Ray Schaufeld's blog

My boyfriend does not own a tv so he asked himself round to watch this, can't for the life of me think why (haha). Mary Beard at her best, giving us her trademark mix of erudition and earthiness. We get some history, some point of view,all backed up by relevant images.The ever present question are naked people great Art or simply there to turn other people on.(bit of both methinks). What about objectification ? And the nudes in the programme,...

'...we made tea. Moth found a hairy wine gum in his pocket so we cut that in half.' The South West Coast Path stretches from Minehead in Somerset down to Lands End and back to Poole. 630 miles, a lot of steep paths.. I've only done teeny bits and taken the bus back home or gone to a Youth Hostel. (I love Tintagel Youth Hostel.) Raynor and Moth have are homeless. They are fifty and the farmhouse they've built from a ruined shell which is also...

Welldescribed grit with bright sploshes of lyricism. Published in 1989 it describes a Brixton that is often unsafe. The storyteller fortifies his council flat with tons of metal, his pal has to butt a racist agressor in the stomach and run for his life and jump onto a bus. The characters are young,likeable, a group of friends, sometimes working at casual jobs at a time sometimes not. They have a lively energy. Some do creative stuff, at least...

The critics thought this was wonderful, the public less so - I can see why in this barrowload of hysterical, historical power-struggle vomit. Queen Anne has gone off her nut after none of her 17 babies lived. Lady Sarah Churchill has a lot of power and control over her but step by step Abigail Hill, a dispossessed aristo who enters the house as a maid ousts Sarah off her perch There's a constant atmosphere of sex and violence and sexualised...

I had to follow this - I'm in the same age bracket, sort of identify with them. I guess it shows 2 things, how a person's life is influenced by their environment and also by their individual character. Perhaps being in the series has been an influence on them too...Several people said they found jumping back in to the public eye every 7 years was painful and yet they wante to stay involved. I think perhaps the series should stop now. Death and...

A bit of feelgood, with real sea shanties and some good views of Port Isaac in Cornwall. It's 'based on a true story', well the band is real and I'm not sure about the predictable love story. Daniel Mays, who plays the London smoothie music producer who finds his loyalties turned upside down is 'yummy' and you sort of put up with the cliches about Cornwall and London being worlds apart because there's just enough truth and then there's the...

A studio Flat shouts Me! This little place is for me alone. It also tells me how to behave. 'Be clean. Be tidy. Be organised. Don't clutter. Don't you dare!' I think it will be a good influence. I'm in West Cliff. My tree-lined street is a long terrace of blocks of studio flats book-ended by hotels. The blocks have green awnings. Did they used to be small hotels? I feel like I'm living in a hotel. One with leafy views, now that I've pulled the...

Sometimes I think I might have given away too much... My boyfriend drove me to the cat adoption centre on Wednesday. I don't see them advertised on the website yet. Funny feellng on my last day of work walking at 5.30 from his place to open the back door of the cinema to do my last shift with the hoover and the mop. No need to pop into my place first and feed the miouwing clamour. I can stay away as many days as I like - no need to run back or...

My background and that of my ancestors is real. It is also a forest, a forest that obscures the tree that is Elsie. And in a few weeks I shall uproot myself from the small seaside town where I have lived for 18 years. I'm shifting to Bournemouth. Why have two miles of golden sands when I can have seven? I shall be training to teach English as a foreign language. I don't know if I shall use my new training abroad or if I shall teach adult...

Steven tells a story through linked facts. A tale of theft, lies and violence. Land where coal is discovered, it's there for grabs. Who wins - the bosses. Who loses - the miners and their families who lose their health hacking the coal out, who lose their homes migrating from one mining shanty town to the next and who get cheated out of their pay by having to pay high rents for rotten housing and worse plots to grow their vegatables than if they...