There Now Follows An Advertisement From Big Fat Pig

BFP Productions are proud to announce the subject for this year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar.

With your indulgence (well, without you too I suppose but you can always stop reading - please don't) I am going to write of twenty-four places that have happy memories for me and as I do so I will attempt to describe those positive feelings.

We start tomorrow with somewhere distinctly unglamorous.

On another topic, I confirm that I have dutifully finished watching Black Earth Rising. I find admiration and ambivalence wrestling to be my prime reaction. Admiration for tackling its excruciating subject matter (the Rwandan genocide) and ambivalence because of its self-conscious styling and some overwrought acting. Well above the televisual norm though one has to say. Would I watch it again? Very possibly.

Also on at the moment is yet another Le Carre adaptation, The Little Drummer Girl. I've read the book but enough years ago not to remember how it will end. I'm enjoying this though the Groupie found it too slow to get anywhere. I can see her point but the prevarications are half the point with Le Carre - I'm still not sure about the need for Ricki Tarr in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but I've loved watching the television adaptation whenever they show it. In Drummer Girl I also enjoy the loving recreation of the drabness of the 1970's - every sighting of an Austin Allegro stirs a nostalgia in me. We didn't know any better - which is rather what made the 80's even more fun.