Mini B.

This year was my tenth valentine day with Jen and to celebrate we spent a long weekend in a cosy cottage in Dorset. Sometimes I forget how beautiful this country can be and thanks to the Internet one can find some pretty amazing accommodation for the same price as a shitty chain hotel (someone should tell Lenny Henry).

Jen found a fantastic cottage near Lyme Regis which according to a fountain on the grounds was built around 1826. The main room had an open fire which, despite being lovely to sit by, contributed to my ongoing emasculation as all fire building was begrudgingly conceded to Jen. My scout leader would be very disappointed.


We were warned that the grounds was the domain of a human hating pheasant which had a habit of attacking anyone who got near it. Luckily we avoided the misanthropic bastard and instead stumbled upon a deer resting a hundred metres from our cottage. Of course it bolted as soon as it saw us, but it really was something to behold.

On the way back we stopped in Wells, the smallest city in the UK and also the setting for the fictional 'Sandford' in the movie 'Hot Fuzz'. Wells cathedral domineers the surrounding landscape and it's a little awe inspiring to see it rise on the horizon when driving towards the city. We managed to find most of the major locations from the film - the village square, the church where Tim Messenger lost his head and, most importantly, the local supermarket. At this point I realised I could no longer call myself a film geek as I had too much self respect to take a photo of the busy Somerfields car park. Wells is a small city yet a big village and it's interesting to see how the geography a film creates can be completely different to real life.



I couldn't recommend the cottage enough and the owners were lovely. Click here to find out more.

2009, Week 6

Good news! Somebody is reading this blog. In fact, possibly two people are reading this blog. I've always insisted that this is a personal exercise but now I have 'followers' I think I need to up my game and do more interesting things to write about. For example, the most exciting thing that happened this week was our bin being nicked by some Sulo stealing son of a bitch.

Sam, my future Brother in Law, has started blogging. You can read his Blog here. I hope he keeps it up. I think the more friends you have blogging increases the chances of having interesting intersections between blogs. For example I can blog about how funny I was when I last saw Kim & Sam and Sam can blog about what an insufferable twat I was when he last saw me. Light and shade, Truth and Lies, Sam and Dave.

I've started getting to the age where I understand the concept of nostalgia and given that most of the quizzes on facebook are nostalgia based (do you remember these 90s films? etc.) I think everyone else my age does too. I do think the internet ruins nostalgia though. It's great looking at the case of an old spectrum game, squinting at the tiny screenshots on the back remembering the hours you wasted trying to clear a screen. The problem is, with the internet you can boot up the game or watch a video in seconds and pretty soon you realise that Jet Set Willy really was just fucking annoying and that He-Man was a badly animated stinking pile of incoherent shit. Anyway, enough ranting. This week I stumbled across something that I never thought I'd see again, Chocolate Cigarettes. I was shocked; How is this possible in the politically correct 21st century? Should a post office of all places be selling such things? And 8 for 39p a packet! No doubt most of the 39p is going to Brown's pocket under the guise of funding treatment of chocolate based diseases on the NHS. Luckily, it was my brand (Coronation), so I bought a pack and had me some chocolate inhalation. Here's me doing my best Deniro


It was valentines this weekend. Jen got me a cool Robot t-shirt (see pic) and hotel chocolaté goodies. I've been overdosing on chocolate this week. Round Scott and John's we had some absolutely amazing chocolate from Mary, a Belgium based chocolatier. I never really believed the phrase 'orgasm in your mouth' before (well, wrt. food) and I think these chocolates are the closest I'll ever come to that. They are £79 per box if ordering online though, which is what I think you'd expect to pay for non-coitus chocolatey climax.


Jen and I were watching the funny 'Free Agents', in which they were talking about magpie based superstitions. There seems to be quite a few of these. In Free Agents it was that you had to hop on one leg whenever you see a magpie. Apparently on Jen's first day at work at her previous Job somebody walked into the room and saluted her, blew her a kiss, and then walked back out again. This threw Jen a bit, obviously, but it turned out that she wasnt saluting and blowing a kiss to Jen, but a magpie outside.

I watched 'Night of the Hunter' this week, another suggestion from the good but brief 'Rough Guide to Horror Movies'. Although I think the film went of the rails at the end with its Saccharin Hollywood ending, the cinematography was outstanding and genuinely creepy. I've been quick to write off older (i.e. pre 1970s) films as over acted, but I think that they were more about escapism then the hyper-real movies we are used to now. Night of the hunter was surreal, almost fairy tale like and some of the shots were enfused with the threat of the titular hunter. Check out some screen grabs i've found on the nets...





CNPS: 15