Good morning, all! I slept late. but let's get to the important issues first.
DR Danise, how wonderful to see you! I have missed you, as I'm sure most of us have, and I'm really happy to know what's been going on. Thank you for your card. I was thinking about you on Christmas Day as I was opening four weeks of holiday cards.
Yes, we had a blizzard and the City is very very very quiet this morning. I finished watching NORTH AND SOUTH (wonderful production!) around 12:30 and had a bitch of a time getting to sleep. I was up and down, coughing, wheezing, sleeping a bit until after 4 am. When the alarm went off at 7:30, there was no way in hell I was getting out of bed.
As to the wonderful NORTH AND SOUTH, it was like seeing the film BILLY ELLIOT: I loved the plot but hada hard time at first with the accents and union talk. NORTH AND SOUTH is set in 1857, the same year as Prince Albert's Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in London, and it's a much darker version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE set in a town called Milton and the cotton mills of northern England. Mr Darcy's character is John Thornton, a wealthy mill owner and self-made man, and Lizzie Bennett's counterpart is Margaret Hale, daughter of a vicar who's left his church after a disappointment in his clergy, and taken his family to northern England; there is a brother who's gone to sea and now living in exile in Spain following a mutiny that may be based on the HMS Bounty. The plot sprawls all over - several tragic deaths, a murder mystery, a union strike and riot - and two of the most heartbreaking farewell scenes ever, one between Margaret's dying mother and Mrs Thornton and Margaret's departure from Milton to return to London. It's quiet a wonderful series.
The cast is amazing, especially Sinead Cusack (Mrs Jeremy Irons) as Mrs Thornton, the severe mother of the leading man, and Brendan Coyle as the union leader, Nicholas. I recommend this series a lot.
