St. Clement's Day Many legends surround Saint Clement, some suggest he was the first man to refine iron from ore, and to shoe a horse. Clementine customs may be survivals of earlier pagan rituals, a confusion of Saint Clement with the early Saxon Wayland, or Wayland the smith, a mythical metalworker. He shares this feast day, which marks the beginning of winter, with the saint. In Charles Dickens’s "Great Expectations" Miss Havisham insists Pip sing for her and her ward Estella, and Pip responds with a ditty from Joe’s forge ‘that imitated the measure of beating upon iron’: ‘... hammer boys round -
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a 2008 romantic comedy film directed by Bharat Nalluri, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. The screenplay by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy is based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Winifred Watson. The novel had been adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2001, read by Maureen Lipman. Set in London just prior to World War II, the film is about a middle-aged, straitlaced vicar's daughter and governess Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), who has been fired from her fourth job. When employment agency head