What I’m actually blogging about now is the film we went to see this afternoon.  Now, being in the middle of the countryside, our nearest cinema isn’t exactly on our doorstep.  In fact, Cineworld in Yeovil is a good 40 minute drive away (albeit along beautiful country lanes).  The film in question was “Julie & Julia”, a film based on two true stories, one of a prestigious cook from the 50s and one of a modern day blogger who finds purpose in life through cooking.  Yes, this is a film review.  Read on if you’ve already seen the film, or if you have no intention of seeing the film but want to know what happens, or if you are planning on seeing the film but don’t mind knowing beforehand what happens.

For a film dealing with two parallel timelines, constantly swapping between the two, I think it pulled it off very successfully.  It was all filmed in the same style, but they managed to make it just clear enough which era we were in at each point; it provided enough separation that we didn’t get confused, yet enough connections and parallels to keep it relevant.  Meryl Streep’s accent was, so I hear, very accurate to the original Julia Child’s, but I actually found it the most annoying part of the film – hats off to her for pulling it off, I just wish it hadn’t been so squeeky.

The portrayal of relationships was interesting, I thought.  Both Julie and Julia had what can only be described (in cinematic terms, at least) as near-perfect husbands.  Or, to be a little more fair, near-perfect relationships with their husbands.  It was refreshing to see loving, successful relationships in a way that wasn’t trite or unrealistic.  That’s not to say they didn’t ever have disagreements, but the love never fell apart despite what they went through.  I thought it added an interesting dimension to the drama – our conditioned eyes were all expecting everything to fall apart, and the fact that it didn’t probably will have disappointed some critics, but to me it made it more believeable.

Another aspect of the plot revolves around blogging.  In the modern-day part of the plot, Julie works her way through Julia’s cook book, one recipe at a time, all in the space of a year, and writes a blog about the whole experience.  To begin with no one reads it, only her mother, who doesn’t understand why she’s doing it.  But eventually it gathers momentum and she gets lots of readers following her adventure.  It raises an interesting facet of the blogging world – just because you’re writing doesn’t mean anyone will take any notice of you.  And once people do start taking note of your opinions, you then feel an obligation to these strangers to keep on writing.  I think it’s a shame really that at the end of Julie’s adventure the blog loses its purpose and probably stopped being written.  To my mind, if a blog is directly related to a particular time frame it is almost invariably doomed to fizzle out once the content stops being written.  There are very few people who would find a blog that hadn’t been updated in months (or years) and read it through from beginning to end.  Blogs are read one post at a time, starting with the most recent one and usually disregarding anything older and just waiting for the next post to be published.  I guess that’s just another illustration of how technology is so often misrepresented in film – on the big screen computers always work faster than in real life and do far more than they are actually capable of!

In conclusion, then, I liked the film.  Not something I’d watch again, necessarily, but it’ll do as something to pass the time.  Certainly not going to go down in history as a fantastic must-see film.  I came out of the cinema not thinking how wonderful an experience I’d had or how beautiful the plot was, but reinvigorated to continue blogging.  I had a similar feeling watching “Marley and Me”, inspired by the writing theme, though that was a much better film altogether.  So if nothing else, I’m more determined to keep writing.  Even if no one reads my ramblings.

It has been said that the internet is one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, having transformed the way we live our lives from communication to business.  It allows us to book train tickets, purchase computers, and communicate with friends and family, all without having to reach across and pick up the phone.  It allows spotty teenagers to express their ill-founded opinions, it enables friendless bedroom-bound loners to socialise in multiplayer online games, and encourages us all to befriend all sorts of people to make our Facebook page look more impressive.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little too negative, but then it is the first paragraph, and it’s always good to grab your audience by the throat from the outset and say something to catch people’s attention.  It’s a well-used PR technique too, which leads me nicely onto the subject matter I’m tiptoeing around in this blog post.  The cat is out of the bag – we know who the Stig is.

The Stig is a legend.  Currently in his second incarnation, the white Stig (replacing the black Stig, who was accidentally fired off an aircraft carrier in a Top Gear series finale) is iconic, mysterious in identity, silent and emotionless, and legendary on the test track.  It came as something of a surprise, then, when I happened to be browsing the Cars and Automotive category of YouTube and found page after page of the same clip of the latest Top Gear episode, in which the identity of the Stig was revealed to be Michael Schumacher.  In utter disbelief I went straight to the source and watched the full episode on BBC iPlayer.  These are my findings.

