DG Creations

Art, photography and writing by Diane Garrett

Abalone Cove: Just Don’t

Beach Life, DG Creations, Photography, Surf N Pixels

There are so many things you aren’t supposed to do at Abalone Cove: Remove abalones or plants, bring animals to the beach and smoke. But you’re really not supposed to sunbathe nude.

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The beach is out of the way, but it’s also popular with families checking out the tide pools. Hence the need for signage above.

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Before you head down to the beach, you are greeted with a host of prohibitive signs outlining all the do’s and don’ts.

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Including this final advisory: Watch out for ticks with nefarious intent.

‘Parade’s End’: Benedict Cumberbatch has a bad case of the mumbles

DG Creations, HBO, TV, Writing

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Caught up with “Parade’s End” and I’ll say this about HBO’s “Downton”-like miniseries:

1. It looks gorgeous.

2. Benedict Cumberbatch’s muddy elocution got in the way of the story. For long patches of the five-part series, it was impossible to figure out what his character was saying. I get that Christopher Tietjens was supposed to have a stiff upper lip — and be restrained to a fault — but director Susanna White did the audience no favors by allowing him to mumble his words so.

I wanted to shake his shoulders like Gen. Campion and say: Enunciate, good man!

This tortured diction was evidently intentional, given that Christopher’s father in the series, portrayed by Alan Howard, spoke in the same incomprehensible fashion. Spoiled and vivacious Sylvia (Rebecca Hall) was a welcome antidote to these two marble mouthed men.

I liked the complexity of the characters — especially Sylvia — and swooned over her outfits and the gorgeous scenery away from the front lines in Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s World War I novels. But I really wish Cumberbatch had spoken more clearly.