I get up early and nip for a much-needed shower before the other two appear. A day of sweltering, tiny theatres has taken its toll, plus my mum is coming up from the Borders to take us for breakfast this morning, so scrubbing up is absolutely essential. Mum arrives with my step-dad in tow, in their especially lovely new Jaguar XF (which has a dial instead of a gearstick – how cool is that?) and pick my brother and I up at around 10am. We drive the short distance to a nearby cafe, where we sit and wait for it to open properly before having a pretty decent fry-up and a nice chat about wedding plans and whatnot (this being the first time we've met up since the engagement) before they head back into the wilderness.
My brother and I head home and spend the rest of the morning playing NHL 2003 until it becomes clear that, for our own sanity, we should probably leave the house. There are two shows we want to see today, the first of which starts at 2.40 at a place called The Caves on the Cowgate. We head down early to make sure we can get tickets (clearly aiming for better-known shows today to avoid being in a room with 10 old fogies again) for Nerds of a Feather, a geek-themed show featuring sets from two comedians called Graham Goring and Chris Stokes. The first talks, Stokes, about being a geek, and particularly about his love for TV shows like Doctor Who and Columbo, as well as the “I think you'll find...” geek phenomenon. He comes across as very likeable and has a lot of good jokes, making subtle use of a projector to do some nice visual gags. Graham Goring looks worryingly like me and uses the projector much more in his set, with visuals, animations and sound effects annotating almost all his jokes. It's very enjoyable from a nerdy perspective and I especially like his jokes about Super Mario Brothers and Sonic 3, something I don't think I've seen done in a comedy club before. Today is their last show of the run and they make a nice point at the end of coming on stage together to thank the venue staff and so on, as well as each other. I can't imagine how much doing something like this every day for a month must take it out of you and feel like a bit of an epic slog.
Our next show, as with yesterday, is shortly after this one and on the other side of town. We wander over there and buy our tickets to see Andy Zaltzman, whose work I know well having spent much of the last two years listening to his Bugle podcast (making it odd that I haven't got round to seeing him in London before, though he did once walk past me at Highbury & Islington tube station). He has an odd, clownish look but does a great line in political satire mixed with surreal flights of fantasy, as well as what he knowingly refers to as “incredibly contrived similes” throughout. The show runs for just over the usual hour, featuring the story of how he delivered his newborn son on the bathroom floor (with obligatory cricket metaphors used to describe his catching technique) and a discussion on the pros and cons of the coalition government. It's incredibly clever and the jokes come thick and fast, even with the drier material. My brother seems to enjoy it a lot too, which I'm pleased about. This is our last show of the Fringe (and indeed Zaltzman's) and it's definitely ending on a high.
We walk back up the hill into town, unsure as to how we fancy spending the rest of the evening. IN the end we decide that it's been an expensive weekend, so we grab the makings of home-made pizza from Sainsbury's and head back to his flat for some grub. We also, for some reason, end up watching The X-Factor (that's two Sundays in a row – what's happening to me?!) and the apparently extraneous (X-traneous?) X-tra Factor hosted by Konnie Huq. By 11.30 this rather heavy weekend has totally caught up with me, and I head for an early bed (which is probably a great relief for my has-to-go-to-his-sensible-job-tomorrow little brother, who's done a great job of entertaining me these last three nights). Back to London tomorrow, then.
Monday, 30 August 2010
Saturday 28th August
I am gently woken by the sun streaming in through the window of the spare room in my brother's rather nice top-floor flat next to the Meadows. After his girlfriend heads off to work and we've tucked into some absolutely-necessary sausage sandwiches, we get his old PS2 out of the cupboard to play NHL 2003 – a game we had a bit of an obsession with when it came out 8 years ago. At the time we set up two custom teams of players we knew nothing about, but liked the names of, and amused ourselves by playing endless series of games between them while making up funny back stories for each of the players. The crazy shit you do as a teenager, eh?
This morning we decide that a nostlagia series is in order, but when we plug in the dodgy old second controller (untouched for several years) it refuses to work and instead just vibrates constantly, uselessly. Unperturbed, we decide to to walk up the road to the local Cash Converters to see if they have an old second-hand PS2 controller in amongst their cabinets of pawned electrical goods. They don't, at this one, but my brother knows of a bigger Cash Converters further down the road. At this point it becomes clear that we are on something of an exciting quest – searching out an ancient artifact that may or may not even exist any more; very much a black plastic Holy Grail. The second Cash Converters is indeed much bigger, and we are delighted when we spot an official PS2 controller sitting inside a glass case, bearing an inviting £2.99 sticker.