Stiggy appeared when it was time to take a car round the Top Gear test track, in this case a Ferrari.  Not just any Ferrari though, this was a £1,000,000 supercar, of which only a handful are being made.  Not only that, the owners don’t even get to keep them in their own garage – Ferrari keeps hold of them and allows the owner to borrow them for track days.  Needless to say, the car is utterly impractical for road use, massively powerful, far too expensive for any insurance company to even consider covering, and not for the faint-hearted.  Even just watching the car go round the track was enough to boggle my mind.

And that’s where the doubt started to creep in about the driver.  Having watched Top Gear for several years, I’ve seen a fair few laps of that track with Stig at the wheel.  Driving styles are like body language, and just watching the Ferrari shoot round the track gave me the impression it was someone else driving it.  The driver clearly knew the car inside out, knew the absolute limits of the handling, knew the optimum revs to change gear, knew the braking points.  The Stig doesn’t usually get that privilege.  This driver took a slightly different approach to the racing line too; it was – dare I say it – more accurate, more clinical, more precise.  This was not the Stig I know.  There’s no denying the car was awesome, and had a driver to match, and that was confirmed in the lap time that absolutely wiped out everything that had been before.  But it wasn’t my Stig.

Then we met Stiggy himself, wandering into the studio for an interview.  This Stig had a definite swagger as he walked through the crowd, something normal Stig never had.  The body language was very different, even behind the impenetrable mask of white racing suit and helmet.  So it didn’t really come as much of a surprise when the helmet came off revealing a real person (admittedly partly because I’d already seen that clip on YouTube).  Michael dutifully acted the part and answered various Stig-related questions, but crucially revealed nothing about how he came to be the Stig or what it was like driving all those other cars around.

So, time for my theory.  Given how exotic that Ferrari is, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Italians decided they didn’t trust a masked, mysterious, unknown driver to take it round a track.  I mean, let’s face it, Stig doesn’t exactly have a reputation for treating cars lightly – he drives on the limit, trying to squeeze every last drop of speed from everything he drives.  So what’s the betting that Ferrari only let the BBC use one of their uber-expensive cars on the condition that one of their own people drove it for them?  And since Michael does actually work for Ferrari it’s likely that he would already have known that car very well from testing and suchlike, and I might even hazard a guess that the car actually belonged to Michael himself.

From a PR point of view, I wonder whether this is the latest recurring theme that they’re building into this series of Top Gear.  Remember the Dacia Sandero?  Or the web sites that Jeremy had found and wanted to share with the studio audience?  To supposedly reveal the identity of the Stig in the opening episode of a new series has got to mean something, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered.  I could understand them revealing the actual identity of the Stig in a final episode, but not the first.  If that is to be believed, what do we expect from subsequent episodes?  It would no longer be a case of getting the Stig to drive the car round the lap but getting Michael to drive it round, which takes half the fun out of it.  No, I very much suspect it to be a very cleverly-planned publicity stunt by the BBC.  And if the YouTube clips and innumerable blog posts are anything to go by, it’s worked a treat.

I’ll be looking out for next week’s episode of Top Gear with interest.  I’m happy to be proved wrong, of course, but I have to admit I’ll have a smug superior feeling if when I’m proved right.  You heard it first here.  At least from me, anyway.

In other news, the steam engine that featured in that episode of Top Gear totally out-shone the two road-going competitors, just by the fact that it was steam.  Glorious steam.  Roaring along at 75mph with a trail of think white smoke.  Magnificent.  Oh dear, I’m turning into my father…

Bank holidays always seem to creep up on me and take me by surprise.  I can’t quite put my finger on why, but where most people live for their days off and eagerly anticipate any excuse not to go into work, the novelty has never really hit home for me.  As such the day never really gets noticed in my diary, and it usually takes someone to remind me that it’s happening for me to realise that I don’t have to do any work that day.  Maybe it’s because I work from home.  Maybe it’s because I’m just not very observant.  Maybe it’s because I don’t do enough with bank holidays for it to be special enough to look forward to.  Maybe.

Anyway, on Monday it was a bank holiday, and since Ellie had reminded me of that fact I just about remembered not to do any work.  Which was a good thing, because we’d arranged to go round to Anne-Marie’s house to watch Takin’ over the Asylum, a BBC series from a couple of decades ago starring a very young David Tennant, set in a loony bin mental health hospital with a would-be DJ trying to get a hospital radio station up and running.  It wouldn’t work today, of course, which explains why it was never repeated, but now that’s it’s on DVD (mainly due to David’s popularity, no doubt) it’s become a quick favourite among Tennant fans.  So Anne-Marie made us invited us to watch it with her on Monday.  All of it.  All 6 episodes of it.  And it was hilarious.

