Although Orange Wednesdays are a bust until normality returns after the festive season, Pete and I have managed to get out to the cinema – to a preview screening of The Artist. Apparently a hit with a critics, I thought it was novel enough to be right up Pete’s street – it’s a silent, black and white film with an old-fashioned aspect ratio. A far cry from the latest installment in the Transformers franchise.

The Artist is set at the end of the 1920s, and revolves around a particularly popular silent movie star – George Valentin. Every movie he stars in is a hit, with his good looks and charm oozing out from the screen. His delightfully talented little dog doesn’t hurt, either.

At the premiere of his latest film, George literally bumps into a young fan who becomes an overnight media success. Peppy is ambitious, and attempting to build on her new notoriety, lands a role as an extra in George’s new production. She becomes infatuated with George; George’s rather neglected wife back home is furious.

But a new era is dawning in Hollywood, and silent movies are about to be upstaged by ‘talkies’. George doesn’t think the new fad will last, and his pride leaves him in the gutter while Peppy becomes Hollywood’s latest darling.

I won’t spoil the ending. Although I knew that this was going to be a silent, black and white film, I didn’t expect it to be quite so much in the 1920s style – I expected a more modern take. It took me back to watching black and white films in the afternoon during school holidays, and the silent Harold Lloyd repeats.

The three leading actors (and I am including Uggie, the dog) are fabulous, conveying everything necessary without speaking a word. There is an orchestral score to underline the action, which at times is not enough noise to drown out the people who are whispering or crunching their way through GIANT BUCKETS OF POPCORN. The modern wall of sound effects has some advantages.

The rest of the cast features a whole raft of familiar faces, some of whom look so different in their spiffy 1920s outfits that they are impossible to identify until later (partly because they don’t speak).

The pace lags a little towards the end, and you remember you’ve been sitting still for a long time, but I found the film charming and a nice change from more modern styles. Pete thought the plot was weak and didn’t rate the film at all.

In comparison, the last preview we went to a few weeks ago (which I forgot to mention at the time) was The Help. Another period piece, this time set in one of the southern American states during the 1960s and dealing with civil rights. A young white woman (Skeeter), keen to become a journalist, decides she wants to help local black women employed in domestic service to tell their stories – which are mainly of prejudice, disgust and exploitation. A key issue covered is the widely-held belief that sharing a toilet with the black ‘help’ would transmit disease.

It sounds a dismal topic, and although it’s not an entirely comfortable to look back on this period of our history and see the racial ignorance that prevailed, The Help is a fabulous film. It’s about compassion, tolerance and having the courage to stand up for your convictions – in a period when doing so could cost you your life.

With some fabulously funny moments, and an upbeat ending, I can thoroughly recommend giving The Help a go. And watch out for a charming performance from Allison Janney of the West Wing, as Skeeter’s mother.

When we first decided to get iPhones, they were only available on O2. So off we went to the O2 shop and – as they were for business use – opened a business account with two phones. All lovely. I went from a person who merely wanted a phone that makes calls and text messages to being an iPhone junkie. It was an 18 month contract, and I never had any problems with it, beyond O2 Business’ semi-regular phone calls to check I was happy with my account. I was perfectly happy with my account, bar the annoying phone calls.

But Pete has never been the biggest O2 fan (I don’t know why, you’d have to ask him), so when the contracts expired he started to investigate other options. In truth, our original package was far more than we needed, and so we were looking into cheaper options that would still meet our needs.

Pete fancied going back to Orange, the network he was on before we got the iPhones. His only problem with them was that when he phoned up to ask them when they would be getting iPhone tariffs, the guy on the Orange end of the conversation basically called him an idiot for wanting an iPhone. We signed up with O2 and about a month later Orange brought out their iPhone packages….

Anyway, Pete likes Orange Wednesdays, and it’s nice to be able to pop along to the cinema of a Wednesday afternoon and stand a good chance of having a screen to ourselves. So Pete picked the tariffs he thought we should get.

In the meantime, life got complicated and before Pete started the new tariffs, our O2 contract finished. Because we were expecting men to come and fix The Leak That Didn’t Fix Itself, I stayed at home and ordered my new SIM card on the Orange website.

