Les gilets jaunes: a footnote

I have nothing to say about the substance of the news from France: but I realised yesterday morning why the British media are translating les gilets jaunes as 'yellow vests'. They aren't vests - except, of course, that in US English, they are, a waistcoat is a vest. Who knows why our reporters have got this usage from their American colleagues, but evidently they have. I shared this revelation with durham_rambler.

He was unimpressed. "You know what they are, don't you?"

"They're high-vis jackets."

"Yes," he said, "but specifically they are the high-vis jackets that French law requires you to keep in your car alongside the emergency warning triangle. We have a couple in our car."

He's right, of course.

Christmas: the good, the bad and the movie

The good

On Thursday we were at the social evening of one of Durham's other residents' associations. This followed a committee meeting, and was mostly for their own members, but one or two outsiders had been invited. Our invitation was to durham_rambler " - and shewhomust, too, of course!" which was kind, but my expectations weren't high. In fact I had a delightful evening, talking almost entirely to the (adult) daughter of an old-but-not-close friend (increasingly I feel the need for a word to express this relationship). There was a touch of acid in this pleasure: she was spending a few days with her father, because he had just received some very bad medical news. But the conversation was wide-ranging and generally delightful.

The bad

On Friday morning we learned of the death of a friend's husband. His health had been poor for a long while, and he had been particularly unwell lately. I had accepted that our plan to meet for a meal during our pre-Christmas visit to London was unlikely to happen, but the latest news was better than expected, and it was possible that there would be a slow process of recovery. And no, as it turns out.

The movie

If you are looking for a Christmas movie guaranteed to make you feel bad about Christmas, and antidote to any seasonal sentiments, any cheer and goodwill, may I recommend Await Further Instructions? @ComradeMorden tweeted that "Await Further Instructions is the bat-shit crazy Christmas film you didn't know you needed. Lovecraft and Cronenberg and Carpenter's lovechild with a tinsel topping!" and who am I to argue? He is far better versed in the genre than I am. I went to see it because scriptwriter Gavin Williams is a friend - you would not guess, from his pleasant exterior, what a deeply twisted mind he has. The film starts out with the young man bringing his girlfriend to meet his family and spend Christmas with them, which is a recipe for disaster at the most mundane level (David Bradley has a whale of a time playing the grandfather); then it shifts into a whole new kind of nastiness; and when you have started to wonder just how this can possibly end - badly, of course, but what kind of badly? - it goes somewhere entirely unexpected.