Exercise, success and a bit more culture...

... are the themes of today. Started out with an exercise session with L, trying out her new Davina's Workout dvd, choosing "bums" as the first area to be targeted. Despite Davina's moans and gasps and "are we nearly finished yet?" asides to her hunky trainer by way of encouragement, that skinny bitch never even broke into a sweat, whereas we on the other hand were huffing and puffing like steam trains. I don't know if the bums have benefitted at all, but we were both walking afterwards as if riding two horses at once...

The success part of the day wasn't mine but #2 son's, who passed his first attempt at the practical driving test this afternoon; he was naturally delighted, and proceeded to try to wind up every family member by texting to say he'd failed. Only I saw through it (you can't fool a mum).

Finally this evening some more culture at FACT Picturehouse, in the form of a special showing of Priest (1994) presented by its writer, Jimmy McGovern, who also hosted a Question and Answer session afterwards. Amazing film, though made on a low budget and given no access rights for filming inside churches not only in Liverpool but the entire Northwest based on the supposed sacrilegious content - the cast had to be bussed down to North London to film those scenes, while the rest of the film was made in and around Merseyside. I'd forgotten how totally desirable are Linus Roache and Robert Carlyle, especially when they were younger, and despite playing gay roles. When the film first aired in 1994 it did not cause the expected reaction of being banned, and instead was pronounced by Bishop Worlock as being the most truly Catholic film he had seen. It was shown continuously for 14 weeks. Tonight in the Q&A session, a young gay Catholic priest spoke of his reaction on seeing the film 16 years ago and again tonight; it made him cry. That seemed to be the general reaction in the audience tonight too.

Not a wonderful blip of Jimmy, but it will have to do in the absence of shots of wobbly bums and driving test, and I wimped out of snapping the two drunken teenage girls fighting over some worthless bloke in the street on the way back to the station - they were screaming and pulling each other's hair(-extensions) out. You can take the girl out of Liverpool, but you can't take Liverpool out of the girl....