Quantum of Solace

Last night I finished reading the novel Smiley’s People by John le Carre. The book was first published in 1979 and forms the final part of a trilogy (the other two books in the series being Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy). When a Soviet ex-spy turned defector is found dead in a London park, world-weary George Smiley, one time head of the British Secret Service comes out of retirement to investigate. He soon realises that it was a professional assassination, and that the ex-spy was on his way to meet Smiley with some secret documents, which have are now missing, relating to Smiley’s arch-enemy, the enigmatic Soviet spymaster code-named Karla, who engineered the devestation of Smiley’s personal and professional lives. Obsessed with destroying his nemesis, Smiley sets out across Europe on a personal mission of revenge. It’s a very well-written book, and probably the best in the series. Away from the glamour and action of James Bond-style spies, the novel depicts a bleak, murky, paranoid world of moral ambiguity, where literally no-one can be trusted.

I was off work today and headed up to the cinema to see Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film. The journey took ages because of road-works and even at the time I went, twenty past twelve, the cinema was packed. The film is a direct sequel to the previous Bond film Casino Royale, and takes up pretty much straight after that one ends. As James Bond (played by Daniel Craig), agent 007 of the British Secret Service, embarks on a dangerous, personal mission of revenge, he finds himself up against a powerful international criminal organsation. Like Casino Royale, it’s a much darker kind of Bond film, with few of the trademark quips and gadgets. However, there is non-stop action, exotic locations and beautiful women (in this case Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton). The movie is named after a 1960 Ian Fleming short story, but has absolutely nothing to do with the story at all, aside from the name (the story is a domestic drama of marital infidelity which is told to Bond at a party).

After the film I went to the shops to get my mum a birthday present (I bought her a book called Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris, it’s the sequel to Chocolat, which I know mum liked, and it’s pretty new, so hopefully she’s not had a chance to get it out of the library yet). There was a sale on so I got a couple of John le Carre books for myself (A Perfect Spy and The Russia House). I also got a birthday card for mum and some wrapping paper. On the way home I picked up some milk and the latest issues of Radio Times and Empire.

I’ve just got the card written and birthday present wrapped, so that’s all ready for Sunday. Also, of course, NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow!

Happy Halloween!

The Dogs

Last night was really quiet, and it was another quiet day at work. I listened to about four episodes of The Mighty Boosh on my iPod during the afternoon.

I got home at around quarter to six and left again about an hour later. I was going up to meet my parents and my brother, who has come up from London where he works as a musician. We went to a restaurant called The Dogs, which specialises in “old-fashioned comfort food”. The restaurant appeared at one time to have been a block of tenement flats. I had a slice of brawn (which is a bit like meatloaf) with chicory and parsley salad as a starter, the main course was deep fried pollock with smoked mackeral and rice along with a salad, and for dessert some vanilla ice-cream and hot toffee sauce. To drink i had a couple of bottles of Peroni beer. It was a really nice meal.

I’ve got the day off work tomorrow, during which I plan to see the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, and buy a present and card for my mum.

Voluntary Committal

Last night I finished reading 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill. Like all short story collections it was a mixed bag, but it was mostly very good. The last novella in the book. “Voluntary Committal”, was very good, about a teacher who writes about the mysterious disappearances of his brother and his childhood friend. It was a very Twilight Zone style story.

Today was a really quiet day at work. The sheet came round to mark the days we want to take off for Christmas. I put down for the two weeks over Christmas and New Year as I always do. I hope I get it.

I still have no idea of a story for NaNoWriMo! It’s very important to come up with a good one, that I’m happy to spend a month working on.

Some Reading

Last night was really quiet. I was reading some more of the book 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill. The book has quite a range of stories in it, from pretty gruesome horror, to weird fnatasy, to some stories which are not horror or fantasy at all, including one that is like a love story between two extras playing zombies in the 1979 George Romero film Dawn of the Dead, in real life Joe Hill had a brief appearance aged ten in the film Creepshow, which was also directed by Romero and written by Stephen King (Joe Hill’s father).

It was another very quiet day at work, during which nothing much interesting happened. I do think it will be interesting to do NaNoWriMo this year. It’s my first time doing it. I have written a novel before though, and finished it, but I never did anything with it, because it was rubbish. I don’t actually know where it is now.

The Start of Another Week

It was a very quiet evening last night, which I spent mostly watching TV. I saw the first episode of a fourteen part adaptation of Little Dorrit based on the Charles Dickens novel, which was pretty good. I’m going to try and watch the rest of the series. One thing that was pretty distracting was the amount of famous actors in the show.

Today I was back at work for another week, although it is a short week due to the fact that I am taking Friday off for two reasons: One, I need to get something ready for my mum’s birthday, and two, I want to see the new James Bond movie. However I did find out that there is going to be yet another strike at work over pay, which will make at least three strikes this year. The union at work is involved in a long-running dispute over pay, and there have been several strikes already. So that is happening on the 10 November. However I did get a reply to the e-mail I sent on Friday about presenting the company video news thing, and they said that I would definitely get a chance to present, since they needed all the presenters they could get. Also they’ve put my name down to help with the behind-the-scenes film-making work, if required. So that is good.

With all that and NaNoWriMo, alongside all the usual stuff, it looks like the next few months are going to be very busy for me, but I’m not complaining about that.

Scary Moments

Last night I was watching 100 Greatest Scary Moments on TV. The number one was Stanley Kubrick’s film of The Shining, in particular the famous scene where Jack Nicholson smashes trhough the door with an axe and yells out: “Heeere’s Johnny!” It was quite an interesting show although a bit out of date now (it was first shown in 2003 and hasn’t been updated). I also saw some of the original John Carpenter film of Halloween, which is actually a really good film and is often rated as the best of the slasher films. The film opens in the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois in 1963 where a young boy murders his sister on Halloween. Fifteen years later, the boy, Michael Myers, escapes from hospital and returns to the town for Halloween, with the intention of resuming his killing spree, which means bad news for the local teenage babysitters. It’s a good film. I’ve seen it a number of times before. It also manages to be scary without being particularly violent.

