Archives: Film

Today is the first day in a long, long time that I can remember not having to set an alarm or otherwise being awake before a sensible hour and it’s wonderfully delightful. I rouse around 10.30am and roll out of bed, leaving K to doze a bit while I catch up on the blog.

I head to the loo and to make coffee and discover that K’s been awake for over an hour and has been sat in bed reading, having heard the typing and thought I was busy writing proper stuff (rather than a pointless blog). I feel bad, as we could have had a nice lie in together, so I head to the kitchen, make us a tea and a coffee and then grab K’s laptop from the living room and we settle into the bed to watch the ITV-Catchup of Ben Shepard’s new Krypton Factor re-do.

It’s actually pretty similar to the old one and just as entertaining, although I’m annoyed that they’ve dropped the flight-simulator round from it in favour of an extended obstacle course. I still can’t do most of the tasks – at least the mental ones you can do from the sofa. I’m sure I’d rock at the ones you can’t try from home.

Once we’ve watched that and a couple of other bits and pieces, we drag ourselves out of bed and get showered and dressed to pop over to Mum & Dad’s to catch the football – Saints playing Man Utd on Setanta.

Sadly, it’s not the world’s most legendary game. An upset was never really on the cards, but we acquitted ourselves well given the fact that we had a man contentiously (although, I argued rightly) sent off and a penalty that really, truly wasn’t given against us, too. 3-0 is by no means an embarrassment to the kids who make up the modern Saints team, but it’s still disappointing.

After the footie we hang around for a dinner party with some of the ‘rents friends, which is really nice as I’ve not seen many of them for quite a while.

While Mum’s getting ready to serve, we get a call from Tim, which brightens everyone’s mood, then we sit down to eat and by the end of the meal (and the wine) the discussion is getting deeper and deeper into the politics of Afghanistan, America, the UK and the Taliban and everyone’s inter-relationships with Pakistan and other places.

I feel a bit out of my depth, as I often do in political discussions, but I still wade in with my opinions, mostly gleaned from things I’ve heard through other people, particularly my bro. It’s interesting how people’s views can differ so vastly and it just served to highlight the fact that none of us really know what’s going on over there.

We head off about 9.30, on the hunt for an early night. We drop one of Mum’s friends home on our way past, drive through a massive flood which seemed entirely out of keeping with the current amounts of rainfall, then get home, jump into comfy clothes and sit in front of The Recruit on TV for a while, until I’m too tired to stay awake and I call it a night.

We rouse ourselves from slumber around half-10 and wake ourselves up, throw on some clothes and head out to the flicks to catch Inkheart, which is now in its last week in cinemas, if the frequency of timings are anything to go by (which is usually is).

It’s a great little film, I guessing far-underrated from it’s lack of fanfare, but if I’d seen it earlier I’d be encouraging everyone I could to go see it. Technically it’s a kids film, but is much more entertaining than any of the Harry Potters and has a cast to rival the series, too, with Brendan Fraser taking the lead in a not-rubbish kids film for once, joined and backed up by an unbelievable array of top talent including Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Paul Bettany and the always-immaculately brilliant Andy Serkis, who deserves to be much more well-known than is.

The tale is a classic modern fairytale of “Silvertongues” – people who, when they read words from books aloud make the characters and images from the page come to life in the real world.

It’s proper fairytale stuff, too, all adventure and danger, scares and baddies you could almost boo at, but all pulled off with a deft touch which steers the cast away from the usual, over-the-top ham into more natural but enjoyable performances.

It’s also pitched perfectly for all audiences – there’s mystery and suspense for the girls, monsters and adventure for the boys and there’s enough of everything in there, artfully pulled off, to keep any adults in it with their kids or even – as in our case – on their own. It’s a true Christmas cracker and I wish I’d seen it earlier so that a) I could see it again and b) tell everyone to go and see it.

When we get out of the flick, I take K over to my ‘rents to peep out the photo collections still strewn on the table and we go through various packets of photos, me filling K in on all the cute little-me stories as well as the really-grumpy me stories and pics.

Mum and Dad get home from golf and tell me I have boxes upstairs from the loft to go through, so K and I hit the upstairs study-cum-storeroom and settle into box-exploring, which doesn’t take very long as we rapidly discover that all my boxes have obviously been gone-through when I moved out and I’d cleared the house of all my rubbish, chuck the keepers up in the loft in the very boxes that have just been retrieved. We move a bit of stuff between boxes and empty one that’s falling apart before calling it a day and heading home.