It was an interesting insight into the sort of people in such mental institutes, and the complications they face every day.  Not only do the residents face their own mental struggles, but they face discrimination from ’sane’ people who treat them like children, and conflicting feelings about where ‘home’ is.  As was demonstrated so powerfully in The Shawshank Redemption, long-term confinement is something some people get used to, to the extent that being ‘released’ is a sentence in itself.  For many, their prison cell is their home, the walls that keep them in are their safe sanctuary.  Being released into the public is like being kicked out of your home, and for some it’s something they just can’t bear.

What I found particularly interesting, though, was how the audience (or maybe it was just our group of friends watcing) were able to identify more with the loonies than with the sane people, and that sometimes the line was so fine that either side could be exchanged for the other.  Mentally disturbed people have their lucid moments, just as normally balanced people have moments of insanity.  Looking at myself, and my group of friends, it could easily be argued that we all have some form of insanity, all with some level of mental misalignment somewhere.  Whether it be irrational fears, obsessions, physical ‘ticks’, multiple personalities – we have them all in some form.  At least, I know I do, and I know several others who would readily admit to it too.  But then, I guess you could say that’s what makes for balanced people – having both sides in equal measure.  Pause for thought.

I got two things out of watching Takin’ over the Asylum.  One was that David Tennant has apparently been a fantastic actor for many years, and in some ways it’s a shame we’ve not seen more of him before now.  The other thing was actually more of a challenge, inspired by Anne-Marie when she put the DVD back into the cupboard, making sure to maintain the alphabetical order in which they had been arranged.  And so, starting today, I shall be alphabetically sorting my blog posts.  Today begins with A.  My next post will begin with B.  And so on.  Not a massive revelation, granted, but it gives me something to do, and gives you something to check up on.

We’re all mad.  Yes, you too.  The only difference between us and them is that we haven’t been caught yet.

For those who haven’t yet seen Marley and Me, feel free to either keep on reading or read something else, depending on whether you’re the type to get offended by spoilers.  I’m still not sure what spoilers I’ll actually use here, we’ll see during the course of writing, but needless to say it’s about the contents of the film, and I may well end up mentioning some important plot devices.  Just so you’re warned.

I’m more of a cat person, incidentally.  Again, no doubt influenced by my childhood, which was shared with a black cat called Lucy, who was half-wild and who never quite got the hang of keeping her claws to herself.  I’ve never really had much affinity with dogs, despite my wife’s efforts so far.  In fact, whereas most wives will ask for a baby and settle for a dog, I think I’d prefer the baby.  So I wasn’t entirely sure that this film would be for me, I didn’t really see myself as the target audience.

The opening few scenes were very clearly centred around the dog, Marley, who is an unruly and somewhat uncontrollable Labrador.  Adorable, but not the best pet to have if you have anything even remotely valuable in the house.  However, as the film went on it became more and more apparent that the story was more about the people than the dog.  The relationship between the two main characters was a joy to watch as it developed, always underlined and emphasised by the presence of their Lab causing mayhem wherever possible.  What made the relationship so believeable was actually the counterplay of good and bad days, with nothing cut out.  There were arguments, there were lovey-dovey sickly sweet encounters, there was harsh and deep sorrow, there was immeasurable joy.

This wasn’t a story about someone else, this was a story about real people like you and me.  Unlike most films that Hollywood churns out, this connected to its audience in a whole new realm of believability.  It wasn’t a fairytail ending, it wasn’t romanticised, it was just true.  Yes, the film is based on a true story, but in contrast to many other film adaptations this kept its finger very closely on the pulse of reality, keeping in scenes that other directors would have cut, scenes that don’t really have much point as far as the plot goes, but which reflect the fact that life isn’t a directed plot.  Life doesn’t take place in a series of distinct scenes, there are things that happen in life that bear no relation to the ultimate direction of our purpose, and those silly little additions in the film were what made it more real.  It wasn’t telling a story, it was showing us a life.

