Dental Institute

Last night I went out with my parents to Pizza Express. To start with I had garlic bread with mozarella cheese, and then I had a Four Seasons pizza (a pizza with a different topping on each quarter: mushrooms, pepperoni, plain cheese and tomato, and anchovies and capers), and for dessert I had a Chocolate Glory gelato (basically ice-cream covered with chocolate sauce and squares of chocolate fudge cake). It was really nice.

Back home I watched an episode of How TV Ruined Your Life which this week dealt with "Knowledge" and discussed how TV dealt with news and factual programming, from the early days of the TV news (when it was just still images, occasional diagrams and voice-over narration, because the powers that be felt like film footage and announcers would trivialise current events) and very soberly presented academic documentaries to the current docu-soaps and celebrity presenters and flashy rolling news, that try to make it really exciting and dynamic. It also managed to take in the moralising on 80s kid's cartoon shows like He-Man and Thundercats, and a bizarre "mocumentary" from 1992 called GhostWatch which was basically a fictional horror drama for Halloween about a haunted house, but was presented as a non-fiction documentary hosted by well-known presenters. People at the time didn't realise it was make-believe and were genuinely terrified and angry about the show. Seen today it's pretty much a forerunner of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. The episode itself managed to be genuinely informative and also extremely funny.

Later on I watched a documentary called The Return of A Clockwork Orange, which was made in 2000 to commemorate the re-release of A Clockwork Orange in Britain. Stanley Kubrick, who directed A Clockwork Orange, withdrew the film from Britain and it was not available to view legally in Britain until after Kubrick's death in 1999. The movie was incredibly controversial in Britain when it was first released due to the violence. For three decades it was the most high-profile banned movie in Britain and was trotted out in endless magazine and newspaper articles, documentaries and so on about violent movies. It's now readily available in Britain though and is frequently shown in TV there. I remember a few months after Kubrick's death I arranged a tribute evening in the Student Union at college and me and another guy promoted and showed The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange. By the time the last movie came on it was literally standing room only. The place was packed out. That was a great night.

Today I went up to the Dental Institute. The bus broke down on the way, so I had to run up to the Institute and then I got lost in the building, but I maanged to get there in the nick of time. In the end they were running late anyway so it didn't really matter. I had my right wisdom tooth taken out in November 2009 and this was basically a review appointment to see how it had been in the meantime and whether I needed my other tooth taken out. In the end the extraction had completely healed up and the other wisdom tooth, while coming in at an angle wasn't causing any trouble to the tooth in front. For now at least I don't need it taken out. The dentist who was dealing with me was this really cute Spanish woman which helped.

I went along to the comic-book store afterwards and got: Lil Depressed Boy issues 1 and 2, Batman Incorporated issue 3, Batman and Robin issue 20, Fables are Forever issue 2, Spawn issue 204, X23 issue 7, Spider-Man issue 155, iZombie issue 11 and Venom issue 1.

Darkman

Last night I watched a 2009 movie called Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, directed by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea. It's a documentary about the production of acclaimed director Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished and unreleased 1964 film Inferno. The documentary was triggered by the discovery of 185 film canisters (totalling 15 hours of footage) and some 30 hours worth of soundtrack. The movie comprises of footage from the unfinished film, a couple of actors performong scenes from the script on a blank stage and talking-head interviews with the film crew who worked on the movie telling the story of the production and it's eventual collapse. The movie Inferno was intended to be about a man who is driven insane by jealousy when he suspects his wife is having an affair, and they shot hours of test footage for the hallucinatory dream sequences. According to the documentary, Clouzot didn't endear himself to the crew. He was an insomniac who thought everyone else should sleep as little as he did, and was in the habit of phoning people up at all hours of the night whenever an idea came to him. He also didn't like people taking time off and on Sundays, when the crew had the day off, he would hang around in the lobby of the hotel where they were staying and grab the first crewmembers he saw and tell them to go out with him and shoot test footage. One of the camera crew apparently took to coming and going through the ground floor bathroom window in order to avoid Clouzot. It was a very interesting documentary and well worth seeing for movie fans and especially aspiring film-makers. It shows just how difficult film-production can be and how easily everything can just fall apart.

