As I blunder into 2012, I find the pressure to make resolutions I have no intention of keeping faintly depressing. And I despair of myself. Where, for goodness sake, is my backbone? My gumption, my competitive spirit? Any kind of desire to better myself? You’ll see them lying, kicked and torn, in a corrosive puddle of piteous reality over there …

And yet I still struggle on, the tattered remnants of my self-esteem shoved hastily into a lovely new Cath Kidston bag which I leave by the back door. One must struggle on, musn’t one? Mustn’t one?

Maybe, amongst the gloom of January (another year older but absolutely no wiser) there are tiny but definite green shoots of positivity. This comforts me unutterably. I find a word coming to my lips and mind with significant regularity. The word is ‘profound’. Now, I have never been known to think, let alone write, anything remotely profound (profane, yes …). That is unlikely to change, but I begin to feel that perhaps other things may. And I am profoundly grateful. I am reluctant to put into words exactly what I feel, because to name it might very well quell it. For now, I am content to let it rumble on secretly as it will. Who knows what or where I shall be this time next year. Let’s hope you will not be left echoing Mrs Brimley …*

Well, that’s enough mysterious mithering, woman!

Yesterday, I had some good news: the fledgling blog about Robert Donat that Jenny and I have been lavishing our love and care upon was given a One Lovely Blog award nomination by Lizzie, whose own rather super blog, Spriteby’s Bokhylle, is very well worth a visit and will introduce you to many wonderful books (A Very Good Thing). The Queen of Lukewarm gratefully accepts the award nomination on behalf of her handsome, dashing Prince Robert who is indeed deserving of the moniker ‘Lovely’. I’m delighted his blog is deemed lovely too.

I must, in return, nominate some of my favourite blogs. I can’t manage the required 15, but I can certainly manage a  few …

1. My Robert Donat blog co-author Jenny has the most wonderful film blog, Cinema OCD, where she reviews classic movies with such wit, knowledge and insight that if you enjoy the best of old films, you really shouldn’t miss it.

2. Kat Got The Cream is a truly beautiful, aspirational style blog by the lovely Kathryn Sharman, a freelance writer. She started Kat got the Cream as a place to share her favourite finds, creative projects and personal style. She also blogs for the likes of Laura Ashley and Oxfam. I never fail to be inspired by the beautiful things she shares: Kathryn makes even the most unlikely charity shop finds shine.

3. No list of excellence (and loveliness) in blogging is complete without the force of nature that is Madame Guillotine, created by author Melanie Clegg. Melanie’s books are historical fiction and her blog is filled with all things historical and beautiful, and much more loveliness besides. I believe she is approaching one million hits, so she hardly needs my puny recommendation, but I curtsey to her awesomeness nonetheless! Melanie’s latest novel is newly published and I know it will be another runaway success for her.

4. Twitter, whilst no doubt sending me to an evil, early death, has introduced me to some splendid people who have enriched my life in many ways. To honour them all is impossible, but there is one person I can’t pass on mentioning because she writes like a dream and is a darling to boot. The Words and Pictures blog by published short story author Nettie Thomson is an eclectic mix of humourous, sometimes profound (there it is again ..) and always perfectly phrased musings on life.

5. Musing on life are also the subject of a very beautiful and spiritual blog by my lovely friend, author Vivienne Tuffnell: Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking. Viv writes poetry, fiction and her thoughts about life and living with depression. There’s plenty to be inspired by and ponder about here.

Those are my One Lovely Blog nominations: I hope you enjoy exploring them as much as I do. And who knows, maybe you will discover some profundity of your own.

*Mrs Brimley is a character in the 2008 film ‘Dean Spanley’. Housekeeper to a stubborn curmudgeon, she one day remarks of her employer (a creature of habit) that at least she knows where she is with him: where she was before. Nowhere.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Inevitably, there are spoilers. If you don’t know about the life of Robert Donat and don’t wish to, don’t read on …

Robert Donat was one of England’s finest stage and screen actors, and was loved and admired greatly during his lifetime. He was regarded, then, as Olivier’s superior, and was highly sought after by Hollywood. Donat possessed one of the most beautiful voices ever heard on film, and was very versatile, taking on romantic lead and character roles with equal ease. Yet he was a very sensitive man (the double edged sword: what made him such a fine actor also made his life very difficult) and was given to doubting his abilities, and taking to heart criticism from others (though he was always his own worst critic).

