Magpie Wow!

I am back from Amsterdam! It is so hard to come home again. I want to live there so much. 

Anyway, I have just finished a petite book about a unicorn, which I will post on here once it has reached its intended owner. 

I had a lovely time with Dan, we watched some Godard (Une Femme est une Femme):

(this has to be my favourite scene...apart from the one where Anna's husband tells Jean-Paul Belmondo "hurry up, Breathless is on the telly and I don't want to miss it")

and the studio Ghibli film, Grave of the Fireflies, which was so relentlessly sad.

Dan also introduced me to a couple of incredibly beautiful films at the Filmmuseum:

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (L'Enfer):

(As you can see, Romy Schneider has the most wonderfully open expressive face, which lights up completely when she smiles)

and Gustave Deutsch's Film Ist a Girl & a Gun:

which was a beautiful assemblage of short silent films, many of which were from the film-museum (or "Eye" as it is now known) archive itself, with a soundtrack added.

We both especially adored this scene with its beautiful music:

The music is by Soap&Skin, taken from their album Lovetune for Vacuum. She reminds me of Chan Marshall crossed with Azure Ray. This is another song from the same album, called Thanatos:

On the last day we sat in the afternoon sun in the park by the edge of the canal, drinking Trappist beer, eating strawberry laces, watching the ducks...and we saw a bright green parrot fly up into the high branches of a tree. And then another parrot called to it. And they were joined by another.