We get back and for the first time since Christmas Eve I jump on my computer and check up email. Disappointingly, there’s nothing remotely interesting there at all, so I’m through it very quickly.

I head into the kitchen and wash up some mugs as well as rinsing our steamer through so I can use it. I get on with cooking a proper, home-cooked meal for the first time in a good couple of weeks, prepping some roasties and chicken, then chopping veg up. I cook it all up and serve to a tired but appreciative K.

I wash up and we settle onto the sofa to watch The Wizard of Oz, a film I’ve only ever seen bits and pieces of. I’m carrying another wapping headache, though and after less than an hour I can’t deal with it any more and have to call it quits.

We hit the sack and I fall asleep in a hurry, but forget as I do so that falling asleep before 10pm means I always wake up around 11-12 and can’t sleep again, which is exactly what I do.

I get up and chuck some random late-night TV on while I sit and update my blog from Christmas most of the night, then throw on Rocky Balboa when I’m done, watching through the extras before putting the feature on.

New Year’s Day starts with an alarm call at 8.30 before I decide that actually I don’t really need to do what I was planning on doing, so I turn it off and sleep again.

I wake for real around 11 and grab some grub and take my tac before showering and dressing. I’ve got a cracking headache, which is a little weird as I’m fairly sure I didn’t drink that much.

I sit and chill for a while with K, then head off to the cinema to catch both parts of Steven Soderbergh’s new 2-part Che Guevara biopic.

It’s an amazing, epic, 4-hour film with a 15 minute intermission in the middle. The cast is all great although it is doubtful whether anyone will notice anything beyond Benecio Del Toro masterful incarnation as the Argentinian.

My only gripe is with the second part of the film which is, ironically, the part I enjoyed the most of the two, when there is a little more “star” casting, including Joaquim de Almeida and Franke Potente, neither of whom anyone else may have heard of, but they really dragged me out of a picture which has cast largely unknowns to people the Guerilla world. The worst of all, though, is a completely incongruous and potentially ruinous cameo from Matt Damon.

I know Steven Soderbergh and his love fro slipping his friends into his films and often it makes no difference, or actually serves to emphasise the comedy of a moment or simpy provide an amusing distraction. In a film as grounded and reality-based as this, however, it does nothing to serve the story and only helps to completely remove the viewer from the experience by forcing them to wonder if that really is Matt Damon playing a Spanish-speaking German priest. Silly and pointless.

Still, as a whole the two pics are utterly remarkable, even more notable for the speed with which is was shot and released, in time for the 50th Anniversary of the sucessful Cuban revolution that saw Castro’s rise to power.

Part One deals with that revolution itself, the initial beginnings through to the near-mythical battle of Santa Clara when power was finally rested from the Batista Government.

Part Two deals with Che’s failure to repeat the victory when he tried to take the revolution into Latin America via Bolivia, where he would eventually meet his untimely (or extremely timely, depending on your view, I suppose) death.

The first part cuts brilliantly between a “modern day” interview in New York on the eve of Che’s speech to the UN about the revolution in 1964, looking back on his view of the events in the revolution, meaning that Che himself sets his own story in context as we watch the flashbacks to the revolution itself. It seemed a little hackneyed to me – an over-used storytelling device designed to showcase the fact that Soderbergh can distinguish two ears with different camera work and visual styles, something we already know he can do masterfully from Traffic. As the film wears on, though, and as we edged into territory I didn’t have knowledge of, having a narrator, albeit a potentially biased one, really helped solidify the impact of what the revolutionaries were trying to do and what their philosophy was.

The second part is much more linear in structure, covering just his time in Bolivia from his arrival and assimilation into the just-beginning revolutionary movement, to the start of the failed revolution itself and his journey from there to his death in 1967. It’s a more coherent “war” film that shows much more clearly the dangers that Che and his men faced as members of a revolution doomed to fail largely thanks to the interference of the US Government to prevent any further anti-American dictators seizing power and turning against them as Cuba had.

I love Steven Soderbergh’s films and I’d sit through pretty much anything he does (except, maybe, Ocean’s 12 again), and I’m aware that my bias may well colour my judgement on this one, but I still think it’s a remarkable piece of contemporary filmmaking which stands a very good chance of becoming a defining portrait of one of the greatest legends (and urban legends) of the modern age.

After the flick I drop a friend off at theirs before heading to Kati’s Bro 2.2’s open house party, where I find all the gusts huddled round the Wii in the living room. I’m not there for long before I’m whisked outside by new Nephew to see his new bike – a 125cc scrambler that he’s immensely proud of and which we sit in the cold and tinker with for half-an-hour or so before saving our freezing butts and succumbing to the Wii.