Later on I watched the 1990 movie Darkman, directed by Sam Raimi. It stars Liam Neeson as a scientist who is working on a synthetic skin, which always becomes unstable and melts after about an hour and a half. However one night he is attacked by gangsters and his lab is blown up with him inside it. He survives, but is horribly burnt. The medical treatment that he undergoes renders him unable to feel pain and gives him sudden bursts of superhuman strength and flashes of violent rage. He escapes from the hospital and uses his synthetic skin to visit his girlfriend (Frances McDormand) and take violent revenge on his attackers. It is a really fun movie which moves along at a good fast pace. Both of the movies are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Today I went out to a stationary store and got some cardboard magazine storage boxes for my comic-book collection, two packs of Sharpie pens, and two A4 size sketch-pad journals (which were in a "buy one get one free" offer). They'll be really good for drawing comic books and other stuff.

My parents are going to see True Grit this afternoon, and I'm meeting them once their movie is finished to go to Pizza Express for dinner. Tomorrow lunchtime I'm going to the Dental Institute, and then I'll probably get some lunch and go to the comic-book store or somewhere.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Today it was another average and fairly long day at work. I left shortly after five and I was pretty much the only one left in the office.

After work I went along to the Filmhouse cinema to meet up with my Mum and to see My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, directed by Werner Herzog, at the Film Festival. The film was produced by David Lynch, and set mostly in San Diego, where a young man, Brad (played by Michael Shannon), has just murdered his mother (Grace Zabriskie) with a samurai sword at a neighbour's house. After the murder, he holes himself up in his house with a shotgun and two hostages. A homicide detective (Willem Dafoe) attempts to unravel the man's motives for his crime with the aid of Brad's fiancee (Chloe Sevigny) and friend (Udo Kier). Their stories, shown in fashback detail Brad's increasingly bizarre existance since his lfe was changed during a traumatic visit to Peru a year earlier. Apparently based on a true story, the movie has many touches of both Herzog and Lynch. It has plenty of strange humour, such as Brad describing his pet flamingoes as "eagles in drag" and strong performances and a memorable soundtrack. Occasionally it meanders a bit but the movie retains a strange power. According to Herzog the intent of the film was to make a horror movie without any explicit blood and gore but with a "strong mounting sense of dread". One interesting thing about the movie, which may have been due to Lynch's influence, is the amount of coffee that the characters drink, and they make a big deal of it. The main charcter even has his "special coffee cup".

After the movie we went along to Pizza Express to meet my Dad. I had doughballs and garlic butter to start, and then a Four Seasons pizza, basically it's a pizza devided into quarters witha different topping on each quarter: cheese, mushrooms, pepperoni and anchovies with olives. It was really nice.

Back home I finished reading the book "Yippee Ki-Yay Moviegoer!" Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema and Other Important Topics by Vern. Vern, no second name given, writes movie reviews for the Ain't It Cool News website, and the book, as the title suggests, is a collection of reviews and essays on films. They mostly concentrate on action movies but there is a wide range of movies covered. The reviews are mostly well-written, witty and intelligent, although one thing that I did notice is that there was a lot of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, presumably partly due to the fact that they were taken from websites.

Pepperoni Pizza

I had the day off work today and went out to the city centre. I bought the DVD of Theorem and the DVD set of Three... Extremes and it's sequel. I also got a £20 gift voucher for my brother's birthday next week. I also bought a birthday card before heading home.

When I got home I ordered a Pepperoni Passion pizza (basically it's just a normal cheese and tomato pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni on top).

Dental Institute

Last night I listened to another episode in the Doctor Who radio series. This one, called "No More Lies", starts in the middle of a story, as a strange alien criminal escapes from the Doctor (played by Paul McGann) in a time-travelling escape pod. The Doctor follows him and arrives at a sophisticated garden party, where he finds out that the alien has been living on Earth for thirty years and has become very wealthy. However, the party is caught in an endlessly repeating "time-loop" and there are dangerous monsters from outside of space and time trying to manifest themselves. Later on I watched the third and final part of the Red Riding trilogy of TV movies based on the David Peace novels. In this episode the scene has switched to 1983, where a troubled defence lawyer (played by Mark Addy) begins convinced that the person arrested for the brutal murders in 1974 is in fact innocent, and one of the corrupt police officers becomes increasingly disillusioned by the day-to-day brutality and corruption. Interestingly, there were four books in the series, bu the second novel was never adapted for TV. I don't know why.

