Day 6.
I remind myself because yesterday, for a moment anyway, it was Day 4 again – and that was slightly alarming.
Incidentally, a word on how I’m doing this: I have made a little list. It pretty much covers the next few weeks, but (and I’d love to give myself the credit) I’m not quite organised enough to have written the whole year of posts. This is pretty much night-before-publishing stuff. I have some broad topics on my list, and I’ve made sure to note both the date, and the number of the day, as a matter of course.
Ooh, the initiative.
I know. I impress myself.
But that’s as scientific as I get.
So, Day 6 – Gillian Anderson.
No particular part of her. Just Gillian Anderson, in general.
When I was a teenager, I watched the X Files, late at night on BBC2 with my mother. She was watching for Mulder and I was watching for Scully, and neither one of us much cared for the aliens. Whether they were real or not, nobody in the Binney household was much paying attention.
I remember the mix of rhapsody and shock I felt when she appeared on BBC1 first thing in the morning, just as I was going to bed, and Gillian Anderson had an English accent. She wasn’t putting it on. It was her own. I don’t think I slept for much for the morning after that revelation.
And, of course, I saw her as Lady Dedlock in the Beeb adaptation of Bleak House in 2005, in which she was transcendent.
And in A Cock and Bull Story, The Fall, American Gods, The Viceroy’s House, Crooked House and The Spy Who Dumped Me. Yeah, okay. I’m a fan.
Of course, she’s beautiful, but that’s not why I like her. It’s largely for her facial expressions.
I have a face which is reserved only for times when I am putting up with something. It is known as my Opera Face.
If I am stuck, trying not to get into an argument but unable to leave a room, I make this face.
If I could do it with this bone structure, it would probably be better, but watch the lip suck. The nodding, get-me-out-of-here lip suck. That’s the Opera Face. If I ever make that face in your company, know that the suggestion of going out for a breath of fresh air will not be unwelcome.
There you have it. Day 6 – Gillian Anderson.
Petrina Binney - Author 