Notes From Retirement......................Where did the years go?: More Trips To Cineworld And This Week's Detecting Finds

Sunday 31 January 2016

More Trips To Cineworld And This Week's Detecting Finds

We've spent a while in Woodbridge at the Planning Appeal this week, I've written another four thousand words of my second novel and we've been to lots of exercise classes but we still found time to continue our cinema binge. On Thursday it was The Danish Girl and The Big Short at Cineworld in Ipswich. Eddie Redmayne has been nominated for the best actor Oscar for his role as transgender artist Lili Elbe but I felt that it was Alicia Vikander as his wife Gerda who stole the show in The Danish Girl. Vikander has been nominated as best actress in a supporting role and I feel that she may well win it as it was hardly a 'supporting role' in what was really a two-hander. The film showed the agony that grew from when Einar Wegener began to cross dress to pose for his wife's portraits to the stage where he felt unable to go on without transgender surgery to become his alter ego Lily. It's a moving and very beautifully filmed movie with some stunning Paris period locations and lovely costumes.

After eating at Ask a restaurant near the cinema we went back to Cineworld a few hours later to see Oscar Best Film nominated The Big Short. I loved this quirky film that tells the story of a number of American bond traders who bet against the US property market before it collapsed. It did it's very best to explain some of the weird and wonderful financial products that were being put together by the corrupt Banking industry and the agony that the traders went through before the world finally realised that the bonds were worthless. If that sounds boring it most certainly isn't. The director uses some way-out and quirky methods to show us what exactly was going on and I think that it is a strong competitor in the best movie stakes for its originality alone although strong performances from Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell also make this a very entertaining and watchable film.

This coming week's movie picks are Michael Caine's Youth and the last Oscar Best Movie nomination for us Spotlight. Youth has only one Oscar nomination (best song) but Spotlight has four or five. It promises to be another great day at Cineworld.

Another exciting cultural event awaits us tonight. Slice Of Life our local arts promoter has brought another tremendous event to Framlingham. Tiara fahodzi's play I Know All The Secrets In My World received huge critical acclaim at Latitude last year and we are both looking forward to what promises to be a thought provoking and (reportedly) emotional piece of theatre.

We try to buy most of our food locally and we treated ourselves last night to some excellent lobster from Darren who is one of the mainstays of Framlingham market. With all the development being discussed for Framlingham it is important that we try and support the local businesses as much as possible as, if housing goes ahead on the scale proposed, another supermarket will inevitably follow and the traders on our historic market hill could suffer.

It was our dear neighbour Wilfrid's funeral on Friday and we were pleased to see a good turnout to say their goodbyes to a funny and knowledgeable old man.

No week would be complete without a detecting outing and yesterday I had a few hours on some very damp stubble.

It wasn't my best session but, as always, there were plenty of signals to dig.This was what I turned out of the bag when I got home. The individual finds after sorting are below.