Sunday: Slumdogs and Spiders’ Webs

Listening to the soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire. It is like a monsoon hopscotch. I am trying to will myself inside the spice market, but I am stuck.

I don’t want to go to work. I have hit a wall that no amount of days off seems to be able to remove. My enthusiasm has all but dried up and I don’t know what to do. I have so many projects I could be working on, but I cannot breathe any wind into my creative sails. This casts a cloud over my Sundays as I feel the countdown to when I have to leave for the office. It is made worse by the glum economic times in the UK, and this chant of “if you have a job, just be thankful and hang onto it.” I get that, but I still feel like I am compromising my potential for the sake of security. It is also not fair of me to drag my heels at work when there might be someone out there with a new, true enthusiasm who could bring more to the task.

This morning I took a long walk. I did some filming for a non-work project. Yesterday I could feel the onset of spring, but today the sleet-carrying clouds have pushed in and the cold has descended like a dead man’s blanket.

My kitchen is a mess but my freezer is full. Yesterday’s sweet potato and coconut soup was stunning, but I am less than convinced by the lamb dhansak and will not make it again. Tomorrow night, provided the weather is good enough for driving, the manboy will be here and I plan to make him a special dinner of steak and mushrooms with roasted sweet potato and squash. Dessert: a pear compote with a cakey chocolate top. We shall drink gin and tonics (I must make ice) and try to forget the world.

Forgetting the world is easy when you watch A Complete History of My Sexual Failures. It is hilarious and is so much of what independent film making should be about. Except the ball whipping. That’s just nasty. On a less funny note but also incredible, especially since it was made for just £5,000, is the Scottish road film, The Inheritance. The DVD includes a fantastic extra in which the writer and director talk about how they made the film for so little money. It is a toast to the power of spontaneous adjustment when things do not go as planned. For example, when the van they were using broke down mid-way through filming, they wrote it out of the script, altering the storyline slightly to have it be stolen. Writer and actor Tim Barrow does the best, embittered and emotionally tortured frown I have ever seen.

Oh! I have discovered Google Reader. I love my google reader. I can be more lazy than ever. Apparently I have 29 subscribers. Who are you people? Name yourselves! I am…amazed.

A few notes to end. Edinburgh is a UNESCO City of Literature and every year there is a “one read” drive, in which one book is chosen and everyone is encouraged to read it. This year it is Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and while I could have gone to the library yesterday to pick up my free copy, instead I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg, which is a lovely land of free reading material. My book club is later this month and The Lost World is up for discussion.

Finally, my father is officially retired. Tomorrow he begins his first full week of never having to go back to the sawmill, where he worked for nearly 33 years. I spoke to him yesterday; he said it doesn’t seem real yet. But he already has great plans for his wine making hobby (’ole Ziggy makes a lovely raspberry wine), and also hopes to expand into beer. His retirement gift from the mill was thankfully not a watch, but a gift certificate for Canadian Tire, with which he bought himself the air compressor he has long admired. Both my parents sound very happy, and I am excited for them as they launch themselves into this next phase of their adventures.

So that‘s it. Anyone for tea? You there! Number 23! Do you take sugar?