As an adult, he developed asthma, which seemed to be worsened by stress. He worried about his health affecting his work, and the worry made his health decline. As time went on, Donat became more reluctant to take on work, and then worried about his lack of income and the damage to his reputation. We are left with just 20 films (though he also left sublime recordings of poetry), and he didn’t manage to undertake all the stage roles he coveted.

His film work stands the test of time marvellously well, and he is probably best remembered today for his wonderful Oscar-winning performance in ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’ (1939).

His widow, actress Renee Asherson, contributed a very touching piece to the book where she described how ‘the crust of worldliness’ never grew on Donat, and that it was his personality, as well as his skill, that drew people to love his performances. J.C. Trewin wrote this biography with the co-operation of the Donat family, and it is both respectful and insightful about its subject, fleshing out Donat’s strengths and weaknesses with affection, never prurience.

The style of Trewin’s writing is a little old-fashioned, and yet it is appropriately so, and allows the reader to consider Donat in context, and not through a modern lens. It is, as I commented whilst reading it, like stepping back in time. If Trewin glosses over Donat’s film roles and gives more weight to his work on stage, it can be forgiven since Donat himself would perhaps have wished it that way (the films paid the bills, the theatre was his real work), and it allows the reader to discover a little of what is now lost forever.

Inevitably, I’m left with immense sadness: having got to ‘know’ the book’s subject so well, a kind of necessary bereavement must take place on ending Donat’s story. And yet, I feel privileged to have had this insight into the life and personality of this wonderfully talented, charismatic, complex man. It never felt an intrusive process, nor was it overly reverential.

The Donat family, Trewin and Renee Asherson were keen to point out Robert Donat’s wonderful sense of humour, which sustained him through many difficult times (it’s in their humourous reported stories you ‘hear’ Donat’s voice most clearly). I’m left wondering what he would have said about this book!

N.B. The book is, rather disgracefully, out of print, as is the only other biography of Robert Donat. Copies are available via Amazon, most at some considerable cost. I’d love to see it back in print, to honour this wonderful actor. We must not forget people like this who have added so much to the arts in this country and worldwide.

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I’m told I must tell you ten things about myself you don’t already know. Although the rules don’t specify, I think that possibly I should restrain myself from telling you things you’d rather you didn’t know. Which doesn’t leave a lot … don’t say I didn’t warn you.

1. I have never, in my life, done a forward roll. Not once. When I went to school way back in the *cough*-ties, PE consisted of forward rolls, backward rolls and jumping over a vaulting horse whilst wearing nylon (or was it crimplene?) navy knickers and a vest. Oh, and daps (pumps, plimsolls, what you will). So when I determined (and I was VERY determined) not to contort myself in order to roll in a manoeuvre that would clearly snap my neck, it forever marked me out as the kid who was always picked last for PE.

2. Despite my refusal to risk life and limb by rolling forward in a silly ball shape for no reason, and my resultant status as ‘rubbish at all PE’, I was picked for the county sports competition (200 metres) and I came third! I have a medal and certificate. Actually, there were only four of us in the race and one of them fell over. But still …

3. The reason I was good at running was because I had very long legs, much longer than the other children in my year. Fascinating fact number three (I know you’re not fascinated, but humour me, please …) is that I was the height I am now (5’6″) aged eleven. When I had a brief dalliance with Friends Reunited, people I’d known from school and have never seen since remembered me as ‘very, very tall’. Not actually true, they were just very, very small.

4. When I was nine, I sold a piece of art to a private collector. It was a sticky paper owl I’d made, and someone bought it, after seeing it at a school parent’s evening, to put up in their kitchen. I was paid £1.50 in book tokens. (Nettie, you’re regretting this now, I can tell … never mind, only six more to go …).

5. This paved the way for adult success in my brief foray into photography. I was commissioned by a local printer to take photographs of rural Norfolk and Suffolk for their Christmas calendar. Two years running. But I never took to digital photography (I miss all the sloshing around in a dark room) so I gave it up when I could no longer use my lovely Nikon SLR and now I can’t take a decent photo to save my life.

6. I once drank absinthe and was so drunk that I … No. Perhaps not. I once got very, very, very, very drunk when I had some absinthe. Ahem.

