My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

So much has happened, and that’s just in the TV serials I’ve been watching. (Actually, sod all is happening in real life, I can’t even get my act together re getting the washing done).

So, I just had my last Tricorn Hat Sunday, which was when I watched Turn on Showcase, featuring JJ Field, Outlander on Soho and then Poldark on the ABC (with the mighty and smouldering Aidan Turner, never once having to leave the 18^th Century (there used to be Black Sails, too).  It was rather fun.

So Poldark and Outlander finished up, and imagine watching those two finales back to back. Not a dry eye (or seat) in the house. I should comment on Outlander, but as the book is basically H/C with Jamie as the whipping boy (literally) it’s no surprise that Jack managed to carve out a little corner of the castle for recreational activities. The heavy editing and conflating of scenes and events in the series worked much better than the books, to my mind, and the religious imagery the boys apparently introduced during rehearsals kind of worked, especially with all the overt bells and smells that went on later.

Is there a place for such sadism in entertainment? Well, considering the imagery and stories coming out of similar POW compounds, I’m thinking it’s at least somewhat indicative of the experience, so at least one can argue veracity.

More high drama over on Poldark, as we have those staples of English fiction: wicked and jumped up nouveau riche, disease and a wickedly indolent and unruly underclass. Throw in a bleeding heart doctor who can’t keep it buttoned, a feckless lord of the manner and a brooding Bryonic hero and you have a steaming syrup of tropes and, oh, what delicious fun.

I don’t think I’m enjoying it as much as I enjoyed watching the original version, but I was younger then, and Bryonic heroes were meat and drink to me, and this version feels rushed (rather than the far more leisurely paced, some might say plodding, original) but the scenery is to die for (it was all shoddy sets under overhead lighting on tape in the original).

Nor is it quite as luridly gripping as, say, Wilkie Collin’s The Dead Secret, a gothic novel set in Cornwall, but it’ll do.

And as for Turn, I will keep spoiling myself, if I don’t know how it already turns out, and I do grit my teeth over the portrayal of the British, etc. (I have ancestors who fought for Cornwallis and also loyalist Quakers who had to leave, all who ended up here by hook or by crook), but I do so like JJ Feild in it, the fasionable Mr Tilney from Northanger Abbey, as was.

Ah, Northanger Abbey. It is, pretty much, a regency era Puberty Blues, especially with the car bore rev heads who think the ways to impress the chicks is to drive so fast they scream. And this a good hundred years before the invention of the automobile, thus proving that type has been with us ‘ere long and is hard to kill (more’s the pity).

And as for Mr Tilney and his enthusiasm for the latest fashions, well, yes, but at least it would have been a splendid wedding. Fabulous, even.

Back to Turn, and I must confess, and it’s a shocking volte-face, I know, but I am seriously watching it for Burn Gorman. He is Governor Frontbottoming his little heart out as the gormless commander, and I’m just loving it. It is pitch perfect, for what the character requires, and it’s making my re-appraise my former harsh sentiments towards the late (that said, Owen was still a dick).

What else has been happening? Not a lot. Still suffering from the concussion, so I’ve missed three plays so far, and Vivid, and doing the washing. Cockatoos came around on the weekend for a hello, and several bags worth of seed. As they were all eating out of my hand, I obliged, it was nice to connect with somebody, even if that somebody had a beak and feathers.

Oh, I did catch up with a friend up from Melbourne. Took them to one of the new cafes around the corner, an Asian/Australian café/market, and they loved it (phew! – taking someone from Melbourne to a café is like taking someone from Brooklyn out to your local, you brace for the critique).

It was good to catch up, and just talk about things, including some stuff that had clearly been bottled up, because I felt good a whole twelve hours afterwards (why don’t I have more friends who leave me feeling better, not worse?).

Also, the hot/sour pork and noodle soup was to die for. Seriously.

I’ve also discovered a burger place nearby that is near-as-dammit the Shake Shack in all but name and copyright, so that was cool (or would be if the burger hadn’t sat there like a stone for days).  That was wicked, but I was feeling better, for a very short window, and hungry, for an even shorter window.

Not that I’ll ever get back to America, sigh. Still, the cultural difference, including the use of the phrase ‘fanny-pack’ as was tittered over in the paper on Sunday. I remember walking off the plane on my first ever visit, and I was on US soil minutes before I saw a bargain bin advertising Fanny Packs for five dollars. Nothing out of the ordinary, you may say, but in my local lingo I’d just walked off a plane and straight into a sign screaming $5 Cunt Bags. So I was a bit o.0 and so not ready for it. And then they’ll tell you they’re rooting (fucking) for their team and I’m all o.0 again and help.

As Oscar so aptly put it, two peoples divided by a common language. They’re a mad lot, those Yanks. Many good points, but omg with the quirky.

But yes, no more lobster TV for the foreseeable future. Oh, what am I saying, we’ve got Banished coming up, which I will be grumbling all through because Joseph Millson, no less, has turned Major Ross into a moustache twirling baddie, when the entire Millson branch of the family (oh yes, boyo, convict stain on one branch of your family tree) owe their very existence to the humanity and decency of Major Ross so harrumph.  I’m sure Ross is regretting it now.

So if anyone is having their ancestors turned upside down in Turn, I sympathise, because mine are about to get the same treatment in Banished (and by a distant cousin, no less, oh bitter irony). Bad Joseph, no biscuit.

"Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society."