A musing on five years

My current locale...

Five years ago today, I wrote an article about a set of fireworks. Gorton is a small area in the south of Manchester, and for the first few years of my life it was the place I called home, before me and my family moved to the marginally more scenic town of Droylsden in Tameside. Of course for my parents, it had had more permanence. At least, I guess so. That's the only reason I can think of as to why we attended those fireworks in the first place. Had I not attended those fireworks, I would not be on this website typing as I am now.
     Blogger is something of an archaic platform to work with. It wasn't exactly hip and trendy when I started using it in 2009, but it was a fair bit more popular than it is now, in an age where all of your blogging needs can be better suited by Wordpress or Tumblr. But then again, popularity was never my main aim - it was an attempt to express opinions about stuff. To a teenager bristling with opinions, an opportunity to do that in a space with few people will challenge you is a very attractive option. Once I started writing regularly I advertised my blog on social networks for a while, hoping to gain an audience like that of the blog that inspired me, Dan's Media Digest. But there's a reason why he's just been shortlisted for a "UK Blog of the Year" award and I've not written anything in months.
     Nostalgia Filter, or as it was once called, Audenshaw Reviews, is at its most fundamental a procrastination aid. Writing about something, making a project of it, is a task I used to set for myself - both because I enjoyed it, and because it felt satisfying to do something productive. As a result, I've I've ended up writing a short book. Taking a very rough average, I have a wordcount of about 900 words (for a standard length review, sometimes I find less to talk about, sometimes more.) Extrapolating that out for the 802 posts I've tagged as either "Review" or "Opinion", and that comes to 721,800 words. That's seven novels. In the past five years I've written seven novels. Except they weren't novels. They were blog posts about TV shows and films. (Note to self - the word blog isn't in the blog's internal spellchecker dictionary.)

A photograph from the event that inspired it all.
(Original owner unknown, please comment if
you want credit.)

     In the past five years, I've done my GCSEs, my A-Levels and the first term of the first year of my degree. I've performed in four stage productions, had a total of 63 articles published in external publications and have posted the word "Thanks" 934 times. (Including this one.) In that time I've watched over 700 hours of television and film in order to review it here, and then countless more hours after that to write up the damn things, with a minimum of about 45 minutes for each one to write it up. Which if you calculate it forward again means that I've spent a bare minimum of 601 hours writing here. That's almost a month.
      Time gets away from us so quickly. Right now this is the longest thing I've written for the blog in months. What began as a place for an arsey teenager to mouth off without being ridiculed by his peers has become something I'm immensely proud of, and something I regret not having done more with. I had planned for so long that this would be the end of this blog - something frightening for me to see as I look at the little (1) next to my "Scheduled Posts". But I don't think it is the end. Not yet.
     For hopefully not the last time,

Thanks.

5th Anniversary

Thanks for the memories, readers. :D

Audenshaw Reviews/ Nostalgia Filter through the years.

Welcome to 2014

Well, that last year seemed to last forever. Or at least, for a long enough time for me to write so many articles for this blog that I could drop dead now and still seem active until June. Last year I mentioned that I thought that 2013 was going to be my last year of doing this - that was for various reasons, all of which still apply, but last Summer I made a longer plan which basically means that 2014 is going to be my last year of this shindig, going up until just after I reach my fifth anniversary this December.

What's coming up in 2014? Well, some long-term US shows for one. The second and third seasons of both Lost and Star Trek Voyager will be gracing your screens every Wednesday and Thursday, with Star Trek Deep Space Nine hopefully joining them once I've done all of the Classic Doctor Who that I want to get through.

There'll also be some spendiferous Heroes overviews, as well as the new seasons of Doctor Who and, near the end of the year, a series of Best Of articles which will look at my favourite shows from over this blog's lifetime.

See you there, people. :D

Thanks.