I was off work again today, but I was out early to meet my Dad at the dental institute. The young dentist who spoke to me (who was female, Irish and very attractive) explained what I'll be in for. They did an x-ray of my mouth and the problem is that my two lower wisdom teeth are coming in at an angle, and so food is getting caught there and it means that there is starting to be decay, and I'll have to get the one on the left out. Apparently, they are going to cut a flap in my gum, drill a couple of holes in the bone and lever the tooth out, after which they'll stitch my gum back up again. I'll also need to get a filling in the tooth immediately in front of the one that is being removed. They said that they'll monitor the left hand side wisdom tooth and decide what to do about it in a year's time (by which time I may, hopefully, be in Canada but we'll deal with that when the time comes). However, I have an appointment to get my tooth out on the 9th November. They riginally wanted to schedule it for the 2nd November, but I changed it to avoid it clashing with my Mum's birthday.

Dad and I then went to the Royal Museum of Scotland, where we had coffee and a scone and had a quick look around the collections, what there were out anyway. The museums being refurbished and not much of the collection is on display. Then we went to Pizza Express and I had a Four Seasons pizza (a pizza divided into quarters with each quarter having a different topping: plain cheese and tomato, mushrooms, pepperoni or capers and anchovies). It was really nice. We had a look around the shops and then went our seperate ways.

I got three books in a three for two offer: Just After Sunset by Stephen King, A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre and Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. So they should be good. Back home I went and dealt with the urine sample that I had to deliver to the doctor's surgery as part of their New Patient check-up.

The internet has been down most of today and that has been extrmemely annoying.

The Night Gardener

Last night I watched the second of the films in the Red Riding series of inter-linked TV movies based on novels by David Peace. This episode was set in 1980 against the backdrop of the real-life "Yorkshire Ripper" murders. In the story a straight-laced young police officer (played by Paddy Considine) is sent to West Yorkshire in order to lead a secret Home Office enquiry into the police investigation of the "Yorkshire Ripper" case. However, he comes up against violence, police corruption and secrets from his own past. It was pretty good. The third and final film in the trilogy is on tonight.

I finished reading the book The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos. The book opens in Washington DC in 1985, where two young patrolmen, Gus Ramone and Dan Holiday, are involved in the police investigation of a serial killer who has killed three teenagers, the only connection between them the fact that their first names were palindromes (spelled the same way forward and backward). Twenty years later, Ramone is a respected homicide detective in the Washington police, while Holiday has been drummed out of the force. When a boy named Asa, a friend of Ramone's teenage son, is found murdered, both men believe that the killer has returned and the two find temselves negotiating the violent criminal underworld of Washington DC as well as their own pasts, on the trail of the serial killer. It was a pretty good book. Very fast moving and exciting.

I had the day off work today so I went along to the Cineworld cinema and saw Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino. For the record, I know the title is mis-spelled but that is how it is written in the film's titles, and presumably Tarantino knew what he was doing. The film is set in Occupied France during the Second World War, and concerns a group of eight Jewish-American soldiers (led by Brad Pitt) who are dropped into France with the simple mission of trying to kill as many German soldiers in as gruesome as possible a way. It's a pretty epic film and quite violent.

After the movie I wandered around the shops for a bit before heading to Pizza Hut for a late lunch. I had an individual Meat Feast pizza (that is a small pizza with melted mozarella cheese, tomato sauce, chopped pepperoni, ham and chopped up spicy sausage) with a bottle of Budweiser. After that I went back home.

Adventureland

Last night I watched a documentary about the history of brain surgery, which was very interesting - if gruesome. Then I saw a documentary in which two people tried to spend a couple of weeks living on the food that was popular the 1980s a lot of which I could remember pretty well. One thing that kind of made me laugh was how shocked they were by microwave ready meals, which are pretty much my staple diet today. After that I saw some of the 1983 movie Risky Business, directed by Paul Brickman. The story revolves around a mild-mannered high school student (played by Tom Cruise) whose parents are away for the weekend while he prepares for a crucial interview for acceptance to Princeton University. However he ends up meeting and falling for a beautiful prostitute (Rebecca DeMornay) and ends up with a novel money-making scheme. The movie is very funny and entertaining.

I got up pretty early today, my Dad came round and we went along to the Gyle shopping centre. We had a coffee and scone for our breakfast and then we went and had a look around. I bought a notebook and some pens. Then we went back to my parent's house and my parents and myself went along to Pizza Express for Father's Day. We had olives to start and I had a Diavolo pizza (a pizza with tomato, cheese, jalapeno peppers, spicy beef and pepperoni), it's really nice and very hot and spicy. For dessert I had a Chocolate Glory (which is ice-cream with chopped up chocolate fudge cake and chocolate sauce). It was a really nice meal. Back at my parents house, we kind of sat around for a couple of hours and I read some of the book that I had brought with me which was The Russia House by John le Carre (I'm trying to save money for Canada and so instead of buying new books I'm making an effort to read all the ones I've bought previously and never got round to reading).

