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Well, my conditioner experiment is now complete. Using travel-sized samples I tested nine conditioners in all, and this is how they performed:

Tresemmé Luxurious Moisture: 9/10
L'Oreal Colour Protect: 8/10
Pantene Pro-V Aqua Light: 8/10
Charles Worthington Sunshine: 8/10
John Frieda Beautiful Brunette: 8/10
Aussie Miracle Moist: 7/10
Herbal Essences Beautiful Ends: 6/10
Dove Damage Therapy Intensive Repair: 6/10
Vinegar Rinse: 5/10

Above all, I'm pleasantly surprised to find how many conditioners there are out there which are perfectly good for my hair. I'd believed for years that there were very few conditioning options available to me, but while perhaps that was true in Oxford with its awful water, in Leeds at least it doesn't seem to be. Five out of the nine options I tried scored 8/10 and above, and none of them were catastrophic. There are also plenty of other brands out there which I still haven't tried at all - these are simply the ones which happen to be available in travel sizes. So there are probably other products on the market which would be perfectly good for my hair as well.

That said, different conditioners really do perform quite differently, and having spent quite some time scanning the ingredients lists on the back of the bottles trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out why, I can report that they can contain radically different ingredients as well. For example, in my old conditioner, the sixth listed ingredient out of twenty-five (so one would assume present at more than trace level) was sugar cane extract, but I haven't managed to spot that on the ingredients lists at all for any of the others. I guess I can conclude now that I don't need to worry about whether my conditioner contains it or not - but on the basis of these sorts of differences I can certainly see why brands might perform quite differently, and why it is worth trying a fair few to find the one which is right for you. They very much aren't all just essentially the same stuff in different packaging. (If you're interested in the major basic types of conditioner ingredients, Wikipedia provides a list).

My plan now is to give each of the top three options a fuller try by buying and using a full-sized bottle of each of them. (I'm sticking to a top three rather than a top five on the basis of minor preferences and price differentials amongst the four which scored 8/10). I've already started those fuller trials with the Tresemmé, and am very pleased with the results. I'm not going to post any more reviews here - I think we've probably all had quite enough of those! But I will continue to explore and experiment, safe in the knowledge that I now have a good range of reliable options which I can switch to if my local supermarkets and chemists stop selling them one I happen to have settled on.

That's a good and useful place to have got to.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Vinegar rinse

Price: £1.25 for a 500ml bottle of apple cider vinegar

No. of applications: Would make 50 application from the bottle I bought = c. 2p each

Smell: Vinegary. Obviously. But the website I've linked above is quite right to say that the smell vanishes completely once the hair is dry.

Appearance in hand: I applied this by pouring it directly over my head, so this category does not strictly apply here. In the mug which I used to mix it up, it looked like very weak tea.

Feeling when applied: Basically like pouring a mug of warm water over my head. I also used my fingers to make sure the rinse was properly distributed through the hair, and while doing this it felt slippery but without the creamy / oily feeling you would expect from a commercial conditioner.

First brush while still wet: Pretty good. Hair had a fair few knots in it, but they brushed out nicely, leaving neat, sleek hair.

Hair once dry: Shiny but rather straggly.

Later brush: Not good. Brushing through the hair after it had dried caused huge amounts of static - worse that I can remember experiencing with it for many years. Probably for the same reason, the hair does not hang together nicely, especially towards the ends, but wants to separate out into individual strands. This makes it look dry / frizzy.

Overall: This is certainly a lot cheaper than commercial conditioners, and for ordinary household vinegar I was pretty impressed with its performance. But the static and dryness after my hair had dried were not welcome. It seems as though it does indeed have a good effect on individual hairs, helping them to look shiny and sleek, but has unwanted effects on the hair as a whole. I certainly won't be using this on a regular basis - at most just very occasionally, and maybe not at all. 5/10.

This is now my last post about an individual conditioning treatment; I'll write up the final scores and overall conclusions in a separate post.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: John Frieda Beautiful Brunette

Price: £1.99 for 50ml = £3.98 for 100ml

No. of applications: 3 from a 50ml bottle = c. 6 per 100ml = c. 66p each

Smell: Slightly almondy.

Appearance in hand: Beige in colour. Looked almost exactly like a thick & creamy toffee yoghurt, or possibly a slightly melty version of the inside of a Thornton's cappuccino truffle.

Feeling when applied: Went into the hair OK, but left a slightly greasy film on my hands, which didn't feel too great.

