So, I'm walking down past Downing Street and, well, (you heard it here first!) those "wacky" guys from Fathers 4 Justice have got themselves all dolled up for action again and had climbed out on the wall of 10 Downing Street (which meant that Downing Street was blocked off which meant I couldn't meet someone outside 10 Downing Street as we'd arranged, which annoyed me a little). Cause, y'know, it worked so well the last few times.

I don't know the individual merits of these dad's cases but....is it wrong of me to want to see one of them take a mis-step and go plummeting to his doom? Does that make me a bad person? That'd certainly get some media focus on the issue.

These guys need a new trick. How about this: Instead of just, y'know, standing about on buildings looking fat- why don't they actually go around like, thwarting crime and helping people and beating up mothers dressed like villains? That'd be entertaining AND helpful.

I don't envy this man the task ahead of him.

Okay, so, I went to a movie last week, and the movie started at eight, and I clocked off work around six-thirty, so I figured I had an hour or so to kill, yeah? I figured I?d like, go to Borders on Oxford Street and chill out for a bit. Get a few books filled with photos of distant galaxies and find a chair in the in-house Starbucks with something chocolatey and caffeiney and wow myself out until it was movie time (seriously- this is a good way to spend an interesting hour).

So I?m walking down T Court Road towards Oxford Street and there?s this band of people accosting everyone who walk by them, saying: ?Free stress test!?

?Would you like a free stress test, sir??

I figured, well, I could trip out on Nebulae any old time.

?Yeah, sure.?

So, the stress test is as follows: You hold on to two iron bars, which are attached (by those rather scary looking ?we-can-electrocute-you-anytime-we-please? pterodactyl-headed wires that you?d normally use to jump-start a car battery) to a little device which has a needle on a gauge. I got the impression it used more or less the same principles as a lie detector- micro changes in my pulse would cause the needle to jump up, indicating stress. The guy was constantly adjusting the sensitivity so that the needle would hover at more or less the halfway point as a baseline- the lower the sensitivity required, the higher stressed you were, I guess.

?So, what?s on your mind?? the guy asked. ?Anything stressing you recently??

I told him about an odd social situation that I?d be thinking of frequently that week and I had, in fact, been thinking of just moments before.

The needle jumped up to its maximum tolerance. Tick-tick-tick, it bounced against the casing.

?Woah! Looks like there?s definitely some stress there!? He laughed and adjusted the baseline, bringing the needle back down to centre. "How about your love life??

Again, before even answering, the needle rocketed to the right again. Tick-tick-tick.

I summarized the disastrous end to my last relationship. He adjusted the baseline again.

?Okay, so tell me about your family...?

Tick-tick-tick.

By now I was starting to get a little embarrassed. Ask anyone who knows me- I?m a fairly laid-back guy. Sure, I?m like, excitable and energetic, but I don?t exactly stress out about things. Most worries tend to roll off my back pretty quickly. But the story I was telling this guy made me sound like one of the more interesting characters in Days of our Lives (not the one who got memory loss and came back as someone else who then turned out to not be him at all when the original actor returned from hiatus. Bo, I think).

Anyway, as anyone who?s ever had a conversation with any stranger in London can attest, the guy?s next move came as no surprise. It was a pretty good strategy really- chat to someone about their worries, and hope they?re one of those lost-soul folks who?ll latch on to anything that might give them a direction. I?d had similar conversations with Christian fishers-of-men, just without the fancy gimmick.

?So Daniel, as you can see you have a stress-factor of six, which is above average. But I?ll tell you something that can help with that...?

From behind the machine, he brandished what appeared to be an airport novel (it had the picture of a huge volcano on the cover). His face beamed. Bless.

?It?s called Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard. Have you heard of him??

?Yeah, he started that Scientology cult, right??

It was at this point I noticed that we were, in fact, sitting outside a building quite clearly marked: The Church of Scientology.

?Yes!? my stress-scientist praised me like a first-year teacher who still gives a crap. ?...and Dianetics is the guiding principles of...?

?He wrote Battlefield: Earth as well, didn?t he??

?Yes!?

?That movie was awful! It was so bad it wrapped round past good and back to bad again!?

?It had some problems, but the principles behind it...?

?No! There is no defence for that movie! No buts, and or ifs! It flat out sucked. It was one of the worst movies I?ve ever seen. There?s no way I can join a cult started by anyone who had anything to do with that colossal waste of my time.?

To the man?s credit, he somehow managed to disassociate the movie from the wacky cult. I imagine they must have started giving special classes in just that problem after the film came out.

?So anyway,? he said, flustered from the effort of trying to bring me round again, ?Dianetics may have the answers you?re looking for. Would you be interested in reading it?? he pushed his two hands, cupping the book, slightly in my direction.

?Yeah, sure, I?ll give it a look.? Anything to get this wacko off my back.

?Great!? Aww, look at his happy little hamster face. This mustn?t happen often. ?That?ll be ten pounds.?

?What? Hang on mate! Scientology is a religion, and from what I can tell, Dianetics is its Bible, right??

?Yes.?