Welcome to 2013

2012 saw "Audenshaw Reviews" transform into Nostalgia Filter, and it's also seen me looking at Doctor Who, Being Human, Ashes To Ashes, Lost, Misfits, Pramface, Hit and Miss, Red Dwarf and Merlin. It's been a busy year, all in all.

Because I'm absolutely crazy, I've decided that 2013 will be rather different. I plan to finish off the New Series of Doctor Who, going through and perhaps re-assessing the Tenth Doctor's era. At the same time, I'll be picking up Lost once again and finishing it off, ranting my way through the painful Sixth Season and picking on all of the things which annoyed me while trying to salvage something positive from it. Plus, other goodies should pop up here and there, like the rest of Torchwood and the second series of Survivors.

And of course, I'll hopefully be reviewing live the rest of Season 33, as well as the 50th Anniversary Celebrations that I've really been waiting for. Once that's done... I suppose, when everything is done and dusted, that's all I've got to write about. I doubt I'll be covering the rest of the Classic Series here, and I'm still unsure as to Doctor Who's future after the anniversary. So I think what I'm saying is that while 2013 will certainly be a busy year here on Nostalgia Filter, it'll probably also be my last.

Thanks. Happy New Year.

October!

October's here, ladies and gentlemen. And you all know what that means.

You don't? Oh. That's weird. Ok, I'll start off by announcing the very temporary return of my old funfair, Super Sundays, which will see me take on a few Halloween related treats. I know I'll be looking at Batman (1989), A Nightmare Before Christmas and the dreaded Fantastic Four, but I might also be looking at a certain film chronicling a series of very unfortunate events. Hmmm... how cryptic?

October also sees the triumphant return of Merlin. The show's fifth and final season is something I've been looking forward to for a while, mainly because I enjoy loving Merlin when it's good and I love hating it when it's bad. Merlin is perhaps the show which I find the most fun to review, if only because it often collapses in such spectacular ways. I can only hope that it sorts itself out for this final year and that Merlin's troublesome facade gets blown early.

As you've hopefully seen from my daily highlights, Thursdays will see the epic return of a Nostalgia Filter favourite, Red Dwarf. The set reports have been good, as have the previews, but I just hope that this series lives up to the hype and returns to the spirit of Dwarf that was lost back in 1997.

Oh, and I've changed the banner to be more spooky. However successful that is, have a happy October and have a happier Halloween!

Thanks.

Welcome to 2012

Doomsday stories aside, we waltz into 2012 with open arms! Despite budget cuts and other nonsense, we've plenty of TV to chew on this year. Today a new three-part series of Sherlock begins, which I will certainly be reviewing. Later there's Being Human, without Aiden Turner or, later, Russell Tovey. Later in the year will see a full Autumn series of Doctor Who, a brand-spanking new series of Red Dwarf, the last (thank Buddha) series of Merlin and Series Four of Misfits. That leaves a spring/summer shaped hole in the year, but I'll do my best to fill that gap with some reviewing joy as I tackle more Classic Doctor Who, Lost Season Five and I finally get around to reviewing Ashes To Ashes!

Happy New Year.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas 2011

Rooms are warm with Xmas joys,
As children play with new bought toys,
And though the year begins anew,
There's nothing left now to review.

Hopefully I'll publish my Doctor Who review some time in the Holiday, as well as a few other tidbits here and there. The Christmas logo is going down on January 6th; the Winter theme will last throughout the season.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Thanks.

Review: Wizard of Oz 2011

Note: This review contains incredible positive bias!