First brush while still wet: Good - brushed through well.

Hair once dry: Good at the top, but a bit straggly further down.

Later brush: Also good. Lay nicely, stragglers seemed to calm down after a second brush, and had a decent sheen. Not quite as sheeny as some conditioners I have tried during this experiment, though.

Overall: Another good performance. Dealt with knots effectively, and left me with nice-looking hair once dry. Only complaints would be the slightly weird feeling of the greasy film left on my hands after application, and the fact that it did not leave quite such a sheen on my hair as some competitors. However, it is considerably more expensive than some of the other conditioners I have tried, which I think in the end is likely to mean I don't bother returning to it. 8/10.

This now brings me to the end of the eight different commercial conditioners which I originally set out to try. However, the experiment isn't over yet, because I am now going to follow a_d_medievalist's advice and try out a vinegar rinse. That's more likely to become something I use occasionally as a supplement to normal conditioner, a bit like they way I also sometimes treat my hair with VO5 hot oil, rather than a total replacement for a commercial conditioner. But I may as well give it a proper try for a few washes now, while I am in the swing of experimenting.

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Yay! For the first time this season I was able to watch Doctor Who live on broadcast, it was a good episode, and I have time to write up my thoughts this evening! Happy times.

I am so glad that the Jenny, Vastra and Strax Show is becoming a regular feature, and even more so that we haven't had a weak episode with them in it yet. I wouldn't call this episode mind-blowing, but it definitely qualified as a really good romp, and because it didn't try to position itself as anything more it left me well satisfied. The running jokes around Strax's battle plans and Mr. Thursday repeatedly fainting, the proper mad-scientist-style steaming coloured liquids in conical flasks, and the brilliantly groan-worthy satnav urchin all helped to seal the silliness deal. Meanwhile, Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling both entirely lived up to their promise, were done great justice by the script, and delivered the proper character-driven drama which I craved and missed in Cold War and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.

We have seen the 'crazed villain tries to enslave humanity with the help of an alien parasite' plot a quazillion times before on Doctor Who of course, but by framing it as a Jenny, Vastra and Strax story, keeping the Doctor off-screen for the first ten minutes and even then revealing him as helpless and paralysed, it felt fresh enough to capture the attention. I loved the flashback scenes in which the Doctor explained how he and Clara had arrived in Yorkshire, too, with their fake 'old film' look - a classic device. That said, I wasn't too sold on the magical machine which could undo the effects of the red poison, which felt like a rather easy cop-out - although I suppose it could reasonably be explained as the end result of the experiments which Mrs. Gillyflower performed on Ada. I also wasn't sure what we were supposed to make of the Doctor kissing Jenny, followed by the rather teenage joke involving his sonic screwdriver when she stripped down to her leathers. Matt Smith's Doctor has reacted uncomfortably in the face of previous romantic advances from both Amy and governess!Clara, and has shown no interest (that I can remember) in Jenny before, so it seems oddly inconsistent to have him suddenly going all Benny Hill over her.

Still, it was great to have a story set in Yorkshire, and some fab northern jokes to go with it as well (Bradford - "All a-swarm with the wretched ruins of humanity"). 'Sweetville' wasn't just riffing off local industrial magnate Titus Salt's planned workers' village Saltaire. It used the design of the factory there directly, with even the concept drawing unveiled at the talk which Jenny attended clearly based on the real equivalent for Saltaire. Apparently the actual filming happened in Bute Town, though, which would explain why the stonework on close-up shots of the cottages looked wrong. People were very into regularly-laid square-cut stone in Victorian Yorkshire, but the cottages of Sweetville have irregular stone.

Finally, sure enough, as I predicted earlier in the week, we had a prominent reference to the Fifth Doctor era, in the form of the line about struggling to get a 'gobby Australian' (i.e. Tegan) back to Heathrow. But, as you'd expect with a series that has as much back-catalogue to draw on as Doctor Who, and a writer who knows that catalogue as well as Mark Gatiss, there were other nods and winks for the knowing as well. The gramophones playing fake factory noises in particular reminded me of the Meddling Monk's recordings of Gregorian chants in The Time Meddler, while the line about the red leech growing fat on the filth in the rivers recalled the eco-warrior stories of the Pertwee era - and especially The Green Death, which seems to have inspired the structure of the title as well.

