Thursday 9th September

The section of the day before I get home from work is mostly uninteresting today - bar the unusual fact that I manage to genuinely slip on a banana skin on my way towards the flat. This has, I believe, never happened to me before (I'd probably remember such a cartoony event, wouldn't I? Like being hit with an anvil) - and while I don't exactly go arse over tit I am, if nothing else, startled. Startled enough to immediately tweet about it at any rate.

Later on K and I watch the first episode of This is England 86 - Shane Meadows' four-part sequel to his brilliant film of (almost) the same name. Shane Meadows is without doubt one of my favourite filmmakers, with Twentyfourseven, A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man's Shoes and This is England among the most honest, funny and exquisitely photographed movies I've ever seen. Meadows has an eye for what makes England England - which is perhaps why This is England is his best loved and most popular project. His talent for spotting acting talent and grim-but-beautiful locations, as well as his use of subtle musical cues to tug at the heartstrings is unlike any other director, certainly in this country. I also have a strange soft spot for the accent found in Meadows' home region (with Paddy Considine the best example of it) - a strange mix of Yorkshire and Brummy that makes me smile every time I hear it.

I have mixed feelings about the TV series existing at all - maybe feeling that a sequel isn't necessary on this occasion, wanting my experience of the movie (which brings me to tears every time I watch it) to remain untarnished - but as soon as it begins it's nice to see the characters and locations all over again, albeit with haircuts and fashion updated for the three years that have passed in the story. The humour and bleakness that makes Meadows' work what it is is still there; and while this first episode doesn't offer anything in the way of conclusion, it suggests that the series is really going to go somewhere.