Triumphantly I carry the controller back to my brother's flat and we play a few games of NHL, laughing as we reacquaint ourselves with the stupidly-named ice hockey players we had built an entire mythology around almost a decade ago. The game itself also stands up surprisingly well for something so relatively out-of-date in the video game world.
By lunchtime though, we need to head out to our first show of the day, which is Smith and Smith at the GRV. One of the Smiths, James, I went to uni with – and having followed his blog have been keen to check out his stand-up act for a while. Weirdly, given that we both live in London, this is the first time I've gotten round to seeing him perform, so I'm looking forward to the lunchtime gig a lot. My brother and I turn up around 1 and have a quick pint in the GRV bar before heading into the smallish room for the two half-hour sets. It's a small audience (we are two of six people) but neither Smith seems put off their stride by the fact, meaning that both come across very accomplished and confident in their 30 minute routines. James, as I had probably expected, has an academic, thoughtful approach to his stand-up, based around stories and internal monlogues – and the immediate (if possibly a little obvious) comparison I could make would be Stewart Lee. I'm not sure if this is because I've just read Lee's book, but James clearly shares the same focus on the importance of language in comedy and every line of his routine sounds crafted and considered. Daniel Smith (whom I previously hadn't heard of) is also very funny, using his set to talk about death and build his jokes around a fascination with recurring murders involving people sharing his name – meaning he gets to make a lot of “dan-” based puns (my personal favourite being “danslaughter”).
Our next show starts very shortly after, so after saying a quick hi and well done to James we dash across the city towards Le Monde, the venue for 'Fancy a Threesome', a £5 show I'd decided to take a gamble on based on the presence of Jim Campbell of the Football Ramble as one of the three comedians featured. We arrive a little early and have a disgracefully overpriced bottle of beer in the gaudy bar before being shown in to an odd-shaped theatre with two rows of seasts. This time we are in an audience of 12 – and all but my brother and I are well over 50. Two people, sat behind us are German and clearly don't speak a word of English. I'm immediately baffled as to why any of these people are here; the comedians are all obviously in their 20s; and on top of their age they turn out to be the most unresponsive audience I've ever been a part of. It becomes truly excruciating during the first act, who tries hard but gets absolutely nothing from anyone. The second, a Canadian named Pat Burtscher, is very funny though – mainly because he basically takes the piss out of the audience and seems to try extra hard to offend the weird, grumpy old people who've come to his show. By the time Jim Campbell comes on, however, he seems fairly sure that the show is a disaster and does his material almost certain that he's not going to get any response. The room is also incredibly hot – and for more than one reason I'm entirely relieved to get out of it.
We wander back up through town and head back to the Udderbelly bars around the Uni buildings. We hover by a table block and people-watch for a while. We spot Reginald D. Hunter, John Bishop (whom I've developed an intense dislike of already, mainly because his face is absolutely everywhere) and Jimmy Carr hanging around, having pictures taken and chatting to fans on their way from place to place. My brother's girlfriend finishes work and comes to meet us, so we walk over to the Pleasance Courtyard ahead of our next show at 8.30. This place, with it's twists and turns and bar tents and hundreds of venues, is what comes to mind when I think of comedy at the Fringe – and I'm already excited about seeing our third show of the evening, Gary Delaney's Purist. This is partly because his one-liner jokes always make me laugh, but also because I'm confident that the audience will be greater than 12 people, under the age of 50 and willing to actually laugh at comedy.
In the end, I don't go disappointed. Gary Delaney's is a great show, with a great audience, in a brilliantly intimate room. He breaks up his relentless joke onslaught with chattier bits that make the show really nicely paced – at one point dropping poker chips into buckets based on whether the biggest laughs come for dirty jokes rather than clean ones. Perhaps predictably, the rude jokes get bigger laughs and he closes the show with some really shocking, but really funny, material. I'm also pleased to pick up one of his 'No Whimsy' badges on the way out.
Hungry again, the three of us walk back to the Udderbelly in search of greasy burgers (and end up stuck behind a moany Australian woman who feels the need to complain that the hot chocolate she just bought from a van isn't the greatest thing she's ever tasted. From a van, love. People.
