Only three appointments yesterday, two at the same house, where the dear, 80 year-old man has lost his wife recently. He sees her everywhere in the house and it makes him more sad. One of the interested parties is a man who is about my age, and I don’t see many of them. I realize I am flirting with him but I hadn’t meant to; it’s simply so refreshing not to be hit on by 60 year olds that I am in the faintly ridiculous position of spotting a novelty and toying with it. The rest of the day is spent in the office and this is when I confirm that I am ill suited to this work. I’m really in my element, driving about all day, meeting and greeting, chat and politeness, but, this morning, in the office, knowing nothing of what has gone on throughout the week, I flounder. When I get back to the office, it is so quiet that the others have locked up and gone home. The desk I use when one of the other women is not there is really mucky, as is the phone etc. I think about cleaning it up but realize this could be taken as a criticism, which it would be, so I leave it mucky and bugger off myself.
Glorious 39 strips away illusions. Poliakoff presents the apparent idyll of an English aristocratic family headed by genteel patriarch Lord Keyes (Bill Nighy). He presides over a country estate in Norfolk and his elegant townhouse in London – a world of golden light, romantic ruins, servants, house parties and happy children. But this is 1939, a mere 21 years since the Great War, the war to end all wars, in which millions died, Britain was crippled with war debt, and the English country house system which he so values was almost annihilated. There are many references to the ancientness of his family and tradition, but now, few male servants remained alive or unmaimed to work the English landscape or to be in service to the old families. Fearing domestic and political upheaval, appeasers such as Keyes sought to prevent Churchill leading the country and taking Britan to war, and to buy off Hitler to preserve British cultural and national identity. Nighty is excellent, contro...
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