What I Did On My Holidays. Day 4.

A quiet day to finish this too short break on account of Sharon feeling under the weather. Still it's an ill wind etc and it gave me the chance to start learning lines for An Inspector Calls. Also the opportunity to read some more of Atlas Shrugged (don't condemn me yet - judgement to follow in the fullness of time) and to listen to the download of a BBC production of Inspector. 

In deference to Sharon's health we shelved the Pol Roger for a more auspicious occasion and went to the cheaper end of the cellar, well it's the garage actually. I did however do what will doubtless be the final barbecue of the season. The primeval thrill of open fire cooking is yet more exaggerated by the fall of darkness over the flames. Show me the power of man's red flower, as King Louis so astutely demanded in the canonical Jungle Book, Disney version not Kipling natch, though family lore has it I read the latter when little more than a foetus.

We're so retro darling, you know we even have a VHS player at our country estate and it was on this venerable machine that we watched Wilde, a copy of which would appear to have been lying unwatched for a decade and a half. Not bad actually, the first half too fragmentary, the second (once the odious Bosie appears on the scene) more compelling. Stephen Fry very good as Wilde but the revelation to me was Jude Law, commandingly loathsome as Bosie, capturing what Roger Ebert describes as the character's 'fatuous egotism'.

Caught a nice line while station hopping yesterday on the way to the bottle bank (we have a gold account) - 'Me, a narcissist? If I was a narcissist I'd be the first person to know about it.'