Pete came home an hour or so later, pretty much sorted. I was without my phone for over a week, until my new SIM card came on Saturday. I didn’t mind being without a phone that much, I was just annoyed the stupid process took so long. So the moral of this story is to just go into the shop – it’s quicker. And the leak people didn’t come anyway.

And so we now both have working phones, and I’ve learned my phone number already, which is making Pete cross (I never did learn the old one) because he hasn’t. But we haven’t used Orange Wednesdays because there’s nothing on but Christmas movies. Sigh.

In the second show for 30th November 2011 I was talking about playing with my new toy and using Pete’s ghetto light studio to take some photos.

This is the photo setup, demonstrating the rather low lighting conditions that are common in the downstairs of the house ;) and the lengths people will go to, to take pretty photos. As they are of plants, the pretty photos themselves are available over on my gardening blog.

It won’t make you rich, but spending a few minutes every now and then filling in surveys for YouGov can add a nice bit of cash to your wallet – and they’re a pukka market research organization who won’t spam you or sell your details on to other people.

YouGov have recently added a lot of new features to their website, and you can swap your reward points for entry into their monthly prize draw if you’d like the chance to win a bigger prize. They weren’t recruiting new members for ages, and have only just opened up a new member referral scheme. I’ve been a member for years now (it’s the only survey program I’m still a member of) and if you sign up via my referral link then I get a few extra points, but they don’t come out of your pocket!

If you choose to collect your points for the cash payout, then once you reach a value of £50 they send you a cheque – it’s as simple as that. What could you do with £50?

For the last couple of days I have been running a blog challenge, writing blog posts about any topic my Twitter/ Facebook and blog pals came up with. There are several on display at emmacooper.org, mainly about gardening but also about blogging. For this one a new FB friend, Sml Footprints, suggested “How about the best ways to reduce energy use in the cooler months. :-)”.

The above photo of the ever-stunning Pete was taken at the Ice Bar in Copenhagen. There the key to staying warm is wearing a big furry cape and not touching anything with your bare hands (because you’ll stick to it). The vodka doesn’t hurt, either.

But closer to home there are plenty of ways to stay warm this winter without running up a huge heating bill. If you want to investigate insulation (cavity wall, or loft) then there are grants available and special offers – the Energy Saving Trust and your energy company are good places to start.

Smaller, quick fixes include putting draft strips around any badly fitting doors, or making your own draft excluder. Traditional draft excluders are made in the shape of snakes, for obvious reasons, but my nan wouldn’t have one of those in the house due to a morbid fear of snakes. Pete wants one in the shape of a lobster so he can call it ‘Lobster Formedoor’, and she would have been OK with that :)

You could also fit window films if you have single-glazed or drafty windows, and you can get reflective panels to go behind radiators (or use aluminium foil). A nice idea I found was to use fridge magnets to cover over key holes to stop the wind whistling through them!

Close curtains at dusk, to keep the heat in. Close doors behind you and only heat the rooms you live in. There’s no need to send a lot of heat into bedrooms if they’re upstairs, as they will benefit from rising heat and it’s easier to sleep in cooler surroundings anyway. Use a hot water bottle if you don’t like getting into a cold bed. Our old kitchen had no heating at all, which was fine because everything you do in a kitchen creates heat, and the fridge was really efficient in the winter :)

Turn the heating down in the winter and snuggle up on the sofa under a blanket or old duvet if all you’re doing is watching the telly. During the day, wear more layers or move around more. If you’re feeling chilly indoors, try going out for a walk – not only does it help you feel warmer, but you’ll notice the heat when you come back home!

Use your thermostat and the timer on your heating system so that you’re not over-heating your home or heating it when heat is not required. Radiators with thermostatic controls allow you to tailor heating in each room.

And even as it becomes impossible to dry your laundry outside, don’t hang it on the radiators inside – get a clothes horse!

What are your top tips for saving energy in the winter?