I won't say that it's been easy, because it hasn't. This year's production has been plagued by problems from the beginning, and as a witness to those problems I feel that I'm a little bit biased this year. We have put in a lot of work and it has at times been tiring, empowering and hilarious, all at the same time. But at the end, it all came together and stands as one of the best productions the school has done.
     Production issues abound made this a difficult play to get off the ground. Early rehearsals made little progress, and then two months into production the lead character actress was replaced by another, causing a shuffling of roles that meant that we had to start from scratch. That considered, the progress made within the five weeks of rehearsal time has been incredible to say the least. Further, different dates this year gave us even less time than we had last year, which further piled on the stress.
    I must say that I initially had reservations about the choice of play, and they remain. The Wizard of Oz is one of the most potent fairy tales of the 19th Century. Written by children's author L. Frank Baum in the 1890s, the story was popularised (and significantly dumbed down) for a technicolour 1939 version featuring Judy Garland - a film that has become embedded in Western Culture. I personally detest the film for its complete and total lack of any meaningful characterisation, it's useless optimism and its skewed sense of morality. I do however appreciate the story itself for what I interpret it as - an examination of the American economic situation during the 1890s. I hoped, slightly, that our interpretation here would be able to capture that, and I feel it does that in many placed while still appealing to people's expectations of the cheerier 1939 version.
     Because of the more...extravagant play, the costumes this year were rented professionally and look incredible. The same can be said of the background sets, and while I thought that Kansas theme was a little silly when one considers that Kansas only appears for five minutes of the two-hour production, I appreciate that this year the Art Department fought over a lot of hurdles. To make up for this single setting, the team made the innovative decision to make curtains that could be used to quickly change set. It'sd little additions like this that took the initially bleak outlook of the production and made sure that on the night it was spotless.
     As for the acting itself, I thought that there was a wonderful sense of campness in the air. Characters like the Lion and Lord Growlie remained in character constantly despite their entertainingly queer characterisations. It helped that a lot of the principle cast had returned from the previous year, but the show's newcomers were just as well-performed.
    None of the problems this year stopped the cast or the producers from giving it their all. And at the end of the day, the production came together in a way which more than equalled the previous year's heights. On a personal note, I'd just like to say that the production was amazing to work on despite my initial reservations, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. I'm sure looking forward to next year, whatever it may be.

Thanks.

Review: Film: Downfall

The closest analogue to Satan that the Human Race has really identified offers a rather tense subject to work with. Adolf Hitler and his political party were responsible for the deaths of over 10 million people, 6 million of those being Jews. He is perhaps one of the most hated and reviled figures in the history of humanity, especially in the country that he led to commit these atrocities, Germany. Downfall, German "Der Untergang", is the most well-known and famous German film outside of the country for the single reason that it examines the Nazi party in all of its evils.
      The film's protagonist is the young Traudl Junge, Hitler's misguided secretary who lived in the Führerbunker from 1942-5, and experienced the collapse of Nazi Germany. By far the film's greatest performance is from Brüno Ganz as the dictator. While charming and kind to those he liked, Ganz's pitch-perfect impersonation of Hitler really comes to a fore when he begins to realise that he has lost the war. It's unfortunate that the myriad of internet parodies has robbed this particular scene of its main potentcy, although I do support making Hitler look like a clown. I also appreciated Corinna Harfouch's turn as Magda Goebbels, whose performance in the film's longest and most evocative scene is chilling
     The film's visual cinematography is incredibly atmospheric. Designed to be as close to the tone of the real Führerbunker as possible, the occasionally strobing floodlights and a suitably grey filter give the film a constant sense of tension and suspense that rather deliberately isn't resolved by the film's end. Care has been taken to ensure that the film's props and setting are as realistic as possible - and the German studio behind the project makes this rather definite. I also admire the acting department, who hired actors with disturbing similarities to their historical counterparts. This makes Downfall one of the most realistic films about the Second World War ever made.
      What Downfall does that really makes it appeal to me is to appeal to my Rouseauist tendencies. Some may argue that it is unwise to humanise such an evil group of people, but that is in essence the point of the film; to say why these people were evil and how. Showing that they were human beings, that they had consciences and passions - it just makes their actions, perpetrated over a political idea, that more evil, but in a way that we can understand and learn from. I can't feel indignation about what I read in a textbook, but the work of these great actors, directors and filmmakers has put it into a medium that touches the modern Zeitgeist.
     Downfall is one of the most important films ever made about the Second World War, and despite its considerable length ever second feels important. It rips down the shroud of political balme games around that period and shows it for what it really was; a group of people that were evil, but human at the same time. It helps us to not only understand that period, but to learn from it in a way that will affect everyone who watches.