I still have a huge headache, which is concerning me, as it seems like more than a hangover which, when I do get them, usually last no longer than an hour or however long it takes me to rehydrate myself. When we leave Bro’s I discover that K’s not feeling good either, so we wonder if it’s something we’ve eaten as opposed to the drink (K definitely didn’t drink a lot) or maybe just exhaustion from all that we’ve been getting up to.

We swing by KFC on the way home to grab some food as we’ve not got anything in, then head home and crash out on the sofa. I make a few phone calls to pass on my bro’s thanks to everyone for his Chrimbo pressies, then we settle in front of the 2-hour special Jonathan Creek, a show we both used to be addicted to as kids, only to find that it wasn’t near as good as it used to be (always the way) before calling it a night.

I wake up later than I have for a while at around 10am and realise I need to take my tac, so head downstairs, where I grab a bite and my tabs before running a cup of tea up to the still-snoozing K.

I shower and dress and start packing up as K comes to life, then we head down and wave off Mum and Dad who are heading off as fast as they can, since they’re back to a party this evening.

Before we head off, I slip my friend’s soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated short film, Gone Fishing into the family Blu-Ray player and head upstairs to watch it projected on the big screen in the cinema room. Although I got a real kick out of it on the small screen the 3 other times I’ve seen it, watching the 35mm print-made DVD with full digital sound ramps it up to another level.

I’ve honestly never seen a short film so accomplished in its technical efficiency, story-telling or sheer emotional impact. If you’re at all interested in film, I urge you to go here and pick yourself up a copy. You’ll probably know how much an Oscar campaign can cost to run, even for a short, and every penny made from these DVD sales goes towards the Oscar run which concludes in February at the ceremony itself. Please, please support this amazing, home-grown filmmaker with a true passion, talent and cutting edge in his field. He’s been a great support to me over the last 18 months and I’d love to repay him by giving him a bigger and better war-chest for the final push of his campaign.

The trailer, if you want to know a bit more about the flick, is here, for those of you who are interested. And for those of you who don’t understand a trailer for a short film, let me assure you this is nothing like the whole story – you really have to see the whole thing.

Once we’ve peeped Fishing out, we grab our bags, load the car and head off, making a quick detour through Ipswich to visit my Nana’s grave. I barely knew my Nana, my Mum’s mum, as she died when I was 3, but from the stories I’ve heard tell she was a remarkable woman. In fact, when I was a baby and in obvious (but then-inexplicable) pain, she was the only person who could quieten me down. I like to think that had she stayed around she’d have been proud of me and what I’ve done – and started to do – with my life and I hope that she smiles down on me from her lofty perch.

Once we’d say a hello and Happy Christmas to Nana, we jump back in the car and head back to MK and home to see it in daylight for the first time in nearly a week.

We head to Tesco to pick up a few essentials, then hit the flat and unload the car. We were planning on heading out to catch Australia tonight, but based on the fact that we’re both shattered and the film runs close to 3 hours, we change our call and opt for a night in instead. We throw on Jersey Girl and kick back on the sofa. As soon as the flick’s done, we’re straight off to bed and we both pass out pretty quickly.

Don’t worry – I’m not about to spend another 500 words harping on about how brilliant the world is and everything that’s in it and how great my life is and how I love everything I can do that I couldn’t do before (I’ll probably get back to that tomorrow…).

No, this post is about the movie of the same name, the 1947 Frank Capra classic with James Stewart and that lady that K tells me went on to be in Oklahoma!

Our local Cineworld, despite having been kitted out with state-of-the-art digital technology as part of a Government scheme which was supposed to see more and more independent films hit the high-street, has a pretty poor record on showing anything that’s not a blockbuster.  So it was not only very refreshing, but also amazingly fulfilling to be able to go and see – for my first every viewing of the film – It’s A Wonderful Life on the big screen.

The flick is one that K likes to watch every Christmas without fail – it’s a perennial favourite of hers.  Last year she introduced it to my family, but over-dosing on immuno-suppressants as I was this time last year, I was upstairs trying to sleep and not throw up at the time.

So when we both heard that Cineworld was screening it, we knew we had to go.

The delightful thing about old films is how they take their time in telling their story.  They’re happy to wander and meander and see where they get to before the main bits kick in and they’re happy to settle for periods on minor details which nowadays would be incredibly plot-specific, but then were simply interesting things they wanted to show.