The Midcounties Co-operative is running several free screenings of ‘The Age of Stupid’ throughout November, in various locations. If you haven’t seen it, The Age of Stupid stars the late, great, Pete Postlethwaite as possibly the last man on Earth, guardian of the archives that prove that we should have seen the environmental Armageddon coming. The twist is that every scene he shows us from the archives has already happened – real life news footage makes up the bulk of the film.

Even if you have seen it, it’s worth watching again. Pete Postlethwaite’s performance was impressive, and the film stands in its own right as an end-of-the-world drama.

To check the dates and locations of the free screenings, and to book your seats, head over to the free film screenings website. You will need to be a member of the Midcounties Co-operative, but if you aren’t then you can apply for membership online and earn points whenever you spend money at businesses that are part of the Co-op.

I had my hair cut yesterday (thanks for noticing :) and while my stylist was doing her thing, another woman came in and was seated at the basins to have her hair washed. She struck up a conversation with the junior, and as she was right behind me and I have stuck with my stylist partly because she doesn’t fill every second with inane chatter about holidays and the weather, I could hear most of what she was saying.

And although I don’t think the weather has been particularly cool this autumn, and this woman obviously lives fairly close by, she was saying that her house is so cold at the moment that she has packed her daughter off to live with her grandparents. Presumably her heating is broken or something; she also said she was spending her evenings under a blanket in the living room, with an electric heater on.

Meanwhile, the temperature in our kitchen has dropped to around 15 C overnight, but the main house (the kitchen was the garage, if you remember) isn’t dropping below 19 C at night. We haven’t even considered turning the central heating on yet, although there have been a couple of days when it was a bit nippy.

Time will tell of course, but we’re thinking that the difference may just be because we now have lovely thick and efficient insulation in the loft (as well as kick-ass loft boards that mean we I can move around up there and we can store our boxes properly. Therefore I am going to remind you one more time that if you’re a British Gas customer you can apply for free cavity wall and/ or loft insulation if you do so before the end of the month.

If you’re not a British Gas customer then have a look at the Energy Saving Trust website, as there are other ways of getting your hands on free insulation or a grant to help with the costs. Apparently today is the last day of Energy Saving Week, too, so there are a couple of competitions you can enter if you’ve got that Friday feeling :D as well as plenty of other ways to save energy and cut your bills.

Last month Pete and I were talking about making wills on the show. We chose to use the Cooperative Will Writing Service, in the absence of any recommendations for local solicitors. If you are a member of your local Co-Op (or become one before you make the will) then you’ll save 15% and get reward points when you pay the bill.

We were sent an information pack, then talked through our requirements over the phone in a very friendly, and not at all morbid conversation. Mike, the guy helping us out, was perfect – he kept it very light-hearted and had a sense of humour. Since then we have received the first draft of our wills, added a couple of missing details, and returned them. We should soon receive our finished wills, when we will get them signed and witnessed and then file them away. Pete can then tick ‘make a will’ off his 43things list.

The reason I mention this is that apparently November is (amongst many other things) Make a Will month and there’s a nice piece on the BBC News website that talks about why we should make wills and what happens when we don’t. “Last year the Treasury gained £53m from people who died intestate – without a will”, and you may not want the government to have your money. More problematic situations include families who are not married, and those with children that need to be cared for.

The article also goes in to some of the reasons why people don’t make wills. The author seemed to be under the impression that making a will was akin to signing your own death warrant, which is a little ridiculous, but there are plenty of people who would prefer not to think about what happens after they’re dead.

But I suspect that most of us would care who ends up with our money or our most prized possessions, so if you have either of those – or dependents – then perhaps now is the time to think about making a will? You can forget about it entirely once you have :)

“Saturday, May 24, 2003

Trash now safely re-bagged and in the bin :)”

I am in the process of going through all the posts on my first blog and either deleting them or moving them to my new home if they’re relevant. Some aren’t relevant, but I’m keeping them anyway for nostalgia. Reading through is bringing back some memories. This one I found funny, although your mileage may vary :)

“Sunday, July 27, 2003

We had terrible trouble with disappearing spoons for years, but (fingers crossed) they have stopped now!