This morning we decide that a nostlagia series is in order, but when we plug in the dodgy old second controller (untouched for several years) it refuses to work and instead just vibrates constantly, uselessly. Unperturbed, we decide to to walk up the road to the local Cash Converters to see if they have an old second-hand PS2 controller in amongst their cabinets of pawned electrical goods. They don't, at this one, but my brother knows of a bigger Cash Converters further down the road. At this point it becomes clear that we are on something of an exciting quest – searching out an ancient artifact that may or may not even exist any more; very much a black plastic Holy Grail. The second Cash Converters is indeed much bigger, and we are delighted when we spot an official PS2 controller sitting inside a glass case, bearing an inviting £2.99 sticker.
Triumphantly I carry the controller back to my brother's flat and we play a few games of NHL, laughing as we reacquaint ourselves with the stupidly-named ice hockey players we had built an entire mythology around almost a decade ago. The game itself also stands up surprisingly well for something so relatively out-of-date in the video game world.
By lunchtime though, we need to head out to our first show of the day, which is Smith and Smith at the GRV. One of the Smiths, James, I went to uni with – and having followed his blog have been keen to check out his stand-up act for a while. Weirdly, given that we both live in London, this is the first time I've gotten round to seeing him perform, so I'm looking forward to the lunchtime gig a lot. My brother and I turn up around 1 and have a quick pint in the GRV bar before heading into the smallish room for the two half-hour sets. It's a small audience (we are two of six people) but neither Smith seems put off their stride by the fact, meaning that both come across very accomplished and confident in their 30 minute routines. James, as I had probably expected, has an academic, thoughtful approach to his stand-up, based around stories and internal monlogues – and the immediate (if possibly a little obvious) comparison I could make would be Stewart Lee. I'm not sure if this is because I've just read Lee's book, but James clearly shares the same focus on the importance of language in comedy and every line of his routine sounds crafted and considered. Daniel Smith (whom I previously hadn't heard of) is also very funny, using his set to talk about death and build his jokes around a fascination with recurring murders involving people sharing his name – meaning he gets to make a lot of “dan-” based puns (my personal favourite being “danslaughter”).
Our next show starts very shortly after, so after saying a quick hi and well done to James we dash across the city towards Le Monde, the venue for 'Fancy a Threesome', a £5 show I'd decided to take a gamble on based on the presence of Jim Campbell of the Football Ramble as one of the three comedians featured. We arrive a little early and have a disgracefully overpriced bottle of beer in the gaudy bar before being shown in to an odd-shaped theatre with two rows of seasts. This time we are in an audience of 12 – and all but my brother and I are well over 50. Two people, sat behind us are German and clearly don't speak a word of English. I'm immediately baffled as to why any of these people are here; the comedians are all obviously in their 20s; and on top of their age they turn out to be the most unresponsive audience I've ever been a part of. It becomes truly excruciating during the first act, who tries hard but gets absolutely nothing from anyone. The second, a Canadian named Pat Burtscher, is very funny though – mainly because he basically takes the piss out of the audience and seems to try extra hard to offend the weird, grumpy old people who've come to his show. By the time Jim Campbell comes on, however, he seems fairly sure that the show is a disaster and does his material almost certain that he's not going to get any response. The room is also incredibly hot – and for more than one reason I'm entirely relieved to get out of it.
We wander back up through town and head back to the Udderbelly bars around the Uni buildings. We hover by a table block and people-watch for a while. We spot Reginald D. Hunter, John Bishop (whom I've developed an intense dislike of already, mainly because his face is absolutely everywhere) and Jimmy Carr hanging around, having pictures taken and chatting to fans on their way from place to place. My brother's girlfriend finishes work and comes to meet us, so we walk over to the Pleasance Courtyard ahead of our next show at 8.30. This place, with it's twists and turns and bar tents and hundreds of venues, is what comes to mind when I think of comedy at the Fringe – and I'm already excited about seeing our third show of the evening, Gary Delaney's Purist. This is partly because his one-liner jokes always make me laugh, but also because I'm confident that the audience will be greater than 12 people, under the age of 50 and willing to actually laugh at comedy.
In the end, I don't go disappointed. Gary Delaney's is a great show, with a great audience, in a brilliantly intimate room. He breaks up his relentless joke onslaught with chattier bits that make the show really nicely paced – at one point dropping poker chips into buckets based on whether the biggest laughs come for dirty jokes rather than clean ones. Perhaps predictably, the rude jokes get bigger laughs and he closes the show with some really shocking, but really funny, material. I'm also pleased to pick up one of his 'No Whimsy' badges on the way out.
