Not that anyone will answer. We want to paint a wall in the living room. At the moment all the rooms downstairs (except the kitchen, utility room and cloakroom) are magnolia. A nice, lovely magnolia. Well we also have a lovely portugese limestone fireplace (that I don't burn fires in because then I would have to clean it) and it sort of fades into the magnolia walls. So the H and I thought that if we painted the wall a different colour it would contrast more with the lovely fireplace. I had originally thought a deeper yellow, maybe a saffron or even being daring and going with a terracotta. The H wants to be really, really daring and suggested at first a deep aubergine. Now he wants a deep burgandy. I worry that the colour will a) be too dark and b) just through the rest of the room out of colour balance. Am I mad?

Number four on the list I always introduce as the reason I am a socialist. Strong words, I know. And lots of people say I am not a socialist or at the very least an exceptionally bad socialist. But at the very least its why I am a union member (and always will be). Its Matewan. There are certain directors whose work I will always go and see. Always. Go out of my way. We've already come across one of them with the Coen Brothers. Others on that list would include: John Sayles, Alan Rudolph, Hal Hartley, Spike Lee. I love Sayles. Lone Star is probably his most accessible and perhaps most mainstream. He has a cameo in Lee's Malcolm X (as an FBI agent, how intertextual is that?!?) but Matewan, as I said, has got those capitalism/owner bad politics that I love in Red Harvest. Cineamatic. Great cast. Strong female character. Tragedy and all the rest. I love movies. And I carry a union card.