Back again...

Well, I'm back now - three weeks 'off air', and I've been amazed at how many people have looked at my blog even when I've not been writing (between 30 and 40 a week...)! Big hello to everyone :-)

NaNoWriMo didn't go terribly well - with only 10 days to go, I've not yet hit 2,000 words... A bit of a failure all round, really! But, the story, even though not really on it's way, does still have wings (I think), and I'm hoping will get a bit further. It's turned into another teen-sci-fi story though - I seem to be incapable of writing anything that isn't teen...

However, the reasons for failure have been many:
We've suddenly had every single council in the country (or so it feels) go out to tender, needing the documentation to be back before Christmas - most of them before this coming Monday... So the stress levels are running very high, and the overtime has been piling up.
In September, I started a college course (Introductory Certificate in Supervisory Management), which got off to a dodgy start ("We will be covering the same topics as in the full certificate, but instead of doing it in 35 weeks, we will do it in 10. By the way, I've only ever taught the 35 week course..."), got worse, ("Because no-one understood the basic stuff I went through in 3 hours last week, I'll spend 1 1/2 hours going through it again this week, and only do the first page of this week's topic."), hit a major low point ("Your course tutor has gone off sick permanently."), and then picked up again with a nice new tutor ("You will get an extension on your assignment (which would have been due in next week), but I want to go through the first half with you individually *now*"). Which meant that I've had to spend the last couple of weeks writing up the first half of my assignment!
Also - we still don't have a car (until tomorrow - huzzah!), which has meant that I've lost half an hour every evening (small excuse) because I've had to walk home, rather than have John come and pick me up.

But yay - as mentioned above, we are picking up our replacement for the Punto tomorrow. It's an L Reg Toyota Carina - not the swishest car on the market, but certainly a good buy, according to Yahoo. It has been very well loved, and the current owner is going to give us the contact details of the garage owner who has been looking after it for many years (not sure if since new, but definitely since it has been in this chap's family). After a month without wheels, I've not got used to not having a car - I'm sure that this says a lot about us and our modern lifestyle. Whilst everybody we know has been amazing in giving us lifts, often coming miles out of their way (big thanks to Sarah here) to make sure that we don't miss out, and my day-to-day life hasn't been disrupted *too* badly (I walk/train to work and back - John normally picking me up from the station in the evening), the inability to jump into the car to go somewhere, even just round the corner (10 minutes drive, 30-40 minutes walk) to Sainsbury's to go shopping has been frustrating. I will be glad to be in a car again, even if the thought of getting behind the wheel of a strange car is scaring me whitless! (I wasn't too bad when using the company pool car to go home for my mother's birthday weekend, but I had driven it before, and a Ford Focus isn't hugely different from the Punto)

The other thing that I need to catch up on before I sign off for the evening (it's getting late, and I've got a long day tomorrow!) is cinema reviews. We've been to a lot of films recently, and I've not talked about any of them - slap my wrists!

Daywatch
The sequel to NightWatch, this is an adaption of a series of Russian novels. Confusingly, although the film title sequence follows the titles of the novels, DayWatch is really an amalgamation of the second and third thirds of the NightWatch novel. We saw it in Russian with subtitles, and the subs themselves were as much a work of art as the rest of the film (one particular one that sticks with me is where one character yells "Bitch" at another, whilst throwing a lump of bloody meat at her. The meat hits the tiled wall, and the blood, running down the wall, forms the "Bitch" subtitles.) The story itself is very confusing, even for me, and I had read the book recently! There are a lot of interweaving threads, a lot of characters who aren't properly introduced, and who look similar to each other (we had met some of them in the first film, but that was shown a while ago...), and the ending is just HUH? But all of that pales into insignificance when you see the beauty of the film. Whilst Moscow probably isn't the most gorgeous of cities to have as a backdrop, every scene felt like it was crafted with care. My overall impression of the film, even over a month after watching it is still "Wow!" I'm going to be putting the DVD on my wishlist :-)

Stardust
This is an adaption of Neil Gaiman's graphic novel - and, though it has been a long while (must be three or four years at least) since I read the novel, I felt that it was pretty much faithful to the story. I really enjoyed it - a pop-corn type of film without any really hard thinking needed. It had a star studded cast; Peter O'Toole making a few minute cameo, and Ian McKellan doing a front and end narration! Michelle Pfeiffer played an incredibly convincing witch, Robert De Nero, a fantastically camp pirate, and a slew of British comedians also had roles (David Walliams, Mark Williams (only he could play a goat dressed up as a man...) and even David Brent (though he, as ever, only played David Brent...)). The film hardly had any CGI, which made a nice change, the scenery used was beautiful, and there were some lovely one-liners in it, and one great sword fighting sequence. Definitely worth a look - whilst you might not come away feeling changed or have any philosophical awakenings, you'll have had a great time!

Black Sheep
This was my horror film for the next five years... I don't do gore. I don't do spatter, and I definitely don't do horror. I therefore went to see this New Zealand independant film with a mild feeling of dread and the knowledge that I was going to be hiding behind my fingers for a lot of the time. But, hey, how could I turn down a film about zombie sheep? And when this was the trailer we saw, it had to be worth a look! I was prepared that all of the best bits would have been in the trailer, as is so often the case, but I was so pleasantly suprised! It was a very funny, but definitely *very* gory film. I *did* spent a lot of time hiding behind my fingers (often at points where, I was told, there were cutaways at the final moment), but I spent even more time laughing. Very silly, sick in places, not one for young children, but a brilliant film - I hope that this team do more!

