Cuttings

In the appropriate surroundings of Stamford's 18th-century assembly rooms and theatre, I finally caught up with Emma this week. The film, that is, not the television series. Rather a blunt-edged script, it seemed, with some extraordinary added anachronisms. The oddest were the strawberries. The scriptwriters transposed the strawberry-picking scene from Mr Knightley's kitchen garden (in the book it is a fabulously wicked episode, with Mrs Elton lauding `Hautbois' as the only strawberry worth eating) to a wood. That's fair enough. Except that in a wood you don't get strawberries the size of the supermarket `Cambridge Favourite' which the cast were feeding each other in close-up. And if Gwyneth Paltrow had to do a "He loves me, he loves me not" sequence with daisies studding the lawn at her home, the director should have shot the scene at daisy time (not difficult) rather than stud the foreground with vast white marguerites instead. For the real thing read Mavis Batey's new book Jane Austen and the English Landscape (Barn Elms, pounds 19.99).

Jim Keeling of the Whichford Pottery has arranged a series of winter sales which start at the end of November. All gardeners know that the Third Law of Thermodywhatnot says that there is always room for one more pot in the garden. If you are feeling excessively altruistic you could buy some to give away as Christmas presents. The sale at Whichford Pottery, Whichford, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, starts today and continues until 8 December. Rupert Golby will demonstrate ways to plant pots today and tomorrow at 11am and 2pm. Sales will also be held at The Buildings, Broughton, Hanpshire (two miles west of Stockbridge, off the A30) from 29 November to 1 December and from 6 to 8 December (9am-5pm). Londoners may find it easier to get to Capel Manor, Bullsmoor Lane, Enfield, Middlesex, where Jim Keeling is holding a pottery sale on 7 and 8 December (9am-5pm).