Lunch with Alice

I went out today to have lunch with my friend Alice. We ended up at a pub called the Conan Doyle, where I had some fish and chips with mushy peas, and a couple of pints of beer. I went to the toilet at one stage and it was absolutely packed of drunk guys puking. I couldn't believe it really, because it wasn't even three o'clock in the afternoon.

When I got home I watched a film I had recorded called House of Usher, a 1961 film directed by Roger Corman and based on a short story called "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. In the film Philip Winthrop (played by Mark Damon) travels to the gloomy, crumbling, family mansion of his fiancee Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). However, when he arrives he is not exactly welcomed by her hypersensitive brother Roderick (Vincent Price), who can't abide noise, light or being touched. Roderick is determined that the couple should not be married because of the Usher family 'curse', and will go to any lenghts to keep them apart. The film is very atmospheric, but is quite slow by modern standards. It's all very stylised with bright, lurid colours.