Nothing Like Tilda or Ryan or Ali

Hello & Welcome to My New Hobby.
On second thoughts, it's not exactly That New.
I've been doing it off & on now for some time.
Can you guess what it is?
To make it easy for you, I'll give you a list, below. You need to pick TWO because I've just realised that I have Two Hobbies - a Not That New Hobby & a Brand New Hobby.
Beekeeping?  Beer Making? Fruit Preserving? Quilting? Brisk Walking? Corn Removing? Scrapbooking?
I Can't think of any other Hobbies. Surely there must be some more?
Oh, Stamps. But I wonder if anyone does that anymore? In this age of Tweets & constant Status Updates, the Stamp seems a little passe. What a shame that I can't put a little accent over the 'e' & make it look like I'm really writing the word  'passe'. You know, like 'Passay'. I'll take any opportunity to show off my Franglais, .
Anyway, have you guessed yet?
That's right. The Not-So-New Hobby is Scrapbooking. Well, a form of Scrapbooking, like if a Scrapbook was a Blog Entry.
And the Brand-New Hobby is Corn Removal. Earlier this evening, I finally cracked & bought a packet of Medicated Corn Removers that Cushion as well as Kill (the corn, that is. I certainly hope that They won't kill me. Like, say the Special Corn Killing Agents ran amok in my blood stream & poisoned my whole body, not just the Rogue Corn?  Quelle Horreur!)
But back to My Scrapbooking.
I'm practising (sp?)   a Highly Specialised form of  The Art.  Here's how it works:
1. I relentlessly trawl the TV guide to see if any of my favourite movies are on. My favourites always feature actresses whose outfits & style I drool over. (e.g. Bette D in 'Now Voyager', the best makeover film of all time)
2. I  squeal with delight when I find a fave. (Sooo hard to find one amongst all the Adam Sandler & Sandra Bullock films. Have you seen  her in 'All About Steve', by any chance? Got to be one of the most insultingly annoying films of all time even though luscious Bradley Cooper is in it)
3. I watch the movie, pausing it (my cable TV package has this handy feature) to take photos of  Iconic Moments in Iconic Outfits & Accessessories. Like Tilda Swinton, above & below, signing a cheque at the Dry Cleaners in 'I Am Love' with a rather out of shape Hermes Kelly (or is it a Birkin?) bag nonchalantly sitting on the counter.

I adore Tilda. She is a Study in Graceful Gravitas.
How does she manage to be an Anglo-Scots Woman who can trace her family back to the High Middle Ages &  be in the same class as Princess Diana at school &  plays a Russian who speaks fluent Italian  in 'I Am Love'?
How does she manage to Effortlessly Cross Genders as she did in 'Orlando'? How does she manage an American accent as she did in 'Burn After Reading' & 'Michael Clayton'? And, most importantly, how the hell does she manage to have a husband & twin children who happily live down the road from her & her Other Partner, a New Zealand painter. Like Two Partners. At Once. And she's Not Cheating. Everyone's as cool as a cucumber.
I once had a New Zealand partner. But I didn't have a hubby who happily lived down the road as well.
I must, repeat Must, stop Comparing myself to Others. Particularly Glamorous film stars.
And I must, repeat Must, stop with the Rhetorical Questions. They're like a Runaway Train that no one can stop.  If one of my students inserts even the smallest of Question Marks in an essay, I almost make a hole in the paper crossing it out with my heavy leaded pencil.

Anyway, I thoroughly recommend 'I Am Love'. It was totally mesmerizing & terribly sad.
As a rule, I don't like to watch Sad Films. I've had enough Sad to last the rest of my life.  But it was a great pleasure to watch Tilda being Terribly Sad in a whole array of Hugely Chic outfits.
I must, repeat MUst start dressing like that.

And now we move on to 'Love Story'. It was on early this week.
Let me, just for a moment take you back to 1971 to when I first saw it at the movies.
It was the year after I left school. I was eighteen.
I swear to God that I remember that it was a rainy saturday nite. Maybe it was just raining in my heart. Anyway, it felt like it was raining.
I went into the city to see it with my long time school friend, Elizabeth. We were both longing for a boyfriend. At that stage I hadn't yet started going out with Bob, my first boyfriend, who I liked to call 'Blob' . Blob owned a white Panel Van which in those days was jokingly called a 'Shaggin Wagon'. My parents approved of him but were appalled by the Van. They always approved of anyone I didn't particularly like.

The problem with Blob was that he was nothing like Ryan O'Neal, which we all know now, in hindsight, is a blessing. But certainly NOt at the time.
I was desperate to meet someone called Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan's name in the film) who I would teasingly call 'Preppy' just like Ali McGraw did in the film. I would visit his hugely wealthy but dysfunctional family at their cold but impressive mansion & even though I was from the wrong side of the tracks, I would quickly win them over with my grace & charm & of course my Ali McGraw-style beauty.

I would work tirelessly in a variety of low-paying but worthy jobs  to support Oliver through Harvard Law School.
That was one of Blob's great flaws. He didn't go to Harvard Law School. Instead, He ran the Kitchenware Department at Grace Bros, Roselands, a suburban department store.   His family were from Norfolk Island & he was a direct descendent of John Adams who was part of the 'Mutiny on the Bounty', made famous by the Marlon Brando film.
Blob had a rather Swarthy Look. It was nothing like Ryan O'Neal's.
After about nine months, we broke up.   I went on to marry someone who went to Sydney University Law School. It was the closest thing that I could get to Harvard.
Bob eventually went back to Norfolk Island where he drove a Tourist Bus. Perhaps he's driving it now.
Luckily, unlike Ali in the movie, I appear to be still alive. Here she is is below,  bravely watching Oliver showily prance around Wolman Rink in New York's Central Park  because She's too sick to skate. 
Then they make that gut-wrenching walk in the snow to the hospital where she dies.
After watching 'Love Story' the other nite, I now blame everything on Oliver Barret IV & Ryan O'Neal.