A better night last night. I managed 8 hours sleep (although not in one block), and am feeling a little more human as a result. Today is the first of the Press Conference days, with Stoned and Land of the Dead to look forward to. I’m off to see Thumbsucker in a little while, and I’m booking myself in for more time in the Videotechque later on. Actual work is going to happen today, and hopefully it’s all going to go nice and smooth.

The friendly gang of teens who’ve been making my life louder, weirder and a hell of a lot more entertaining for the last couple of days are out of the Hostel today- but, I’ve grabbed a couple of their e-mail addresses and am going to try and keep in touch with them. You don’t forget a night like Wednesday in a hurry (Remind me to tell you about it one day…). I shall miss them.

Time to go- a screening at 9, and the cinema is a slightly boggling distance away.

The trouble with being tired, is you’ve got to try and stop it from taking you over.

I’m going to get through tonight until 10.30 ish, and then collapse into bed, mainly because I don’t want to disrupt my sleep patterns. Today has been mucho film watching, although not as much as I’d like. Saw Mirrormask, which was stunningly beautiful (we need more creepy, gloriously messed-up childrens films in the world), An Unfinished Life, which was well-played, beautifully shot and stunningly predictable, and Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist, which proved that an Exorcist prequel was always going to be a bad idea. Also tried watching a swedish film called Popular Music, but the guy in the Videoteque booth next to me was watching the same movie but half an hour ahead, which was too bloody distracting.

Also saw my first Edinburgh show last night- a madcap saga of victorian time travel called Madam, I’m Adam. Some very funny moments, but it didn’t quite hang together, and lost an awful lot of comic momentum in the second half.

Food is beckoning.

Anyhow…

Luck and strangeness. All present in heavy doses.

I managed to shop yesterday, and I’m now fully stocked with various food to last me a few days.

I also ended up staying up till 4 in the morning, all thanks to a bad throat and a surreal evening involving trying to sober up a drunken teen in as fast a method as is possible.

I’m currently extremely tired. If I’m up to a more detailed update, I will present one later.

At the least, the problem with the article is solved (more or less) thanks to the miracles of technology and USB “memory sticks”.

I have more films to come. I’m not going to let today defeat me.

I think (and hope, and pray) that I’m going to be able to sleep tonight…

Tiredness is my enemy.

I slept okay last night, but still woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a moderate-sized truck. There were a couple of things I was hoping to get done today, that I’ve had to simply write off down to experience. My main project is to get through to tomorrow and actually feel awake, rather than the curious sensation of being half-stoned that I have at the moment.

Edinburgh is a full-scale experience- the walls scream so many adverts for so many shows, it’s difficult to imagine that there really is this much going on at the same time. At the moment, my biggest worry is the fact that I’ve got two articles to do, and I haven’t yet worked out exactly how I’m going to get them from my laptop to the people who need them. I hate not being at home, and I hate not having easy access to the net.

I’m very grateful for the Hostel where I’ve ended up- it’s loud, vibrant and clean, and my 8-bed dorm is currently taken up with a gang of thoroughly entertaining teens who I’ve semi-befriended. It’s nice to actually be mixing with people, rather than doing my usual “lurk in the corner and don’t say anything” method of dealing with new places. Was also able to speak to George, which was great, and I haven’t been quite so rampantly homesick today. It’s an after-effect of being so tired, and if I ever do this again, there’s no way I’m doing it by bus. Screw the expense- it’s not worth this level of tiredness.

I may try seeing something tonight (show-wise), as the next few days are going to be incredibly busy.

For the moment- I’m hopeful that I can get through this with my brain intact.

Okay- reintroducing myself to the world of timed Internet cafes. I miss broadband on tap…

Bleary-eyed, battered but alive, I’m here, and Edinburgh is fascinating- a looming, weird, semi-medieval vaudeville of a city with lots of levels and lots of layers. I’m too tired to function accurately at the moment (I tried logging onto http://www.livejounral.com a moment ago), so today is mainly a chance to rest- I did manage to sleep fairly well on the bus, but it was never going to be enough. The hostel is bright, clean and pleasent (unlike the two I walked past to get there), and everyone so far has been terribly helpful. Saw WAH-WAH this morning, and despite a couple of overdone moments it kept me entertained.

I miss George, and I don’t know exactly how the next two weeks are going to pan out- but I can see them going by in a flash. My updates will probably be rather short and snappy for the next fortnight- here’s to dark screening rooms, and lots of weird, wild and wonderful movies.

Chin chin!

Just a quick update, as time is at a premium at the moment.

The weekend was great fun but extremely tiring, and an excess of gorgeous food yesterday resulted in me getting very sleepy and over-emotional, as it often will. George’s Dad was lovely enough to drive us home from Hampshire with the quite gorgeous executive chair I received as a birthday present (along with Time Bandits and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1+2) on DVD, and a fabulously incomprehensible T-shirt from Toby, George’s brother).

I’m now packed for Edinburgh, and will be leaving the house in an hour. I’ve got a screening tonight (The Aristocrats), then I’m meeting George after work for an hour- and then, I’m on my way whether I like it or not. I’m currently reeling from the fact that I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything, and I’ve managed a fairly compact rucksack and a bit of hand luggage. Scotland is not the ends of the Earth, and I am only going for two weeks, but it was still a bit of a surprise.

I don’t really have enough time to think at the moment, which is probably best. I’ve got two confirmed comissions for Edinburgh, but I’ve got a couple of days before I have to hurl myself into things completely. I keep telling myself- this is reconnaisance. This is the test. This is the “prototype” version, so I can get all the really dumb mistakes out of the way now.