That’s also partially their downfall, though, too.  For no matter how much I want to watch some classic movies, I still find myself getting fidgety if I’m in an environment with lots of other things going on.  If I’m going to watch an old film, I need to be able to turn off my phone, close the curtains, turn the lights off and focus 100% on the screen and let myself get sucked right in.  It’s increasingly hard to do so in the modern world, though, so I fear I’ve not seen as many classics as I should have for such a profound movie lover.

It’s A Wonderful Life had all the elements to be a really disappointing film.  After all, how often have you heard someone rave about a movie for days on end and then when you see it there’s nothing there to back it up, or maybe it’s just been over-hyped in your mind.  This, however, was everything K said it was and more.  Clever, funny, emotional and kind-hearted, it’s the very definition of a feel-good Christmas movie, but not in the modern sense of garish colours and broad comedy – this is a movie to get swallowed up in and one which leaves you wishing you lived in the age when a man wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without a hat to tip to the ladies.  When women wore nothing that wasn’t immaculate and beautiful and when Hollywood was unafraid of the soft-focus close-up.

If Cineworld don’t have it back again next year, I swear I’m going to launch a sit-down protest in their popcorn machine.

At this very moment right now, I was supposed to be standing on a sunny but slightly chilly street in the middle of Bletchley shooting my first short film as a director since 2003.  Instead, I’m sitting at home in a T-shirt (and jeans, you mucky-minded fellows) and writing this.

The course of true love never did run smooth, someone once kind of wrote (gotta hate people who paraphrase the greats, haven’t you?), and the course of navigating my way to and through my first love – film – is proving exceedingly bumpy.

The film that was scheduled for this weekend is a script I’m really proud of that I’m confident I can turn into a brilliant little film.  Sadly, although it’s been in the pipeline for months, it all fell-apart mid-week when the actress playing one of the two leads (in fact, one of the two parts) pulled out due to commitments early next week.

I spent a furious few days scrabbling around trying to find a replacement before, in a phone call with the producer on Thursday night, finally giving up the ghost and conceding that we’re better off to postpone the shoot until we can find the right girl, not just any girl, to fill the role.

It has caused me a lot of pain over the last couple of days to come so close to shooting and then see it slip away, but at least I’d not spent any money on it.  I’m in a difficult kind of limbo right now where I know in myself that I have the talent to direct, but I also know that to all appearances outside my own head I have nothing at all to show for it.  Let’s face it, no one wants to give a job to someone who has nothing to demonstrate that they are capable in any way whatsoever.  No matter how much I bullsh*t or try to talk my way through things, without demonstrable evidence to show people, there’s no reason for anyone to have any confidence in me.

Which is why it was so important to me to get at least this first short under my belt and then move on to other things.  Sadly, that’s not to be, for now.

I’ve spent a good couple of days moping about this now, but yesterday I managed to pick myself up and start looking at the other projects I’ve got going, which had somewhat fallen by the wayside in the build up to the One Under shoot.  This succeeded at least in shifting my brain from mope-mode to active-mode, which is always a good thing.

Then a funny thing happened.  Feeling restless and couped up this morning, I wandered down to the corner Tesco to pick up some bits and pieces (milk for tea being the most important) and as I was walking back up the hill to the flat, I flashed back to the time back in January/February when I first walked down to the shop having recently returned home from hospital and then my parents’ and discovering the true capabilities of my new puffers.

Walking back up the hill today was immeasurably easier and less hard work than that time all those months ago and it served to show me – and remind me – just how far I’ve come in the last 12 months.

Sure, I’ve not managed to make a film in my first 12 months, as had been my hope, but far from being the enormous downer that I’d raised it up to be, I realised that with the new lungs I’ve got and the new chance at life I’m enjoying, I need to focus on the bigger picture just as much.  To never lose site of the fact that this time last year I wasn’t even well enough to be considering making a film, let alone being disappointed that it all fell through at the last minute.

Filmmaking is undoubtedly important to me and it’s 100% what I want to do with myself.  There will be more opportunities to come, at first of my own making and then, hopefully, at the behest of others who recognise what I’m capable of.  Until then, it’s just a case of sitting back and thanking God for the gift I’ve been given and the life I can lead now.

The choices are all mine right now, and that includes my attitude.  So away with the moping and welcome the joy of expectation.

Today marked the start of something more than exciting for me.  Last week, Live Life Then Give Life invested in a new media production package of professional equipment with which to document all the activities we’re involved in, as well a creating short films and videos to play at events and talks being given by any of the trustees or advocates.

