The Night Manager

After a wonderful and relaxing Easter with family I have finally caught up with The Night Manager. What decadence to be watching television by myself on a Tuesday morning. Sitting on the sofa’s edge with coffee and chocolate in hand while the nail biting finale unfolds.

Hooked from the start by Tom Hiddleston his Jonathan Pine has been a perfect blend of geniality, ruthlessness and smolder. Oh and nakedness. An audition for James Bond some have said. I’m not a fan of the whole 007 franchise however if he or Idris Elba make the cut then you can count me in!

Hugh Laurie is ideally cast as the baddie. I saw him first! In my novel Blood Rain I envisaged him playing the main antagonist.

But as amazing as these actors are it is the women who stand out. Roper’s girlfriend has me wishing I was statuesque and willowy, floating braless in beautifully draped dresses and bejewelled sandals. Much more than an adornment Elizabeth Debicki plays Jed in an understated way and a pregnant Olivia Coleman as Angela Burr, as always, is a class act. The way she delivers her lines is perfection. Discombobulated, ha!

As much as I want more I hope they don’t give us another series. I’m content that Roper gets what’s due to him, Jed goes home to her son and Pine and Burr get closure. Great adaptation of le Carré’s novel. Thanks BBC!

My mind is bursting. Chaos reigns. Fleeting thoughts of the things I need to do: ~~Keanu Reeves,~~ finish proof reading OFM, again, write extra OFM fics, market OFM, read ‘how to’ articles, go to work, see family, contact friends, meet up with friends, tidy the house, help decorate the house, catch up with The Night Manager. And then there’s all the new fiction ideas that continue to write themselves in the dark recesses until I grab my notebook and scribble them down.

And there’s the moment when asked a question on a course that I search the chaos for an answer to find nothing. Nothing I tell you. Nothing at all in all those thoughts. Why? Because it’s not part of the chaos, it’s nothing to do with the things I have to, want to do. Not good when you’re meant to be ‘in the room’ and not miles away working through the list. All eyes on me waiting for the simple answer that never comes.

Today I am fortunate to be back in the room, my room. I’m proof reading OFM again for grammatical/punctuation errors. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve done this. I’m still finding errors. Surely I eradicated them last time? There has to be a grammatical goblin, a punctuation Puck sneaking them back in, sniggering as they do it.

As I work through the list – perhaps there is order in the chaos – I pull on that part of my female brain that is hard wired to multi-task but come up empty. Looking back it’s probably never been there. I do try. I mean I have four novels on the go for heaven’s sake but am I working on them all at the same time? No. I spend the majority of my time in my head. Perhaps that’s part of being a writer. Has the chaos got away from me though? Does it need to reigned in, just a little so I can move forward? Maybe. Or perhaps I should take heart in these words taken from the book of I Ching,

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd…

The brilliance is coming folks 😉 Ordering Flynn Matthews, the novel, out soon in digital format, along with a new website, extra fiction and fan forum.

Perhaps, as it’s Shakespeare Week I should have gone with a picture of Midsummer’s Night Dream with its chaos and I did mention Puck after all. So why is there a picture of KR? It’s relevant, honest, he gets a mention somewhere, I think!