I'm Going on Holiday!

The last couple of day's have been really crap. Been writing a ridiculously pointless essay for college that has to be handed in while I'm away. But it's done now! So, this time tomorrow I'll be flying to Cyprus to spend 7 days lying on the beach, reading books and listening to my ipod. I can't wait! Feels like ages since I had a proper holiday (it's actually about two years since I last had a beach holiday like this) so I can't wait to do nothing. I love the feeling of going away to another country, it's like you get to leave yourself behind for a week and just stop.

When I get back to England I'm heading straight to Sheffield for my Sister's wedding, which feels a bit strange and grown up for my little sister. So I'll post again when I can. Until then, hope everyone has a great few days just spare a thought for me on the beach every so often.

The Star Wars Effect

In 1982 I was 4 years old and my Dad took me to the cinema for the first time...

[fade out to me as an 8 year old queing at a cinema in Paignton]
I didn’t know why, but I was excited. I was stood in a line with my Dad who said we were going to watch a film. I wasn’t sure what that was, but I thought it was something to do with the TV. I was sill excited about the zoo we’d been to the day before. I was carrying a plastic lion with me everywhere. At that point I was going to grow up and be a vet so I could look after the big, scary animals (I wasn’t interested in the cute ones or the reptiles, just the ones that could eat you) so I could prove how brave I was. As the queue started to move Dad told me AGAIN that I had to behave and be quiet if we were going to see this film. This film was ‘"Return of the Jedi"; and as we queued my Dad started to tell me the back-story to the film (my Dad’s a huge film geek too), he told me about the Jedi and about Luke and Ben. Han Solo and Princess Leia. Storm Troopers and x-wings. By the time we were let in I was already excited, when I saw the size of the TV, my mind just couldn’t deal with it. But then the film started and that big TV, the cinema screen, became my first window into another world. Everything looked so REAL (not like the CG we get now) and through those images and sound, but most of all through that story, it made me believe that incredible things were possible. That I could move things with the power of the force. That other worlds existed. That good would always beat evil...
[fade back to the present]

Star Wars is directly responsible for the birth of my now overly active, often warped and weird imagination. Of course, other things influences me in this way, like when I began to read books for the first time and I read ‘Danny the Champion of the World’ or the first time I really listened to the Beatles, but Star Wars started it all. And on Thursay morning, 23 years later I watched the last new Star Wars film I'll ever see. So it was with a mixture of joy and sadness that I sat in the cinema at 12:35 in the morning. But as the words "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away..." appeared on the screen, and the music started, I was just a young kid again watching the thing that I loved.

The film itself was really good. MUCH better than the other two prequels. I got to see the fall of Annakin as he became Darth Vader. I saw Luke and Leia's birth. I watched Chewbacca help save Yoda from the Jedi Massacre. Sure there were problems with it. But it was a Star Wars film, so part of me was always going to love it (I even secretly love episode's 1 and 2, even though I know they're relatively crap).

But the best thing about this film happened today while I was sat in my favourite coffee shop on Rose Street. It was fairly busy and as I sat there with my coffee, reading my paper, a man and his son sat next to me. The son (who's name was Jack) was bouncing up and down with excitement holding a C3PO toy. He told me that he'd just been to see Star Wars with his Dad. He told me the story of that film and that it was the first time he'd been to the cinema. That his Dad was going to let him watch the old films now. He talked to me non-stop for 30 minutes about Star Wars while his Dad was using the internet. It was like watching myself 20 years ago and when he left I had a huge smile on my face, happy that Star Wars still has the power to excite and let kids take their first step into a larger world.

7 Days Later...

I've been really uninspired to write anything this last week. Not really sure why since it's been neither the dullest of weeks or the busiest of weeks, but there you go. I'm also slightly sleep deprived at the moment. This isn't due to one of my occasional bouts of insomnia, but because I've been lent seies 3 of 24 to watch on dvd. If you've ever watched a series of 24 then you'll know it's one of those prgrammes that always end in a place where you want to know what happens next, so you end up saying "I'll just watch one more episode" to yourself until you realise you've watched all the episodes on that disc. It is actually very good and very well written, so it's worth watching.

Not really done anything interesting this week. Except that I've got tickets for the midnight showing of episode 3 on Thursday (this time tomorrow night!!!) so I've been increasingly looking forward to that the more I read the positive reviews people like Kevin Smith and Simon Pegg are giving it, but I'm sure I'll be writing about that on Thursday so I won't go into that now.

Other than that, a fairly normal week. Had a good night on Friday playing poker with some friends. Bought (though due to 24 not got round to watching) Garden State on dvd. Today, I bought some new shorts for my impending Cypriot holiday and finally used the live chat (telephone for free over the internet) option on ichat with Jo in the states, which was really cool. Even if she was watching 'not another teen movie' for which there's no excuse.

Right, got to go to bed now. Got the last four episodes of 24 to watch, and the last new Star Wars film I'll ever see to look forward too.

What If...?

Here's an occasionally fun, usually dangerous game. Especially if you're sat on your own, in a park, on a sunny day, listening to radiohead having been in the pub for a long lunch.
This is how you play.
You sit and think through all the decisions you've made, you know, when you decided to move, when you chickened out of telling that girl (or bloke) how you feel, or left it too late to tell her, when you decieded to commit to being a Christian, you know, those major life decisions (or lack of).
Then you imagine where you'd be if you'd actually made a different decision.
Like I say, it can be fun, but if you're like me, it can get kind of depressing too, so play with care.

A tired week and a General Election.

Sorry it's been a long time since I posted anything, was away this last weekend at Roots so got back home on Monday evening knackered and haven't really caught up properly since, until today when I've been lying in bet til now (4:05 in the afternoon) sleeping and watching the West Wing. ALthough staying up to 5:00 on Thursday night to watch the general election results come in probably didn't help.

So Labour are back in for a third term, but with a substatially reduced majority. At the momemt it's down to 65 with one constituency still waiting to declare. I'm actually quite plesed about this. I think the reduction in the majority means that Tony Blair is going to have to pay alot more attention to his backbenchers who are generally more to the left than he is and so that can only be a good thing.

The tories did do ok in the end, although I'd be interested to see how much of the voting was decided on peoples attitudes to Tony Blair rather than either their local MP's or the parties manafestos. I think when Tony Blair does decide to leave and (hopefully) Gordon Brown takes over there's a good chance that, especially if the Tories are once again trying to reinvent themselves as the same thing under a new leader, there'll be a swing back to Labour. I just hope and pray that we'll see sensible, strong, compassionate goeverning from the Labout Party over the next few years. No more wars, and hopefully a very positive G8 in July.

And very quickly, I just had another look over the last post, and realised how ludicrously, stupidly, geekily long it was, so I thought I'd summarise it here quickly:
I really like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.