Hungry again, the three of us walk back to the Udderbelly in search of greasy burgers (and end up stuck behind a moany Australian woman who feels the need to complain that the hot chocolate she just bought from a van isn't the greatest thing she's ever tasted. From a van, love. People.
Friday 27th August
Today I'm off to Edinburgh as the result of an impulsive and probably financially unwise decision to travel north to catch the last weekend of the Fringe (and, peripherally, to visit my younger brother who lives and works in the city and kindly agreed to put me up for a few nights, as well as hopefully coming to see a few shows with me). The train is at 11am, so after saying goodbye to K as she heads off to work I get the tube to Kings Cross and hang around a bit before scuttling through the predictably busy station towards my thankfully booked seat. I say mine – I actually sneakily take the window seat next to mine in order to be next to the plug socket should my phone or laptop need any extra juice. The young woman whose seat it is inevitably turns up a minute later, at which point I politely ask if I can stay in the seat for the aforementioned mobile electricity reasons. She says that she really likes the window seat, but that I can have it if I want. Feeling bad, I then offer the seat back to her – but impenetrable British politeness stops her or I from budging and eventually she sits down and proceeds to play Solitaire on her iPod for the entire journey, rather than gazing out of the window as she probably would have been had I not been so inadvertently selfish.
I pass the four-and-a-half hour journey by catching up with a week of blog posts, listening to music and eating the packed lunch K had, rather wonderfully, made for me to take on the train. My headphones keep me cocooned from my fellow travellers in the packed carriage – though a loud group of theatre types sitting at the table in front of me insist on talking loudly about how incredible everything they like is, dominated by the alpha-intellectual male who has no shame about raising his voice to have his opinions be heard. It reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall when Alvy and Annie are waiting in the queue for the cinema while a loud man “pontificates” about the work Marshall McLuhan. I do this too, sometimes, I suppose – but at least I have the courtesy to keep my voice to myself and the person I am boring.
The journey passes without further incident and we pull into Waverly station at around 3.30. Edinburgh is my favourite city to arrive in by train, as you can walk up the ramp towards Princes Street Gardens and find yourself right in the centre of the city, with the castle above, Scott Monunent to the right and the Old Town to the left. I can't think of another city I've ever been to that is so immediately striking and immediately typical of itself. I call my brother (he is meant to be here to meet me) but his phone seems to be turned off, so I take some initiative and walk up Cockburn Street to the Royal Mile, recalling the geography of this city I once lived in and knew much better, and towards the Fringe box office. There is a short queue, so I join and buy tickets for three shows for tomorrow – two that I had already planned to see and one that I picked more or less on an impulse decision. Excited to definitely be in Edinburgh and defintely seeing some of the comedy I felt I was missing out on only a couple of weeks ago, I call my brother back and discover that he's standing just down the road from me. This road being the Royal Mile during the festival, I have to traverse the clueless, gawking crowds of tourists giddily photographing living statues (how impressive will they be in photos?) and refusing the thousands of flyers earnestly handed out by theatre students dressed as Dorothy Wordsworth or whoever – but eventually we meet up and head for a quick pint at Wash, round the corner on the Mound.
We're soon joined by my brother's girlfriend and we wander towards the Edinburgh Uni buildings, seemingly the epicentre of the fringe, centred around the big Udderbelly tent, and have a drink in the Spiegeltent arena, soaking up a little of the Festival atmosphere. It's clear that these places would have been much more busy maybe a couple of weeks ago – but there are still plenty of people around and queues for shows everywhere you look. We walk up to the Udderbelly itself and stand amongst the crowds sipping Stella from plastic cups before hunger drives us to a nice-looking bar/restaurant place called Biblos, where we eat giant burgers and I start to get a bit knackered. We stop off at one more pub on the way home to my brother's flat (one he complains about a bit; we differ significantly in our taste for drinking venues; whereas tiny, crusty-looking old pubs appeal to me greatly, he prefers a more “sophisticated” bar-type setting, which I absolutely hate) before exhaustion finally propels us home.
I pass the four-and-a-half hour journey by catching up with a week of blog posts, listening to music and eating the packed lunch K had, rather wonderfully, made for me to take on the train. My headphones keep me cocooned from my fellow travellers in the packed carriage – though a loud group of theatre types sitting at the table in front of me insist on talking loudly about how incredible everything they like is, dominated by the alpha-intellectual male who has no shame about raising his voice to have his opinions be heard. It reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall when Alvy and Annie are waiting in the queue for the cinema while a loud man “pontificates” about the work Marshall McLuhan. I do this too, sometimes, I suppose – but at least I have the courtesy to keep my voice to myself and the person I am boring.
