Stornoway

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I really want to visit Lewis.


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Titles make me nervous.

I was going to write about how wonderful it is to be in my pyjamas in bed with the curtains pulled and the front door locked at 10pm on a Saturday. But whilst in my warm and indulgently long shower I decided I would quite like to write about food.
And definitely not Take Me Out.

This is what I've eaten today.

In Pictures (yasss)

x1, peeled

A refreshing orange from the fruit bowel(sic) I keep on my window sill.
It was a really great orange. In the grand scheme of things, pretty average in flavour but the 5 from that particular batch I have eaten so far this week have been really sour and flavourless so it really was a pleasant surprise. What a great way to start a day!
I always feel really cheeky when I eat fruit, anything, in bed.





x1, toasted.


I made the mistake of asking my flatmate to prepare it for me, unaware of her total toasting incompetence. Talk about lacking life skills....
I managed to salvage the sacrilege with a layer of hummus.




x1, peeled

The consumption of this banana proved unremarkable.





x9

I couldn't resist treating myself to a half price packet of Milk Chocolate McVities, usually more of a plain digestive, or recently even rich tea kind of girl, but after 2 hours hard bouldering...




x1 courtesy of Holly Knox Yeoman.




It was better than her Mongolian Beef circa. 20/01/11





x8


Just love salt, don't I?









Not really sure why I decided to do that. Today has neither been typical nor exciting in terms of food.

Ten from 2010.

Ten nice days from the year that was.


1. A damp day when Rachel and I took a trip to Broughty Ferry.


2. The time Holly had a pheasent in the freezer and we pretended it was a baby.


3. A cycle trip to Tentsmuir, with fishcakes for dinner.




4. Exploring in Girona


5. The day it rained in Trieste forcing Imogen and I to drink wine all afternoon.



6. Swimming in the rain and Brotseit with Hans




7. Cycling in Bruges



8. My 21st birthday made very special by many lovely friends...



9. Wandering round the Lake District with some companions


10. Snow days with Holly Yeoman




All in all, a real nice year.

NEDS

NEDS directed by Peter Mullan. 7/10

Quiiiiiite good. I must point out before I start that I went to see this film at the of a long day and a long week and was not exactly in a relaxed and receptive mood. I also was desperate for the toilet about 30 minutes from the end. These factors undoubtedly played a small role in my over-all appreciation of the film.

Also on a more general note I have come across some minor problems in reviewing cinema as opposed to novels. Thus, whilst reading a novel you have no choice but to have it's narative pretty much your only focus, film however is much more passive and has the ability to move a lot faster... Meaning if you are some what distractable, as am I, you are liable to miss important points or subtle references. Having said that I am usually a very attentive viewer. But, yes, thought I would take that into account.

So NEDS. Sure, it was good, I'm glad I went to see it. But for me it wasn't very special.
I'm not sure I have an awful lot to say about it.
The characters were well played, the script was good, the story was interesting....
I was tired.

Retrospective

So to back track on about books I have read between my last couple... May not be very elaborative as it has been quite some time since I finished them.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
I really enjoyed this novel. I love John Steinbeck's style of writing. My favourite chapter of the whole book was very near the beginning and dedicated to the description of a turtle crossing the road. It was magical. It highlighted to me the differences in peoples' or, I suppose, animals' perspectives of the world. Each person has their own personal significant events and reacts to events in their own way. I like to think of myself as quite an empathetic kind of person... I also just really like turtles. I think that was one of the most endearing aspects of this book for me: Steinbeck's way of zooming in and out the perspective through-out. Alternate chapters would follow the tale of the Joad family's struggle to find work and travel the long road to the coast, in the background the story of the depression and mass migration of thousands in the U.S at that time. I found the historical context of the novel fascinating as well. I have mentioned before my poor grasp of general knowledge and world history. I really like a novel as a way of gaining an insight into a period of history. I enjoy getting a human perspective on historical events.
One aspect of the book I found particularly interesting was that of prejudice and immigration. People have a terrible habit of picking up the worst in the unkown and have very little sympathy. It made me feel awful, really, as I can relate it to so many things I see every day. Assylm seekers, homeless people. It is so easy to think that these people are not your resposibility, that some how it is their fault they live on the streets or that there is someone else to give them a helping hand. This story just highlighted how easily people can fall out of luck, and how difficult it is to find a helping hand when you need it most. A subject that, unfortunately, will probably always be contemporary.
The end was so touching. The bitter struggle for survival... That sounds really cliched but I really can't think of better words. It was heart breaking when the baby was lost, but also almost a relief. As if an innocent new life shouldn't deserve to brought into such a dire situation. The bitter sweet last scene was really moving. The loss of one life meaning possiblity of saving another...
Enough pretentious waffling for now I think. But really a great read. A firm 9/10