I think it’s one of the few films I’ve seen that portray a lifestyle and an approach to relationship that I’d actually want to emulate.  Their lives weren’t perfect, far from it, and it was filled with normal everyday difficulties, but their love kept them together in a way that wasn’t forced or uncomfortable, but genuine and flawed.  That’s how relationships should be – not perfect, just genuine.  Being able to say sorry is one of the gifts of true relationship, contrary to one particular saying you may have heard.  And it’s my hope that Marley and Me is an inspiration to couples everywhere, that actually relationships can last a lifetime, maybe not the way you expected, but certainly in a way that’s sustainable.

So where does the dog come in?  Like a child, Marley underscored pretty much every aspect of their life, both in the good times and the bad, and became a genuine member of the family.  Even a very bad dog, a dog as bad as Marley, can be a very good dog to the family it comes to love.

My wife and I will be getting a dog.  And a cat.  And hopefully a couple of children too, God willing.  Not because those things will complete our relationship (they certainly won’t make it easier), but as a compliment to it.  And if we end up with none of them, or more besides, we’ll always have each other.  That, I guess, is what I love about Marley and Me – two people, irrespective of what they have or don’t have, will always have each other.

One might think, then, that such technical achievements would not be possible on a smaller scale.  Think again.  Having reclaimed my Lego a couple of weekends ago, I set about creating my own Tumbler.  I had seen on another web site that other people had had the same idea, creating some stunning reconstructions of the iconic vehicle.  But almost all had static front wheels, providing no steering, and only a few sported suspension.  True, it’s no easy task, and it took a lot of thinking and experimenting to get it right.  But I did it, and I am pleased to reveal images of my very own working model of the Tumbler, completely constructed of Lego.

Technically, the steering mechanism is by the most complicated part of the car.  Or should that be tank?  Whatever.  Each front wheel has its own steering mechanism, comprised of a transverse rack-and-pinion system linked up to a custom wheel bearing joint.  You can see a little of the mechanism in the photo below.  Not only do you have hardly any room in which to put all that mechanism, but it also has to be solid enough to support the weight of the rest of the vehicle.  With the offset of the wheel and the looseness in the bearing I actually had a problem with the camber of the wheels.  To resolve that I had to put some spacing at the top, effectively angling the whole wheel downwards to counteract the camber.

Alongside the complications of steering, the suspension system used in the Tumbler is quite unusual.  The wheel sits at the end of an arm, which pivots at its connection with the rest of the subframe, and it held in place by two small springs for extra rigidity.  The placement of those springs actually means a lot of spring force is needed, hence two springs on each arm rather than two; it’s all to do with turning forces and suchlike – the springs would have been more effective at a different angle, but then they wouldn’t look right.  Thankfully they just about do the job ok.

At the rear end I’m using a couple of enormous wheels.  The original Tumbler had two sets on each side, but since I didn’t have four wheels that size, and my big ones roughly equated to the same total size, I settled with those.  Those wheels on their own account for a fair proportion of the total weight of the car.  Again, independent suspension has been used, so that each wheel has its own springs, giving the car a stable feel in the corners.

The original Tumbler had a jet boost thingum at the back, between the rear wheels, which launched it across rivers (in theory).  Since I don’t have a Lego Jet Pack, I used that as a steering wheel, linking it to the mechanism at the front of the car.  I find that a more comfortable place to put steering mechanisms on Lego Technic models anyway, as it allows you to push and steer at the same time, more effectively than having the steering controlled from something on top of the car, as is preferred by the official Lego models.

The working chassis was brilliant.  It was light, agile, sturdy, and handled jumps and rough treatment with hardly a complaint.  I’ve put a video on YouTube demonstration some of the features.  Unfortunately, the bodywork that was added later made it all rather heavy, putting a greater strain on the suspension and in some cases hampering performance.  It certainly looks better than a bare chassis, but drop it too heavily and it’ll collide with the floor.  If I was building it again, I’d definitely make the suspension harder to compensate for the bodywork.  The front suspension particularly feels very soft now, and while it handles the occasional bump fine I wouldn’t want to be leaping it over ramps now!

It’s not perfect, but any means, but it’s not bad as a first attempt at a model on this scale.  The bodywork isn’t quite right, partly due to the limitations of the chassis itself and partly a lack of black panels!  I’m also not entirely satisfied with the steering mechanism.  Impressive as it is, I’m sure there is room for improvement.  I already have ideas for more streamlined versions, which would allow the arms to be lighter and thinner, but it’s a case of balancing that against maintaining rigidity and strength.  I would also redesign the central chassis to make it more structurally rigid and less likely to fall apart (at the moment the main part of the chassis is fine, but everything on the outside has very little to hold on to).  It would also be nice to put an engine in the back and link it to the rear wheels, but I expect that would need a fixed rear axle rather than the current setup.