?Well, bloody hell, I can get Bibles for free* pretty much any hotel I?d care to go to- the Gideons see to that. In fact, I even got given a copy of the Hare Krishna** in an airport one time. There?s no way I?m gonna pay ten pounds for your guys? Bible! You know how much beer I could get for that?? (Curses, I should have added: Now that?s stress relief. You only ever think of these things after the fact).

d

* Although, according to Neil Gaiman, the Bible is the book that is most frequently shoplifted, throughout the land. Which makes no sense whatsoever.
** Yeah, I know, it?s actually called the Bhagavad-Gita, but these facts don?t always spring to mind when you?re making a point and you have to go with what you?ve got at your disposal.

I?ve always been a big fan of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I remember quite distinctly going to see The City of Lost Children, having heard absolument rien about it, and being taken by utter surprise. I think the thing that impressed me most was that he used cutting edge special effects not for their own sake, but to give the audience a new perspective on the story. While he stumbled seriously with the execrable Alien: Resurrection (ugh- I feel dirty just typing that), he rallied strongly with Amelie, which was exactly the right kind of charming.

A Very Long Engagement actually has a lot in common with Amelie- not just its lead (and every other actor, come to think of it- I guess France only has a dozen to employ?), which you soon forget about as she?s playing a completely different character (Amelie was irrepressibly happy, whereas Mathilde rarely spends a moment in the film without looking like she is on the brink of bursting into tears); but the style of the movie is very similar. There?s a narrator documenting people?s various histories, flashbacks are shown as though they are silent black-and-white films, light beams out of people?s faces, the camera dives between rocks and peers through shell casings. It?s also an incredibly gorgeous film. I actually had trouble reading all the subtitles because I didn?t want to tear my eyes away from some of the shots- they were just too good to miss even a moment of. I can?t, off the top of my head, think of any film that has better cinematography. From the rich browns of the Channel Island Moors, to the bleak greys of the battlefields, every shot is crisp, every camera movement rewarding.

That?s where the similarities end. While AVLE is, at it?s heart, a romance, it?s also unrelentingly grim, as any film that tries to be honest about World War I must surely end up being. Characters are killed off at alarming speed, often in gruesome and explicitly portrayed ways (one of the friends I was watching it with had to put her head between her knees at one point, lest her nausea overcome her). Almost every scene, in one form or another, revolves around death, be it the hope that it?s been cheated, or the consequences on those left behind when it has not. If you?re expecting the feelgood film of the year, prepare thyself.

So is it a romance or a war movie? It?s neither! It?s actually a mystery. In trying to uncover the story of what happened to her fiancé during the war, Mathilde uncovers the stories of those around him in his last hours, touching the lives of those who knew them as she tries to piece together the whole, confusing story. And it is confusing. Despite a narrator and constant flashbacks (sometimes even split-screened as people talk about them), there often seemed to be one more character than I could sensibly keep track of, and it wasn?t until a great deal of them had been killed off that I started to get a grip on who was who and what their role was in the story.

However, in spite of the confusion and the gore, it never failed to be entertaining and surprising (although the conclusion, while definitely unexpected, is mainly so due to it?s complete lack of dramatic climax). I left the cinema feeling a little weary, but quite pleased, as well.

Go see.

One of the (many) advantages of being, well, me, is that I seem to gravitate, through accident or unconcious design, towards extremely talented people, particularly in the creative arena. Most of my friends have exceptional gifts, be they manifest in music, poetry, art, photography, web design, modelling, writing, cinematography, animation or comedy [and a few of the bastards are just good at bloody everything they put thier mind to].

One of the disadvantages of this is that, on occasion, you can feel a bit overwhelmed and inadequate when surrounded by such talent. That's okay though- it forces you to lift your game up and get going, which is a good thing. It's daunting, yet inspiring.

One such of these occasions was last Thursday, when I went to opening of the art installation that a friend of mine, Nicky Deeley, has been slaving over for the last year or so. Although- it's more than a simply art installation. Nicky has completely transformed an entire bar using her own unique asthetic.

Little details lurk in every corner. A flock of crows from one piece sits on a power line above the bar. An oilcan in the staircase can be found in the corner of one of the paintings. It's not a series of disparate works- it's almost as though you're inside a single cohesive artwork, which manifests itself in many different ways, all around you. It's brilliant.

These photos (and there's more on flickr and at the squidbunny) simply don't do justice to being in the bar and soaking up the atmosphere. And no still picture can prepare you for the moving tentacles!

So if you're in the Old Street area looking for somewhere to meet for a drink, you could definitely do far worse than to head over to Dreambagsjaguarshoes, 32 Kingsland Road. I recommend it.

The first thing you need to know about this book is that it's not that funny.

Does God exist?

From: AQA [63336]

The Bible is the most significant piece of evidence that God exists, but it is not scientific proof. It's the choice of the individual to believe in God.

I would happily support Yet Another Hike in tube prices if, and only if... they used the money to hire James Earl Jones to replace the automated voice that tells you what station you're at.

Just imagine how much perkier your day would be if every morning you got to hear Darth Vader's voice coming over the PA:

"This.....is Great Portland Street."