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Two years ago today, I wrote my first review and published it to Facebook. More details about the first year of this blog can be found here. Since my first year anniversary, I've managed to review the rest of Misfits Series One, Life On Mars Series Two, the whole of Torchwood Series One and Miracle Day, Doctor Who Seasons Twenty-seven and Thirty-two, the entire Fourth Season of LOST, AND all of Being Human. It's been a fun year for me on this blog, and I can only hope that I'm still here this time next year, to review both Series 7 of Doctor Who as well as the brand-spanking-new series of Red Dwarf.

Thanks.

Off To See The Wizard

Like last year, and less so the year before, I'll be reviewing my school's production this year, which I again have a part in. Compared to previous years, I expect that this year's review will be a lot more interesting due to our relatively messy production. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose. In any case, look forward to Wizard of Oz 2011 on the 9th December.

Thanks.

From The Archive: Opinion: Alton Towers Trip 2010

Back in early 2010 I promised a review of my trip to Alton Towers with school. It took me a while to get around to writing it, and when I did write it I wasn't very happy with the results. I felt I was being over-analytical and too formal, and that I was letting my personal prejudices to do with rides etc. get in the way.
     Regardless, I've decided to dig up that review from my Archives and finally, around six months later than promised, post it on the site. Keep in mind my own reservations, and read on.

-------------------------
Written Summer 2010. Trip occurred in July 2010.

I've been struggling to get round to writing this, mainly because at the time, I felt more of an indifference towards the park then any particular strong opinion. Regardless, it's time for me to take a look at the money-sink that is Alton Towers, and whether we should let it walk over the park's history.
     I made it my aim this time to show my partner around the park, as he had never been before. It was therefore in my best interests to explore every area of the park, looking at design, enjoyment and hospitality. Despite my position that adrenaline thrills are a waste of time, I tried to keep an unbiased view.
     As always, the park is a very immersive experience - several theming devices and a constant source of music make the surreal areas more believable. The main areas of the park looked at Pirates, Jungles, Tech Parks and then more kiddie themed Fairytale and Cloud Cookoo Lands. These areas are well-spaced and connected, with several routes between them, and the maps are fairly clear as well as being colourful and a good display of what's on offer.
     In my last visit, I was badgered by stall-owners as I walked past, to my great annoyance. This has been eradicated, although the prices are still sky-high. Alton Towers is a pure cash-cow; designed to sink as much money as possible from its customers. And, it seems, it is succeeding.
     And now to where I wanted to go on this trip; the two areas of the park most true to its spirit and yet also sadly rejected - the Towers themselves, and the Gardens. Before entering these areas, park-supervisors actually asked us whether we wanted to go in there, or whether we were simply mixed up. And this shouldn't be the attitude; both are well-kept areas of historical significance, and are quite beautiful in their own way.

Castle Gardens

     Alton Towers itself was a settlement looking back to around 1000B.C., but the current castle was built as an extension to a hunting lodge after the English Civil War in the 1600s. The castle is now used for weddin ceremonies, although it is fully possible to explore the ruins, taking a look at the old kitchens and the several writing rooms and lounges. The rooves offer a great view of not only the park but also the surrounding countryside.
     The Gardens on the other hand are much more well-preserved. Straddling a valley between two of the park's main areas, Charles's Talbots gardens are just a wonderful work of art, taking from many different cultures and perfectly understanding the subtlties of garden design. There're the Roman colummns, the large Eastern Pagoda, the Lily Pond, the statues, and many other interesting sections.
     So, I conclude. Alton Towers has a great atmosphere and you can have a really fun time. The sheer amount of care and effort put into keeping the park clean and safe is astounding, even in the areas where less emphasis is placed on people visiting. However, some of the park staff can sometimes get in the way of your enjoyment, even though they do it less than in the past.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays, everybody.