In the evening I headed over to the Cineworld cinema to see the first film that I had booked for this year's Film Festival, which is now in it's sixty-third year. The film I went to see was Adventureland, directed by Greg Mottola. The movie is set in 1987 and concerns a high school graduate, James (played by Jesse Eisenburg) who, in order to raise money for college, takes a summer job at a run-down amusement park called Adventureland where he encounters various odd-balls and eccentrics and falls for co-worker Emily (Kristen Stewart) and befriends the married maintenance man Connel (Ryan Reynolds), who is secrelty having an affair with Emily. The movie is very funny in places, but it's also really moving at times as well. The star of the movie, Jesse Eisenburg was there to introduce the movie and answer questions afterwards.

Tomorrow I'm off work and I'm going to try get the tickets for the Book Festival. There's going to be a lot because I'll have to buy the tickets for my parents as well. As it stands I want to see Neil Gaiman and David Simon. Mum and myself want to see Margaret Atwood, Arthur Smith and Will Self. Mum wants to see Sarah Vine and Mum, Dand and myself all want to see Frank Skinner. I just really hope I actually remember all that!


"The line between actually very serious and actually very funny is actually very thin."
- The Russia House by John le Carre.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

Yesterday evening I listened to an episode of The Price of Fear on the radio. It's a series of one off half-hour horror plays for the radio from the 1970s hosted by Vincent Price. This week's story was called "The Family Album" and concerned a mild-mannered commuter whose wife is having an affair with his best friend. The wife and her boyfriend consider the commuter to be a timid joke, but he is secretly planning a macabre revenge.

Later on I watched an Arena documentary about the life and work of the famous poet T. S. Eliot, which was very interesting. After the show I must have fallen asleep on the sofa for awhile. When I woke up I saw a 1965 film on TV called Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, directed by Freddie Francis. The movie is made up of five different stories linked by a framing story, and it starts when five strangers (incuding Christopher Lee and a young Donald Sutherland) meet an elderly tarot card reader (played by Peter Cushing) on a train. The tarot card reader claims that he will tell each of the five how they will die and proceeds to tell each of them a series of stories involving werewolves, man-eating plants, voodoo curses, disembodied living hands and vampires. It was the first of a series of such films that were made in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Mostly it's neither scary nor gruesome although it is still fun.

This morning my Dad came to pick me up fairly early and take me over to my parent's house. The reason for that is because he is playing in the final of his golf club championships this afternoon. The latest issue of Sight and Sound magazine had arrived during the week. This month's main features including a report on the Cannes Film Festival, interviews with Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch and an article about the career of experimental film-maker Kenneth Anger. My Mum and I went along to Pizza Express where I had dough balls and garlic butter to start and a Four Seasons pizza (that's one where each quarter of the pizza has a differnet topping: one is plain cheese and tomato, another has anchovies and capers, a third has pepperoni and the fourth has mushrooms). It was really good. When I got back I watched a couple of episodes of Peep Show on DVD.

The Sandman

Last night was another quiet one. I spent a bit of time writing some more of the story.

I had taken today off work, to celebrate finishing my script and went out to the shops. I bought two graphic novels in the Sandman series: The Sandman Volume One: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman and The Sandman Volume Two: The Doll's House also by Neil Gaiman. I've never read any of them before but I have heard a lot about them.

After that I went along to Pizza Hut at the Omni Centre and met up with Owen and some of his friends. I had a really good Meat Feast pizza (which basically had mozarella cheese, tomato, ham, pepperoni and pieces of spicy beef on it).

After that I walked around for awhile and then headed back home.

Graphic Novels

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched an episode of Hammer House of Horror which dealt with a woman who kills an attacker and later on believes that his ghost is haunting her. It was a pretty good one.

My Mum is on holiday to Egypt at the moment and so my Dad picked me up fairly sharply this morning and took me along to the St. James Centre shopping mall here we had some coffee and a scone. After that we split up to look around. I bought a selection of graphic novels by Alan Moore in a three for two offer: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes one and two and From Hell. After that I went back to my parent's house for a while. After awhile we went over to Pizza Express for some food. I had a Capriciosa pizza (which had tomato, cheese, anchovies, capers, ham, peppers, olives and a boiled egg) it was really nice, that was followed by a Chocolate Glory ice cream, which was vanilla ice cream with chocolate fudge cake and chocolate sauce poured over it. It was a really nice meal.

