A post for the 80th annie-versary of Lucy Maud Montgomery

24^th April 2022

In the midst of Titanic and my book launch, and then Easter last week, I have not been able to immerse myself in Anne again as I hoped. I realised what a busy April I’d given myself. I have gotten out Anne, but rather than rush her, I just wanted to share my thoughts in progress on this day, on which the author of the Anne of Green Gables series died, in 1942.

Truly, it was a difficult appointment to keep, for two reasons. One, as a mum of a recent second baby (book) that has not yet enjoyed the kind of success that Maud did, and still does, it is easy to feel a mix of envy and despond in considering this woman. The other matter is the possibility that Maud took her life. Although I have now learned that she may not have done, I recall the shock of reading this for the first time only months ago, and the comparison between the lives of her characters and the one she seemed to have lived; and then the inevitable personal comparison.

There is something I learned from Yoko Ono regarding John Lennon – who we’ll be considering in October: she exhorted people to recall his life, not the manner of his death. I have taken that on with the loss of my Mum (next weekend) and also remembering Jesus each Easter. If the worst is true about the earthly ending of Anne’s creator, it must not be allowed to negate the rest of her life and what she created with it.

I’m not a Maud expert; Maud the woman is a relatively new acquaintance; and I have not yet read her non Anne stories. Perhaps this series will inspire me to delve into her other ones, such as Emily. But I do know Anne Shirley so please allow me to keep with her, but thinking of her later appearances and tying that in with Maud herself.

I have started to read The Blythes Are Quoted, her final work – apparently delivered to her publisher on the day she died, which means that today is also its 80^th anniversary. It was not published for several decades, and then, under the title of The Road To Yesterday, it was redacted. We’ve been able to enjoy this work in full, under its original title, for barely a dozen years.

The first blurb I read – one of several – was intriguing in its shockingness and its departure from all that we expect of both Anne Shirley’s adventures, and the general output of her author. The first tale – one of the omitted ones from the first publication – is a ghost story with ghouls and animal cruelty. I wondered who I was reading; it didn’t seem like an Anne book, except that she and her husband literally are quoted by 3^rd parties in a tale about someone quite other.

But then, I began on what I have said is my favourite Anne book, although I have not been able to re-read it in some years. (Who has decided that the first, and perhaps second or third books are to be made readily available, and adapted, but not the others of this series?) Anne’s House of Dreams is about an important chapter in her adult life – and this book contains things which are not for children. (I point out again that by the end of book one, she’s at college and considering her career; her contemporaries soon start marrying; thus the Anne books are not really for children).

After a drawn out bucolic reunion, Anne encounters someone who has experienced double suicide in their family. There is drunkenness and abuse – which was also part of her childhood. Anne comments that her friends, up until meeting Lesley Moore, have been regular, married folk, with less dramatic problems – although debt and loss, heartache, loneliness, illness, jealousy and long running feuds have all been part of their lives. So actually, Lesley isn’t so different; it is just more obvious, perhaps.

I’ve many more thoughts, I’m sure, but I cannot marshal them all for this day.

I just want to honour Maud and her life, and what she has brought to ours.

You may be interested in my service last month on The Wisdom of Anne, which contains links to the rest of my series from last fall. I may well have more to share – about ‘Gaying Green Gables’ and Anne on education, for example.

Quills 20 years on: thoughts for Lent 2021

There are at least two films of 20 years ago that I would like to reflect on at their anniversary.

One is my ongoing weekly piece for Lent, culminating in Easter Sunday’s sermon – Chocolat.

The other has been a more profound and regular experience for me, but a more controversial one. I hesitate to tell people that I’ve watched it, let alone own it. If they don’t already know what the film is about, then I hesitate even more. I make clear that I abhor the Marquis De Sade – his books and his practices. There is much in the film which makes me flinch, and I will turn the sound down or even fastforward certain scenes and speeches. It’s a DVD I still keep out of sight.

I firstly explain why I saw that film at its British general release in February 2001, and why I saw it again. I would have passed over it, were it not for the involvement of Kate Winslet [see tag cloud to the right]. I watch all of her films, but bucked at attending an 18 certificate about this infamous post Revolutionary French writer, whose pain inducing declivities gave us an adjective named after him. I think I knew that the film wouldn’t be showing these. Something personal influenced a heartwringing decision to find out what this film was like. I found a companion to see it with, but several friends were shocked I went.

