sunshine on leith (and cork!)
And goodbye to the brrr-ing since Spring has very much sprung, not least in Scotland where the balmy weather took me quite by surprise – other surprises included an exceptionally comfortable new style bed at the budget-tastic Glasgow Ibis, a complete lack of rain after the Thursday night (always important when sitting in a cinema auditorium) and the price of a fish supper on Sauchiehall Street being a quid less than one in Scarborough pretty much anywhere.
Standouts from the Twenty20 of horror festivals were (and I’m no lover of sequels unless they’re Godfather II) Wolf Creek 2 plus the fabulous new offering from Indonesia’s Mo Brothers; in the unlikely-but-pleasing event that anyone reading has seen previous effort Macabre and was expecting more of the same, Killers requires more engagement of brain than the red-stuff-blood-pink-blobs-people format but is even lovely to look at to the extent that virtually every frame could be a promo poster – the presence of an engaging story and interesting characters may sadly render it a prime target for those too idle to write their own films and who would rather earn a living manufacturing US remakes of others. Resist! See the proper one.
It’s worth pointing out that there is more to the Glasgow Film Festival than Frightfest, and the Glasgow Film Theatre in particular is well worth a look for anybody weary of the multiplex (that said, the vast Cineworld on Renfrew Street would take a long time to bore me – I will be testing this theory in May). I left on the Sunday morning for the short hop to Edinburgh relatively unscathed only to be besieged by friendly punters, and in the process was delighted to be presented with not only a haggis (for anybody feeling deprived I’ve found out since that Morrisons sell the same ones, at least at the moment) but a neep and two tatties and ended my visit in triumphant fashion with mince, tatties and a pint in the Cask & Barrel before realising my train was going in fifteen minutes and having to make a run for it. Thankfully (and not for the first time lately) the train was made with seconds to spare but by every bit of me except the belt from my winter coat, necessitating a panicky call to the nice people at Belstaff who first apologised profusely for my losing it, and assured me they will do everything they can before apologising again in case they couldn’t do anything. I suspect I’ll be getting the sewing machine out.
Back to the now and clear skies abound, the forecast predicts more of the same and I’m settling down for the night in Cork – yay! The trepidation with which I was approaching this visit as a result of losing my phone (and consequently all 400+ of my blocked numbers, which as anybody who has ever worked in Ireland will know is the stuff of nightmares) has been considerably abated by my accidentally coming across a software oddbod called ‘PhoneMiner‘, which managed to find, extract and display all the previously backed up BlackBerry info from November-ish on my laptop, even though my technical knowledge doesn’t extend to transferring them back and a very long afternoon was spent typing various permutations of ‘Cork TW/Cork NS/Cork No’ with accompanying numbers on the little keyboard until I had a headache. I’m not looking forward to the day when it’s time to do Dublin.
Useful stuff; my UK phone is with me and being checked daily but won’t actually be switched on until Thursday evening when I’m back in the UK, so whilst text messages will be got, as ever, emails will be got far More Quicker. I’m taking bookings for York, and availability is still OK-ish; if your window is small, best think about getting organised. Everybody else, more dates have been added overleaf including a new venue – Chester awaits, by way of an amuse bouche before the mighty Isle of Man just in time for Easter – yay! Glasgow, Edinburgh and That London are all on the way too…
More soon. And fingers crossed for the sunshine!
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