Today one of our advocates, the irrepressable Nelly Shah, orgnised one of the 108 World’s Biggest Walks that took place at the same exact time (12noon GMT) in 18 countries over 5 continents.  Emily and I headed down (well, she came up) to Stanmore in Middlesex (just off J4 of the M1) to join her and her family on their 5km walk around Stanmore and Edgeware to raise awareness of organ donation and the chronic shortage of donors, particularly in the black and Asian communities.  Nelly, who’s originally from Kenya, has now been waiting for five-and-a-half years simply because of the dificulty of matching her tissue type with such a small pool of donors.

I took our equipment down and shot my first professional documentary pieces, as well as several interviews, which will go into an awareness-raising, high-impact video package for a talk Emily’s giving next weekend to an audience of over 2000 people from the Tamil community.

It was unbelievably exciting and I’m so amazingly pleased to have been given the opportunity to do this by the guys at Live Life Then Give Life who have placed an enormous amount of trust in me to deliver high-quality product to help the charity achieve its objects.

Of course, that’s only half the task, I now have to assemble the footage into usable pieces – one for the website to promote the walk and one, longer, piece for the talk DVD, which will also include an interview with two parents who have recently lost their 15-month-old son for want of a liver and small bowel.

It has to be said that I do feel a certain amount of pressure to deliver now, as it was me who spent a lot of time and energy researching the equipment and talking to the other trustees about the benefits and pluses of investing in the camera and sound package.  But, to be honest, I’m actually quite enjoying the pressure as it’s been a while since I actually had any pressure on me to achieve anything at all, so it’s nice to have a target.

Things are picking up pretty fast now, as I move further and further towards the world of work.  Today I went down to Bletchley train station to do a location scout for the short film I’m shooting in just 2 weeks’ time.  It’s unbelievably exciting to be actually preparing to do something for real that I’ve been imagining myself doing all through my time on the list and before, when I was too ill to consider actually getting on and doing it.

Now, more than ever, I’m aware that filmmaking is 100% what I want to do and to earn money doing it is my ultimate goal.  The next few weeks are going to be a kind of make-or-break time for me when I will discover whether I am actually capable enough to pull it off, or if I’m going to have to revue my plans and options and consider a change of direction.

The scout was really exciting as it really drove home the fact that is is definitely happening now.  It’ll be a real challenge and it’s already pushing me creatively more than I’ve been pushed before, but I’m absolutely loving it and thriving on the freedom to make decisions based on what I want to achieve, rather than aiming for the results someone else is going for.

I can’t wait to get shooting and turn out a really top-notch little film.  Here’s hoping it can meet my expectations and provide a launching pad into the career I’ve wanted to follow since I was in my teens.

Up at 6am this morning to get K to her Uni train for her long day – 9am lecture start and solid work through until 4 – pretty epic, really.  Still, if one will choose the hardest working course outside of Law and Medicine, what do you expect?  What I expect is, of course, huge backlash from every single student who reads this blog telling me that they’re course is just as hard-working as any other.  I won’t believe them, though.  Especially the Media students…

Back home I managed to get through quite a bit of stuff, looking into a couple of new business opportunities which may help me in setting up the company I most want to run as well as getting through some Live Life stuff which has been sitting on my desk for a while.

Around 10ish I gave in and took myself off to bed for an hour as I couldn’t keep my eyes open, then got myself up to head in to the flicks to catch Burn After Reading, the new Cohen brothers film.

I must confess I’m not exactly a Cohen brothers fan.  Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing apart, I tend to find their films a little too quirky and impenetrable for my tastes, however much I want to like them desperately.  No Country For Old Men is a case in point, where the majority of the movie had me gripped and was really well put together, but the last act just left me cold.  It wasn’t even as if I could pinpoint what they were trying to do and addmire it, as I frequently can and do with films I don’t like but see the merit in.  I was just baffled.

Burn After Reading is more my kind of thing.  It’s got the Cohen quirks, but at a much more restrained level and features a fantastic cast doing some of their best work in a long time.  Not just George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, either – J K Simmons knocks his ever-so-brief role out of the park and hits all the right comic notes and the rest of the cast are equally impeccable.

The plot is cleverly convoluted without getting beyond the audience.  The confusions and mix-ups that make a good thriller are in place, as is the almost trademark high-violence of the Cohens, albeit somewhat restrained from some of the rest of their pieces.  Pitt really lets himself go and looks like he’s having a wail of a time, but then I’ve been a fan of his for years, since the days before he was BRAD PITT or Mr. Jolie.