I feel much better for that episode, and am actively looking forwards to next week's now. Having actual children in the TARDIS promises to be interesting, and certainly something which I don't believe has ever happened before outside of the two films made with Peter Cushing. I wonder if it is in part a reaction to the fact that The Sarah Jane Adventures sadly cannot continue any longer, with the format of the spin-off being folded back into the main show? Anyway, it is certainly something new for new Who, and I hope it makes for interesting new story-telling possibilities as a result.

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I am horribly behind with Doctor Who reviews, partly because I was in New York when this (half-)season started, and partly because I didn't find the first few episodes very inspirational anyway. This is an attempt to catch up.

( 7.7 The Bells of Saint JohnCollapse )

( 7.8 The Rings of AkhatenCollapse )

( 7.9 Cold WarCollapse )

( 7.10 HideCollapse )

( 7.11 Journey to the Centre of the TARDISCollapse )

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: L'Oreal Colour Protect

Price: £1.39 for 50ml = £2.78 for 100ml

No. of applications: 3 from a 50ml bottle = c. 6 per 100ml = c. 46p each

Smell: A little bit like a sun-cream which my Mum used to use when we were children.

Appearance in hand: Texture - similar to the Tresemmé conditioner which I tried. Colour - white.

Feeling when applied: Absorbed easily, felt like it was doing some good.

First brush while still wet: Not that great the first time I tried it, but then again it was the first time I had washed my hair after getting back from New York and spending three days dying of jet-lag. Seemed much better on subsequent uses.

Hair once dry: A bit fly-away at first, but settled into smoother, neater locks later in the day

Later brush: Very good. The bottle says something about this product including some kind of 'nourishing ingredient' which 'transforms' the surface of the hair, and I really did notice a distinct and very welcome sheen to my hair while I was using it.

Overall: I think I really liked this conditioner, in particular for the sheen-y layer which it put on my hair. But because the bottle only included three applications' worth, I don't quite feel that I had enough chance to judge it properly. That's L'Oreal's fault in a way for choosing to put their travel-sized conditioner in a 50-ml bottle, and if I was less sure about the conditioner I'd probably just say "Bad luck, guys - you ruled yourself out." But I'm already thinking that after I've worked my way through these small sample bottles, I might buy a full-sized bottle each of the top three, and give them a fuller trial. I'd like this one to be part of that trial. 8/10.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Herbal Essences Beautiful Ends

Price: £1.19 for 75ml = £1.59 for 100ml

No. of applications: 4 from a 75ml bottle = c. 5.5 per 100ml = c. 30p each

Smell: This conditioner supposedly contains 'red raspberry and silk extracts', and it did smell slightly of raspberries, but not very strongly or somehow very pleasantly either.

Appearance in hand: Texture - similar to my old conditioner, i.e. smooth and creamy. Colour - pink.

Feeling when applied: Fine - absorbed easily, didn't feel greasy or anything.

First brush while still wet: Good. Brushed through nicely.

Hair once dry: OK. Felt smooth and silky at the top, but got quite straggly further down.

Later brush: Also OK. Shiny and smooth, but perhaps a bit flat. The bottle on this product claims that it offers 'split end protection', but I wouldn't expect to see the effects of that over only four washes, so I can't judge whether it is effective or not on that front.

Overall: Middling performance overall. Does what I would basically expect from a conditioner - i.e. makes my hair easy to brush through after washing, and reasonably silky once dry, but fails to excel. I also found myself disproportionately annoyed by the branding on this product (building on an existing long-standing annoyance with Herbal Essences advertising on TV). The very name, 'Herbal Essences', and the inclusion of 'raspberry extract' attempt to evoke earth-motherly images of living close to 'nature' which are a) annoyingly delusional in any context and b) not remotely lived up to by this product, which is in fact just as stuffed full of artificially-produced chemicals as any other conditioner. And the back of the bottle also attempts to strike up a 'bond' with me as the customer via jokey, first-person text:

My velvety conditioning will give your length protection against breakage and split ends. Use me: soak your hair with me, yep all the way down to the tips, rinse and repeat for good measure.

Puh-lease! 7/10 for actual performance, but an extra point knocked off for stupid branding, so 6/10 overall.

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I watched this on the plane on the way to New York, which was nice as I missed it in the cinema. Presumably, I saw a slightly censored version, as the cinema release was a 12A, and as far as I understand all films available on in-flight entertainment systems have to be a PG or below. But basically I've seen it.