And finally...

Beowulf
This is the much advertised retelling of the Old English tale - man meets beast, man kills beast, beast's mother gets a little upset and comes to complain... I'm not going to give away too much, as this one is still in the cinemas, and I don't want to add any spoilers (particularly where the story has been changed from the original). The technique of the film is interesting - the actors were filmed, and then animated, so the entirety of the film is CGI. Unfortunately, they seem to have been hanging a lot on this technique to sell the film (much is being made of it being seen in 3D, which we weren't able to do), and the technology isn't *quite* there to pull it off (apart from the final action sequence, in which almost all sins are forgiven!) The script was ok (not fantastic, given that Neil Gaiman was writing it), the acting was good (Antony Hopkins played a great King), and there were some lovely bits (the fact that Grendel speaks in Old English - it takes a while to tune the ear to it, and I know that they would have picked the words close enough to English to be understood, but it was still a beautiful touch). However, there just seemed to be something intangible missing. Something that could have turned this from a mediocre film into a brilliant one. I do think that I'll go and revisit the book, though...

And, now that I've written almost as much as I have for the whole of my NaNoWriMo story, I am going to sign off... Hopefully, it won't be another three weeks before I write again!

Firsts...

Well, since getting married, I've managed to encounter a number of 'firsts'. I've had my first filling (discovered a hole in my tooth the hard way when trying to pick out the pip that had got stuck - the pin went right through...) I was recommended a dental surgery round the corner from us, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were still taking on NHS patients. I registered on the Friday, had my appointment on the Monday, and had the follow up appointment to actually have the filling the Monday after. Very impressed.

I’ve managed to lock someone into a building for the first time (locked myself out plenty of times!) – in this case, John. Our flat doors are completely key operated – they don’t slam shut behind you meaning that you lock yourself out by mistake. However, this time, I managed to take both my keys and John’s to work, and, as John is not dedicated enough to the company that sucks the life force from him, he wasn’t willing to contemplate climbing out of a window to go to work (not only that, but leaving a window open would have been an obvious temptation to burglars…

And, my very big first – I’ve had my first multiple vehicle car accident. I’ve been in a couple of cars that have had single vehicle accidents before; when I was 11, a sliding Yellow Pages meant that my father drove into a lamp post, and a couple of years ago, our bonnet flew open on the motorway, smashing the windscreen. However, this was the first when I was driving, and the first when I was alone in the car. I’m not going to beat about the bush – I was in the wrong. I was tired (the accident happened at about 9.50), I’d got lost in an unfamiliar part of Bristol, and I was not concentrating as much as I should have been. I ended up pulling out in front of someone, and hitting them on the passenger side door. Fortunately, although both myself and the driver in the other car were shaken up, neither of us were hurt at all. The cars, however, were a different matter. Whilst her car managed to get away with a dent on the passenger side, and a burst tire from where she swerved onto the pavement, our little Punto ended up with a stove-in bonnet, passenger side lights smashed, and, fatally, a broken radiator, that leaked water everywhere. The upshot of this is that the car is on the verge of being written off (we are waiting for the insurance assessor to finish his report).

The one thing that struck me about the whole thing was how many people there are who will go out of their way to help. Within a minute of the accident, a number of the householders around had come out to see if there was anything they could do. They offered advice (including what details to swop – my brain had gone into shut down, and I really didn’t know), checked that we were both ok, and one incredibly kind gentlemen (retired paramedic) offered the use of his front room whilst I was waiting for the recovery vehicle (and he was very persistent about it – I didn’t want to impose on him and his wife, particularly given that it was now half past 10, and the breakdown vehicle wasn’t going to arrive till half 11. The third time he asked, I accepted!), and brought me out a glass of water whilst I was waiting on the phone. Even the parents of the person I hit were amazing – the mother going as far as giving me a hug when I got overwrought – something you don’t expect when you have just hit their daughter’s car!

So, for the first time since we both moved to Bristol, we are car-less. It is amazing how much you rely on motor transport – neither of us cycle. The public transport round Bradley Stoke, whilst acceptable during rush hour (I get the train to work in the city centre), is appalling at weekends (the regular buses around our house stop running at 6 pm in any direction on a Saturday, and hardly anything runs on a Sunday), which makes doing the shopping very difficult (and I am incredibly reluctant to shop online. However, with delivery being £5, which is the same cost as getting the two of us to Sainsbury’s and back, I might think about it!) The hardest thing (on my part – I think John is not too happy about having to walk to work every day rather than going five minutes round the corner!) is not being able to get to orchestra – I find that I rely a lot on the relaxation that comes from playing as a group, and not being able to go, even for a couple of weeks, has left me feeling a bit empty.

But the one thing that we have not had, in the midst of all of this disruption and destruction. We have not had our first row. John has been amazing through all of this – he has not shouted, he has not sulked, and he hasn’t even blamed me. He has been upset, obviously, but he has not taken anything out on me, even though I deserve it. I couldn’t ask for a better husband.

In other news, I'm going to be taking part in NaNoWriMo - I am going to try to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. This means that I might not be posting as much as I should, though I'm sure I'll be able to post some story updates on here :-)