I was anxious as I sat in my local multiplex. I might’ve been tempted to leave at the first scene, of a drawn out, semi erotic public execution by guillotine. The next scene was more reassuring: as ever, the impending horror cut away to something else: the eyes and voice of Kate Winslet, a laundry maid, collecting the linens of a certain inmate in Charenton asylum for the insane. In the dirty sheets are dirty writing, to be slipped to a waiting man on horseback outside the gates, whose printing presses are… I decline to turn that into a Geoffrey Rush as Sadean simile.

I felt fearful and weighed down during and after the film. I wrote that I felt psychologically sordid and reviled for seeing it. My companion hadn’t liked it either.

Then the film came to the local arts cinema. I’m not sure why I went again; was it the description in the brochure, something I’d read in one of the many magazines I collected about the film? It was talked about in intellectual terms about literature and censorship. It involved a liberal priest. And Kate Winslet. Had I gotten something wrong?

This time I was alone, and I was in a busy house of artier and often agier people. An octogenarian behind guffawed throughout, and I realised that Quills is meant to be funny. I kept my eyes open for more scenes. The film was beginning to transform. I even went again, and this time, I did not shut my eyes at all, although I prepared to. Now I knew what was coming and when. Actually, the offence was mainly auditory – in the words spoken. Now I considered it among the best films I had seen.

When the DVD was released later that year, with a full set of extras, I hesitated. Perhaps I would be able to better understand with a full writer’s commentary and featurettes? I did… but I was not ever able to embrace the 1995 play on which the film is based. Base is the word. It was Kate who suggested that her character, Madeleine, love the Abbé in charge of the asylum. This is central to the film, and without it, the play – which went further than the film – is a cold ‘encyclopaedia of perversions’. I sent it back to Amazon and do not intend to re-read it.

I shared Quills with a group and had intended to on a course I taught. But I had forgotten, rather than become inured to, the potentially shocking horror scenes, and I ended up having to reassure my community about the very concerns I’d had when I first saw it. It’s a responsible thing, choosing a film which you introduce to a posse, not the public. I decided that I didn’t feel comfortable to show Quills in its entirety in such a setting again, although it wasn’t helped by the group’s general response to the film.

In early 2009 – eight years after the film’s release – I wrote an article for my new found web presence. It’s no longer there, so I reproduce it at the bottom of this. It was called “A Christian response to Quills”. One reader was pleasantly surprised that it was not the outraged moral diatribe which she expected, but welcomed debate and challenge, and recognised the film as superbly crafted.

Yet my more recent viewings have elicited a different view.

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A chief reason that this film entered and remained in my life is its place in my own writing. I published a novel and am still redrafting the sequel, which has required huge personal work and very complicated multi-layered writing. Parallel Spirals is a story within a story, and it celebrates the power of story and its place in our own. The characters watch a film in the very cinema that I saw Quills in for the second and third times which has the kind of power over them and compulsion that this did on me. My inner story is a film I created, a subversion of Jane Eyre called Eyres and Graces. It too comes in two parts and the sequel finishes the sequel of my novel. It is not about Quills, but draws on the experience of seeing it, and another film involving the same actress which I first watched at the time. My story doesn’t involve a Marquis de Sade, although as I type that, I can see a parallel with someone. I can reassure that although my own story is also for an adult audience, it won’t involve scenes of the sort I feared in Quills, and nor does it describe them.

I like to choose reading and watching to match what I’m writing. When I enter the Eyres and Graces parts of my novel, I seek out something to keep those parts of the long-gestated story alive. Quills has often been part of that. They both involve sensuous but lovable women in overwashed petticoats who are confined to the grounds of a large mansion, servants and ministers, and people who find solace in writing. For that third layer, I drew on another film I saw at that time: like Quills, a story woven around a real person of controversy, a European writer concerned with sex: Veronica Franco. That inner story is called The Nun and The Courtesan. Not unlike the pornographer and the priest in Quills, plus maid.

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What I wanted to say about Quills now ties it into a most contemporary parable. Quills is about confinement, censorship, forbidding. It is about controlling through health. It asks if the worst of abusers can be rehabilitated, or punished. A man of God is usurped by a man of science on the orders of the highest political power. It is set in a land who has experienced a bloody revolution whose ghost still haunts. The people almost revelled in destroying the oppressing elite, but the ruling aristocracy was replaced by not just a monarch, but an emperor. France needed further revolutions quite swiftly.

