WIDAWTW

This post is part of a regular series made largely for my own benefit. You can pretty much scroll right past.

Teaching
Roman World / City in the Roman World - uploaded more (anonymous) first-class essays to the VLE for students who got lower grades to see.
Dissertations - read a student's plan and held a meeting with him about it.

Admin
Held a plagiarism hearing.
Made module reviews and programme reviews available on the department's VLE area, so that students can see how we are responding to their feedback.

Research
Held a preparatory meeting with one of my PhD students for a conference he is running this week.
Attended the conference itself (a two-day event), including chairing a session.
Began sketching together the sorts of things I will say in my AHRC application. Just notes so far, not continuous prose, but it's a start. Read a very helpful book chapter about approaches to fascist engagement with the Classical world which has clarified my understanding of some paradigms which I can present my work as challenging.

Other
Attended a tutors' meeting.

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Day 14- Sneak a peek at gifts or wait it out?

As an adult I'm pretty good at waiting, because I know how nice it is to have a lovely big pile of presents to open on Christmas day. That said, nowadays I often know what is in half of them anyway, because we tend to share present suggestions and requests around within the family in order to ensure that we're all buying things that the recipients will want. The only presents I really have to exercise self-control over are ones given to me by friends, students or colleagues, which are a) a genuine mystery and b) often presented to me quite a few days before Christmas itself.

Like most kids, though, I often peeked as a child. I seem to have known from quite an early age that birthday and Christmas presents were always stashed in the cupboards above the (fitted) wardrobes in my parents' bedroom, and would regularly take advantage of any opportunities which arose to climb up on a wooden stool and find out what I could expect on the day itself.

Most of the time, that didn't really cause any problems. I managed to keep my secret knowledge to myself, and it wasn't usually a problem to look suitably surprised and pleased when I got the gifts themselves, because I was a child and all gifts were exciting anyway, whether I knew what they were in advance or not. But I guess over the years I learned that a genuine surprise was more fun for me.

One year, though, I did get myself into trouble for it. Not by being found out in a straightforward way, but because I gave the game away myself while basically trying to do my Mum an emotional favour. I already knew that she was 'Santa', so when I found what were obviously destined to be our stocking presents one year a week or so before Christmas, I decided to write a letter to Santa asking for exactly those same things. In my childish mind, this was intended to be lovely for my Mum, as it would reveal to her that she had managed to buy exactly what we really wanted, and she would feel a glow of warm satisfaction. And I'm pretty sure I did throw in a few random other items in an attempt to make my letter look 'realistic'.

But it obviously didn't convince, because she sussed what I had been up to straight away. I don't remember being told off hugely for it - perhaps she realised that my intentions were generous, even if they were based on me looking in places where I knew I wasn't supposed to look. But I did feel pretty ashamed of myself afterwards, and I think I pretty much figured out for myself after that that I really shouldn't look in the top of the wardrobe any more.

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31. White Christmas (1954), dir. Michael Curtiz

This film was the annual festive Cottage Classic - which I was rather glad about, as I feel I have seen their alternative offering, It's a Wonderful Life, enough times for a lifetime over the previous two years. I went along with ms_siobhan, planet_andy and a packed house-full of other cinemagoers on Wednesday evening, to enjoy it along with mulled wine, mince pies and the usual opening reel of vintage adverts and shorts. To suit the time of year, several of these were festive, including one of a mad old couple cooking with Paxo and another made up of nostalgic shots of churches, snow and a room full of diners with streamers and balloons, designed to wish cinemagoers a happy 1947. We were not wished a Gay 1964 in the medium of tinsel this time, but we were informed of the availability of Wall's Gaytime ice-creams in the foyer. Sadly, however, the kiosk seemed to have run out of them - some time in the late '60s, I suspect.

The film itself tells the time-honoured story of a bunch of people putting on a big show, complete with all the song and dance opportunities which that normally affords. The two main characters are army buddies, whom we meet for the first time putting on a show for their division. Ten years later, they are a hit Broadway double-act, and the main thread of the story sees them hooking up with a pair of duetting sisters and following them to a small ski-town in Vermont. There, they find their former army General running a ski-lodge which is in financial trouble due to a lack of snow, and resolve to bring their whole Broadway show up into the mountains, put on the biggest extravaganza the town has ever seen, and do their General proud. Along the way, of course, there are comic scrapes and tragic misunderstandings; romances and reconciliations. And I probably won't be giving too much away if I say it snows at the end.

The song, 'White Christmas', was treated in the film as an established hit. Bing is singing it right in the first scene for his army buddies, which you don't really do with a headline number that you have written specially for a new film. Rather, the film is capitalising on the established success of the song. According to Wikipedia, it was first recorded in 1941, and myfirstkitchen was right to say in a comment on one of my earlier 25 Days of Christmas posts that it was originally written for Holiday Inn. I can't say I think it is that great, to be honest - like most of the music in the film it is just straight-up schmaltzy sentiment without any real sense of fun or irony, and that doesn't really do much for me. Properly sad songs full of aching loneliness, yes. Outright happy songs revelling in the joys of life, yes. But I can only buy sentiment if it is packaged up with a really good tune - and it almost invariably isn't.

That said, some of the performances which accompanied the music were fantastic. Top of the list was Bing Crosby and and Danny Kaye doing a sort of sub-drag act, in which they mimed to a recording of the duetting sisters, wearing make-up and carrying large feathered fans, but without going the whole hog and wearing wigs and dresses as well. Danny Kaye in particular clearly really enjoyed that, camping it up to the nines, and I can well see why rumours that he was gay or bisexual persisted throughout his life. Vera-Allen, one half of the sister-act, also showed off some pretty amazing dance moves - especially in an early duet with Kaye which saw them twirling around poles on a fake studio jetty, but also later in some of the big set-piece numbers from the show they put on in Vermont.

But my favourite acting in the film came from Mary Wickes, whose name I didn't know before this Wednesday, but is that woman who plays a stringent, non-nonsense housewife in everything. Trust me, you have seen her in something. She's playing very much to type here, but damn she does it well, and stands out a mile as one of the least-sentimentalised characters in the film.

White Christmas isn't trying to tell such a complex story or to build such three-dimensional characters as It's a Wonderful Life. It stays at the level of simple romances and good deeds, whereas It's a Wonderful Life is a close study of a single character (George Bailey), exploring his flaws, self-doubts and sense of identity in a much richer detail. So it isn't fair to compare them, really. White Christmas is perfectly inoffensive, but only because it doesn't take any risks or attempt any real depth. All in all, then, although I find a lot to annoy me in It's a Wonderful Life, I'd probably still rather watch that next Christmas than see White Christmas again, as at least It's a Wonderful Life gives me something to engage with. That said, here's hoping that the Cottage Road management will hit on something other than either of them instead for this time next year.

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