The journey passes without further incident and we pull into Waverly station at around 3.30. Edinburgh is my favourite city to arrive in by train, as you can walk up the ramp towards Princes Street Gardens and find yourself right in the centre of the city, with the castle above, Scott Monunent to the right and the Old Town to the left. I can't think of another city I've ever been to that is so immediately striking and immediately typical of itself. I call my brother (he is meant to be here to meet me) but his phone seems to be turned off, so I take some initiative and walk up Cockburn Street to the Royal Mile, recalling the geography of this city I once lived in and knew much better, and towards the Fringe box office. There is a short queue, so I join and buy tickets for three shows for tomorrow – two that I had already planned to see and one that I picked more or less on an impulse decision. Excited to definitely be in Edinburgh and defintely seeing some of the comedy I felt I was missing out on only a couple of weeks ago, I call my brother back and discover that he's standing just down the road from me. This road being the Royal Mile during the festival, I have to traverse the clueless, gawking crowds of tourists giddily photographing living statues (how impressive will they be in photos?) and refusing the thousands of flyers earnestly handed out by theatre students dressed as Dorothy Wordsworth or whoever – but eventually we meet up and head for a quick pint at Wash, round the corner on the Mound.
We're soon joined by my brother's girlfriend and we wander towards the Edinburgh Uni buildings, seemingly the epicentre of the fringe, centred around the big Udderbelly tent, and have a drink in the Spiegeltent arena, soaking up a little of the Festival atmosphere. It's clear that these places would have been much more busy maybe a couple of weeks ago – but there are still plenty of people around and queues for shows everywhere you look. We walk up to the Udderbelly itself and stand amongst the crowds sipping Stella from plastic cups before hunger drives us to a nice-looking bar/restaurant place called Biblos, where we eat giant burgers and I start to get a bit knackered. We stop off at one more pub on the way home to my brother's flat (one he complains about a bit; we differ significantly in our taste for drinking venues; whereas tiny, crusty-looking old pubs appeal to me greatly, he prefers a more “sophisticated” bar-type setting, which I absolutely hate) before exhaustion finally propels us home.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Thursday 26th August
Today at work is an avalanche of bollocks and I'm glad to be heading home – especially as I'm now on holiday again until Tuesday – but annoyingly last night's overtime homework has produced more for tonight. I need to get it out of the way quick too, as K has booked an impromptu visit to cinema to see Scott Pilgrim vs the World, a film we've both been looking forward to with interest.
Following up on last night's work involves logging into my work computer via remote desktop – something I've never done before, what with it being a bit tricky to do on a Mac and me never, ever actually wanting to do any work at home – but now I have the PC-based laptop around the place it is, apparently, quite simple to do. Following our IT guy's instructions, I log into my work computer, which is a somewhat surreal experience. Opening my work email and our special, 80s-style bespoke database is a weird thing to be doing at home – and it freaks me out slightly to think of my mouse cursor moving around the screen and windows opening and closing on my computer in a closed-up, dark office. After fiddling with more bastard Excel documents for a while, I get started on finishing up last night's work, which goes much quicker (I am rushing) and is done and dusted by the time K gets back.
I make us a quick dinner and we head out into the miserable rain, up the road to the Cineworld in Wood Green. We collect our tickets and head into the rather nice 'Delux' screen, which involves massive reclining chairs and tons of legroom.
I'm not sure what to expect of Scott Pilgrim. I know enough about the premise of it based on the trailers – and it's been hyped up by the sort of people who usually follow Edgar Wright projects (as I do). I've never seen the comic though, and I suppose I'm half-expecting another Kick Ass, albeit a 12A rated version. It's easy to go into these indie comic adaptations wary – as it's easy for them to end up as slick, panel-by-panel recreations that have very little of their own substance or any directorial input. Scott Pilgrim, on the other hand, seems every inch an Edgar Wright creation. It is slick, and does feature a lot of directorial tricks and gags – the best ones involving video game references (why has no one ever done a nerd film where bad guys explode into coins before?! It's a brilliant idea – and brilliantly realised here) and the fact that each new character has their own set of them is a nice touch too. Michael Cera is very much the usual Michael Cera character and some of the jokes are a bit clunky, but it's a very fun film to watch and a treat visually – if not the riotous, noisy, sweary funfair-ride that Kick Ass is.
