I aten't dead! Been down in the West Country the last few days, staying with cybermule (H). She picked me up from the fringes of Birmingham Pride Saturday afternoon and we drove south after seeing a friend of hers who had the most beautiful tortoiseshell cat, rescued from Greece. Sunday we went into the Cotswolds, hoping to walk up to the long barrow of ( Read more... )

I finished line-editing and submitted Other Voices an hour ago. It was getting to the stage of procrastination, where if I went any further I'd begin gutting the thing. After a few months of sitting on it, I'm glad it's done; it's one of the very rare occasions where I haven't hated a story in the editing process. With Kate and the Furzes troubling ( Read more... )

I watched Berberian Sound Studio (2012) in the early hours of Friday and it still hasn’t left my system yet. I can read horror; watching it’s another matter. Most horror films I’d shy away from; this is one of the few I’d choose to re-watch.

Gilderoy (Toby Jones) is a timid English sound engineer hired to work on an Italian giallo film called The ( Read more... )

The bus I was taking into the city centre this afternoon nearly ran a guy down on Carrs Lane. I was stowing a book in my duffel bag when it turned the corner and jolted to a stop. I looked up and there was a man sprawling in the road. He hadn't been hurt; the driver had braked just in time, thank God. Driver got out and offered to phone an ( Read more... )

Limping a bit - I fell over last night (I need to reheel these boots). Managed to dent my knee quite badly.

I'm still trying to work out my response to watching "Iron Sky" earlier in the day. It is as dumb as fuck, and could easliy fit into the last series of Lexx; I think I enjoyed it, though. It's worth watching for the Fuhrer tricked into ( Read more... )

  I liked The Artist  a great deal. It is very charming: I fell in love with Berenice Bejo's Peppy Miller sraightaway: gamine, with huge laughing eyes; and with Jack the dog (I wonder if he was based on Snowy?) I've seen very few silent films apart from Metropolis and the Harold Lloyd comedies BBC2 used to run in the early eighties.

After two or ( Read more... )

Last night we watched The Hanging Garden (1997). It's an excellent film. Williiam, once a troubled obese teenager, now a thin, apparently settled man with a steady job and boyfriend, comes home for his sister's wedding. His father is still the same abusive drunkard; there's a foul-mouthed little sister he didn't know he had; his Catholic ( Read more... )

A foul and rainy night: we can hear the wind rumbling outside.

Saturday night, we watched James Bidgood's film, Pink Narcissus (1971). Martin's more enamoured of it than I am. Perhaps it was too colour-saturated for me. The film had some sequences I liked, mostly our nameless pretty-boy making love to the earth, to butterflies, teasing his navel ( Read more... )