Month: May 2008

Had a lovely bank holiday weekend.  We celebrated my neice’s first birthday with a barbecque at my sister’s house.  I met lots of lovely Melbourne folk and ate many vegetarian sausages.  I also found myself covered in Black Forest Gateaux – babies have little talent for feeding themselves cake.  Their method seems to involve grabbing two fistfuls of and cramming it into their mouths.  And over my trousers.

Here is a photograph of one of the presents I bought for my neice, courtesy of Ikea.  Yes, it’s a frog with a rat in its mouth:

Watched a couple of movies over the break.  Iron Man was very OK – I had a good time watching it in the cinema but would hate to have to watch it again.  I also finally say Beowulf, which was fantastic.  The movie did a good job of solving the problems of the original story’s structure.  I found an excellent negative review by The New Republic, which seemed to hate Beowulf for many of the reasons I loved it.

Managed to restart work today without too much of a bump.  Planning to relax a little, then head out for training.

PS – NIN have released another album online, this one, The Slip, available for free.  After Radiohead’s conflicted attitude to independent online distribution it’s good to see a major band do it properly.   

Coventry is an odd place to have ended up.  For a start, it’s the most inland city in England, quite a change from Brighton.  I came here for the work and a change of scene but find I actually like it.  There are a few good places to eat and, despite its
reputation as a Ghost Town, the city is beautiful in places.  It’s quiet too and I’m getting some  good work done.

Coventry is also distinguished as the birthplace of Clint Mansell and Philip Larkin, and was where some of The Italian Job‘s car chases were filmed.  And it has better rainbows than any other place I’ve been – the photograph below shows a double-bow photographed from my study window.