It was Monday last night. This means that I was reduced to a snivelling, bawling wreck just five minutes into Long Lost Family. I was very disappointed with last week’s episode as I found myself getting really annoyed. I was annoyed at the fecklessness of both fathers who were happy to just walk away and not take any interest in or responsibility for their child’s life. I was also angry at the mother who ‘found herself pregnant again’ just two months after giving up her baby for adoption. Found herself?? It’s like that other phrase ‘fall pregnant’ as if it’s just happened like catching a cold. Why are people surprised to find out that sex leads to pregnancy? I made a comment about this on Facebook and got a couple of patronising comments about 70s being a time when there was ‘a lot of love around’. Really? No need to tell me, I was there! So last week I felt very cynical about the programme, but last night it got me again! I felt so sorry for the lady in her seventies who’d had a lonely life when all the time she’d had brothers and sisters. BUT, I wish they would make follow up programmes about what really happens after the subjects are reunited . The captions at the end of the programme are always worded in such a way as to make me very suspicious that it doesn’t always end up happy ever after.
Last year I did a short play at the Anna Scher Theatre called Long Lost Family, with the wonderful Kerryann White and Robert Walters, which showed what happened a year down the line. Not a happy ending at all!
i don’t really like happy endings all the time. I think, perhaps that’s why I don’t really like Chick-Lit and hate it when my books are shoved into that genre. I was very kindly given a copy of a new-release, Chick-Lit novel to read and review. I’ve read it but am really procrastinating over the review because I feel I have to be really honest and say that although the book was very clever in places, the humour really did make me laugh out loud, I absolutely hated the ending. Far too sugary-sweet for me, I’m afraid and not really believable. I like twists that nobody saw coming or to see people take responsibility for their actions or realise that actions have consequences. That said, this writer has a publisher behind her and her book is racing up to the top of the charts – two things that I haven’t managed to achieve yet – so what do I know? Shut up, Spires, and write a Chick-Lit novel!
Talking of women writers, I take my hat and my coat and my gloves and my boots off to Moira Buffini, the writer of Handbagged, which I went to see at the Vaudeville on Saturday. Handbagged was gobsmackingly great; a real five-star show. The script was pacey and lively and just…well, clever! Added to which, Marion Bailey, as the Older Queen, Stella Gonet, as the older Margaret Thatcher, Lucy Robinson as the Younger Queen and Fenella Woolgar as the younger Margaret Thatcher gave outstanding performances. Great, too, to see a play with such fab roles for women. I absolutely loved it and it was made even sweeter by the fact that I got a fab seat on lastminute.com for only £17.50! Just wish I could write like that…..
