A nicely fulfilling day yesterday! Went to lunch with Andrew and cousin Jamie, who’s spending her last couple of days with us. It’s been really great having her around, not least because of her enthusiasm for Firefly and generosity in helping me plan my California travels next month. (Less than a month to go before I’m off to the States now… exciting!) Then came back to more research and draft-reading for Melissa, whose book is now taking shape. Quite apart from the content, it’s actually just really interesting to watch the process of writing a book up close, rather than just encounter a finished product all printed and bound and on sale. And then in the evening I went out to a lovely little gathering of Cambridge-peeps organised by Maryam: unsurprisingly, both education and Psychic TV came up. (Since my last post on here I’ve been followed by another ‘psychic’ on Twitter, whose website boasts a number of extraordinary predictions for 2011, delivered in creepy-trance-dialogue fashion with more than a twinge of Glenn Beck in the air. Needs to be seen to be believed.)

“What kind of money, Denny?!”
YOU’RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!

Avenue Q

Recommended!
Only for now! (Sex!)
Is only for now! (Your hair!)
Is only for now! (Nick Clegg!)
Is only for now!
Oh, and mega congratulations to Abbi and Paul for their official engagement! I love that couple
I interrupt this desert of blogging mostly to wax lyrical about Four Lions. Yes, Chris Morris made a film! Yes, the same Chris Morris who created the best television of the 1990s! And yes, you ought to go see it!
It was this kind of instant enthusiasm for a slapstick satire about suicide bombers which got Lucy and I to make plans to see it on Saturday, as it happens. (Bit of a weird day, incidentally, since my mum and three of her friends also found their way to mine for tea – forcing me to resort to using the novelty ‘sloping’ mug which is the perfect demonstration, should you ever require one, for why mugs generally don’t slope.) But since Four Lions didn’t suggest itself to be the world’s most romantic film ever, I also gathered a fine collection of people-who-don’t-revise-through-the-night to come along. And so it was that Oliver, Simon, Eamon, Patrick, Caroline, Flora, Matthew, Laura, Lucy and I (phew) ended up at the Cambridge Picturehouse on Saturday night, facing a rather perturbing snaking queue and worrying mutterings that it was totally sold out.
Being resourceful people, however, we began a trek to the Out Of Town Soulless Multiplex (TM) which – amusingly – is located right next to the ‘Cambridge Central’ Travelodge. But not wanting to face the embarrassing prospect of being turned away once again, I also commandeered Caroline’s iPhone in order to book us all tickets. And it was at this precise moment that I first came face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) with those awful automated phone booking systems – y’know, the ones which require you to walk down the street shouting out “FOUR LIONS” or “YES” or “STUDENT” at regular intervals. (And why waste my time offering me a ‘plot summary of the film you have just selected’? Does anyone actually use this?!)
Anyway, the point is that the whole experience reinforced my view that there is probably no crime in Cambridge at all, because I was walking down the road desperately trying to punch debit card details into an iPhone and still nothing happened – a rather pathetic indictment of the ability of local criminals to respond quickly to opportunities. (Although I suppose I’ll have to eat my words if I log onto internet banking later to find that I’ve bought a yacht or something.) But yes. We got there, and it really was a superb film, and I highly recommend it.
(Oh, and this week’s Doctor Who was similarly excellent. Though I hope it doesn’t persuade a generation of kids to throw themselves off hill-tops in the hopes of waking up in the TARDIS. At least save that for the night before your HAP exam, kids!)

Repentant Woods sorry for affairs
I thought trivial news was at least supposed to have the element of surprise?

Jubilant Woods really enjoyed himself