Overall verdict - jolly good. I've enjoyed the Judi Dench 'era' of Bond, but I guess nothing can last for ever, and she certainly had a very compelling exit. Playing Bond's character off against a bitter former agent made for some good opportunities to explore the personal cost of serving as a double-0 agent, especially when triangulated against the new Eve Moneypenny's ultimate decision not to go into the field herself. Speaking of Naomie Harris, I have always completely loved her in 28 Days Later, so was very pleased to come across her here again. And it is cool to have a new, minimalist techy Q on board as well. I've only seen the actor who plays him, Ben Whishaw, in Brideshead Revisited (2008), where I was distinctly underwhelmed with his petulant teenage Sebastian, but he seemed to work much better in this role.

The action sequences and dry humour that we all basically watch these films for were well in place, as were some fantastic locations. I especially enjoyed the Scottish highland setting for Skyfall itself, having been to very similar country so recently myself, and also Raoul Silva's abandoned industrial island complex. The best line of the film was easily Kincade's response to Bond asking him whether he was ready to face off their attackers at Skyfall: "I was ready before you were born, son" (the line really being made, of course, by a well-timed re-loading of his shotgun).

On the down-side, the stuff about Bond's parents dying when he was a child, and the link between that and his Freudian relationship with M as his substitute-'mother' sometimes came across as a bit cod-psychological. The return to the old-school set-up of a male M in an oak-panelled office and Miss Moneypenny in the ante-room outside could offer fresh opportunities for re-invention and subversion, but it also risks a return to the more misogynistic scripts which originally came with it (not that this one was exactly a feminist triumph - ask Sévérine, the trafficked sex-slave who ended up as a toy, broken in a fight between two men). And Raoul Silva was blatantly an Evil Gay, which I could really have done without.

Still, it was gripping, entertaining and fairly substantial for a Bond film, and I certainly enjoyed its company on a long-haul flight. I will be looking forward to more Naomie Harris in particular in the next instalment.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Charles Worthington Sunshine

Price: £1.99 for 75ml = £2.65 for 100ml

No. of applications: 5 from a 75ml bottle = c. 6.5 per 100ml = c. 45p each

Smell: Perfumey, though not in an unpleasant way.

Appearance in hand: Texture - quite similar to my old conditioner, although a little thicker. Came out of the bottle in distinct 'worms'. Smooth and creamy but no pearlescence. Colour - white.

Feeling when applied: Light, easily absorbed.

First brush while still wet: Very good. Few knots, easy to brush through.

Hair once dry: Also good. Nice sheen, lies well, feels smooth and silky, barely any stragglers.

Later brush: Seems very prone to static on later brushing. Otherwise good - shiny, silky, smooth.

Overall: Very good performance apart from the tendency to static when re-brushed later in the day. That is quite off-putting, though. Also the most expensive conditioner per application which I have tried so far. 8/10.

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This was the latest Cottage Classic, seen with ms_siobhan and planet_andy. I read the book 13 years ago, during my DPhil when I was living in a tiny studio apartment in Paris and researching Roman urban peripheries each day at the Bibliothèque Nationale, but I've actually never seen a film adaptation of it at all. This one seemed good, though. Charles Laughton's performance as the hunchback is excellent, and makes me all the sadder that the 1937 film of I, Claudius, in which he would of course have played a similar character (misunderstood, disabled), was never completed.

It doesn't follow the novel exactly - in particular, it gives the story a happy ending, in which Esmeralda is not executed but goes off happily with the young poet Gringoire (who reminded me a lot of Juvelad), and Quasimodo lives on in his bell-tower. But I felt it captured the atmosphere of the novel well, including some of the thematic stuff which I remember being struck by when I read it. For example, the book places a great emphasis on the difference between the interior and exterior of the medieval walls of Paris (which had obvious resonances for me when I was reading it because of my work on Roman urban peripheries) and includes long passages about how cathedrals and their sculptural programmes are the equivalents of texts for a society without printing presses (which also relates closely to the role of Roman public buildings). Both of these came up in the film too - especially the cathedrals-as-texts thing.

I don't remember Louis IX being quite so prominent in the book, though - or so progressive. In the film, he is a great advocate of the new-fangled printing press, which he thinks is a miracle. I missed the character of Gudule, an old woman who lives in a cell off a public square lamenting her past, and whom I felt added a lot to the brutal / ascetic medieval atmosphere of the book. And in the novel it seems plausible that Esmeralda might have some interest in Phoebus, but the film didn't really convince on that point. Meanwhile, some of the themes of the film - inner vs. outer beauty and superstition vs. rationalism - felt a bit heavy-handed sometimes. But the sets were good - especially Quasimodo's bell tower, but also the streets of 15th-century Paris, which were all purpose-built for the film.

