I have noted, and complained about the almost ubiquitous tendency on the part of mainly male writers, to start the tales they want to tell by `killing off` the mother of the plot. Certainly, had I specialized in English, and done a PhD, I would have explored this paradigm in my research!
Last night I chatted on skype with my sister in Jerusalem who told me she was enjoying the long Canadian series Heartland. She recommended it to me. (It began in 2007, apparently.) What`s it about, I asked her. Oh, she said, and mentioned a girl, whose mother dies in episode one.
Exactly. Had I never mentioned my hang-up about this before? Never mind, I`m mentioning it now.
That was last night. This afternoon, feeling a bit unwell, I put my feet up, and switched on the TV. I came upon an episode of `Lewis` I`d not seen before. What with Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox and the plots which either are or are not intelligent, but always sound as if they are, I usually manage to overlook the fact that this series launched with the tragic death of Lewis`s wife.
I`m a grown up. I got over it. I ignored it, in fact. But then came this evening. Like everyone else in the world, we don`t exactly hit the town these days on Saturday nights. In fact we settled down to watch an opera streamed from the Met. Simon Boccanegra. Just run through the plot for me, will you, I asked Jeff. Obligingly he opened `Opera for All,` and began to read. Of course. It happens in scene one. There`s a woman called Maria who has a child – and promptly gets herself killed. This is not my paranoid imagination. This is real and always has been. This thing keeps happening.
Writing about...
On Not Going Out Very Much….