France of the late 18th century believed that an entirely new era was coming. We too, globally, have the opportunity for such a restart. We are discovering horrors of the sort that the Marquis committed, or his characters do, the most base acts that can be done to another. It seems that these are done for the benefit and pleasure of the perpetrators on minors and other vulnerable people. What can we do with Bluebeard when his cellar is opened? I’m thinking much about judgement, and my beliefs about punishment and the kinds which are permissible in a moral and just society, run on love. None of Dr Royer-Collard’s fit that description, and neither does the mass guillotining of blue blood. But what then? Some of you may not yet know to what I refer. Sadly, you will. It is Bluebeard and de Sade on a mass scale.

There are also the atrocities above ground and in plain sight, such as those in Quills glimpsed being done to extras by nuns and a so-called doctor, to assist ‘ill’ people and make them ‘better’. The premise of Charenton asylum that people who are deemed not to have culpability and cognitive ability are entombed, held within dark corridors and single occupancy cells, for which they do not have the key. They are taken there on someone else’s orders, someone considered more qualified’s diagnosis, to get well. Or at least, be kept safe and out of the way. They are infantilised, restricted, watched over. They seem to have no or few visitors. Their length of stay does not seem up for review.

I am thinking of something else starting with the letter q, referenced in a recent post.

Then there is the public association – banned by a wealthy man appointed by the highest authority who does not understand or care about the needs of the wards of the asylum. Theatre was their joy; it also gave pleasure to others. It also brought in an income – we wonder where the high salary of the doctor is coming from. He is prepared to make draconian threats without warning and discussion, even throw out the 200 people living at Charenton and giving them nowhere to go but a grave in the gutter. He does not consider the people working at Charenton, who all seem to live there, who perhaps have known no other life. Maddie seems to have grown up there, following her mother’s footsteps. We note that her mother lost her sight via work hazards, but no-one seems to be compensating and finding justice for her, or preventing the same happening to others.

Meanwhile, the doctor is secure in his château, gifted by the emperor, and a salary suffice to refurbish it.

His supply of marble and silk will be reimbursed via manipulating the Marquis’ wife into making money out of the man he is sent to prohibit; his supply of nubile flesh comes courtesy of the church, who also benefited. His recommendations for therapy are clearly torture, but his tall hat, big house, introduction from the court, and title give Royer-Collard the right to advise and direct over the more familiar and kind-hearted leader. Royer-Collard’s history should concern us, for he is making more of the same.

Seeing the parallel?

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In recent viewings, I decided that the story is often abusive. Almost every instance of sexuality is someone taking advantage of another, often a younger, less experienced person. Each time, the abuser is a man. Only one person is set free, and by her own instigation, but it’s not really a love story as much as a sexual liaison which gives her the chance to escape. The diabolical doctor doesn’t get his comeuppance. It’s the kindhearted priest who is taken down, rather that elevating, as he intended. Although the author explains that the ending isn’t all negative, for writing is the Abbe’s salvation, I found that stronger and more positive in another French film about a real, controversial writer: Violette. I can feel like the walls of Charenton – an unhealthy green and dripping.

I don’t like to state that I am ascending and sound arrogant but I think on my spiritual quest that I am re-evaluating many things. I don’t think that writing, with its necessary tensions and blend of dark and light, which I believe we also need in life, will go even if the Age of Aquarius is all we wish it to be. But I do question why art house cinema often equals misery, and we call misery real and happiness and hope cheesy and less good quality. Hollywood gives your dreams: arthouse crushes them.

Yes, the world can be as base as the Marquis’s writing, and include the cruelties we see in the film to those who are incarcerated. But we also have the other capacity, as the Abbé says. And we can transform through art, absolutely.

 A Christian Response to Quills

“This book is a threat to decent people everywhere,” says Dr Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) of the Marquis de Sade’s lewd novel, Justine. Could the same be said of the play and the film Quills, from which the quote comes? I feel embarrassed at confessing to having seen a film on the Marquis de Sade, the man whose sexual perversions gave us ‘sadism’. It includes violence, bad language, explicit sexual references and blasphemy.

