Guests

I had Jari and Ella down to stay this week, and found myself in a role I don't play very often, that of host. Jari came down first, and I cleaned the house to the best of my ability, which is to say very little, but that was fine because he very sportingly kept repeating that the clutter added to the rusticity.
Jari was a complete neophyte to Shropshire, and was astounded by the silence, the space, the atmosphere and the extreme differences between Telford and Ironbridge (to be fair, I myself sometimes get caught out by that). It was nice to see my home through the eyes of a stranger, especially the things I take for granted that are absolutely stunning, like the view from the front of the house and the multitudinous picturesque walks within a stone's throw.
We also watched some films together, and I was once more struck by his taste in media: he seemed genuinely upset by A Serious Man's missing ending, and disdained Burn After Reading throwing away good comic potential and becoming a more serious mediation on violence and power. I very much enjoy citing Jari, a mathematician with a PhD in maths from Oxford, as a counter to the belief that intelligent people somehow abhor comedy or appreciate art house cinema more.

Whilst I was touring Jari around the local museums, I came across an old school chum curating one of them (not as impressive as it sounds, it's a room with an old price list inside), and I was delighted to find that he not only remembered my thespian exploits, but explicity cited my delivery of the line "Listen to me!" in Les Miserables. That was eight years ago.

Ella then took Jari's place, appearing a scant hour after he left. Ella is one of the few people I know my age trying to make it in the arts and actually drawing a wage. She's a photographer, and we sat for hours discussing the ups and downs of creativity, the worst stories we've accrued of art gone wrong, how we'd really like our lives to pan out, and how industries are changing with the advent of the internet; she also bought me pimms and raspberries, both of which were consumed with alacrity.
Ella and I also took a walk in an area of the Gorge which I don't really know too well, and it was, in an odd way, gratifying to find that one can get lost even in the small valley where one grew up.