Definitely another film I'm glad I've seen, anyway, especially on the big screen.

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I'm starting to despair a little of ever getting time to write up my recent holiday spent touring around Wicker Man filming locations in Scotland with thanatos_kalos. It's partly busy-ness, and partly of course the fact that such things are rather more fun to do than to write about. But maybe I can get the juices flowing a bit by writing up my impressions on watching the film at the start and end of the holiday?

( 3a. Before - moustaches and world-buildingCollapse )

( 3b. After - location scouts and the hazy line between fiction and realityCollapse )

I promise that I'll put up some of the pictures from our holiday shortly in their own post, but for now I will just share my own favourite photo of the week, taken by the lovely thanatos_kalos. I am sitting on the wall outside Anwoth Old Kirk in bright sunshine, just like the musicians in the may-pole scene from the film. I think it very well captures how vivid the experience of going to these places is - and how much the weather did to contribute to the requisite summery atmosphere! Do feel free to compare it to the Youtube video of the relevant scene, below:





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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Aussie Miracle Moist for dry hair

Price: £1.69 for 75ml = £2.25 for 100ml

No. of applications: 4 from a 75ml bottle = c. 5.5 per 100ml = c. 42p each

Smell: Nice - sweet and nutty. (Unsurprising, given that it proclaims itself to contain macadamia nut oil.)

Appearance in hand: Texture - a bit like slightly more liquid vaseline. Colour - beige-ish.

Feeling when applied: Oily (in a good, nourishing sort of way), well absorbed into hair.

First brush while still wet: Very good. Some knots, but they melt away quickly under my brush.

Hair once dry: Basically good. Nice sheen and lies well, but there are a few stragglers.

Later brush: Hair hangs nicely and looks smooth, but is a bit static-y, and has a slightly 'rough' feeling - more like cotton than silk.

Overall: Felt nourishing and good for my hair while wet, but became a bit more disappointing as it dried - stragglers on initial drying and then a static-y rough feeling when brushed through once dry. Could do better, but certainly not a disaster. 7/10.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Tresemmé Luxurious Moisture

Price: £1.29 for 100ml

No. of applications: 5 from a 100ml bottle, but it would easily have done 6 - I was just extravagant with the last couple of helpings, as I wanted to finish the bottle before going to Scotland and interrupting the experiment for a week. So strictly speaking 26p each, but if I'd been more frugal it would have worked out at 22p each.

Smell: Very mild, slightly ricey / starchy.

Appearance in hand: White with a slight pearlescent sheen. Texture similar to the last one, but slightly thicker.

Feeling when applied: Smooth and light, absorbed easily into hair.

First brush while still wet: Good. Similar performance to my old Garnier Fructis conditioner. Obviously there are some knots when I first start to brush, but they disappear pretty quickly.

Hair once dry: Very good. Falls into place nicely, looks smooth, shiny and well-cared-for.

Later brush: Also very good. Barely even seems to need any further brushing beyond the original styling while still wet, at least if I haven't been out in the wind anyway. Hair hangs really nicely and generally looks just how I want it to.

Overall: Yay, this one is excellent! It has all the same good qualities as the Pantene conditioner which I last reviewed, but doesn't make my hair hang down too poker-straight in the way that that one did. I suppose a conditioner could be more perfect than this, so I will hang back from actually giving it 10 out of 10, but this is the best I've tried so far and I can't imagine I will improve on this. 9/10.

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I wrote up my overall experiences curating the PeopleofLeeds Twitter account a couple of weeks ago, and followed that up with a post containing some of the pictures I had shared of local Headingley landmarks. But the real theme of my week on the account was Art Deco Leeds, so this post rounds off the story by recording some of the pictures I shared on that topic. I'm not including absolutely every picture I took or tweeted here, as that would get a bit much, but these are the highlights of my Art Deco week.

