adore amy

extra time!

…is what I now have in Victoria next week; after not very much procrastinating and agonising I’ll be staying on all day Friday and Saturday morning prior to moving over to a far less salubrious (but a lot cheaper) crash pad for Saturday night – yay! This is partly because of a couple of folk for whom I’m always (within reason) happy to change my plans and who couldn’t make it before the Friday check out time, and even more partly because still being in London on Saturday 10th gives me an unshakeable excuse to go along to the Nicolas Cage double bill at Somerset House and see Mandy again, along with Wild At Heart as a prelude. Woohoo!

As a few will know already Mandy was my big hit of last year, and the opportunity to see it again while sitting on a yoga mat in the beautiful Somerset House courtyard having eaten my body weight in Pringles is one I wasn’t going to pass up if it was even remotely practical, and now it is! Plus I haven’t been to Summer Screen for a couple of years, and despite my conscientious objections to their introduction of premium seats in the better places for those who pay more (instead of those who turn up at the gate in good time and queue patiently so they can get the first pick while their pizza gets cold) it’s been one of my favourite London nights out since my maiden visit to see Slumdog Millionaire way back in 2009, even including the time we all watched the intro and first ten minutes or so of Do The Right Thing in a monsoon in 2015. It did stop once the film got going, although IIRC my yoga mat took over a week to dry out…

Back in the present, and while I certainly sympathise with anybody who has had to suffer the weather stuck indoors anywhere even remotely enclosed (or God forbid, on the Central Line), it’s been a lovely couple of weeks here at the coast and whilst my flat thankfully doesn’t get the direct sun, the beach and surrounds have been calling and I’ve spent a fair few of the afternoons knocking off early and taking the longest walks home possible by way of the sea – my hair hasn’t quite forgiven me for being dunked in cold brine three days in a row, Plantation Hill and the Rotunda for some wire dinosaur spotting, and a wander along the path of the now long gone open air pool and now a star map, at least at night. I won’t be the only person who still remembers being made to get in it and splash about ineffectually until I turned blue (regardless of weather, season or anything else) on the promise of peanut butter sandwiches and salt and vinegar chipsticks after. It was character-building stuff to say the least, but I do wish we still had it.

I will be back in Scarborough for a scant ten days before setting off again on the 22nd – it’s one of those months again, but September should settle down a bit and the decorating might even finally get done! This will obviously mean a few days off while everything gets moved around, leant against a wall out of the way and then put back again, but as ever I’ll post more when I know – if I can get it done before the end of the school holidays I will, but I’re tried setting concrete dates before and only doomed myself to abject failure so I’ll be playing it by ear as usual and the worst is definitely over. At least until I start on the bathroom.

Thanks mostly to FrightFest, August is definitely my major film-watching month even leaving aside Somerset House but before all that, it’s scheduled to get going on Tuesday night with one of my all time favourites at the Prince Charles – also seen at Somerset House, and possibly the same year as DTRT? – Jackie Brown, which is handily also possessed of one of my favourite soundtracks. Even if Bobby Womack didn’t richly deserve a turn on Song Of The Week, the alternative was putting everybody through the full twelve and a half progtastic-but-punishing minutes of King Crimson’s Starless from Mandy, and tempting though it was – nah.

More soon! I’m trying to get some more new pictures up before the weekend if my laptop will behave, so fingers crossed.

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