So why did I bother going to see the film?

I was intrigued by this Oscar nominated film which has been praised as ‘intelligent’ and ‘quite brilliant’, with high calibre actors being drawn by the outstanding quality of the screenplay (by Doug Wright). its self confessed theme is that of artistic censorship, using the Marquis as a figure to weave an argument around. Housed in a 19th century asylum, the Marquis is forbidden to write after surreptitiously publishing a novel that shocks (or delights) all France, and a battle of wits ensues as he goes to ever more extreme measures to continue…

So is this film “nothing more than an encyclopaedia of perversions” (as Caine also says of Justine), or masterpiece of moral philosophy in drama?

To decry the film seems to beg the Marquis’ question: “are your convictions so fragile that they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your God so flimsy, so weak?” I find fleeing from controversy a form of cowardice and rise to the challenge, especially as it directly includes the Church, and we have only the mouth of Joaquin Phoenix’s liberal Abbé de Coulmier (who runs the asylum) to speak up for us. He puts De Sade in perspective: “You’re not the antichrist! You’re just a malcontent who knows how to spell!”

Quills shows little violence or sex: most of the film is dialogue, although there are some scenes I am still uncomfortable with. It is exaggerated, often very funny, human and touching with a convincing central romance. The characters are vivid and unstarched by period drama.

Its central premise is a timely question when the boundaries of film censorship are being tested. It is superbly structured ‘escalating frenzy’ with succinct synopses of philosophical debate in rich language.

Both sides of the argument are given: the violent acts committed seem to stem from the Marquis’ story, insinuating that those who have a more laissez faire attitude must consider those incapable of telling fact from fiction. Equally, the Marquis claims that he writes a work of fiction, not a moral treatise, and he writes what he observes as the eternal truths: the most base of human nature; he says that elevating the human soul to higher things is the job of the Church. But it leaves the viewer with the right to make up their own mind.

Quills has a tendency to elevate the writer’s creative needs above all else in society, and perhaps the East Anglian newspaper reviewer who stated that Quills is full of its own self importance did not charge unfairly. But there are other themes which interest me more. The most central and relevant to me is redemption. It challenges me as a Christian: is it for us to say where God draws the line at forgiveness and where humanity has taken leave? Dr Royer-Collard, Michael Caine’s alienist sent to cure the Marquis, uses discipline to yield self improvement. But is denial and punishment the way forward? Or is the Abbé’s approach of befriending and encouraging the channelling of one’s demons as a form of catharsis (such as the Marquis’s writing) more fruitful? We see the pitfalls of both: the hypocrisy of the supposedly upright doctor, and that repression has equal dangers as too much freedom – something the Church needs to learn.

The Marquis’ tenet that “to know virtue, one must first be acquainted with vice” is a refraction of Romans 1: we have the law so we know what sin is. The only thing the film really incites is debate, not debauchery. The film certainly inspired lots of thoughts for me – not perverted or disturbed ones, but really involved issues that few films have the courage to address.

Chocolat for this week will appear anon

A post for Kate Winslet’s 40th

Life begins at – and has already been significant for….

Within a week, two of my favourite actresses turn 40. I am choosing to write this on the birthday of the younger of the two, as that is the person I know best and have followed for the longest.

I think I’ve known Kate Winslet for her whole career, and she has been important to me for much of that time. Anyone who’s read this blog before, or even glanced at the tag cloud on the right, will see that Kate is someone who has taken up much screen time – on my computers, on my television sets, of my cinema going. I have seen all her films, often at the cinema and within days of its release; and I own and have rewatched many of them. Click on the cloud to see my analyses of these. It will keep growing.

Yet it is more than reviews and articles that she has inspired in me.

The power of those we don’t know, those that are public and we have an idea of and yet none at all of their real selves, is a theme that drives much of my work. It is true of queens who died centuries before I was born, princesses who died during my lifetime, and superhuman princesses that are invented, but yet feel like real people.

With an actor, there is who they are really, their persona, and the roles they play. There is what they say in the media, and what the media says of them. We glean ideas about them from those roles, those interviews, the analyses of the dresses they wear and the causes they choose. But perhaps like Sarah Douglas said of her role as the black shiny clad Ursa in Superman, the slits in the costume that seem to show the bare skin of the wearer are highly calculated false portals. “You think you see me in places you don’t.”

