Of the making of lists there is no end...

I had thought I would pick up on samarcand's comments on the "hundred and one best screenplays list. But the more I thought about it, the more pointless it seemed: how do you decide if it's the screenplay that's great rather than the casting, directing, cinematography, all the other things that go to make a great film? are the only great screenplays the ones that have made it through to commercial release, or should the list include the great ungilmed screenplays? what's the point of including precisely two non-English language films in a list of 101 (La Grande Illusion and 8½), it doesn't fool anyone into thinking that you've considered the whole of world cinema and found it wanting? why His Girl Friday instead of its original, The Front Page? And so on.

Worse, the question became entangled in my head with a "hundred best" show we stumbled into on Friday evening, home from walking and too idle to do more than fetch a bottle of wine, make some sandwiches and watch television. So I'm also debating the top 28 of a Hundred Best Musicals programme which seemed not to know whether the musical was the show, and could therefore be illustrated by a variety of stage productions and movies, or whether it was a single production and could therefore be praised for one individual performance. The actual listing seems to have vanished without trace, so I don't know what gems languished below the top 28, but how can I take seriously a list which has room for the complete oeuvre of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but no mention of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, only one Gene Kelly film (Singing in the Rain, and rightly so. But no American in Paris, no On the Town...), no Summer Holiday (I don't care, I like it... No? Oh, well, then, no Yellow Submarine).

It doesn't bear thinking about. So here, instead, is a taxonomy of birthday cards received to date (more are confidently expected: declaring a national holiday to celebrate one's birthday does interfere with transmission):

Outdoor scenes with water: 2

one oriental, with sampan, one Victorian seaside scene

Outdoor scenes with blue flowers: 2

one lavender fields, one bluebell woods

Indoor scenes with cultural activities: 2

one young woman reading, one elderly couple singing / playing the harmonium

Cats: 5, on 2 cards

Lesley Anne Ivory's Gemma, green-eyed and innocent on a rug, Ronald Searle's four tiny conspirators pushing their great Trojan bird towards the enemy stronghold

Birds: 2

one as above, one dodo (a William de Morgan tile)

Other livestock: 2

one otter, one (or rather, five) sheep

A remarkably well-balanced selection.