My initial reaction to the movie was that I want to read ‘Persian Fire‘ again. I was surprised at the level of historical accuracy, given that this is Hollywood.

Am I slow or is it simply that I’m not wired up that way? It was an hour and a half into watching before I wondered if there was meant to be an homo-erotic element to the film? Slow? Or a case of “to the pure all things are pure”? Surely, never has there been such a gathering of ‘iron pumpers’ and oiled at that! For portraying the 300 Spartans, how did they get so many people with such similar physiques? Was the cast really made up of a load of ‘gym haunters’ or were they digitally altered? Or perhaps they were the real actors heads on other people’s bodies. I thought the Spartans fought naked, unsurprisingly they were not portrayed like that in the film, they all very tastefully sported leather ‘Y fronts’.

While the historical accounts tell us of an amazing military feat by so few, I was wondering, before I saw ‘300′, how they would manage to make a story out it. The use of the romantic link between Leonidas and his wife, between the battlefield and the home, was a clever one. Though in such a strange brutalising society I am not convinced such romanticism existed. After all, this was a society where boys were taken away from their parents and entrusted to ‘boy-herders’ to be turned into warriors, and where girls were similarly treated that they might produce more warriors. A whole society dedicated to breeding fighters, where love was scorned.

Read rest of article at TheMorningFlight.com

Sunday 18th March saw the welcome return of old friends. This time it was Fiona, Pauline and Praveen.

Don’t they look well?

Fiona has been travelling overseas but stopped off on her journey from Scotland to Gloucestershire, and Pauline and Praveen now live in Zurich.