The Accidental by Ali Smith
A peculiar novel about how a young woman manages to infiltrate a family, bonding with each member a bizarre, seemingly very personal way. I found the characterisation of the different family members quite interesting, although not fascinating. I could relate in some ways to both of the children. I particularly liked the daughter who filmed sunrises. Bit of a geek, with no friends. Babe.
I imagine that part of the point of the novel was that this woman was never fully explained and seemed to drift in and out of the their lives with no sense of direction or purpose. I found this quite disconcerting. Who was she? Where had she come from? How was it that she managed to just move in with strangers without anyone mentioning her identity? I imagine these are questions the author wanted to raise, but I wanted them to answered by the novel rather than left to my imagination. I fear I don't have a very lively imagination. I also wasn't really sure how I felt about the physical relationships in the book. The 'stranger' managed to get physical with almost all member of the family - particularly disturbing was her repeated copulations with the 15 year old son in the local church attic. I really don't know how I felt about it all. I suppose she conjured some kind of inspiration and sense of purpose in everyone. Which is a good thing. But the way she went about it seemed very deceptive. I couldn't decide whether or not I liked her.
For these reasons. I'm out. No, but really, for those reasons I didn't really like the book. I was waiting for answers which I never got. The novel seemed to reach no conclusion and I was never sure who I liked and what I wanted to happen. It gets a mediocre 5.5/10

Those are the only two I can remember - so probably doesn't say very much for any others I read.

I'm currently writing this in bed with Holly. We are blogging together. Think the scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with the grandparents all in bed together - it's real cosy in here.

Eyes

I'm not sure I want to be a doctor any more. But I really, really enjoy looking at irises thorugh a slit lamp.
Here was a diagram I drew of an eye. And a pin hole camera I got for my birthday... I like them both a whole bunch.

Cinema

I consider going to the cinema one of my favourite past times. Perhaps because I am pretty anti-social and enjoy being able to sit next to someone and acceptably not say anything for two hours. Also because there are some pretty great films out there.

So, as I already (albeit occasionally) review the books I read, I thought I might try out scribbling down my thoughts on films I see at the cinema.

Last night I went to see Chatroom by director Hideo Nakata.
Probably the worst film I have seen in a long time. No doubt in my bottom 5 of all time. Made even more frustrating by the fact I was planning on going to The King's Speech but was persuaded otherwise at the last minute...that will have to wait for another Sunday.
The basic plot is of 5 'Chelsea Teens!' who meet in a chatroom and share their life-weary woes. A the age of 15.
The physical depiction of the chatroom was an interesting idea; having never used a chatroom I can't really comment on how accurately it portrayed the experience but it was certainly an interesting idea. The film started with uninteresting teenage vocabulary ridden dialogue between the characters - fair enough, I thought, as it is, after all, trying to depict how the youth of today interact with one another....but it didn't move on from that. The whole time I kept waiting for some 'real', interesting, and well contrsructed twist or turn in the plot. I honestly thought the writer had deliberately made it mundane in order to make the twist all the more shocking and punchy when it finally came crashing in. Unfortunately it just never did...
Other parts of the film were just as boring and cliched. For example our depressed young friend, Jim, who the main character, William, is trying to manipulate towards suicide: the roots of his depression stem from the day his father left one afternoon next to the penguin enclosure at the local zoo. Cue the most hideously cliched flashback of having the best day of his life: in the sunshine with his dad and the penguins, having one last slow-motion hug, with nauseating emotional strings in the background, before his father wanders away never to be seen again. It made me frown at the screen. I really hoped it was supposed to be tongue in cheek, but I fear that was not the intention.
I didn't connect at all with any of the characters, they were all really superficially and lazily characterised.
The main character William, for example, has some sort of history of self harm and depression, although it's never really clear what that exactly is. He gets off on making other people commit suicide online and let him watch through his 'powers of persuasion'...Not that we witness anything mighty convincing in the film. There is poorly disguised jealousy of his brother, with his mother's best selling novels all being based on his successful, polite, more handsome older brother Ripley. His mother, brother and father incidentally have no personality of their own at all.

It's not so much that I found any particular piece of the film unbelievable but just entirely boring. Even with a plot involving suicide and manipulation, mental illness....
The plot idea was a really interesting one, but the characters let it down. With a little more work it has the potential to actually be quite interesting. But at the end of the day, with all the teeny-bloggers some how managing to track each other down in real life and grab the gun just before William jumps in front of a moving train is a little too shite for me. Sorry, couldn't really put it in any other way.

I would rate this film a generous 1/10.

Roll on next weekend.

New Year

It has been quite some time since I have made a post on my humble blog, a little put out by distractions such as exams and holidays.

I think it would be quite nice to begin again. What better time than at the beginning of not only a new year, but a new decade. Gosh, that makes me feel quite old.

Since my last entry I have turned 21, and although if anyone asked I wouldn't say I feel any different. I think I perhaps feel more like a real person. I feel unlikely to radically change the way I have in the past 20 years in the next 20 years. Other than things like getting a real job and maybe living in my own home. But I don't think, personally, ascepts of myself, will change a vast amount.

Anyway. What I really wanted to do was write down some sort of New Years Resolutions so that I couldn't deny I made them in the weeks and months ahead.

1. Read nice books, and write about them on this blog.

2. Try and go swimming or to the climbing wall or do some form of excercise at least once a month! If not more regularly.

3. Eat good.

At the moment that's all I've got. It's a start.

Must dash - rat brains to disect.