Banked Holiday
8 May

Well, it didn't feel much like a Bank Holiday - aside from the fact that it rained.

Because Mondays are my normal day off, I tend to dislike the fact that the world and its granny share my privilege for a day. Anyhow, as it happened, I ventured out very little. Partially this was to do with the inclement weather. Partially it was to do with being wedded to my computer.

Even though the circumstances of my recent car crash are uncontested, I have had a number of different forms to complete. Each one asks for the same information. Describe the crash. Draw a plan of the crash. Describe your injuries. I am sure that there is some underlying condition where the various parties look at all these separate statements and compare and contrast them looking for loopholes in the variances of language used in order to be able to avoid payment.

I've taken not to answering the questions on the forms. Instead, I have produced a word-processed statement which I shall add to as times passes. On the forms, I simply write - see attached statement. That way the words remain the same whoever asks the question.

The other activity which kept me at the computer was preparing for a commercial training course on Microsoft Project later in the week. I've been so bogged down with teaching computer maintenance to unemployed people that I'd almost forgotten what it's like to plan training sessions for intelligent adults who want to learn.

I also managed some rest and relaxation.

For example, I read Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. He wrote Cloud Atlas which I read and thoroughly enjoyed two years ago. After the success of reading a second novel by Mark Haddon (A Spot of Bother), I was hopeful that this would also turn out to be OK. It was. Just not as OK as Mark Haddon's. It's a story of family life and growing up in the 80s. It's about rites of passage and about being 14. It's about school and power and peer group pressure and not understanding and adults. And it's good at what it does. And it's good to read an author doing something different in a second book. It's just not as good as I had hoped it might be.

On Sunday night we took ourselves off to the Plaza cinema to see the first blockbuster of the year, Spiderman 3. I had enjoyed Spiderman and had really enjoyed Spiderman 2 so I was looking forwards to this threequel. The cinema was full of young people with their fathers (or male guardians) and, to their credit, the cinema was quiet and ruly throughout. As for the film, well it succeeded in the spectacle stakes. But it went the way of most Hollywood follow-ons. In trying to cap the previous successes, there was just more of everything and more meant less. Cut out one super-villain; cut out one plot thread; reduce the film by 20-25 minutes in length and it would be really good. As it is, it is competent and OK. I wouldn't want to see another Spidie film on the big screen. The original cast are now just beginning to show their age as well.

It was sort of the same but different with Pedro Almodóvar's Volver. After the mad excess and success of Bad Education, this felt like a different type of director's film. Almodóvar seems to have two different types of blood running in his veins. His heightened, magical reality blood and his more down-to-earth and realistic blood. Volver came from the latter font. There's nothing about it that I can fault. It's just that I wanted something with a little more brio.