Thanks.

Review: Oliver! 2010

"The best production I've seen in 30 years" Mr. Ward

It was Lionel Bart, in the 1960s, who decided to translate one of Charles Dickens' most scathingly satirical books into a stage musical (and then a major film). It softened the lengthy and often conveluted plot from the book and gave it an overall more optimistic spin, while retaining enough of the orignal satire to encourage a morbid feel. Oliver is a story of corruption and innocence, taking centre-stage in the depths of the London Underworld. Perfect, then, for a school production.
     This year saw a large number of Year 10s come to the front, most of whom especially were excellent character actors - injecting some much-needed realism into preceedings. The Sixth Form filled in the other gaps, as last year, but this year they were generally stronger. The chorus this year were still as distracted and juvenile as one can expect when attempting serious drama, but there were some strong players that really knocked it up a notch and the energy on the stage was simply amazing. This was no doubt helped by the two Sixth Form choreorgraphers, Laurens Power and Haigh.
     The director this year was Mrs. MacFarlane, assisted by Miss. Urwin, and they took a different approach then previous years due to the less aesthetic nature of the production - Grease got it's points across (the few it actually had) using song and dance, while Oliver! is a bit more cerebral.
     As expected in a school production, the cast brought their own eccentricities to the fore to make their characters more interesting. The almost obligatory "Panto Dame" was Old Sally, played by a disgruntled (but clearly very brave) Year 10. Irregularities in the scripts provided also gave birth to entirely new characters with their own histories and characteristics (e.g. Reg the Undertaker, who was invented when a cast member was needed to bring on a coffin).
     Much credit must also be given to the other aspects of the show. The backdrop this year took on a more consistent style in the form of a London street, in contrast to the gaudy tableaus of previous years. Costumes were a great challenge, but Miss Ainscow managed to bring along an outstanding array of outfits for all of the characters - the most notable being Nancy's stunning red dress, Fagin's hat and wig, and Sikes' imposing green coat. Finally, the music was spot on and well-worked by Mr. Jones and his Year 11 assistant Stephen Scott.
     Now all is said and done, I'd like to thank everyone involved in the production and especially everyone who paid to come and see it. As a cast member, I had a lot of fun and I sincerely hope the audience did too.

Thanks.

P.S. My reviews of Misfits 2.6 and Life On Mars 1.7/1.8 will be up later today, Sunday at the latest. Also, this week will have no Super Sunday, like last week.

Two Week Break

Right; just finished Series Six, and so now I'm going to Devon for two weeks! When I get back I'll be publishing my first review of Sherlock as well as resuming Red Dwarf.

Thanks.

Review: St Damien's Choir

Uh, wait. One sec. Why's my name of a list? Oh, there we go.
          Yes, I, as a musical student, was invited to a talent-scout-induced concert in which ten students from St. Damiens School came up on stage and sang some songs that weren't intended for a choir. Here we go.
          The first song was "Shine" by Take That. The song choice is a logical one; a song designed for four men does logically extend to ten, and the voice variation allowed for a wide variety of notes that couldn't be created by the piano backing. When they finished, I thought they had done a good job, although the last few shouts of the chorus were less singing and more whiny shouting.
          Then there was the, er, more illogical choice of "Haven't Met You Yet," by Michael Bublé. My first reaction was, Why does it make any sense for ten boys of varying vocal range and quality to sing a song sung by one very good Canadian? It doesn't, but despite some jarring discreapancies, it stood as adequate entertainment. After that finished, the overly posh music teacher from St. Damien's did some... wait for it... MASS PARTICIPATION! You heard me right, folks! Why is it that every educational event thinks that what people under 16 want is to uniformly chant and clap?!?! "coughs"
          Anyway, so then she said, "And now a final song," and I thought, this could be at least pleasant. Then she said that only three of them knew the song. I thought it could work, three singers isn't the end of the world. And then the piano bloke started, and it was a very strange. And then they started singing. It felt like the world was ending. I knew those lyrics. This was, "I'm a Believer," by the Monkees, a cherished part of my younger childhood. And they were not only singing with the wrong notes, they were also whining it instead of singing. This wasn't singing. This was criminal.
          One and a half songs out of three isn't bad. For the very little practice they admitted doing, and the fact that the oldest one there was 14, they had a high quality. But from a more objectified analytical standpoint (ooh big words) it just doesn't cut it.

