays heavy into the narrow-minded religious mind and the horrors that can lurk in the corner of our eyes - there's something here for everyone. It's like the long lost sibling to The Haunting, from 1963. It's based on Henry James' classic The Turn of the Screw, brought to life through beautiful black & white cinematography. If ghosts do exist then I have no doubt they look and behave exactly like the ones in this film.




Suspiria, Dir. Dario Argento, 1977
A good example of a beautiful failure. It's a visual feast for the eyes, with some crazy ass set design that made me grateful I hadn't smoked a joint before watching it. I could practically feel the walls that made up the strange dance school where things go chop-chop in the night pulsing with evil. The story, editing and acting, however, were a bit pants. Its influence on popular culture is noticeable too; I can see where Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodovar got some of their inspiration, as well as the Hostel films and even the composer for the Harry Potter soundtrack. Kevin gave up on it after ten minutes because of the bad dubbing.

When Kevin and I left the apartment yesterday evening, we thought we'd meet some friends in a downtown pub for a quiet night of beer, trays of nachos and chit chat. Never in our wildest dreams would we guess that by 5am we'd be wandering the empty streets of London, pupils so big they took up half of our faces, bodies still warm from dancing at Planet Angel.

We nearly didn't go, but rosamicula is very good at changing people's minds and making them see the light. So, after a few hours of mellow pub conversation with the patsy_social, we headed back to Rosamicula's - courtesy of sarcaustick and thirstypixel who were in town and willing to drive us - for some food, wine and outfit changes.

Planet Angel doesn't have a fixed address. Every month they throw a party in a different London location. Yesterday's was in Vauxhall, in a venue decorated like a 60s sci-fi film set smoked with hundreds of incense sticks. Bouncers and "carers" wandered around, through a mostly young crowd, smiling at everyone and making sure people were having a good time. Rooms played hard trance, drum and bass or happy house. The latter was my favourite, but it was played in a tiny room used as corridor for the other two main rooms, so one couldn't get lost in the music without someone pushing past on their way somewhere else.

The crowd was mostly young. Really young. As in, I saw groups of 14-year-olds and I wondered how the hell they'd got in. rosamicula seems to think many were freshers, and she's probably right. I think it's very precocious of 6th form freshers to party like this these days!

Once in a while, in the sea of smooth torsos, pouty emo boys (oh, how sushidog and naturalbornkaos would have loved there) and tiny girls in angel outfits, you'd glimpse someone in their 60s, clearly making time there until the outdoors festivals return. A giant poster on one wall, with paint on the floor, encouraged revellers to scribble messages or decorate their own faces. And if anyone felt like getting some rest, there were couches in chill out rooms, videogames, lego and toys to lose oneself in. They even sold food and tea, and occasionally bar staff wandered around with trays of strawberries and grapes.

But despite all this, Kevin and I didn't have enough energy to dive head-first into the night. We tried our best in each room, finding briefly some fun in New Order's "Blue Monday" on the happy house dancefloor, but the feeling never remained. Men kept approaching Kevin and asking him for drugs or lighters. Rosamicula disappeared because she wanted tea and a podium to pound the night away (plus, she seemed to know half the people in there). I was still wearing my work clothes and didn't feel 100% comfortable. So, at 4am, Kevin asked if we could leave.

Outside, London slept and the streets were deserted. We walked past a silent House of Parliament, and it suddenly struck me that I was peaking. I asked Kevin if he felt anything and he jabbered for about 10 minutes on how he wasn't high at all, and how he really could do with some chips, and how there were various places we could catch the night bus, and how he wanted to do some drawing on Saturday, and how he might come to Sushidog and watch X Factor and on and on and on. So cute.

Today, we have been completely useless. We watched Beautiful Thing and Horrible People, and we ate easy fare like oven chips and fish fingers. My lower back has gone to pieces and I keep forgetting what I want to do. I'm surprised I managed to write this post. It must have taken me about two hours, but I can't be sure. What I do know is that the X Factor and some hearty winter food from Sushidog's kitchen will be the perfect way to ease me into the night.