7. I’m not very good with heights. I got stuck up a tree as a child, and had to stay up it for an hour until my Dad got home from work to get me down. The tree was only eight feet high, which probably actually makes it a shrub. Nowadays, I often have to ask shops for access to emergency exits so I can go up or down stairs rather than use the escalator or (and I shudder at the thought) glass elevators. My idea of hell would be a trip on the London Eye. I’ve never been able to go up the Eiffel Tower, and I recently had a major ‘do’ in the Natural History Museum’s new wing which involves far too much glass for my liking. I stepped into the glass lift thinking we were going up one floor. Ten or more later, and I’m crouched on the floor by the door with my eyes closed, chanting nonsense in a most unseemly manner, and panting like a large dog on a sweltering day. When I realised the only way to get out was by the same route, and a kind NHM staff member tried to encourage me by saying she was scared too, let’s just say I got assertive …

8. I often get called Liz. And Sue. I don’t really know why. Something to do with them all being short names, and abbreviations, perhaps? I’d actually quite like to be called Liz or Sue, because I don’t like my own name one bit. I used to cringe when it was read out during registration at school. I did feel a little better when Gillian Anderson appeared in the X Files and made my name much more cool than it’s ever been. And then Gillian McKeith became (in)famous and that was that …

9. I have mild dyscalculia (numeracy form of dyslexia). It impacts, interestingly, on all sorts of things. For example, I sing in a choir, and although I can sight-read after a fashion, I can’t, technically speaking, read music and most of what I am doing is learning very quickly by ear and memorising, using the music to help me see when the notes are vaguely going up or down. I can’t tell you what each note is called, which is a crotchet or a quaver, or what key we are in. I’ve had it all explained to me enough times for it, surely, to have sunk in by now, but my brain muddles the information and I just can’t make sense of it. And so, unhappily, I’ve never been able to learn to play a musical instrument, which is a source of great sadness to me.

10. And finally … I studied philosophy for a year at university, but was so terrible at it that the very first sentence of my very first essay was read out to the entire lecture hall as an example of a fallacy … and I later managed to prove that I didn’t exist. I gave it up.

If any of you still exist after reading all that twaddle, thank you, you’ve done very well!

I’d like to nominate the following, far more deserving, bloggers for the Stylish Blogger Award:

• Janelle Dvorak, a dear friend and one of the most intelligent people I know, whose insightful musings on life, family and politics can be found at Flyover
• Amy Cockram, lovely lady, a fellow admirer of my actor, and an erudite bookworm who has introduced me to many new gems, blogs about her reading here: Stuff and Nonsense
• Beverley Adams, a dear friend with whom I’ve shared many an escapade in theatreland, student of literature and history, blogs delightfully about her travels here: Lady Byron’s Musings
• Sue Vorenberg, another wonderful lady I’ve come to know through our mutual admiration for my actor. Sue is a journalist for the The Columbian, is possessed of a rare and wonderful sense of humour, and loves The Kinks. Read her fantastic blog here: The Exploding Egg

I watched Newsnight last night, and was interested to see the discussion pointing out the difference between this latest scandal and the previous ones involving what were, slightly dismissively, referred to as ‘celebrities’. But that’s not the difference in this case. What makes this latest gross intrusion of privacy so shocking is that it involves a newspaper sanctioning the hacking of a child’s telephone, a child involved in a murder investigation. This would be horrific and appalling if the child was a ‘celebrity’ or a private individual, there’s no difference. As if it wasn’t bad enough for this child’s parents, they now have to listen to their child’s name being ‘used’ by newspapers in their attempts to win the debate.

For me, this debate has never been about freedom of speech and the public’s ‘right’ to know, but about moral responsibility. Times are hard and newspapers must be sold, but are there really no limits to what the press are allowed to do in order to sell them? And are we, the public, really so depraved that we will read the effluent these ‘news’papers print, no matter who is injured in the process? Sadly, the answer seems to be ‘yes’.

Many of you will know that I write a blog about the actor, Jeremy Northam. Jeremy’s an extremely private man, very little is known about his life outside of his work, and he chooses to have no contact with me, which I respect and understand. I never give any information about his private life on my blog, nor do I have any desire to know about it, in the same way that I don’t want him to know what goes on in my home with my family. It’s private and no-one’s business but our own. Yet every single day, at least half the people who come to my blog are there because they want to know if he’s married, if he’s divorced, if he’s seeing someone, if he’s gay, etc. As Hugh Grant argued recently on another Newsnight, acting in a film should not mean you henceforth have no privacy. And now, it seems, if your name is in the public domain for any reason at all (e.g. a murder inquiry) then you are equally denied this right.