Thanks.

Opinion: Attractions of the Rhineland (Day 2/5)

Day Two

I awoke at 6 am. The sun was lovely, shing through the windows, as the bells in the local church rang as they had on the hour all night. I got dressed in clean clothes, finally managed to shake my roommate awake and then took my camera and walked down to explore the hotel, looking in other people's rooms and also inside the quad, which had a lovely set of gardens.

Breakfast consisted mainly of terrible German cereals or a round of toast. We assembled our "packed lunches", which consisted of a sandwhich, a German apple-juice carton and a little biscuit. Then we set off, to a large castle on a steep hill, whose name I really cannot remember. (ed: Marksburg Castle). It had a lot of interesting architecture from many different periods, with all sorts of brickwork and cobbling as well as room designs lasting over two thousand years, when it was a safeguard against the Roman advance into Germania. The guide was a woman in leather, that couldn't quite pronounce her vs. (Those over there are the winyards!)

After that we went to the chairlift in the local town in Boppard, which was a bit like a ski-lift except that you certainly would not want to be falling from it. On the way up the views I met another boy, who was sharing a room with some of my other friends. Wishing to avoid another night of snoring, I offered a swap, and there the deed was done. At the top of this cliff there was a lovely natural park and the edge had remarkable views of the Rhine valley. There we ate our lunch and met a stray dog.

At the bottom of the mountain we went into the town on one of those train thingymajigs, and we were immersed in the culture. What my budgeting self found particularly enjoyable was a shop I've mentioned before, called Pennymarkt, which was like Lidl, but so much more inviting due to our low budgets. I didn't find any souvenoirs here though.

Heading back to the coach, we drove to a bowling alley. The bowling was, well, exactly the same as bowling here in Britain. As a great man once said, "Bowling is Bowling." When we got back, the evening meal was chickpea soup, a wonderful spaghetti bolognaise and some sort of strawberry mousse. At the bequest of some of the more footbally footballers, we walked to a football field where they played football and I played on the Gameboy Advance. (I know, right?)

Then, I realised the horror of my earlier choice to swap. This parter was perhaps one of the most increasingly annoying people I had ever met. While I was trying to sleep, he was watching football and speaking to his friends on loudspeaker. It was enough to disturb my sleep accidentally - but when it was conscious, something had to be done. But not tonight. Tonight I had to sleep.

Thanks.

Opinion: Attractions of the Rhineland (Day 1/5)

May 2009. A school trip to Germany is on offer. I, enthused, take the offer. Five days in the Rhineland, with a coach and several activities, as well as four nights stay in the wonderful Hotel Lindenhof.

This piece is an Opinion because it's more of a recall diary than a review, and much less proffessional than a normal review.

This particular piece focusses on Days One, a turbulent day on the trip, in which I contemplated returning home...

Day One

We arrive the the coach at around midnight, where the coach is waiting. I've got a bag of stuff, and I'm wearing jeans, boots and a tee shirt. I sit next to my partner, who I allocated myself with at an earlier date. He;s not the closest of friends, but I can trust him.