Will I do another Tumbler?  Probably not for a while, if ever.  The only reason I was able to spend so long on this in the first place was because work wasn’t too busy, and Ellie was out at work all day and didn’t mind the lounge being taken over by my Lego.  Now that she’s back in her normal routine she’ll be back a little more often, so the Lego will probably go back in the garage until I can think up another excuse to play with it again.  The Tumbler will stay built though, and may even stay on display downstairs if I can find a space for it (doubtful, but you never know).

Pics of the bare chassis:

Pics of the finished model:

Accompanying YouTube videos:

• Lego Tumbler chassis
• Lego Tumbler finished

However, this was not supposed to be a film review, so I’ll move on.  My point was more along the lines of the interaction between famous people and us ‘normal’ people.  The film got me thinking about who the Queen actually is.  It may just be my warped perspective on life, but I seem to recall having always thought of such people as people, not just celebrities.  The Queen may be the Queen, but she’s also an old woman called Elizabeth, and while I’m not too fussed about meeting a monarch (as good as that may be for my ego), I would be intrigued to meet the lady behind the title.  What would it be like to have Elizabeth round for dinner?  For the sake of argument I’ll ignore the fact that she wouldn’t be allowed out without hoards of security guards, as they would no doubt get in the way of pleasant conversation.  In fact I think it would be quite delightful (and I don’t mean that in a posh, toffee-nosed way) to have tea with someone so different from me – that, after all, was why I got on so well with my friend Andy C, who played hiphop music at dangerously loud volumes and considered a mug to be clean if it had been briefly rinsed with cold water beforehand.  Elizabeth and I come from two very different worlds, and I suspect we would have much to chat about, finding out about how the other lives, what they find amusing, and how they prefer their tea.  Does the Queen prefer Earl Grey or PG Tips?  And does she take sugar?  These are the important details I’d love to find out.

I have to admit, I would probably be the sort of person who would, if possible, completely ignore the other person’s level of fame.  The way I see it, famous people are always famous, whether or not they are actually doing anything, or even if they are on the whole ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (Hilter was just as well-known as Churchill, after all).  Although I am in no way famous, I would hazard a guess that many famous people would actually savour a ‘normal’ conversation that didn’t involve reference to their best work yet, asking for an autograph or posing for a cheesy photograph.  A such, I wouldn’t be making a special effort to make the house spotless for the arrival of the Queen.  Sure, I’d nip round with the hoover, maybe tidy some of the junk in the lounge, but that’s about it.  After all, if someone like that is coming to see me, they’ll be wanting to see me, not an unusually prim version putting on a show for their benefit.  I would serve Elizabeth tea in a mug, since we don’t actually own any dainty china cups, and although I can offer a choice of PG or Earl Grey I wouldn’t be ashamed to offer orange squash as well.  Maybe that’s just me.

It reminded me actually of the time Rolf Harris went to Buckinham Palace to paint the Queen’s portrait.  I remember thinking at the time what a wonderful idea that was, mixing someone who was traditionally portrayed as serious and austere with someone wild, wacky, and downright hilarious.  I can just imagine their conversations.  At first, when Rolf was introduced, he would have bowed awkwardly and been very polite, and Elizabeth would have expressed how intrigued she was to have someone like himself paint her, trying to hide her nervousness at the prospect of what the resultant painting would look like.  Eventually Rolf would be set up and the painting would begin, and conversation would come and go, often revolving around Rolf’s work, the Queen mentioning how she loved his TV shows, and Rolf getting embarrassed at realising she had been watching him making a fool of himself.  In the end they would both end up laughing and giggling together, the painting would take a little longer to finish than expected due to Rolf’s sidetracking and drawing little cartoons which Elizabeth would giggle at and keep for a rainy day.  The result would be a painting full of life, zest, and humanity.  Yes, she was smiling in the painting.  Good for her.