Following up on last night's work involves logging into my work computer via remote desktop – something I've never done before, what with it being a bit tricky to do on a Mac and me never, ever actually wanting to do any work at home – but now I have the PC-based laptop around the place it is, apparently, quite simple to do. Following our IT guy's instructions, I log into my work computer, which is a somewhat surreal experience. Opening my work email and our special, 80s-style bespoke database is a weird thing to be doing at home – and it freaks me out slightly to think of my mouse cursor moving around the screen and windows opening and closing on my computer in a closed-up, dark office. After fiddling with more bastard Excel documents for a while, I get started on finishing up last night's work, which goes much quicker (I am rushing) and is done and dusted by the time K gets back.
I make us a quick dinner and we head out into the miserable rain, up the road to the Cineworld in Wood Green. We collect our tickets and head into the rather nice 'Delux' screen, which involves massive reclining chairs and tons of legroom.
I'm not sure what to expect of Scott Pilgrim. I know enough about the premise of it based on the trailers – and it's been hyped up by the sort of people who usually follow Edgar Wright projects (as I do). I've never seen the comic though, and I suppose I'm half-expecting another Kick Ass, albeit a 12A rated version. It's easy to go into these indie comic adaptations wary – as it's easy for them to end up as slick, panel-by-panel recreations that have very little of their own substance or any directorial input. Scott Pilgrim, on the other hand, seems every inch an Edgar Wright creation. It is slick, and does feature a lot of directorial tricks and gags – the best ones involving video game references (why has no one ever done a nerd film where bad guys explode into coins before?! It's a brilliant idea – and brilliantly realised here) and the fact that each new character has their own set of them is a nice touch too. Michael Cera is very much the usual Michael Cera character and some of the jokes are a bit clunky, but it's a very fun film to watch and a treat visually – if not the riotous, noisy, sweary funfair-ride that Kick Ass is.
Wednesday 25th August
It's the time of year when my company puts out it's biannual new titles catalogue, which involves producing a list of all the books that we'll be handling for the next six months, along with the fully-edited and proofed blurbs for each title. Producing this catalogue falls to our department – and in particular the proofreading element. Slightly annoyingly, it needs to be done on top of our normal workload, so the proofing has to be done as overtime. Hence tonight I'm taking home a wedge of paper containing the blurbs for around 200 books which need to be gone through thoroughly and using every inch of my eagle-eyed proofreading skill. Happily, being at home, I can also put Monsters, Inc. on in the background and take a break every time I get suicidally bored – not something I can really get away with in the office. Though I think if I were allowed to watch bright, colourful Disney films while I was working I'd be at least as productive as I am now, if not more. This might not be the case.
I want to get the work done by the time K gets home, but it's a bit of a slog and when she does, in fact, get through the door I'm still knee-deep in paper. Luckily for me this means she can crack on with making dinner – a rather delicious curry – and I finally get finished at around 8. Utterly bored of work, I'm in the mood for some light-hearted, facile television – but unfortunately K manages to find a documentary on Channel 4 I can tell from the start is going to be hard going.
Titled My New Brain, it tells the story of a 20-year-old boy (or man, as 20-year-olds are inappopriately referred to on the news; I wasn't a man when I was 20!) who, while out getting drunk with friends at university, fell off a 20-foot wall and suffered a severe brain injury. Having been in a coma for five weeks, the film joins him six months into recovery, when he is making admirable progress. His speech is noticeably affected as is his movement, and he seems perpetually confused – though he is capable of having conversations and seems mostly lucid. His family are heartbreakingly strong – particularly his mother – and do their best to cope with his mood swings and the things he can't do for himself any more. The strangest thing seems to be the fact that his personality has completely changed since the accident, and his family must come to terms with the fact that he is a different person now. It's hard to watch, mainly because his family remind me a lot of my own family, but also because his injury is the sort of thing that could absolutely happen to anyone. It could be tempting to point to the fact that he was drunk and stupidly trying to climb over a wall to get back into a club he'd been kicked out of – but people do stupider, drunker things every day and get away with it. The film ends with his 21st birthday, a point at which he seems to be coming to terms with what has happened to him (he has no memory of it) and the fact that he can't go back. I'm pretty choked up by the end.