Today is the last day of the holiday. I have to go back to work tomorrow, which I am really not looking forward to. It feels like I have been away for a lot longer than just two weeks.

This evening I signed up for this year's "Script Frenzy". You might remember last November I did the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) where the aim was to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. Script Frenzy is a similar thing, in fact it's run by the same people, but the idea with it is to write 100 pages of a script (a movie screenplay, TV show script, play or comic-book script) during the month of April. I did manage to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge, so this one should be pretty good.

Live and Let Die

Last night I was watching the 1973 movie Live and Let Die on TV. When three British secret agents are killed while monitoring the activities of the dictator of a small island in Caribbean, James Bond (played by Roger Moore) is assigned to investigate and finds himself up against a powerful gangster operating out of the island, who is utilising the local's beliefs in voodoo practices as a cover for his heroin operation. The film is relatively faithful to the original Ian Fleming novel, and has some pretty good elements in it (such as the speedboat chase) and a memorable theme song from Paul McCartney.

Later on I was watching a repeat of an episode of Peep Show, which was very funny. Then I listened to the final episode of The Woman in Black in which the ghostly Woman in Black take a final, shocking revenge upon the lawyer who discovers her secret, and the final episode of Ancient Sorceries, in which the clerk discovers the ancient evil dwelling beneath the sinister little town. They were both really good shows.

Today was my last day at work before my two week holiday! I am not sorry to see the back of the place for the next couple of weeks, I don't mind admitting. I was originally going to go out for some drinks with my friend Joe to celebrate, but he wasn't feeling well and had to leave work early, and so I got a six pack of bottles of beer on my way home and ordered a cheese, tomato, ground beef, green pepper and jalapeno pepper pizza so that was really good!

A Day Out!

Today I had the day off work and headed out to meet my Mum at the bus station at half past ten. We got on the bus to Glasgow, which took about an hour and a quarter. When we got there we went along to Pizza Express for lunch. I had a Diavolo pizza which had the usual cheese and tomato but also spicy beef, pepperoni, hot green peppers and jalapeno peppers, with a dash of tabasco sauce. It was hot, but in a good way. Hot and spicy enough to give it a good kick but not enough so that it burnt the mouth. Afterwards I had a Chocolate Glory (which was vanilla ice-cream, with pieces of chocolate fudge cake and chocolate sauce) and a bottle of Peroni Nasturo beer. It was a really, really good meal.

Afterwards we split up and I had a look at the books in Borders. I got a book called Peep Show: Scripts and More by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, with a forward by the show's stars Robert Webb and David Mitchell. It contains the scripts for every episode of all five seasons of the show to date complete with extra funny stuff such as school reports, e-mails, work memos, playlists. Then my Mum and I went along to have a coffee and a scone, and caught the four o'clock bus home. I went to my parent's house for a bit and watched some TV and had a couple of cups of coffee and a glass of wine.

When I got back home I found out that my brother had sent me his share of the money for my Dad's Christmas present. It has been a good day.

Comedy Characters

Last night was fairly quiet. I was watching a show called The World's Greatest Comedy Characters. Number one was Basil Fawlty (the character John Cleese played in the sit-com Fawlty Towers). It was quite an interesting show and very amusing.

Today I went along to my parent's house as usual. They have been decorating and the living room was completely empty of carpet and furniture, except a table, two chairs and the TV. All the rest had been moved into the lounge. So we went along to Pizza Express for lunch. I had a Four Seasons pizza and a Chocolate Glory for dessert, with a glass of Peroni beer. The waitress originally misheard the order and brought along the wrong pizza, but it was changed without any trouble. It was a really nice meal, anyway.

After lunch we went out to look at hi-fi equipment. Also the new issue of Sight and Sound and Fortean Times had arrived, so there was plenty to read.

I managed to get up to 16,519 words on NaNoWriMo yesterday.

James Bond and Rock Stars

I went out to meet my mum in Princes Street today. We went up to the City Art Centre to see an exhibition called Bond Bound: Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design which focussed mainly on the cover designs of Ian Fleming's James Bond books from the 1950s and 60s to the present. It also had exhibits of some of the film posters, some of the prelimenary sketches and memos, along with one of Fleming's manuscripts for a book, with his notes. It was good, but it could have done with a bit of analysis about the art work and what aspects of the books different covers focussed on. Some really focus on the sex appeal, some on the exotic locations and some on the action. After the exhibition I had a look in the gift shop and bought a book called Major Works by John Keats (it cost £4 reduced from £11.99).