Of course all that is pure conjecture, I have no idea how it went because I wasn’t there, but I can dream.  But when it comes down to it, the fantasy revolves around these iconic figures being normal people with emotions, nerves, feelings, hormones, pet hates and cute idiosyncrasies.  They are not another breed, they are not special, they are just well-known.  In fact, Alex recently posted a link to Stephen Fry’s blog (very sensibly also using WordPress – good man), in which he writes a blog essay (or ‘blessay’, as he puts it) about the nature of fame, which I found to be a fascinating insight into that most public of lifestyles.  If you have a moment or several, do have a read.  Be warned though, it may be lighthearted and witty in Fry’s usual tone, but it’s not exactly succinct.  It nevertheless brings to light exactly the point I have been making, that the famous are in fact real people, and often would quite like to be treated as such.  Maybe not all the time, otherwise there would be no benefit to fame whatsoever, but just ever so often it would be nice to be treated with respect, shown some kindness and possibly even affection.

I would love to sit down and listen to a Goon Show with the Queen.  I’m sure she’d love that.  It would also be rather nice to have Stephen Fry come round for a cup of tea at some point.  If anyone happens to know either of them, feel free to point them in my direction, I’ll put the kettle on…

Without giving away any of the plot (which is pretty much as limited as I had expected), I can tell you that the graphics are truly amazing.  There is so much going on in the transformation process, so many moving parts, so many mechanical bits, so many reflective panels, so many complex shadows, and it’s all done beautifully.  I might even go as far as flawless.  The acting is pretty good too, considering they would have been acting against blue screens half the time.

Since then I’ve actually been watching a load of old cartoon episodes of the original Transformers series on YouTube, and they’re absolutely classic!  A lot of the original characters have thankfully made it into the film, and it’s good to see how much has been kept faithful.

This afternoon AM and I got talked about the film again, and the topic came up of the top 1000 films to see before you die, as reported in the Guardian.  I felt compelled to look at the list, and found to my surprise that I had seen at least 84 of them!  More than I had expected.  And not far behind AM, which was even more of a surprise.  I’ve also realised that when I move my office to our new house I won’t have a computer here to play with in the evenings, which means I shall probably end up borrowing Ellie’s DVD collection…

Already our new Prime Minister has expressed desires to make drastic changes to our government, shaking everything up, doing things differently, taking on the challenges and fixing all our problems. That in itself causes me some concern. I remember distinctly when I was running for Vice President of the University of Essex Christian Union, and in the grilling session before the vote I was asked what I would do as VP – I didn’t know, so just said hesitantly that I had some changes up my sleeve. To my surprise, some people were slightly taken aback at the thought of their CU being changed beyond recognition, and I realised that what people wanted wasn’t radical change but a gradual smoothing over of the cracks. Now, I realise that Prime Minister of a country is significantly different to VP of a CU, but Gordon Brown’s words still prompted me to doubt. On the one hand he does have to come across as assertive and proactive, but I want to trust that he will achieve his goals without sacrificing the good parts of our way of life.

In fact, trust is one of the big issues I think he will have to tackle. Regardless of his policies, he has to assure the public that he knows what he is doing and that he is a real person. For my liking he just doesn’t look friendly enough. I know ‘friendly’ isn’t really something that our Prime Ministers have had until Tony Blair (I wouldn’t call Margaret Thatcher or John Major the sort of people I’d like to invite round for dinner), but to my mind Tony’s smile and humanity were more encouraging to me than any of his policies. Some may call that a shallow view of politics, and they’re probably right, but Gordon Brown isn’t going to be able to win over the public with a smile and a joke – he’s going to have to work really hard if he plans to stick around. His eyes are too narrow, his hair too grey. Who knows what hides behind that facade?

It doesn’t help that when watching Gordon Brown’s speech as he addressed the public for the first time as Prime Minister I couldn’t help but think of The Master from Doctor Who, who made a similar speech a couple fo weeks ago – he had the advantage of a smile that people trusted, and yet he still brought destruction on the earth. The Master promised healing to a sick country, Gordon Brown promised to fix the NHS. “And now let the work of change begin” – was that the Master or the PM? Could have been either… Do you trust your new Prime Minister? I certainly don’t remember voting him in…

In the evening myself and several friends all met up at the cinema in town to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was awesome! I had heard some less than favourable reviews, but I was happily surprised to find that the final chapter in the Pirates trilogy was superb! There were some classic lines, some intricate and complex plot devices, some excellent special effects, and some spectacular stunts too. I’ve not laughed so hard in a long time! Admittedly I usually laugh a lot at the cinema, more than most people around me, but this was incredibly funny – Captain Jack Sparrow was crazy as always and Elizabeth Swan was very strong in character, even Will Turner was a little less wet than usual!

I won’t divulge too much of the plot though, I’ll let you go and enjoy it for yourselves…