With the up-coming Changling, I think both Mr and Mrs Pitt are coming back to show that they have the talent to raise themselves above the kind of tabloid-fodder which has caused or reflected many a career misstep.  I’m always excited to see either of them work and when they come up with a cracker – as in the case of Fight Club, Se7en or Legends of the Fall for Pitt, Gia or Girl, Interrupted for Jolie – it always really pleases me.

If you’re a Cohen fan, there’s much to admire and it’s definitely a “Cohen” film, but if they’re not your cup of tea, don’t necessarily let that put you off – this is a far more “mainstream”-feeling movie with a more accessible structure, plot and storyline than much of what has come before.

Back home after the flick I caught up with a friend who I’ve not seen properly for far too long, which is always nice, although we could only squeeze in a quick hour before I had to grab K from the train, change hurriedly and pick Dad up for a trip to see MK Dons courtesy of Clydesdale Bank.

It was the first time I’d been to Stadium:MK and I have to say I was mightily impressed.  It’s a lovely stadium and the pitch was immaculate.  The game was pretty good, too – entertaining and interesting to watch the way the Dons play under Di Matteo, although with the final score resting at 2-1 to Stockport after an own goal in the last minute, it could have been a better result.

It was interesting to reflect on the power of team support, though.  As a Saints (Southampton) fan, whenever I go to a game, I get incredibly involved and tend to scream and shout with the rest of them.  If we lose, I’m always in a bad mood for most of the rest of the day.  On the other hand, watching the Dons, who I follow and support as a local team, I wasn’t overly bothered by the result.  It was a strrange feeling of under-whelmedness, I guess, which I found intriguing.  Maybe if I watch more games (which, incidentally, I’d love to do) I would have more of an investment in the club and their results, but as it was last night was just a really fun, if slightly chilly, night out.

I can’t believe my body sometimes.  Or maybe my brain.  One or the other, it doesn’t really matter because I’m just as cross with both of them for waking me up at 5am this morning.

Mondays are supposed to be my “lie ins”, with K not starting Uni ’til 11am meaning we don’t have to be up until 8.30am, as opposed to the usual 6am.  But this morning something inside me decided it wanted to be up and about at 5.  Five o’clock in the bloody morning!

Still, it meant I managed to be at least a little productive today, although I’ve managed to have one of those days where I look back over what I’ve done and realised all the things I wanted to get done and haven’t, which is mildly frustrating.

Still, I managed to fit in all of my necessary admin stuff and bill payments (although I’ve still got a mini-pile of post to go through) and get through a veritable mountain of ironing.  I can’t stand ironing, it’s the worst chore in the world, by far, and I’m also absolutely rubbish at it.  Actually, it might be the fact that I’m rubbish at it that makes me dislike it so much because it seems like so much work for so little effect.

Once I’d got all my housey bits done, I took myself off to the flicks to catch City of Ember which is not as bad a film as I thought it was going to be, although it’s a bit slow in the build-up and with a few bizarre plot strands which don’t entirely make sense.

Then it was off to Costco for our monthly stock-up on essentials and bits and pieces which we go through at such a rate as to make it cheaper to buy in bulk.  That said, I think we’d buy a lot more from there if we had more space for storage.  It’s a weird dilemma walking around the warehouse working out whether a) it’s cheaper to get it in bulk, b) you’ve got enough cash-flow to cover the up-front costs of something you might not buy for another 2 weeks and c) you’ve got enough space at home in the kitchen/in the cupboard/under the bed to find a home for it all once you get back.

Of course my days never run completely smoothly and I did have to make a minor detour back home to collect my Costco card which I’d handily filtered out of my wallet at some clever clean-up stage a couple of months ago.

From there it was to the Supermarket to get the more regular weekly groceries that are either uneconomical or too perishable to buy monthly in bulk, then round to the station to collect K and back home to start the somewhat lengthy process of packing up all the meat into dinner-size portions to chuck in the freezer until further notice.

After quickly checking emails and sorting out my plans for the week, it’s time to cook and get dinner ready, then to wash up and finally some time to hit the sofa and chill.

The best news of the day came in an email this morning, though, to let me know that I’ve won a place at a prestigious documentary pitching day at Channel 4 next Monday.  20 of us have been selected to appear in front of a panel of industry professionals and pitch our ideas to them for feedback and possible further work.  It’s really, really exciting and could potentially open a lot of doors for me at this stage in my break-out.

More of that and other new projects coming soon, so stay tuned.