More gardening, and some telly

Another couple of square yards of impacted soil, gravel and builders' rubble dug over. A couple of paving slabs put down to mark the border of a bed and make it easier to walk from the path to the rotunda. Several plants and yet more bulbs planted, top-dressed with reclaimed gravel and watered in. Shredder bought--I've been resisting this, because I want EverCRAPest to keep their damn promise and clear their damn rubbish, but the Countess is practical and wants it cleared now rather than next fucking Christmas so that we can reclaim that part of the garden and clear a path to the pond before it freezes over. So I guess we just give EverCRAPest a free pass on that one. It's been mooted that we bill them for the shredder, but I'm not counting on that pig to fly any time soon. And of course the garden-wrecking builders have still got to come back to put in the steps, and while we have made it as clear as possible that what we have done is DELIBERATE and GARDEN and NOT TO BE TRAMPLED OVER, we did that last time as well.

We've been watching the Lord Peter Wimsey TV adaptations. Sadly the series will never be completed--we shall never see, outside the Lord of Dream's library of telly dramas that were never made, the Carmichael Whose Body? or Unnatural Death or the Petherbridge/Walter Busman's Honeymoon, any of which would have been brilliant. (Carmichael would have been completely wrong for the later romantic Wimsey, as Petherbridge would, I think, for the earlier silly-ass Wimsey. Harriet Walter was for me the perfect Harriet throughout.) We have audio adaptations to fill some of the gaps, and the pictures are, I'm told, nicer on the wireless, but being not that visual I find it helpful to have something to look at with the external eye.

Both sets of adaptations have interesting points. The music is better in the Carmichaels--Joseph Horovitz' theme for the Petherbridge/Walters simply meanders around in a vaguely Noel-Cowardy vein for a couple of minutes, rises for no apparent reason to what almost becomes a climax and then fades away unresolved. Herbert Chappell's muted trumpet and pinned piano theme is much more structured and purposeful. It's also fun to see a couple of examples of cross-casting--Miss Rossiter from Murder Must Advertise pops up as Miss Climpson in Strong Poison, and Ellen the maid from Clouds of Witness goes upmarket as one of the lady dons in Gaudy Night. I couldn't take to Richard Morant as Bunter, though--they should have found someone else of the tonnage of Glyn Houston. But Margaretta Scott was perfect as the Dowager Duchess, whereas Isabel Jeans was just playing someone else with the same name.

I wonder who among our current crop of actors might be found who could embody the whole career of Wimsey the way, say, Jeremy Brett has come to embody Holmes, or David Suchet Poirot? And who would be his Bunter, or his Harriet? Suggestions invited...

EDIT: I guess that shows how successful my intended "When you see this, post from the works of Dorothy L Sayers" meme would have been. :)