After that we went along to Pizza Express and I had a Four Season pizza (basically it's a pizza divided into quarters with olives: One quarter is plain cheese and tomato, one is mushroom, one is pepperoni and one is anchovies and capers). For dessert I had a Chocolate Glory (vanilla ice-cream with squares of chocolate fudge cake and chocolate sauce).

After eating, we went along to the Edinburgh Book Festival and saw Rick Wakeman. in the 1970s, Rick Wakeman was a pretty big rock star in bands like The Strawbs and Yes. These days he does quite a lot of TV shows. He was really, really funny. With some hilarious anecdotes especially about his days as a session musician working with people like David Bowie and Lou Reed.

Back at Work

I went back to work today, for the first time since my robbery. The police phoned a couple of times. Apparently someone had been arrested had been arrested this morning for robbing someone else in the same area, and the description and method used by the robber matched what I had told them. A couple of police officers came to my work at lunchtime with some photos to see if I could identify the robber. The one that I picked out apparently wasn't the guy they have in custody, but they said that they would question him about what happened to me anyway.

The rest of the day at work was pretty dull. The same as usual, really.

Emily met me at my work and we went over to my place. We ordered a chicken supreme pizza, and watched the first fifteen minutes of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, which Emily didn't really enjoy, so we replaced it with The Royal Tenenbaums, a 2002 film directed by Wes Anderson, about an eccentric family, whose three children initially showed signs of genius but their early success faded away as they all reached adulthood. It's a very quirky film, but I really find it very funny, and I think that Emily enjoyed it. She headed back home after the film ended.

As I wrote a few days earlier I have been thinking a lot about things over the past few weeks. I always think that one of my main problems is that I tend to be constantly afraid of what might happen, in any given or imagined situation. For some reason I always imagine the worst happening.

Double Glazing

Today has been really busy. I woke up early, despite having the day off work, to move furniture around. My dad came around to help. The double glazing was being fitted today, and it was no easy task getting the areas around the window cleared. The guys to fit the windows came at around ten (about an hour late).

I took a walk up to the St. James Shopping Centre to meet my mum. Dad came as well, leaving the precious things in my flat to the tender mercies of the window fitters, although my parents assured me at length that my possessions would not come to harm. We had a coffee and cheese scone at the Place to Eat in John Lewis, and my dad went back while I went for a walk along Princes Street with mum. Along the way I got a warm woollen hat, a pair of gloves and a scarf (see pictures below). We went to Pizza Express for lunch, which was a large thin-based pizza topped with tomato, mozarella, anchovies, parma ham, capers, olives and boiled egg, with a triple chocolate sundae for dessert. It was really nice.

When I got home my dad and I tried to tidy up my home as best we could. The windows seem nice. They certainly cut down on a lot of the noise. There's a guy coming round tomorrow to inspect them and make sure that they have been fitted correctly. After that it is a matter of painting the sills and that should hopefully be it finished.

Some More DVDs

Last night I was feeling hungry and so at around eleven o'clock I decided to heat up a frozen pizza in the oven. I never use the oven and so I was hovering around it for about half an hou in case anything went wrong. It was okay actually, and the pizza turned out very nice and not too burned.

I also watched the late night horror film on TV. It was called Satan's Slave, and was a 1976 film directed by Norman J Warren, who made a string of mostly bad horror films in Britain in the 70s and early 80s. The story involves a young woman who frequently experiences premonitions, and goes on holiday with her parents to the large mansion house of her eccentric uncle (played by Michael Gough), who lives there with his creepy son and his secretary. No sooner have the woman and her family arrived then the car explodes, leaving the woman the only survivor, and in the care of her uncle, who of course has a dark secret. The film was pretty gruesome for the time, but it is extremely bad. The acting is terrible, and although it's not intentionally funny, it's more comical than scary.

This morning I went out to the opticians to see whether my new glasses, which were ordered two weeks ago, had arrived yet, and I was told they were due in on Monday, so I should be able to pick them up after work. Then I had a look around the shops and got the DVDs of Shaun of the Dead and Freddy Vs. Jason in the sales (I've got all the Freddy Krueger films on DVD now) and I bought the novel The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum as a Father's Day present for my dad.