Hopefully.

Anyhow, I will try and update as much as possible, but apologies if tremendous gaps appear for a while, as I will have to assess the terrain before I know what’s what.

In any case, it’s going to be interesting seeing what the next two weeks have in store for me.

Tick…. tick….. tick….

I always get like this before a big trip. Any kind of responsibility gets me feeling like this- a sense of “Whoah- I shouldn’t have done this. I’ve really messed up.” Trouble is, I know exactly where it comes from. Fear of failure is particularly annoying when it affects your life as much as it does me. Anyhow- I’m going to Edinburgh, and I’m going to have an excellent time. And when I get back, I’m knuckling down and doing some serious work on the novel that I’m writing. September is a clear months before the London Film Festival, and I’m going to use it as best I can.

I have to.

(I’m very good at encouraging others to do things. I’m not always great at doing it for myself…)

Events have moved along…

I’m now down in Hampshire, spending the weekend with my in-laws, and having an early birthday celebration (which is a little strange- nice, but strange). We came down this morning, after a brief and sweaty half-hour in Waterloo, where none of the self-service machines seemed to be taking cards (a fact you could generally only find out by actually cueing at the damn things for ten minutes). Thankfully, it all worked out, and we arrived in Alton at 1.40. The trip down was full of one of those freewheeling conversations between George and me that remind me exactly why I married her- I should have been reading the book I’m supposed to be reviewing for SFX, but I didn’t care! (Gosh…)

Anyway- this afternoon, I earned some brownie points by managing to keep my three nephews and one niece occupied for two and a half hours thanks to the fantastic Games Workshop boardgame Dungeon Quest, which I’d picked up on Ebay a few weeks ago after being reminded that the thing actually existed and remembering how much I’d enjoyed it. I hadn’t played it in over 15 years, but it was still a fantastic amount of fun, and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Getting the chance to play both the heroes and the monsters, as well as shouting “Die, die, die!” at various points provided plenty of fun.

We just finished watching an episode of Seinfeld- where Kramer hi-jacks the old set from the Merve Griffen show, and Jerry ends up drugging his latest girlfriend just so he can get away with playing with her vintage toy collection.

Also created a photo for the blog this morning- I thought I’d go for a Warhol-esque feel. At some point, I’m going to upgrade to a paid account because I want to upload some of my rather epic CD compilation design work- but, at least there’s a little more colour about the place.

Edinburgh is two days away. Being philosophical about this is possibly the healthiest way to approach this- I’m treating it as reconnaisance. If all I do is hang out, get my face known and get to go to a couple of parties, that can’t be too bad.

I’m having one of those afternoons when life seems determined to go wrong. I’m either getting messages that interviews aren’t possible, or offering me the chance to do other interviews, but at a time when I won’t actually be physically able to do them. Still tired. Still vaguely confused.

Watched the “Dalek” episode of the recent series of Who over lunch, and it’s still bloody good stuff, although not all of it completely stands up to close scrutiny. There’s still a certain “one-liner”-ness to the dialogue that gets a little vexxing at times, but it’s nice to see something with an edge, and an episode that ends with the place LITTERED in bodies! That’s what Doctor Who was always about!

I’ve got washing up to do. And I am going to try and remain calm.

Yes! It’s official!

I actually feel a little better!!!

Got a fairly decent amount of sleep, and now feel slightly ready to take on the day. I’m still a little suspicious of my head, and I’m still determined to take it as easy as possible today, but I do feel a hundred times better than wen I went to bed.

Saw A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE last night- quite wonderful, even though it’s the least deliberately Cronenberg thing that Cronenberg has done. Other directors could have done it, but they wouldn’t have brought so much genuine humanity and emotion into the story, and they also wouldn’t have tackled the violence with quite such brutal relish. There’s some brilliantly nasty stuff in there.

Also added Nessreader to my list of friends, and slightly despairing of ever reaching the heights of wonderfully venemous strangeness that she reaches on her blog. It’s the kind of diary that you can imagibne people discovering in fifty years and saying “Ah! Now we have ze truth of what life in ze early twenty first century was reaaly like!”, or something. Go check her out. You won’t be disappointed!

Got home last night, and watched more of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets- George went Potter mad earlier in the week and picked up all three films. It’s quite bizarre- Chamber is a much better movie, much better shot, and yet it’s so bloody long! We’d already watched fifty minutes, so we started again, had dinner, sat there for a while- and there was still about 40-50 minutes to go! And the plot didn’t seem to have moved onwards that much! Had a small discussion about the ridiculous structuring problems in Rowling’s work this morning- particularly easy with Book 6, which suffers from the same episodic, loose structure as everything else, and also completely fails in her attempt to get the characters to “grow up”. The kids at Hogwarts discover snogging. They’re seventeen, and they’ve only just discovered snogging? If I remember rightly, Rowling’s excuse for this is “oh well, they’ve had such action-packed lives that they haven’t developed as fast”, but I think if there was that much death, threat and destruction going on, they’d have been leaping into sexual experimentation as fast as you can say “Avada Kedavara”, or whichever bizarre curse is your phrase of choice. It’ll be interesting to see how long they last as “treasured literature”, because to be honest Rowling is standing on the shoulders of better writers who’ve accomplished better things in the past. And the end of book 6, with Harry doing the “no, I can’t be in love with you, it’s too dangerous” nobility thing is the kind of stuff I thought went out with the fifties.

Right. I feel cleansed!

Got the invitation to my friend Tristan’s wedding (well, technically “Blessing”) yesterday. The illustration featured guinea pigs, a Ford Capri with “Monster Tyres”, and the word “Dreckly”. I kid you not.