Bits, pieces and a picture of my house

I'm working entirely from home this week, as it's 'reading week' at Warwick (although I still had to teach first years on Monday, because they don't get one). In the garden outside my window, lots of little birds are hopping around, rummaging for seeds and grubs, and chirruping as they do so. It's rather nice to have them keeping me company as I continue to edit chapter 3.

On this topic, I'm going to try out LJ's new 'insert picture' function, and see if it will let me put in a picture of my flat, so you can all see the garden I'm talking about. Here goes:

( I live here )

Hmm, it's worked, but the image is smaller than I'd like. So, experiment conducted, but I think I'll use methods which allow me more control over my pictures in future. Anyway, the front part of the ground floor of the building in the photograph is my flat, so all the windows you can see at that level are mine. I am working just inside the window in the bottom right-hand corner, and the birds are jumping around in the large bush-type thing in front of it (although that is now, of course, leafless). Please pause to admire my rose (pink) and clematis (lilac).

Hell, let's have a picture of my bridge while we're at it. I've been meaning to post this for a while:

( It's mine, I tell you - all mine! )

This crosses the railway to approach my house, and although it was built by the Council, it is, self-evidently, my personal property. I cross it every single time I leave the house, and my friends never cross it for any reason other than to get to my house. Ergo, mine. It is my equivalent of the large gates and tree-lined avenue which told visitors they were entering into the territory of a stately home. On the bridge, you can see the small, retreating forms of edling, johnnydefective and angeoverhere.

( Six Feet Under and Rome )

Oh, and all you legions of people who don't have exler_rss on your friends list - you do know that it's a regular Dilbert feed, don't you? There are occasional short articles in Russian as well, actually, but they are easily ignored for the much higher proportion of daily Dilbert cartoons which you get. Just spreading the love, there.

Time for more of chapter 3, I do believe...

So how about Rome, then?

Initial reaction - I liked it a lot. Good characterisations, plenty of interesting details to look out for in the sets, and accessible without being too patronising. Sure, there are some historical liberties being taken. If little Octavius ever got captured by Pompey's agents in Gaul, the event was so successfully hushed up that there's absolutely no trace of it left anywhere, in any of the historical records. But it developed his character, and also helped to clarify the enmity between Pompey and Caesar.

I'm pleased, in fact, to see Octavius taking such a central role. In fact, I'd go as far right now as to say that it looks to my eye very much as though the whole production has really been conceived from the start as his story. Not Julius Caesar's, not Mark Antony's. It starts at the very point when the young Octavius is just beginning to become actively involved in the affairs of his family and the politics of Rome. Of course, his story involves some major secondary players, and I'm sure they will have their moments. But in terms of the grand arc of the production, it looks to me as though it is his life story that will form the central peg on which all others hang. And so it should, because he is amazing.

It's a pity, that being the case, that they've got his name wrong. He didn't officially become Octavian(us) until adopted by Julius Caesar, and he didn't use the name himself even then. And a pity that we didn't get to see his first real major public appearance in Rome - the delivery of the funeral oration for his dead grandmother, Julia. But I suppose that that would only have worked for an audience familiar with the device of the Roman funeral oration, and who wants to hear a long boring speech anyway, when they can see him nearly getting killed in Gaul?

On the plus side, his costume was excellent (a bulla! and a toga praetexta!), his physical appearance convincingly like his later portrait images (as indeed was the case for most of the major characters) and his characterisation just perfect. The nerdy kid with a vicious streak, already unnervingly au fait with Roman politics and keen to manipulate and control. Oh yes, all just ready to flower into a most excellent Augustus.

I look forward to seeing more: of him, of the sets, and of the fine details of HBO's Roman world.

Edited 03/11/05 to correct mistake about Julia.