You're so totally deluded

Black cats bring good luck, don't they?

I like weekends... The sun continues to shine across the UK (and temperatures look likely to soar again by Sunday); Trump is buggering off to Scotland, where one hopes he will shut his orange gob for a while while playing golf; there'll be sweaty hunks in tight shorts grunting away in South West London today as Rafel Nadal plays Novak Djokovich in the Wimbledon tennis semi-final; and the BBC Proms Season opens tonight (more of that later, no doubt). Life is good.

However, the superstitious among us are quaking - they need Basement Jaxx [who, to my eternal shame, I discover I have never featured on this blog before] to sort them out with a bit of Good Luck!

Basement Jaxx and Lisa Kekaula - Good Luck

Thank Disco it's Friday (the Thirteenth, again)!

The original Catwoman

Yesterday was the centenary (or possibly the 101st anniversary, as there is some dispute over the actual date she was born) of the birth of the charismatic and glamorous French actress Simone Simon.

Evidently well-travelled - she lived in Madagascar, Budapest, Turin, Berlin, Marseilles and Paris at various stages - the exotic young Mme Simon was eventually whisked to Hollywood by none other than Daryl F. Zanuck to make her fortune. Unfortunately he sacked her, having no time for her Gallic temperament...

Nevertheless she went on to star in movies alongside some of the greats of the day, including Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young, Constance Bennett and James Stewart before - after a hiatus back in France - landing the role for which she is probably best remembered, as star of the original 1942 movie Cat People. This was a part she was born to play, with her feline looks and reputation as a seductress (among her alleged conquests were George Gershwin and WW2 spy Dusko Popov).

She never quite recovered from being portrayed as the mysterious and deadly vamp, however, and eventually retired from cinema in the 1970s. She died only six years ago, at the ripe old age of 93!

A divine creature.

Simone Simon - Cat People trailer

New York Times obituary