This theme of revelation of self and of celebrity is pertinent right now. I’ve already said so much about Kate on here, and will continue to view her films (two new ones coming out next month!), but I wanted to speak a little about what she means to me, or rather, what function she has served in my life. It is true of other actors, but her especially.

We don’t need to know our muse, or them to know who we are, and who we think they are doesn’t have to be true. That’s not to say I don’t want to meet Kate – she might be the living famous person I’d most like to – but that a sort of relationship can be created without an exchange, at least, on my side.

I’ve found Kate’s c2000 roles her most powerful and enduring. As a person that I’d like to be with, I’d choose Maddie from Quills, though I’d like to take her far from Charenton, and also Hester from Enigma. I also warmed to Sabine in A Little Chaos.

At this time, I am also doing a Sarah Douglas costume, starting to show some well planned slits as I make my writing known to the world, because I’m launching my book. Although my creation is separate from Kate Winslet, there is something of and someone like her in my novel (which I plan to also make into a film). It is a story about false bottoms of drawers, of consciousness of the layers of ourselves and what we show, and what we keep to ourselves – and how it is easier to explore and reveal ourselves through personas, even publically, than me as me, to those I know well.

It is about the power of an actor’s persona, one which (like Kate’s) often feels very real, very ordinary (and yet not at all ordinary), and a particular role – one that I invented – to be part of our lives; and for stories to have life changing power, not just a couple of hours of entertainment and escape, but to make you face what you couldn’t bear to see.

Thus today, which is not my birthday, is also for me a time of anniversary and celebration – not yet of a life, like Kate’s, which is full of public recognition; mine has thus far been of preparation.

I would like to thank Kate for the inspiration, joy and challenge she has brought to me and so many others who may not know you but whose lives you have certainly touched.

Marion Cotillard will get her own post when I have seen her latest film, Macbeth – hopefully, any day.

http://parallel-spirals.webs.com/

Eloquent Expression – fiction dialogue for the congruent

As I writer, I am fed up with hearing – when you write dialogue, make sure nobody says what they mean. And I think – does this mean that all characters, by definition, are inarticulate and not self aware? Surely their journey during the story should be towards greater awareness and the ability to say what’s on their hearts? Some people are taciturn and oblique; some are loquacious and elaborate. The writing world seems to favour the former. But can’t we create characters who are at different stages of the speech spectrum? In film, it means the actor’s facial expressions leave us guessing what a character’s thinking – and sometimes, viewers can guess wrong.

I wondered if characters who were skilled at self expression would make for interesting drama – for there always needs to be something that’s not working for a story to be worth telling. Are they too sorted for the necessary growing and tension?

In life, we strive to be greater at self awareness, at speaking our hearts, at building better relationships with ourselves and others – especially our intimate others. In fiction, characters go on journey too and can be incredibly informing about real life. So why this discrepancy? Why are we encouraged to keep our characters (and our audience) in emotional nappies?

Carol Rogers, the psychotherapist behind person centred counselling, speaks of congruence as one of his three core conditions needed for a therapeutic relationship. It reminds me of school maths and triangles fitting over each other – but I think that’s the point – that what you’re feeling inside fits with what you present to others.

Also – who’s to say no one ever makes speeches or uses mellifluous language in dialogue? We are diverse, and yet the writing world would have everyone have a particular mode of expression – pithy, tangential, limited vocabulary.

I was delighted by the recent film Her in which characters (one human, one virtual) do share their emotions freely. Samantha, the operating system, begins by being open and insightful; as she evolves to ever grater levels, she gets even more adept at it. There is plenty of tension, and yet both Samantha and Theodore always speak their hearts. At last – a drama for the emotionally mature! So thank you to Spike Jonze for penning one and for Joachim Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson and Amy Adams for being part of something which demonstrates that self development and being congruent does make for good drama.

My Bad Girls Series 1 fan fiction has arrived!

I posted it yesterday on Zetaboard’s Nikki and Helen forum. I’ve also started and contributed to other posts on this site, I love the insights on there.

Under the first instalment, I explain how weird it was to write other people’s characters and that it’s not my usual style. We’ve been debating the style of Bad Girl’s writing, and whether it’s too short and misses things, or whether its subtly is part of its quality. Personally, I think the former.