There’s something of the voyeur in all of us, if we’re honest, me included, but it’s a dreadful, corrosive vice and it’s eating up our humanity.

I think it’s really very simple. It’s not about ‘rights’, it’s about how we function as a civilised society. And that involves respect and dignity. For people you’ve seen on the telly and people you’ve never heard of. If we have no respect for our fellow humans, I worry about where we are heading.

I watched something this morning that made me very angry and very sad. It’s an interview with the late actor Jeremy Brett, conducted by ex-tabloid journalist Derek Jameson. Brett was making an appearance on Jameson’s chat show to promote his successful long-running series of Sherlock Holmes films. I’ll let the clip speak for itself …

Please, if you’ve read this blog post, don’t buy the News of the World, don’t buy any newspaper or magazine that trades in the privacy and the misery of others for the sake of a few moments’ ‘entertainment’. Imagine that actor is your spouse; that sports person is your sibling, your parent, your child. Think of the parents of Milly, Holly and Jessica. And please sign this petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/murdoch-deal-petition#petition

Thank you.

I happened to ask the very friendly and helpful Jonathan, who tweets as @NHM_London, if there was anything special we might want to see at the museum over Easter. He told me about the dinosaur exhibition and then invited me to the preview. I may also have mentioned dinosaurs could win my son Junior Mastermind (an entire bookcase heaves with dino books, he can pretty well recite the scripts of all the ‘Jurassic Park’ movies, and he has absorbed every last fact from ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’).

Son donned his favourite dinosaur t-shirt, packed his dinosaur rucksack, and we set off this morning for Epping and thence to South Kensington via Holbourn. I couldn’t help feeling more than a little smug as we sailed past the enormous queues outside the Natural History Museum and into the staff entrance. The smile was almost wiped off my face by a very zealous security guard, but (in the nick of time) Jonathan arrived, all smiles, let us in and directed us to the exhibition.

The Age of the Dinosaur is a very successful mixture of well-presented facts in traditional, bright and accessible displays, with moving images, atmospheric sounds, and models of fossils visitors can handle.

In addition, there are some irresistible touch screen areas where you can (virtually) scan fossils and reconstruct and compare brains, as well as trying to escape being eaten by a T Rex by successfully completing a quiz. The images are projected onto touch sensitive tabletops, and are large, bright and very easy for children to use.

But of course, what we REALLY wanted to see were the animatronic dinosaurs and we were not disappointed. My son was able to tell me what they all were, but was thrown slightly by the Velociraptor having fur and feathers!

There are two areas with animatronic dinosaurs and they are very lifelike. If you’ve been to the museum’s permanent dinosaur display, you will have seen their T Rex. These models are as good. I could swear that one in particular genuinely looked me in the eye!

At the end of the exhibition, Son created a Virtual Scrapbook, with factfiles, games and activities he can access at home.

I think this is going to be an EXTREMELY popular exhibition (I’m told the museum has over 4 million visitors each year, and dinosaurs are amongst their most visited exhibits). It opens on Friday (22 April) and runs until 4 September. You can book tickets online here. I highly recommend a visit, it’s a thoroughly engaging and very well-developed exhibition.

You can read all about the various preview events that took place on the same day here, and you can watch one visitor’s vlog here.

Thanks very much to Jonathan Tyzack for the invitation.

So, when the phone is eventually answered, I ask if there might be a possibility that I could see a doctor in the next couple of days. This is greeted with appalled silence, followed by the grudging offer of an appointment with a “lady doctor” at a time I can’t actually make 2 days hence.

I can’t quite figure out if:

• it’s a major inconvenience for anyone to actually go near a doctor
• it’s a major inconvenience for a doctor to go near me personally
• it’s a major inconvenience for the surgery receptionists to have to deal with potentially sick people
• I have a major misunderstanding of what a doctor’s surgery actually does

This why I rarely ring or go the doctors for myself. For my child, not that I’m a panicky parent, it’s different, although after the doctor who shall remain nameless and who should be struck off nearly killed my son, I’m even a bit hesitant about ringing on his behalf…

Maybe my mistake was to be only a little bit ill, not exciting enough to be seen. But, you know, I could have a really exciting underlying condition, you never know!

I wonder if our village has a Wise Woman? There’s certainly a lot of witches, that’s for sure!

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just struggle on being a bit off-colour, and try (I will try, I promise…) not to whinge TOO much!