Sweeties, Pies and Ginger

Things have been a bit on the hectic side at work over the last week, which resulted in me having top work over the weekend. Things went majorly pair shaped at around 18:30 yesterday evening, but I couldn't stay to fix things as I had to get home for dinner. There was nothing on the telly, so we stuck Delicatessen on and watched that.

Half way through Karen was fast a sleep on the sofa, so when the movie finished she went off to bed. I was still ironing shirts for the week ahead and since there was still nothing on the telly, I decided to watch Ichi The Killer.

This movie is by the acclaimed Japanese director Takashi Miike and is based on a Manga comic book. I'm not really sure what the film was about to tell you the truth as it was sometimes a little hard to follow what was going on. I think there was quite a bit of double crossing going on, but I haven't a clue why, I think some of that would be clearer on a second viewing.

The film centres round two people, the schizophrenic assassin Ichi and the sadomasochist Kakihara. A gang boss goes missing with a load of money and Kakihara sets out to track down the kidnappers. However, we already know that Ichi has done away with the gang boss and is slowly working his way through the rest of the gang. Why he's murdering them all wasn't made clear, or at least I didn't have a clue why he was taking them all out.

The movie is full of over the top violence with blood gushing everywhere, body parts being ripped off and general OTT visuals. Ichi has this razor blade boot thing that he uses to slice up his victims and there are a number of scenes of body parts flying as he chops his way through various people. Kakihara is also a bit of a loony when it come to the violence and can be see sticking spikes through peoples faces and even chopping off his own tongue.

I'm not really sure what to make of the movie as it was all a bit bizarre. I stumbled off to be at around midnight wondering why I'd just watched a movie like that. Truly disturbed and fucked up and not entirely a relaxing film to watch. I'll need to give it another viewing, but maybe with some other people so we can try and figure out what the hell is going on.

Just after the watching the rugby I noticed that one of our three cats had caught a bird and was playing with it on the patio. The weather today is truly dreadful and Kamba looked like he'd been dragged through a swimming pool then a hedge backwards. A wee while later I had to leave to come to work, where I am at the moment and instead of finding a dead bird on the door step there was a massive lump of half digested cat vomit. It was really massive hair ball that contained clearly identifiable bird parts, truly gross.

Well, the fifth Rugby World Cup is finally over and England have lifted the Webb Ellis Trophy, beating the Wallabies in a thrilling match. Even though England did everything in their power to lose the match, they managed a fairy tail ending when Johnny Wilkinson slotted home a drop goal with 20 seconds of extra time left. You couldn't have written a better script.

Even though I hate to say it, congratulations to the English rugby team, it's great to see the Aussie beaten, especially in a major final.

Yet again the Scottish football team's attempt to get into the finals of a major tournament end in glorious failure. After starting the campaign with a two all draw with the Faroe Islands, things weren't looking good. However, the Scottish team managed a slight recovery to make it to the playoffs, only to be drawn against Holland.

The Dutch are currently ranked fifth in the world, although they haven't been playing as well as they should have. So the first leg was at Hampden Park and saw a massive upset when the Scot's thrashed the Dutch one nil. Amazingly the Scottish team had won a game when it mattered, the ghost of Archie Gemmel's amazing World Cup goal against the Dutch in 1978 could finally be laid to rest.

The second leg last night, was a different affair. Played at the Amsterdam ArrenA, Scotland got thrashed with in an inch of their lives. The six nil gubbing was the worst Scottish result in 42 years. Yet again Scotland fall at the final hurdle and go out in a blaze of glorious failure.

Went to see Love Actually last night with Karen, it was one of those advanced preview screenings, so the cinema was packed. I was a bit nervous as previous films written by Richard Curtis don't feature amongst my favourites. The film wasn't actually that bad, in fact it was pretty good, although it did seem to loose it's way in a few places.

The fact that the film was split into 10 different sub stories was stretching it a bit far, you never really got into any of the characters and were left wanting the film to concentrate on just a couple of the story lines. Because of this some of the stories lost their way as there just wasn't the time for them to develop properly.

That aside the film was quite funny and had me laughing and cringing, which was quite nice. Unfortunately butter fingers struck and I dropped a large drink all over the floor, which meant I had to spend the entire film with a wet foot.

I'm in work early this morning for reasons I won't go into at this time... Just before I started work I was looking out of the window at the Moon. It's amazing to think that someone from our planet has actually walked on its surface and brought back samples of its rock. It just reinforces what an amazing planet we live on.

I had an altercation with another driver this morning while on my way into work. There's a really bad roundabout over the A14 that I have to negotiate on the way in and it's a notorious black spot. The incident was the result of impatience on his part and bloody mindedness on mine, we were both to blame in other words.

The upshot of it all was that coming off the roundabout his car was practically in my boot as he gesticulated wildly and shouted obscenities. I returned the compliments with a well known international sign of friendship and it was at this point things turned nasty.

I turn off the road at the next junction onto a set of business parks and he followed me. It was pretty obvious that he was going to follow me until I stopped, but then what...? As far as I was concerned it was both our faults, so a bit of shouting and gesticulating was in order and that was that, there was certainly no need for a face off.

I was starting to get a bit worried as the chap looked like a bit of a thug, he certainly wasn't a business man on his way into work. He looked a lot bigger than me, so there was no way I was going to get out of my car and risk a beating just because he had road rage.

I got to my building on the business park and he was still driving in my boot, so I started to drive round the car park, looping in and out of the islands that dot it. After a few laps it dawned on him that I was taking the piss and he stopped his car, so I drove out of the car park on the other side of the building, he started to follow me again.

I then drove into the car park of another building and did it all over again, then another building and finally back into the car park of my own building. I'd locked all my door by this point, as I was getting just a tad worried.

After ten minutes of driving around, stopping, driving some more, he finally got the hint that there was no way he was going to get anywhere near me and drove off. I had to sit in my car for five minutes to calm down before going into the office.

In retrospect I should have just stopped that car, locked the doors and phoned the Police, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. It made me realise that it's just not worth it, what's the point in getting all worked up and angry when the result is you get chased by some maniac for ten minutes.

It still pisses me off when I see bad driving, impatience, rudeness, the usual stuff. I'm going to have to try to not let it bother me so much from now on, it's just not worth it.

I went for a run this morning, as I didn't really want to cycle to work and I felt that I needed to keep up with some exercise. I left the house at around 07:30 and decided that I would run for between thirty and forty-five minutes, in essence I'd see how it went.

I decided to run a loop out of the village and then back in, as I felt that would probably be around the right distance, even though I didn't have the foggiest how far it really was. It wasn't as far as I'd expected thought and I ended up back in the village after only twenty-five minutes or so.

I thought I should stay out a bit longer as I still felt okay; the thighs were burning a bit and I was sweating, but I didn't fell totalled. So I decided to do a quick loop through the village and then head back, it would take me in a big circle back to the house.

After another five minutes, around the time I would have got back to the house, I started to hit the wall. I was beginning to curse myself for running the extra distance as I started to get a stitch in my lower left abdomen and my thigh were on fire. I really should have done more stretching before leaving the house...

I finally made it back home and didn't feel too bad as I walk the last twenty or so metres back up the lane to the house. Feeling fine after the run wasn't an issue, them main issue would be how I felt in the evening after sitting around all day.

I can honestly say my thighs are knackered! If I move around they're not too bad, but if I sit still for long periods and then get up they scream in agony. Going up and down the stairs is a nightmare, I hope they're a bit better tomorrow morning.

I'll certainly have to make running part of my training if I'm to do a Triathlon, so I suppose I'll have to get my legs used to it.