28 (OK, 29) days later…
And apologies for the mini hiatus – sorry!
There has been plenty of fun to be getting on with rather than masses of Stuff to report – I binned the original opener about the advent of Spring after waking up on Wednesday to a blizzard and I have spent a fair proportion of the last month sitting either on trains or in cinema seats, having at last got in a visit to the new(ish) and very comfortable Curzon on Victoria Street (Ex Machina) as well as an impromptu lunchtime trip to the old(er) Odeon on Panton Street (A Most Violent Year) in which I’ve spent many a happy afternoon, including one sound asleep in front of Antichrist after missing a train during one of London’s regular summertime monsoons. In case anybody was wondering, Screen Two still smells of toilet unless you sit at the back.
There has also been the first festival jolly of the year with Glasgow Frightfest, this taking up the end of last week and the weekend with horror aplenty and which included the added bonus of staying virtually opposite the gigantic Cineworld on Renfrew Street (allowing me to nip in and catch It Follows while the Saturday afternoon Blair Witch making-of documentary was on at the main event – yay). Back on home territory I’ve managed to catch Birdman at the formerly-an-Odeon up the road (which had me on the verge of walking out with sheer boredom and irritation for an hour and a half and then redeemed itself towards the end), Whiplash is in the diary for later in the week and the upcoming Back To The Future marathon is booked and paid for. Anybody with a number for a good chiropractor, please do feel free to share it.
I also caught up with a few old friends and made some new ones at the National Ugly Mugs conference in Manchester on Monday having trekked across the country through another blizzard complete with hailstones (fortunately the inside of a train was the nearest I got to any actual precipitation), of which more another time since it really deserves it’s own proper entry, although no doubt some will have already seen the press coverage of Dr Teela Sanders’ research in which many of us took part and the results can be seen on the NUM site here! Whilst I’ll admit to being so worn out afterwards from the combination of travelling and learning that despite having made it successfully down to the flat I slept through most of Tuesday on the settee, it was well worth the effort and I do hope they turn out to be a regular event. The chicken balti at lunchtime wasn’t half bad either, although the company (including the ever-engaging Andrew Boff of the London Assembly, whom I remembered from the Ugly Mugs launch back in the day) did plenty to help it along.
Other things I have been doing on a Tuesday include finally completing my giant Christmas-present London jigsaw (see above!) whilst revelling in the glorious, black-dark joy that is Better Call Saul on Netflix, the latter not without some trepidation although this had gone within the first ten minutes (if not the first two) and any qualms I had about spin-offs are firmly put to bed for now, at least – thank God for that. Oh, and slightly-less-than-heartfelt apologies to anybody who has no earthly idea what I’m talking about.
I will be continuing in similar vein for the next three and a bit weeks before my Easter trip to London and return to my lovely corner of the South Bank – woohoo! The evenings are finally getting noticeably lighter and the flat is shaping up little by little, the long awaited new combi boiler is looking within reach and whilst exciting it may not be all is progressing nicely. Dead By Dawn in Edinburgh looms large in only forty eight days and it’ll be summer before we know it!
More soon, and definitely sooner than this. Promise.
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