It wouldn’t let me put them all in one file as it’s too long (22,000 words). Here’s the links:

http://s4.zetaboards.com/Nikki_and_Helen/topic/10047551/1/#new eps 1+2

http://s4.zetaboards.com/Nikki_and_Helen/topic/10047561/1/#new 3-5

http://s4.zetaboards.com/Nikki_and_Helen/topic/10047562/1/#new 6-8

http://s4.zetaboards.com/Nikki_and_Helen/topic/10047563/1/#new 9-10

If you’ve got any more specific feedback (make criticism constructive please) I’d love to hear it

Why I’m disillusioned with the publishing world

Although many publishers and agents claim to want to champion the work of writers (I am sure genuinely)…

We are told that 98% of agents reject submissions, and without one most big publishers will not look at your work.

Yet the publisher takes a bigger cut than the author, who gets only 8-10% of book sales, meaning that for 100,000 copies, (and all those years of soul inspired work), you’ll get minimum wage. (Agents take their commission out of the author’s royalties).

This is making me ask: why go that route?

I was against e-publishing and pro bookshops, but it occurs to me that it’s book chains who are damaging the book trade. Thay ask for a third to even half of the cover price, and they stock only what they consider will sell. I know from being a former bookseller that where once the shop staff had the power to order their own stock, this is moving more to head office level. Range is sacrificed to large numbers of sure sellers.

This does not help the independent bookshops who cannot command the same discounts. It also affects small publishers.

And this affects what is written, or allowed to be publicly expressed.

Agents and publishers tell you you need an agent because it gives the agents work and saves the publisher doing it. They tell you there’s no kudos in self publishing, calling it “vanity” to degrade it. Self publishing and e-publishing tell you you don’t need agents; they will remind you of the tiny cut you get, the rights and control you may lose, and how hard it is to be published.

But if 80-90% of submissions are on the slush pile of what agents consider no good, what do those writers do with our talent and hard work?

I think some writers feel that agents are intimidating: there’s a huge disparity of perceived power. You the writer must do exactly as they say and if they deign to choose you, you must remember what gold dust of a chance you’ve been given and be submissive. There’s the feeling that agents are handlers, in every sense of the word.

Some agents want to know if you submit elsewhere. Considering the odds against being chosen and that agents take months to reply – “of course” is the answer! Would I be expected to say if I had applied to other jobs? If I need a job then I will diligently apply for them until I am offered what I want. If I wish to date, I will put a profile on as many sites as a I wish and chat with as many individuals as I wish. It’s only when things became serious (ie an offer is made) that exclusivity and openness cuts in.

Yes, we can only have one agent (although some of us are artistic in multiple areas yet lots of agents can’t represent acting, scriptwriting, and literature). And we need to get it right. This is a mini marriage, the person that looks after our babies. Which parent would allow a nanny more power and say over their child than themselves? Would they not feel the right to ask questions and withdraw an application if they felt unhappy?

We should never be in any unequal relationship, feeling we are so lucky to have a chance that we have no rights and say.

Agents and publishers need authors to exist. But we can write without them. Just as employers need to market themselves to new employees, so agents need to let writers know why they should submit to them. Yes we as writers need to know what an agent seeks and we need to do our own wooing. But who dates, feeling it’s all about their profile and they should have no choosing power of their own? It’s equally about being sold to, not just selling yourself – and remember the phrase ‘the highest bidder’? That is not just in monetary terms, but care and empathy.

The culture of the agent (publisher/director/producer etc) having all the cards needs to change. With the internet, self publishing of all kinds (including music and video) is very easy and prominent, and understandably so.

It needs to be mutual from the start. And those who do not get chosen, rather than feeling crushed, should find other outlets. No one should be even thinking they have the right to destroy the career and confidence of another. Of course “you are no good” means “I think you are no good”. It is always a subjective statement, but hearing it once or twice can be enough to cause even suicidal feelings.

How many of us struggle to see the worth in a much lauded established piece of work? How many of us, as editors or producers,  would’ve passed over something that’s famous?

And how many famous people were constantly passed over?

The crushers need to be more aware and take responsibility for that. Of course, some who hear harsh words end up doing well and then publicly repeat these statements of woe, to the discomfort of those who said them.

(And in case you’re wondering, no-one’s said that to me, not that I would believe them anyway).