Easy Easter
13 April

Easter passed nicely and warmly. We spent most of the time out in the back garden did Ross and I.

We had seen Ross's parents the previous weekend. My parents were down in Epsom staying with my sister Linda. We had the time to ourselves.

And the first thing to say is that the weather was gorgeous. It must have been one of the sunniest, mildest Easters that I can remember. We'd intended to do decorating after the work on the bedroom ceilings but it was far too nice to stay indoors and, in this country, traditionally at least, it is best to take advantage of whatever sun is going.

We spent most of Good Friday out in the back garden clearing and weeding and trimming (Ross manicured the hebes). I'd wanted to listen to the start of the Classic FM Hall of Fame but a mix up in the availability of extension leads put paid to that for most of the time.

Come Good Friday night, we settled down to watch a DVD of Superman Returns, courtesy of the local library service. Ross says that he thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt that it was all so so. It was worth the £1.50 we gave to Sefton Council but probably not the £8.00 we might have given to the Plaza cinema. Like Batman Begins, it suffered from having a cinematic back history and a lack of narrative purpose in re-establishing itself.

Ross is easing through the tail end of a cold at present. So, we are probably doing even less than we might have done. I'm certainly sensing a touch of peeve creeping in. I seem to be the only one doing anything and the only one at all concerned with decorating the bedrooms. Probably unfair. But it is how I feel.

The next few days continued much as the first. We ate well, slept well, did some more work about the house. Not a lot of intimacy though it must be said.

Television currently offers few rewards. Dr Who is back and has settled into a generally high standard of entertainment. Prison Break continues but is finding life on the run outside of the enclosed prison environment difficult. Some of the plot shifts beggar credulity and character development. I'm not sure that even Wentworth Miller can keep me enthralled. Lost has long since been a lost cause.

Life on Mars finished its second and final series immediately after Easter. For some reason, I totally missed out on the first series which was to do with detective Sam Tyler finding himself back in the 1970s after a car accident - was he mad, in a coma or an unwilling time traveller.

Well, it turned out that it was all to do with a tumor in his brain. However, having been cured and having returned to the present, he opted for death or disablement in order to return to his fictive life in the earlier decade.

John Simm and Philip Glenister were the main protagonists and the dialogue crackled with 1970s pre-politically correct invective. I guess that part of the point of the series was to check just how far we have come in thirty years on issues like racial awareness and Irish Nationalism.

And it was clever to do that whilst still wallowing in a nostalgia for the decade that had no taste. I wish I'd seen the first series because many people say that it was better. Still, it was worth four stars.

It was strange being back at work.

Many of the other teams were depleted as people took annual leave. Ours wasn't. We run a 51 week a year operation - the whole building closes between Christmas and New Year. We have customers who need us to be their to provide them with a service. Our work does not let up - ever. And I'm increasingly aware that this is something that the broader mass of my colleagues simply do not understand.

On Thursday night, we made one of our jaunts out to the Plaza cinema to see Sunshine, the new film from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. This is the crew who brought us The Beach and 28 Days Later. It also stars Cillian Murphy who was in 28 Days Later and seems to have been in everything else recently - viz Red Eye, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Batman Begins and Breakfast on Pluto. What else can I say. Well, it was effective and I enjoyed sitting through it. But then it resembled many sci fi classics, such as 2001, Solaris and Alien, so it should have been difficult to dislike. I liked the spectacle but didn't totally engage so three stars is all I can manage.

I've also been reading. Aberystwyth Mon Amour is one of a number of books that I have bought on the off chance from the local Oxfam shop. Well, it's much cheaper than buying them new and they will always go back to earn the charity a little more money. I'd also heard about the series on one of the Radio 4 book programmes.

Basically, it transfers the Philip Chandler hard-nosed Los Angeles detective genre to little Aberystwyth on the coast of Cardigan Bay. Well, it's interesting and there are now four or five books in the series so I assume that many people have really cottoned onto the joke. I confess that I found it heavy going and that the joke wore a little thin by about page 50 out of 250. So, I don't feel like giving it more than two stars.