Petty ailments of the season: a twitchy left eyelid, return of the slight numbness in my left hand that plagued me last year, and general unfitness & tiredness. I’ve already had the hand looked at by a specialist – nothing serious, perhaps go in for physiotherapy if it’s a problem (it isn’t). An NHS search online suggests that the twitchy eyelid is probably down to caffeine, alcohol or stress, or all three. So I’ve started switching to decaff coffee and camomile tea.

Spent the afternoon preparing for the Writing London module’s seminar. This time – the film Finisterre. Went over my notes and the tutor’s handouts, and watched the film again courtesy of the Birkbeck DVD reference library – you have to sit and watch it on the premises, using one of the computer stations and headphones. Didn’t realise the Astoria Theatre was in the film – people are seen queuing outside for a concert in 2003 by The Hives (I think). The Astoria is now vanished, of course, erased into the crater that will become the central Crossrail platforms.

By the time of the seminar, I’d typically scribbled down enough things to say to take up the whole session. Once again my problem was knowing how to edit my class contributions to that tricky area between not saying anything and saying too much and making my classmates hate me (thankfully I’ve not yet reached that dreaded moment when the tutor says ‘Someone else!’). So I limited my pipings-up by pointing out that the film’s script – everything said by the main ‘narrator’ of Michael Jayston – was written by Kevin Pearce, and that his role is often overlooked in articles on the Saint Etienne films. Then I offered the idea that the film was not so much about The Tourist Gaze, more The Thoughtful Fanzine Gaze, and mentioned Mr P’s 1993 book Something Beginning With O (now worth £65 online, I’ve still got my copy and it’s not for sale). And I mentioned how some of the references to songs in Finisterre are pretty obscure indeed – I suggested that I was probably the only person in the class who knew that the phrase ‘Use A Bank I’d Rather Die’ was a song by McCarthy (and I was).

Chatted online afterwards with Mr Pearce himself about it. He finds the idea of having his words studied for a degree ‘surreal’. Too modest. I can heartily recommend his blog about London songs, The London Nobody Sings and his more recent online music fanzine Your Heart Out. 

Next week we do Henry IV Pt 1. Which will be a lot harder. I’m definitely not a Facebook friend of the scriptwriter there.

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Afterwards, to the Odeon Tottenham Court Road to see The Iron Lady. It’s not worth the hype, and not as good as the recent BBC TV films on Thatcher, particularly Margaret with Lindsay Duncan. And certainly not three times as good as The Queen (see previous entry).

Attempting to cover a whole lifetime of such a famous life in a single film can only frustrate. It’s far better to zoom in on a particular incident like the 1997 Diana crisis in The Queen, or the 1990 leadership challenge in Margaret. Plenty enough there. Zoom out any further, and surfaces are skimmed.

But what people are really going to see is Ms Streep being excellent as usual, just playing the part, and that’s what you get. Just as Resident Alien was really about seeing John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp again. Both films are not proper films, they’re turns. Is that enough? Yes, if that’s what you come for. Undemanding, no surprises, nothing you didn’t know, you just enjoy the turn.

Spent a few hours after I woke up today, tinkering with the Coleridge & Hughes essay before finally uploading it. Slightly regretting the ‘Shard as visionary fragment‘ pun now, but glad I got it out of my system. It had reached the point where I was taking the same words out only to put them back in again, over and over again.

What I am definitely proud of is just getting it done on time, and not missing a single class yet.

Currently reading Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. Stuffed full of engaging ideas, highly readable (particularly for a lecture) and – not a quality always associated with Ms W – quite funny in places. I can’t read the bit about ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ without thinking of the Smiths song that took its title from the piece, or the band that took their name in turn from the Smiths song.

Tonight’s classes: a seminar on gender in poetry (Mina Loy, Plath, Carol Ann Duffy), followed by a lecture on the uses of literary theory. Stayed around in the Birkbeck student union bar afterwards with fellow student Matthew and young MA friend Joseph R. Gin & tonic at only £2.50, plus you can stand on the roof outside and look over Bloomsbury.

Picking up new words to bandy about in essays all the time. Tonight’s is ‘valence’ – the capacity of something to unite, react, or interact with something else.

Not to be confused with ‘valance’, the skirt-like drapery thing that goes around the edge of a bed.

Or indeed, Holly Valance, who recently came fourth for draping herself around the edge of Strictly Come Dancing. 

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Press release in my email box: “The Iron Lady has taken three times the box office achieved by The Queen“. What are they implying?

Radio listening: Enjoyed Mark Kermode’s review of the new Thatcher film, which quickly turned into a lengthy argument with his long-time foil Simon Mayo: ‘I’m saying you can’t make a film about Thatcher without doing the politics.’ ‘Yes you can’. ‘No you can’t. ‘Well they did’. ‘But it doesn’t work!’ And so on for about twenty minutes. I’ve yet to see it myself, but one thing to say in The Iron Lady’s favour – it’s certainly got people talking.