Week 15: Winter is coming

Apr 9 – Apr 15

I start the week with a day off, and it seems to do the trick. It ends up a fairly busy week, but a good one. No complaints. For a change.

Monday

After two consecutive weekends of painting, and little genuine rest, I’ve decided to take a pre-emptive day off to recharge. It starts of relatively poorly when I head to the bank for 9am (right after dropping the kinderbesten at school) only to find that it doesn’t open until 9:30am.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon pass acceptably but the rest period ends at 2:50pm when I have to collect the Kinderbeast from school. I then have to return an hour later to collect the Elderbeast from his CoderDojo. I then have to head out just under an hour later to take the Elderbeast to his final acting class. I return home and cook dinner, then have to leave to collect the Elderbeast from his class. On the way the Kinderbeast and I play I Spy, but I eventually have to ask him to stop talking at me as my brain has reached exhaustion point. We finally get home, eat dinner, and the kinderbesten are despatched to bed.
I decide to treat myself to the first episode of The City & The City. I read the book a few years back and am fascinated to see how they translate it to the screen. So far, the answer is: very well.

Tuesday

It’s a year since my marriage ended. It’s therefore ironically fitting and utterly surprising when the Elderbeast’s PEAC teacher tells me that I’m her example of “a single Dad who’s really got it together” It’s not a bad thing to hear.
Later in the day I realise that the weather is actually cold, and I realise with a deep level of glee that I can finally put the winter duvet back on the bed. I do exactly that and can honestly say I’ve probably never been so excited about going to bed.
I’m so old sometimes …

Wednesday

My evening plans are wrecked when episode three of The City & The City suffers critical tech-fail. It was clearly not meant to be: the kinderbesten retreated to bed later than planned, eating deeply into my TV viewing window. I give up and read. Well, browse the internet. And read stuff on it.

Thursday

We have pie for dinner. I’m so excited that it’s finally cool enough to have pie for dinner. It feels like welcoming winter in with open arms. At least until the temperature drops another few degrees and I banish the weather out in the cold where it belongs and start cursing the very thought of coldness.

Friday

It’s my #childfree weekend, but due some some unavoidable family arrangements it’s getting on for 8pm before they finally depart. I try to delay having dinner until the peace and quiet descends, but make no such allowance for my wine. The outcome is I’m perhaps a little more wobbly than usual when my Fridate friend arrives.
It being a Friday, and the 13th of the month, we watch Friday The 13th Part 2 for our Fridate horror choice. I check the calendar for upcoming Friday 13ths and determine that it would take another four years or so to see the franchise out in this chrononomically pleasing fashion.

Saturday

A pleasing day of light social activity. I meet some friends for brunch and am surprised when a waitress brings food to the table that we haven’t even ordered. Apparently this is what Dim Sum is all about. It’s my first time and I feel a bit like it’s the gazpacho incident in Red Dwarf.
Then another friend visits to help me redesign my garden. We share ideas, drink much tea, and chat.
For the evening I’m left with the dilemma of what to watch. Unusually, I have nothing in mind. After browsing my blu-ray shelves and attempting a bit of shortlisting I finally settle on Pan’s Labyrinth (on the basis that I haven’t yet seen it, and it’s supposed to be pretty good).
It’s pretty good.

Sunday

My Fridate friends come over for what I hope is merely our first “Doctor Who breakfast”. Simply put, we eat breakfast and watch Doctor Who together. And by breakfast, I basically mean we drink coffee and eat waffles.
I spend the rest of my afternoon cooking and chilling out in front of the bonus features disc from The Last Jedi. I particularly enjoy The Director & The Jedi: I’m a sucker for getting a glimpse behind the curtain. The moments with Carrie Fisher definitely bring a few tears to the eye.
For the evening I check out the first two episodes of Lost in Space with the kinderbesten. It proves a hit.

Watched

Read

I start the week by finishing off a comic book, Terminator Salvation The Final Battle, which sparked my interest for two reasons. Firstly, it was written by J Michael Strazcynski, who created Babylon 5 (which was awesome). Secondly I’m a sucker for stories that try to retrofit continuity and come up with something new and different. It’s a double challenge, and this book did a fairly good job. It certainly made more sense than Terminator: Genisys, and had about twenty times the entertainment value of Terminator: Salvation.
I ended the week by returning to Doctor Who: The City Of Death. It’s an interesting one, this. It’s a novelisation of one of the few classic Who stories that didn’t get novelised back in the day, but it’s a very different beast from those old books. It’s based on a story that was originally written by Douglas Adams, and I’m both impressed and surprised at how well the author (James Goss) has evoked Adams’ style here. It’s shifted the tone of the story from classic Who to something that very much belongs in Douglas Adams’ oeuvre.
Less impressively, it surfaces the limitations Adams had when it comes to plot and narrative structure, but we can’t have it all.

Eaten