( Art Deco HeadingleyCollapse )

( The University and city centreCollapse )

But the grand climax of my week was the Sunday, when I armed myself with my SatNav and a list of every other Art Deco building I knew of in Leeds, and ( drove around the city visiting and photographing each oneCollapse )

Meanwhile, outside the sun set on my day of Art Deco, and my week as the Twitter face of Leeds. As I said in my previous post, it had its pros and cons, but the prompt to finally get myself organised and visit all these buildings systematically was very definitely one of the pros.

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I went to stay with my parents in Birmingham this weekend, and on the Saturday evening I took my Mum out to their local art-house cinema to see this. It's a documentary about Don McCullin, a photojournalist who specialised in particular in war photography. After growing up in considerable poverty in London, he broke into the world of professional photography with a striking series of portraits of an east end gang who were basically his mates. He then went on to work for The Observer and The Sunday Times from the early '60s to the mid-'80s, covering events such as the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War, the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the attempted secession of Biafra from Nigeria, struggles over the control of Cyprus and the Lebanese Civil War, but also more slowly-unfolding human dramas such as poverty in New Orleans, homelessness in London and the sheer eccentricities of the British at leisure.

Unusually for a documentary like this, McCullin is still very much alive, and the piece was largely structured around a series of interviews with him in his home, looking back over his career and talking through his collection of his own photographs. He came across as a very thoughtful and sensitive man, who had been driven above all by the urge to show people the reality of what was happening around the world, and particularly to bring home the consequences of their actions to the politicians who make the decision to enter into armed conflicts. For these reasons, his images focused above all on the victims of conflict - dead and injured soldiers, starving civilians and all kinds of abandoned or displaced women and children. In some ways, his work had the desired effect, contributing to a strong change in public opinion about the war in Vietname, for example. But in others, of course, it did not, since we are still at it with no apparent change.

The real stars of the film are the photographs themselves, many of which were very harrowing but all of which were strikingly composed and very obviously the result of close involvement with the brutal reality of extreme human circumstances. Arguably, of course, they could be better engaged with via prints in a gallery or perhaps a large-format coffee table book. But the film could put them in the context of contemporary news-reels, as well as framing them with the very intimate and absorbing interviews with McCullin himself. The primary director, Jacqui Morris, apparently used to work with him as a photographic assistant, which probably helps to explain the relaxed, open, self-scrutinising manner in which he is willing to talk about his career in front of the camera, and this definitely adds considerable value which the photographs alone could not quite deliver.

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I saw this round at ms_siobhan and planet_andy's house a couple of weeks ago. As ms_siobhan explained before we began, it is one of those ghost films where you never actually see anything supernatural, but the atmosphere is nonetheless creepy as hell. Shot in beautiful black and white and set almost entirely in an empty, isolated stately home, it is all about the psychological reactions of a small group of main characters. The set-up is that they have been invited there by a Dr. Markway, who wants to investigate the house's supposed paranormal history. Once they are settled in, of course, strange and frightening things begin to happen, bringing all the hidden tensions within and between the various personalities in the house to the fore.

This means, of course, that this film is very closely comparable to other similar movies such as House on Haunted Hill and The Legend of Hell House - though by no means diminished by the comparison. I'm afraid I found the main point-of-view character, Eleanor Lance slightly disappointing. She is the one most affected by the atmosphere in the house, and both her back-story of guilt after the recent death of her mother (for whom she has been a carer most of her life) and her psychological disintegration over the course of the film could have been very compelling. But for me she began the film already too neurotic and self-doubting for me to develop any real sympathy for her, or for her further journey into madness to carry much interest for me. Otherwise, though, the cocktail of characters was very well-judged, the individuals convincing and well-defined, and the interplay between them as they experienced greater and greater terror very compelling. As for the location and sets (the latter purpose-built for the film), they did a huge amount to underscore the atmosphere of the story, and were beautifully shot using all sorts of interesting angles and framing devices.

So far, so very competently-made haunted house story, but the one extra element which took us quite by surprise in a film from 1963 was the heavily-suggested homoerotic sexual tension between Eleanor Lance and another female character, the sassy and very modern Theodora (or Theo for short). This isn't exactly what you would call a positive representation, of course - how could it be in 1963? At one point, Eleanor roundly accuses Theo of being both jealous of her own growing attraction to (the male) Dr. Markway, and of being 'unnatural' and one of 'nature's mistakes'. But on the other hand, they also have scenes of close intimacy - holding hands, walking arm in arm and painting their toe-nails together - in which it is quite clear that Eleanor is just as drawn to Theo as Theo is to her. And in the end, it is Theo, the character depicted as being consciously aware of her own lesbian desires and knowingly acting on them, who survives the film, while the more repressed Eleanor is broken by the house to the extent that she dies and becomes one of its victims. So there is something a little more complex than a simple heteronormative morality tale going on here, and something which in turn opens the door to some more interesting readings of what exactly the unseen terrors within the house represent - uncontrolled female sexual desire, perhaps? Viewers must decide for themselves.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Pantene Pro-V Aqua Light

Price: £1.19 for 75ml = £1.60 for 100ml

No. of applications 5 from a 75ml bottle = c. 7 per 100ml = c. 24p each.

