Needing a filmatic prescription.  After the triumph of yesterday completed first draft and a celebratory dinner at a new Indian restuarant I have woken afflicted with the lurgy.  The cold is bearing down on me and there’s only one thing for it, to indulge myself with rest, movies and tea.  Does anyone know of any good movies along the lines of “Under the Tuscan Sun,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” or any of the historical romps, that will take me somewhere else today, beautifully.  I don’t want to be challenged, watch anything thought provoking with a complicated construction - I just want to curl up and escape.  Help?

Am I the only one that imagines I am original; maybe not in word or deed but in creation, only one snowflake just like me and all that…  Last night I was again reminded how wrong that is.  Forget questions of parallel universes, how about this one, right now.  Years ago I was working in a pub, ‘bottling up’ (re-stocking the shelves) one morning before opening.  It was a beautiful warm day and I’d left the outer door open to clear the smokey/beery air.  A man wandered in and I said he could sit there but would have to wait a bit until we opened.  So we chatted.  Well, not exactly chatted in the conventional sense, rather I fielded his pretty weird questions.  I will make this long story short but it seems he had been elsewhere in Scotland, another small place and met me.  The me he described sounded a lot like me, he said looked exactly like me and was even doing the sorts of things I would be doing.  She was involved in a small theatrical production, brilliant but getting up the noses of the local clergy for reasons he didn’t explain.  The thing is, it wasn’t me.  Last night I went to see “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” with my daughter and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was prepared to suspend critical faculties as I loved the cast and the setting, the whole premise of the story.  My daughter kept saying about Judi Dench’s character, “She really reminds me of you Mum,” attitude, haircut, manner, etc.  I of course wasn’t seeing this until I heard the Judi character (can’t remember her name) giving a little speech for telesales staff about how to connect with people.  Not only have I done that before but I more or less said exactly the same words she did.  Maybe my daughter was right.  The real question is, are we singular snowflakes or could there be more like us, different versions, but much like us?  It’s a thought isn’t it, something to ponder.