A Diary

I'm still around, even if I haven't been particularly active recently.

I've been watching a lot of Stranger Things recently. I'm about half way through season four.

I was back to working at home. I don't know when I'll be back in the office next. They are trying "hybrid working" where we can work at home, or book a desk in the office for a day. It's something that they've been talking about for years, long before the pandemic.

I listened to The Retrospectors, Office Ladies, Like Minded Friends, Stuff You Should Know about a riot that erupted at baseball game in the 1970s due in part to beer being sold for 10 cents, Myths and Legends and British Scandal about the 2015 Hatton Garden Heist, where a gang of elderly crooks stole £14 million in gold and jewels.

I watched a couple of episodes of a 1983 TV adaptation of Jane Eyre, which starred Zelah Clarke as Jane and Timothy Dalton as Rochester. It's a very good adaptation and very faithful to the book.

I've been pretty quiet on here recently, although it's mostly because things have been pretty quiet.

I've been watching the TV series Castle Rock which is really good.

Yesterday I finished reading The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, which was a collection of strange fantasy stories, vignettes and essays. It was very good, and very clever.

I went out and saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, which I really loved. It is such a wild and entertaining film.

I also watched the final episode of Derry Girls. I will really miss that show.

Yesterday I went to my parent's house, and helped my Dad do some work on the garage roof. I held the ladder and passed him stuff.

In the evening I watched the movie Blow Out. It stars John Travolta as a movie sound technician who inadvertently records the sound of a car accident which causes the death of a popular presidential candidate. However as he listens back to what he recorded, he becomes convinced that it wasn't an accident but murder. It's a very good conspiracy thriller.

Last night I watched the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which I had never seen before, but I thought was really good. It stars Dev Patel as a teenager who is one question away from winning the grand prize on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when he is arrested by the police on suspicion of cheating. During. brutal interrogation it is revealed that each of the questions he was asked related to incidents from his own life growing up as an orphan on the streets of Mumbai.

I listened to a few podcasts today: The Retrospectors, The Evolution of Horror discussing the novel Dracula, Kermode and Mayo's Take interviewing director Gaspar Noe and Filmspotting previewing the summer movies. Then I went out and got my groceries for the week.

On Saturday I went out and bought a couple of books: Silverview by John le Carre and The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye. I finished reading the novel The Magician by Colm Toibin. It's based on the life of German writer Thomas Mann (author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain) and his large, fragmented family. It's a very good book.

I went to my parents house for lunch on Sunday, and in the evening I saw the film The Walker, written and directed by Paul Schrader. It stars Woody Harrelson as a man who is paid to act as a companion for wealthy women in Washington D.C. and finds himself embroiled in a political conspiracy when he is suspected of murder.

After work yesterday I went out for some milk, and later I watched a documentary called Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres. Ben Fong-Torres was a writer and editor at Rolling Stone magazine throughout the '70s. It was very interesting.

Yesterday I went out and got the graphic novel of Death: The Definitive Edition written by Neil Gaiman.

Last night I watched Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, written and directed by Richard Linklater. It's set in 1969 in the run up to the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and is about a boy who lives near NASA and imagines himself as an astronaut. It's animated in a method called "rotoscoping" where sevens are filmed with live actors and the the animation is traced over the footage. I also watched High Noon, which is a really good film.

Yesterday I went out to see The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which was a really fun action comedy starring Nicolas Cage as himself.

Today was a pretty slow day at work. I got a hat delivered that I had ordered on Sunday.