Smell: Almondy / coconutty

Appearance in hand: White, creamy and moist, a lot like my old conditioner but a little bit more liquid. Slight pearlescent sheen.

Feeling when applied: Light and silky, 'vanished' quickly into the hair. Slight tendency to lather as I rubbed it in - not like a shampoo, but a few tiny bubbles forming in my hand.

First brush while still wet: Medium performance here. First few strokes of the brush smooth and resistance-free, but there were quite a few largish knots further down which took some time to work out.

Hair once dry: Pretty good. Hair mobile and fluid with a moderate sheen to it. A few stragglers, but not too bad.

Later brush: Really nice. Hair feels silky, soft and strokable, but not at all oily / greasy. Arguably it hangs slightly too poker-straight on this conditioner, though - the two broad sweeps I'm used to on either side of my face became less and less noticeable on each successive wash with it.

Overall: This is definitely encouraging - only the second conditioner I have tried, and I really like it. It's not perfect, a) because it requires me to fight through knots a bit more than my old conditioner did when I first brush out my hair, and b) because I'm not quite sure about the poker-straightness which it gave to my hair by the time I got to the bottom of the bottle. But my hair does feel lovely and smooth and silky on it, and it appears to fulfil the claim on the front of the bottle to be particularly suitable for fine hair, leaving it with 'virtually no weight'. 8/10.

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I wrote about my experiences curating the PeopleofLeeds Twitter account earlier today, and said at the end of that post that I would share here some of the pictures which I posted to that account during my week, so that I have a more permanent record of what I did with it. This post contains some (though not all) of the pictures I took of non-Art Deco landmarks in Headingley during my week, and the things I said about them.

( The no-longer original oakCollapse )

( 5, Holly Bank, one-time home of J.R.R. TolkienCollapse )

( The Cottage Road and Hyde Park cinemasCollapse )

( Remants of the Victorian-era Leeds Zoological and Botanical GardensCollapse )

None of the above photos are that great, of course, because they were taken with my phone camera, and I didn't usually have the luxury to be able to wait around for good weather, good lighting, no cars, etc. before I took them. But that's the nature of Twitter, and I think they did convey a good sense of what I like about my area.

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What on earth is this post about? All explained here.

Name: Dove Damage Therapy Intensive Repair

Price: 99p for 50ml = £2 for 100ml

No. of applications three from a 50ml bottle = six per 100ml = 33p each.

Smell: Mild and inoffensive.

Appearance in hand: Pale yellow colour. Texture of first helping like thick-ish cake mix. Came out of the bottle in distinct 'worms' rather than as a pool of gloop. No real sheen or shine to it. But also became looser and creamier further down the bottle. Lesson - shake each bottle carefully in future before starting to use the contents.

Feeling when applied: First helping had an odd sort of rough, scrapey feel to it, a bit like there was silica or mica in it or something. Kind of like the feeling of a graphite pencil travelling over the surface of some paper, as opposed to the silkier feel of my old conditioner. But again, this had gone by the third (and last) application.

First brush while still wet: Not great the first time. Hair quite matted and tangly, required quite a lot of patience to get the knots out. Could still feel the roughish texture that was there in the shower on application. Much better by the third application.

Hair once dry: Also not great the first time. A lot of rather frizzy-looking stragglers floating free of the main body of the hair. But again got better.

Later brush: Improved texture, even the first time - stragglers seemed to settle down, and hair felt OK, but a bit dry and dull. By end of the bottle, perfectly acceptable.

Overall: On the one hand, this wasn't as bad as the first application made me think. On the other, I don't want a conditioner that is as vulnerable as this one to settling out and performing badly as a result. Also, presumably its average performance even when properly mixed is still somewhere closer to the initial rough-feeling experience than I would like. Definitely worse than my old Garnier conditioner, but not catastrophically bad. 6/10.

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