we went to see road to perdition last night. it could have been better, but it wasn't totally awful. i was expecting more though, because i loved american beauty so much. really though this just didn't work as well, which is a shame because sam mendes seemed like such a good director. plus it was as though he'd given jude law some idea of what his physicality should be, but no idea at all what his character should be. he spent the whole film slightly hunched over and looking out of the top of his eyes. what a waste.

on the way back we were discussing films which have been made out of graphic novels, and really the only one that has worked at all recently has been ghost world which was brilliant. the thing with ghost world though was that daniel clowes, the author was pretty much involved from start to finish. that meant they were able to take bits that weren't in the book and put them in the film, but they still felt like they were part of the film and had the same kind of tone to them. just a thought.

i was getting ready to take a shower this morning, and thinking about posting to explain why i feel bad about hurting flies, when my mum phoned. she said that my godfather died a couple of weeks ago, and that she had found out because the accountant had seen his obituary in the telegraph. i was crying before i even put the phone down, which surprised me because i managed to keep it together when uncle tony (my other godfather, as it happens) died in march, and i liked him rather a lot better than jim. but thinking about it, jim was pretty important in my life.

jim was a fairly well known author of romances and thrillers, including callan and when the boat comes in which were both made into tv shows. after my godmother died, he tended to write more romantic novels, usually with a beautiful demi indian woman as the heroine (my godmother was half indian, half portugese). but when i searched for him on amazon i discovered that his last novel was a callan story.

things i remember about uncle jim: he liked a drink, he'd come over for dinner with my parents and start the evening off with a "couple of nourishing scotches". he liked to eat well, just before he moved out of london to go back to newcastle, my mum and i joined him for lunch at an italian restaurant, where he was very well known, and he insisted on ordering on our behalf. (on a related note, the first time i ever got drunk i was with my godmother, aged about 6. she had no children of her own, and so she thought it was perfectly reasonable to give a small child a large glass of red wine followed by vanilla ice cream with a whisky sauce.) i interviewed him for a careers project when i was in the lower fourth at school, i asked him how he became a writer. i think i'd like to find that interview and hear it again. about 5 or 6 years ago he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, and ordered not to drink anything other than lucozade and water, which he was not happy about.

embarrassingly enough i am now in tears in the computer room. i remember saying "life goes on" to my mum when my godmother died, but right now i'm with stephin merrit "life goes on and on and on. and death goes on". it feels like a lot of people who i was pretty close to have gone this year.

i'm sorry this wasn't better written, uncle jim, but i think as a keen amateur actor you'd probably be prouder of having an obituary on the british theatre guide page than on my little blog. hope they have scotch in heaven.

edited 25/9/02 the guardian obituary is also very good, particularly if you want to find out more about uncle jim's work. actually there are tons of obituaries including the miami herald. there was one in the times which i can't link to, but if you go to the times website and type "james mitchell" into the search then you should get his obit. i really didn't know he was so well known. wow.

mum and dad came up to uni this weekend to see me. or well, they came up to bring my stuff up and seeing me was a pleasant side effect. we went for supper at ask, it was all very civilised, but then they didn't say goodbye before they left this morning, they just posted a newspaper and the stuff from the student loans company through the door and drove off. i'm kind of upset about that really. but they had my best interests at heart (they didn't want to wake me up), the fact that i was already awake and had been for about an hour is neither here nor there.

they did bring me up a cheque from emap though which was very nice, it confused me 'cos it was from peterborough instead of camden, but there it was. and ok it was only paying me back for my travelcards, but still, it's all money in the bank.

apart from that not much has happened. although i had to kill a fly today. so you see it's true, i may not be proud of it but i have hurted flies, because i'm not really that twee. honest.

there was a spider in the bath this morning. i really don't deal at all well with them, and this one was bluddy massive. i tried pouring water over it but i couldn't get it to go back down the plughole. so it's probably still there. now i think about it, i feel quite sorry for the spider, being trapped in the bath and all, but there's no way i'm going to pick it up or anything. yuk.

i'm doing reading for an essay i've got to write before the beginning of term on aids in literature. it's interesting and i'm really glad that's what i'm writing about, but boy is it depressing. stu made me a tape with all sad songs on one side, and happy songs on the other. so i was reading and listening to the tape, by the time it got up to no distance left to run i was just about ready to shoot myself. but then the other side had lots of happy songs, including creeque alley, which i hadn't heard properly before, and i really liked it.

