Saturday afternoon already. Last night we enjoyed Nigella's maple chicken where you marinade it in apple juice, maple syrup and various other goodies including lots of garlic before baking it in the oven and then devouring the stickily adorable results. The recipe suggests also using ribs and we've often done those too as a mix with chicken. Everyone who's ever eaten it has loved it, usually resorting to animal greed and spectacular displays of Henry VIII style gnawing and hurling of animal bones. Sometimes it's good to let out your inner Tudor tyrant. Nominally healthy green salad served with, then downhill all the way health wise with a delicious pudding of golden syrup roly poly pudding served with double cream (again a Nigella recipe). Devoured contentedly then a happy evening spent watching "A River Runs Through It", one of my favourite films. Robert Redford as director has actually made two corkers - this and "Ordinary People" which I think is genius too.

River features a very young Brad Pitt - the story is wonderful, the scenery is gorgeous and every time I watch it I swear to visit Montana. Robert Redford provides the unseen narration, and as usual I am in floods of tears by the end. Interestingly my opinion of the film has shifted with successive watchings. Brenda Blethyn as the mother of the family is magnificent. For years I never really liked Brad Pitt's performance, finding it just too light. Watching it last night though, although it was flawed, I think he did capture the essential nature of the character, while the other brother,the narrator, just seemed so lumpy by comparison. The biggest change has been my view of the father's character - with each viewing I warm to him more, and like the underplaying. I think that's often a mark of a good film (or a book or play actually) that you can get different things out of it at different times.

Earlier in the week, I caught up with Nosferatu the Vampyre, the version made by Werner Herzog, not the original Expressionist version, although of course Herzog pays tribute to the original with many similar shots. As a teenager watching it, I fell madly in love with Klaus Kinski and still find him curiously attractive in the film, in a bruised and wounded way. Far from being an all powerful vamp, as we are now used to seeing in so many productions, he seems old and hunched and strangely vulnerable in many ways. I do also think that he has a gloriously sexy voice - that gorgeous broken accent as he says "Listen to the children of the night make their music" while the wolves howl. Ah, bliss. How I long for a push-up nightie and a four poster at moments like that. Isabelle Adjani's performance hasn't stood up quite so well. She's still astonishingly beautiful but because English is not her language, she seems curiously wooden while speaking. Fortunately she is more than able to earn her keep simply drifting around in gorgeous lacy dresses, looking pre-Raphaelite and scared.

Today we went for a walk with the woofs from Erwood, a small village near Builth on the Wye. Had a slightly sticky start by taking a wrong side path leading to a mudfest and a sticky moment on a stile (most undignified) but generally good. Magnificent views of the river, snowy hills, eccentric fishing huts and grazing sheep. Happy greyhounds and happy people. Returned home to homemade bread bacon sandwiches and a snuggle on the sofa with the paper. Just had a shower and am now pottering about as it starts to get dark. Just been accosted by a greyhound requesting a cuddle so am happy to oblige.