I want to get the work done by the time K gets home, but it's a bit of a slog and when she does, in fact, get through the door I'm still knee-deep in paper. Luckily for me this means she can crack on with making dinner – a rather delicious curry – and I finally get finished at around 8. Utterly bored of work, I'm in the mood for some light-hearted, facile television – but unfortunately K manages to find a documentary on Channel 4 I can tell from the start is going to be hard going.
Titled My New Brain, it tells the story of a 20-year-old boy (or man, as 20-year-olds are inappopriately referred to on the news; I wasn't a man when I was 20!) who, while out getting drunk with friends at university, fell off a 20-foot wall and suffered a severe brain injury. Having been in a coma for five weeks, the film joins him six months into recovery, when he is making admirable progress. His speech is noticeably affected as is his movement, and he seems perpetually confused – though he is capable of having conversations and seems mostly lucid. His family are heartbreakingly strong – particularly his mother – and do their best to cope with his mood swings and the things he can't do for himself any more. The strangest thing seems to be the fact that his personality has completely changed since the accident, and his family must come to terms with the fact that he is a different person now. It's hard to watch, mainly because his family remind me a lot of my own family, but also because his injury is the sort of thing that could absolutely happen to anyone. It could be tempting to point to the fact that he was drunk and stupidly trying to climb over a wall to get back into a club he'd been kicked out of – but people do stupider, drunker things every day and get away with it. The film ends with his 21st birthday, a point at which he seems to be coming to terms with what has happened to him (he has no memory of it) and the fact that he can't go back. I'm pretty choked up by the end.
Tuesday 24th August
Having been on holiday last week, the healthy weekly-swim regime had to take a week off. It had all been going so well too (apart from the odd session postponed due to my general wussiness rearing its head as soon as it starts raining outside) – but the fact that Tuesday to Sunday last week was spent eating and drinking more or less constantly (see the relevant blog posts for irrefutable evidence of this) means that I currently feel about three weeks behind in terms of exercise. As a result, even the gentle walk from home up to the swimming pool seems like a bit of a slog, though the weather is nice enough to make the meander through Priory Park a pleasant diversion. I arrive at Park Road a bit early, as usual, and sit on a bench enjoying the latest Football Ramble podcast while waiting for K to turn up.
I start my usual slow/medium lane regime, counting down from my target of 30 lengths. It's immediately obvious that I'm slightly out of practice, as the first 10 lengths or so are a real struggle. However, by the time I get closer to 30 I'm properly in my stride (if you can be said to stride in a swimming pool) and manage to stick a few more on at the end. I'm also mildly entertained by one of the men in my lane trying to chat up a girl, managing to sneak a few words of conversation each time they're stopped for breath at the same end. Unfortunately for the hopeful chap, she soon seems to be ensuring that they're never at the same end together – setting off well before he gets to her end. Eventually he gives up and gets out. It's probably for the best – it's virtually impossible to get someone's phone number when you're in a swimming pool. I'd imagine.
K is a little tired from a hard day's work, but she manages her full me-shaming quota of lengths and we head out to get dry. Outside it's noticeably darker than it was at this time a few weeks ago, and we walk through the park when it's probably just a little darker than is safe. There's a fairly intimidating boy doing circles around the grass on his moped, but other than that we pass through unmolested. Back at home we eat the leftovers from last night's bolognese and watch the latest Mad Men – which might be the best one of this series so far.
I start my usual slow/medium lane regime, counting down from my target of 30 lengths. It's immediately obvious that I'm slightly out of practice, as the first 10 lengths or so are a real struggle. However, by the time I get closer to 30 I'm properly in my stride (if you can be said to stride in a swimming pool) and manage to stick a few more on at the end. I'm also mildly entertained by one of the men in my lane trying to chat up a girl, managing to sneak a few words of conversation each time they're stopped for breath at the same end. Unfortunately for the hopeful chap, she soon seems to be ensuring that they're never at the same end together – setting off well before he gets to her end. Eventually he gives up and gets out. It's probably for the best – it's virtually impossible to get someone's phone number when you're in a swimming pool. I'd imagine.
K is a little tired from a hard day's work, but she manages her full me-shaming quota of lengths and we head out to get dry. Outside it's noticeably darker than it was at this time a few weeks ago, and we walk through the park when it's probably just a little darker than is safe. There's a fairly intimidating boy doing circles around the grass on his moped, but other than that we pass through unmolested. Back at home we eat the leftovers from last night's bolognese and watch the latest Mad Men – which might be the best one of this series so far.