i think the new indie soc fanzine should look really good, one of the ordinary members has made a font out of my handwriting and i'm well happy with it, i might even use it on this site eventually:

i googled myself just now and of those results, two weren't me! that means there is someone out there with the same name as me (actually i know there's someone else on the electoral register in britain with my name too, because stu found out on 192). i was tempted to email her, but i decided it would probably be too weird. the thing is that neither name is that common, so the odds of it being found in combination are slim. it's not like dave gorman or anything.

anyway, i'm back in york *yay*, it's kind of grey and overcast (don't believe the weatherpixie when she looks like it's quite sunny. it's not. but i've got a croissant for my lunch and i made the computer work, so in general, life is good.

well i'm back. sussex was fun, although spending time with my parents in an enclosed space is usually a recipe for disaster, this time it wasn't so bad (well apart from the cat waking me up every morning at 5 so he could go out). eventually my dad swapped with me, so he got woken up by the cat and i got some sleep. and had some good dreams too.


*dirty dream #1* i'm about to appear in a play which is being put on by my prep school drama teacher, mr tim and his assistant miss jones (tessa). but actually the play is the last fattybottypuss in the world, the last play i did at the open air theatre. i played a welsh rabbit (geddit?) and the mummy fattybottypuss. anyway, we were about to go on and i couldn't remember my lines (ooh performance anxiety). i think my first line in that show was something like "darling don't stare", but i can't be sure. anyway, the next thing i know, i'm snogging some girl (who looked a bit like a younger dervla kirwan or lexie off monarch of the glen). thus i am desperate and watching too many bbc comedy drama things */dirty dream #1*


*dirty dream #2* actually this one wasn't so dirty. i dreamed i was babysitting for a really rich couple, and i had to take the kid to a birthday party in the same apartment building. and jarvis and his new bride camille were also there. and so was jason bourne from the bourne identity was there. fucking strange as julian casablancas might say. anyway jarvis was really nice to me, even though i was behaving as though i was "secretly six" (which i said to him). i think i might have cried because i didn't get a balloon. */dirty dream #2*


anyway, i'll be back in york this time tomorrow. bluddy hell, better get packing.

ok i'm off to sussex tommorow, so i shan't be posting for another, er, weekish, and since i'm going back to uni then, it might be even longer. but what are you going to do without me, i hear you cry, well what i really like doing is just going to the blogger front page and randomly clicking on other people's blogs from the most recently published column. it's really interesting - like a glimpse into someone else's life. ooh, troubled diva is a favourite of mine.
also i can recommend the film insomnia which i saw earlier with my brother, we both enjoyed it muchly. and if you're really bored try the links over there ------>

i didn't drink today because asm has this theory that i'm an alky, so when we went out i didn't drink, like a good girl, even though we went to the pub for our deep and meaningful. the gist of which was let's just be friends. fair enough.
also i saw the harry potter cow in leicester square, which i was pretty excited about, asm was not impressed though. oh and we saw the big fuck-off tree painting in golden square, which we both agreed was deeply cool.
i'd promised tom that we'd have pizza for tea tonight (well, last night actually), and so when i got back at about 11, neither of us had eaten, so we ordered pizza and watched drop the dead donkey. i can think of worse ways to spend an evening (night).

the party
was so much fun. ok, so not everyone turned up, but i really had the most fantastic time - didn't get too drunk either, even though i was drinking cosmopolitans all night (and had to get people to buy them for me 'cos i forgot to take any money with me - fool). loads of people from all different groups of friends mixed in a kind of not very way - jarvis and joyce stayed very much together as did chris and chris, but glenn and tim and stu all mingled admirably.
then last night i went with the p's to the open air theatre to see oh what a lovely war. i love that place so much, although it's changed a bit from "my day", when the stage door was a bit of green baize - since the lottery grant it's all posh and lovely and full of fairy lights *sigh*, if i could live there i would.
today, which is my birthday proper, we went down to kent to see my aunties and nana. nan was very excited about it being my 21st and even sang happy birthday all on her own - not bad for someone who'll be 95 next january. it was really good to see them, and we had lunch at a really good chinese restaurant, my favourite.
got mostly cocktail mixing paraphenalia for my birthday, featuring a cocktail shaker, 3(!) cocktail books and a set of useful things like a bottle opener and a strainer. should be getting cocktail mixing lessons at some point, so then i shall be a real twentysomething, able to do grown up things like mix a good martini!


so in my head i'm actually really 12 and about to start secondary school. the idea of going into my last year of uni is just ridiculous, but true. but it's not been a bad lifetime so far, so here's to another, what, 60? years *raises glass*
cheers.