The baking queen

I have been feeling fine – by which I mean no sickness – since I woke up yesterday. I am as wary of this feeling as one who has been held against her will for two months and suddenly, for no discernable reason, finds the prison door ajar.

We tested out this theory by doing things the sickness normally disallows, such as burgers at lunch, a stroll through Muswell Hill’s commercial sector that included stopping in at every charity shop we came across, a film (more on that in a moment) and a brisk walk. Any one of these activities would have seen me bedridden for the rest of the day, but upon arriving home later that afternoon, the feeling of fineness continued, and it did not dissipate.

This morning, I am still feeling fine. Bruce is helping our friend move flats, and I plan to do a bit of grocery shopping (something I haven’t done alone or with Bruce in weeks), try my hand at making these cookies and perhaps take on some light cleaning. The sky’s the limit when you’re feeling well, but this is as high as I’d like to go at the minute. I just want to be very sure the nightmare is actually over before I plunge back into life.

Speaking of plunging, I managed to convince Bruce to take me to see Mamma Mia!, which the trailer made out to be a light-hearted drama infused with Mediterranean glitz and the occasional song and dance. It was much worse than this, though, and after sitting through three or four humiliating scenes of Meryl Streep over-emoting and flinging herself artlessly along the Grecian coast, we wordlessly grabbed our things and left.

I think the worst part about the whole thing was the attempt to fit the storyline to the existing Abba songs, which often involved the characters highlighting pertinent bits of lyrics with a hysterical shriek or bellow as though to say “See? THIS is why the song works in this particular context!” like we couldn’t have worked it out for ourselves.

The Guardian wasn’t overly taken with it either, but I don’t need a review to tell me when something is shit. I like to see for myself, which is why we are still planning to watch The Happening at some point. We did not learn our lesson after Lady in the Water, and probably never will, though this type of innocence is worth preserving in my opinion. Maybe not £20, but, you know.

If you want to see a really good film this weekend, I recommend The Visitor, which we saw at the Phoenix - one of the oldest film theatres in the UK. It inspired us to watch The Station Agent (2003) as well, which was another lovely film.