Regency skateboarders?

It's fun watching the latest BBC dramatisation of Emma alongside someone who's not read the book and is only half-watching the TV anyway, but does know the film Clueless. It leads to conversations like this:

Him: Who's that?
Me: He's the farmer who wants to marry Harriet Smith.
Him: *blank look*
Me: *sigh* He's the skater dude.

Him: Who's he?
Me: Frank Churchill. He's Mr Weston's son by his first marriage. *pause for brief uncomprehending silence* You know that chap who turns up half way through the story and turns out to be gay? It's him. And Mr Weston is, rather loosely, the Sicilian from The Princess Bride.

Him: Is he the skateboarder?
Me: No, I've already told you; he's the vicar.

It's all creating some rather nice images in my head, though.

In need of a tidy

Oh dear... The house has been suffering lately from the lack of free weekends, the fact that Pellinor came back from Summerfest with an entire lorry full of stuff, all of which exploded about the house, and, well... from general laziness. I'm now trying to tackle it by doing about 15 minutes a day, in the hope that I will turn around suddenly one day and realise that I live in a shining model of perfection. I felt bad enough when I realised quite how many palimpsests of candlewax there were on the ridiculous number of candlesticks (note to self: candlesticks in the form of dragons complete with textured scales might look nice in the shop, but they need to resisted. Removing wax from said scales is an impossibility.) However, it was when I moved the curled-in end of the dining room curtain that I was confronted with the most stark evidence of how long had passed since I last did such a thing:



I expect I have failed somehow.