Monday 23rd August
As is always the case when getting back from even the shortest of holidays, there seem to be tons and tons of emails waiting for me. What is obvious, though, is how few of the emails I get at work are actually of any importance whatsoever. I spend the morning trawling through them, but find that most can be discarded and even the trickiest ones have already been dealt with by my wonderful colleagues in my absence. As a result, I'm quickly back on this week's work, which unfortunately falls into the tedious-but-necessary world of online admin and staring at spreadsheets. Carefully. For hours. It's at times like this I have to struggle to see this job as anything more glamorous than a menial data-entry position on the fringes of the publishing industry – but it keeps me in beer and sweets, I suppose.
After this less-than-exhilirating start to the week, I head home via Sainsbury's and stock up on the various things we'll need to get through the rest of this shortened week. Shortly after I get back, Alex pops round with her little sister Drew, who's staying down in London for the week. Drew, aged 8, is in dire need of entertainment, it seems, and the girls are here specifically to raid my DVD collection. Alex clearly knows that I'm bound to have at least a few proper kids' films in my juvenile selection (though unfortunately for them my prized Pixar collection is all on Blu-Ray and thus no good) – and she's right, as they managed to pick out Cool Runnings, The Goonies and Wallace and Gromit (two of which, it must be said, are actually K's). We sit and chat for a little while and I recount my cat-harassment story from the weekend for Drew's amusement. The girls head off shortly afterwards and I get on with sorting out dinner.
The rest of the evening is spent, as with many evenings when K is out of the house, fannying around on the computer and watching unnecessarily dull TV shows. I do manage to find, however, Richard Dawkins' recent documentary Faith Schools Menace on Virgin catch-up – a subject I've seen and read the always-entertaining professor take on before – but nevertheless and interesting film looking at the shocking state of selective religious schools and the completely unregulated way they teach RE to impressionable children. One scary moment sees Dawkins asking young girls in a Muslim school to pose questions about evolution to their science teacher (fairly simple ones like, “If we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes around now?”), to which the teacher had absolutely no idea of how to reply. These schools are the ones who claim not to be indoctrinating children, but to offer them a choice and present all beliefs as “theories” - except that they are clearly ignoring fact, paying lip service to the idea of a balanced curriculum and receiving state funding to do so. Needless to say, this subject is one I'm concerned about; especially as I may one day find myself, as an atheist, unable to send my child to the best (or even just the nearest) local school based on the fact that I'm not a demonstrably practising Christian. Shouldn't state schools be for everyone? Hmm.
After this less-than-exhilirating start to the week, I head home via Sainsbury's and stock up on the various things we'll need to get through the rest of this shortened week. Shortly after I get back, Alex pops round with her little sister Drew, who's staying down in London for the week. Drew, aged 8, is in dire need of entertainment, it seems, and the girls are here specifically to raid my DVD collection. Alex clearly knows that I'm bound to have at least a few proper kids' films in my juvenile selection (though unfortunately for them my prized Pixar collection is all on Blu-Ray and thus no good) – and she's right, as they managed to pick out Cool Runnings, The Goonies and Wallace and Gromit (two of which, it must be said, are actually K's). We sit and chat for a little while and I recount my cat-harassment story from the weekend for Drew's amusement. The girls head off shortly afterwards and I get on with sorting out dinner.
The rest of the evening is spent, as with many evenings when K is out of the house, fannying around on the computer and watching unnecessarily dull TV shows. I do manage to find, however, Richard Dawkins' recent documentary Faith Schools Menace on Virgin catch-up – a subject I've seen and read the always-entertaining professor take on before – but nevertheless and interesting film looking at the shocking state of selective religious schools and the completely unregulated way they teach RE to impressionable children. One scary moment sees Dawkins asking young girls in a Muslim school to pose questions about evolution to their science teacher (fairly simple ones like, “If we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes around now?”), to which the teacher had absolutely no idea of how to reply. These schools are the ones who claim not to be indoctrinating children, but to offer them a choice and present all beliefs as “theories” - except that they are clearly ignoring fact, paying lip service to the idea of a balanced curriculum and receiving state funding to do so. Needless to say, this subject is one I'm concerned about; especially as I may one day find myself, as an atheist, unable to send my child to the best (or even just the nearest) local school based on the fact that I'm not a demonstrably practising Christian. Shouldn't state schools be for everyone? Hmm.
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