Of course, it's my idea that I might be able to get some sleep on this coach, being past midnight 'n' all. But that doesn't come to pass for quite a while, with screaming and singing kids all over the coach. The seat and my position in it is uncomfortable, and the mix of fatigue and confusion left me confused and slightly mad. Luckily, around half-past twelve, they were told to shut up and I got some kip.

Only four hours kip, if I remember. When I woke up, we had gone into a service station, where the drivers of the coach swapped over, and a few boys were allowed off the coach to go to the loo. When I got back on the coach, I took an empty set of two seats. Much more comfortable. We were driving for the next three hours, with a few more stops for whatever reason, until we got to Dover.

It was a foggy day on the channel. I'd never seen the White Cliffs before, and so it was an interesting thing to do. We waited a bit but then got on an earlier ferry, which was another new experience. After a kip and a good walkabout, my thoughts of confusion were wiped out by my intrigue in exploring the ship to its limits, going through all sorts of halls and balconies. I was hungry, as it was seven in the morning, so I decided to go to the "Parisian Cafe" and order a Pan au Chocolat. I wasn't really in the mood for French, so I asked the waiter in English. What I get in response is a long string of seemingly-nonsensical sentences that I neither understood nor cared about. I think he was saying that there were none left. Regardless, I just gave an apprehensive, "Ok" and walked off.

Thinking I'd get better fare downstairs, I went down to the Economy Area, where most of the others were getting their food. It was a horrid imitation Full-English. I wasn't going near it. I even took a photograph of it, that's how much it disgusted me.

One of the things I loved was how I could stand at the bow of the ship, watching the cliffs of Dover dissappear and the beachy-coastline of Northern France emerge from the fog. I managed to stave off sea-sickness for a while but eventually I gave in and sat down near the four teachers, who were telling each other stories of their childhood ( horriffic, horriffic things).

The coach passed through France (one service station), Belgium (one very rude service station) and The Netherlands, before we entered Germany. On the way into Germany we hit noon, and so we stopped off at a German side-of-road restaurant that had lots of lovely food, a semi-pornographic gift shop and an automatic handdryer.

Eventually we got to the Rhine, which was a lovely sight. The sparkling, golden waters of the Rhine, with the vineyards on either side. Our hotel was a small one on the surface, but it had Tardis like qualities. Behind the fascade out front was a large quad of newly built hotel rooms. We were in room thirty, a rarity as it had the single, two-matress bed and little else. Oh, and there was a TV full of German Channels. (Except at six in the morning, at which it was English stock markets.)

Our first dinner was in the function room; a vegetabley soup for starters, fish and chips for main and then a pudding that not many people liked but I thought was passable. And then we found out someone had brought, "And Now For Something Completely Different" on DVD. I would have run in fear, but I had not been exposed to the genius of python, nevermind the dark absurdities of their first film. Not dark as in content. Dark as in the sheer lack of god-damn funny for the first hour.

Anyway, after that pain we went to bed and it was there that I began to break down. My partner was tired, as I was, having had about five hours sleep out of the past fourty eight. You could say that he was tired enough to snore. And how. I was surprised he wasn't disturbing the neighbours. I tried to wake him up, but every time he came close to consciousness he fell back into sleep within seconds.

I had my escape all planned out. I would walk down the Rhine until I came to a dock, and then I would hijack a boat, travelling up the Rhine and across the North Sea to Hull, where I would get my Euroes changed back into pounds and take a taxi back to Manchester, where I could catch the bus home and enjoy the rest of my holiday. Fortunately, I managed to get some sleep after an hour of reading. And thus ends Day One.

Thanks.

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day, a commercialised equivalent of "Mothering Sunday", a Catholic tradition for honouring maternal family figures that brings grown men to their knees in an attempt to make up for a life of sweat, toil and emotional pain. Made a national holiday in 1914, this has torturered people of all ages ever since.

It's also New year in the Nanakshari Sikh Calendar.

Thanks. Happy Mother's Day.