Another trip to the medical profession today, this time to get more blood tests at an outside service. I know my ladies at the hospital so well that whenever I go elsewhere to get blood drawn it gives me a lot of anxiety. I had to fill almost five vials today. Fun. No cheerful banter either. Que sera.

I saw Vera Drake over the weekend. A very quiet brutal film. Mike Leigh did well. I still can't watch Naked. Not sure if I ever will. Anyway, Imelda Staunton was amazing. Such quiet. The film was so quiet. She led such a quiet life. It made the brutality of her sentencing so more dramatic. Very much the antithesis of Dancer in the Dark in its dramatic narrative. Besides, Lars Von Trier is an autocrat (so says I). It made me think of my favorite critic, John Leonard. For years I would wake up Sunday mornings to catch John Leonard on CBS Sunday Morning and listen to his elocution on whatever media or TV show was current. He once said, critically, of the movie version of The Cider House Rules, that it differs from the book by leaving out Candy's narrative and asked how you could make a movie dealing with abortion without a female narrative? This film seems in a sense to answer that.