I went along to my parent’s house today for my lunch. We had some chicken and grapes in a white wine sauce with peas and a baked potato. The rest of the day was pretty quiet.

Saw V

Last night was pretty quiet, as usual. I watched the latest episode of Little Britain USA which is, as the name suggests, an American version of the Little Britain TV comedy series, although it is written and performed by the same team behind the original version and often features the same sketches re-made in a different location, although there is some new material. It doesn’t work as well as the original really.

Today I went out and bought my groceries for the week, and then I went out to the cinema to see Saw V. The Saw series revolves around a killer nicknamed Jigsaw who kidnaps people who he believes have taken their lives for granted, and places them in elaborate and lethal traps for which, in order to escape, they have to endure physical or psychological torment, in which they have to examine and repent their former lives. Taken together the films all form one long story, so it’s probably not a good idea to see this one without seeing the previous films in the series. They tend to be quite similar to each other, but they are usually quite suspenseful and it’s fun to fit them in to the on-going story-line. The movies tend to be released at the rate of one a year at around Halloween. I’ve seen all of them so far at the cinema. It’s become almost a tradition now. Speaking of Halloween, I still haven’t got a pumpkin yet. I wanted to wait a bit until I got one, so it didn’t go off. I didn’t carve a pumpkin last year, but I would like to do one this year.

When I got home, I heard an interesting epsidoe of Fear on Four called “Tissue Memory”, about a woman who has undergone a heart transplant and soon finds herself experiencing sinister flashbacks to the life of the heart’s donor, and soon she begins to question her own identity.

It’s been a very dull, grey, wet and miserable day, also the clocks go back one hour tonight, so that will make it even darker, which is quite depressing.

NaNoWriMo starts in a week, and I have no good ideas yet!

The Meeting

Last night was fairly quiet again. I was watching a couple of the comedy shows on TV, along with some of the deleted scenes and commentaries on The Office DVD set. The commentaries were fun, and the deleted scenes were really good. I assume they must have been cut for timing reasons rather than anything else, because a lot of the stuff was as good as the stuff that made it into the episodes.

It was a quiet day at work again today. I had the meeting about the office video news thing this morning. It was held in the main boardroom, which I had never been in before. It was on the top floor of the building with a great view, with a large widescreen plasma TV screen and very comfortable leather seats. The plan for the news thing was that they were installing plasma screen TV sets throughout the company and they were going to be making weekly news bulletins about office events and business news to be shown on the TV sets. We were, apparently, brought in to gather news from our particular sections that would be put into the show. It sounded like it might be quite fun, but I really want to actually present the thing, when I got back to the office I e-mailed them to say that I would like to present the thing, and also I could be involved in filming, editing and scripting the thing. It’s just a kind of office thing but I am interested in film-making and it would be good experience. Also it would be something for my resume and would look good at the next performance review (God knows, it needs it).

The rest of the day was pretty quiet, as it always is on a Friday. From my window I could see people in the outdoor smoking area of the pub next to my office, although not for long because it started to rain really heavily, and continued, off and on, throughout the afternoon.

I picked up the latest copy of Radio Times, for next week’s TV listings, and the latets issue of Total Film, which had a brief story about Chuck Palahniuk due to the release of the film Choke, based on one of his novels. I’ve heard some bad things about the movie, but the book was very good, and I really like Palahniuk, so I’ll probably check it out anyway.

An Ordinary Day

Last night I watched the last two episodes of the third season of The Office, which I got on DVD on Saturday. I’ve really enjoyed the show, and I actually think it is funnier than the original British version. Aside from that it was a really quiet evening.

It was another average day at work. I spent a lot of time listening to my iPod again. I headed back at around half past five and stopped off to buy a takeaway sausage supper, which made a nice change (if not exactly healthy).

It’s my mum’s birthday a week on Sunday, and I have absolutely no idea what to get for her. I’ll have to try and find out if there’s anything she particularly wants next time I speak to her. She admits herself that she is not an easy person to buy presents for!

20th Century Ghosts

Last night I was reading another couple of stories from the 20th Century Ghosts book by Joe Hill. The first one, “Abraham’s Boys”, was quite a disturbing story about the family of Abraham Van Helsing (the vampire hunter in Dracula) after the events of the book, the second one “Better Than Home” was about the son of a professional baseball player, who suffers from painfully acute hearing. It wasn’t a horror story, instead it was quite a moving story about family. Mostly it was a very quiet evening. I watched a repeat of That Mitchell and Webb Look and a couple of episodes of The Office DVD set. I have been really enjoying that show. My friend Joe sent me a text message to ask if I had Saw 3 on DVD, but I don’t have any of the Saw films on DVD. When the series has finished and the films are all released on DVD I might get a box-set of all of them, but that won’t be for a couple of years at least.

The weather today was very sunny, but very cold. It was another quiet day in the office. I had quite a lot of difficult work to do. I was listening to my iPod a lot, including the Juno soundtrack again – I should probably know every word to every song on that album by now. It feels like I’ve listened to it every day for months now. I still really like it though. I’ve really gotten into the music of Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches (who feature on the soundtrack). I really loved the movie as well. I’ve seen it several times now. I was also listening to a couple of episodes of The Mighty Boosh, which were still very funny, despite how many times I’ve listened to them already.

On my way home I bought some milk, and when I got back I had a microwaved meal of spaghetti carbonara and apple juice. Of course, NaNoWriMo starts pretty soon. I’m taking part in it this year.