I scratched the paintwork on the new car. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
If there is a metallic paint demon out there who has chosen to confront me, his pain shall be legendary, even in hell.

No, this isn’t a rant about the dangers of Thatcherism and why the floppy haired Johnson is a disaster for London (too late for that, everyone who voted for him is an idiot.).
This is just a little tale of boy meets bat, boy helps bat learn to fly and then sobs when bat leaves him.
Which is one way of saying, a few days ago, I found a baby bat on my terrace. The poor thing seemed weak, possibly injured and generally, a little sorry for himself. Well, it was mid afternoon, this is the bat equivalent of finding yourself dazed and confused in Wantage at 3 in the morning.
I looked up what to do, kept him away from the local cats or anything else that might consider a tasty treat, and hoped for the best.
His face looked very much like he should be called Boris and he was the cutest thing you could imagine. Licking his lips, making little “eep, eep’ noises and utterly determined to climb things so he could hang upside down, everything he did brought a huge smile to my face.
But the time must come when young ones go out into the world and so, with little encouragement and nary a glance back, Boris left, to find his own way in the world.
I hope he finds happiness and many bugs to eat.

I love my big, new, shiny 24″ mac. Not in a biblical way, that would be wrong. More like a fluffy kitten.

Well actually it’s not silver, it’s a deep metallic blue. I am really looking forward to getting my new Mercedes. And yes, that does make me a massive wanker, but a massive wanker with leg room.

*Pre-war Formula One reference. But I’m still looking for any viable reference to the 6 wheel Elf Tyrell. Which was also a deep metallic blue.

If the truth be told, I’m something of a male stereotype; I like me booze, birds and football. But I’ve never been much of a petrol head. When guys in the pub started talking about cars, I would glaze over in much the same way I saw some folk glaze over when the conversation turned to football.

But, our current car is coming to the end of it’s life and each new thing that needs fixing for the last year or so has seemed like a waste if we’re going to get a new one soon anyway.

So the search has begun. Our current monster, a Fiat Brava, is a gas guzzling beast that is also absurdly long. Parking in Rome is problematic at the best of times, so getting a smaller car is one of the priorities. In the city runabout class, most of them are too small for me with nowhere near enough legroom or headroom but there’s a few that are OK; The Citroen C3, Fiat Punto Grande, even the Suzuki Splash would all be fine, if unexciting. But another criteria we were looking at was environmental impact, so we dutifully went to look at Smart cars. The regular Smart for Two wouldn’t be enough for us but we thought we’d try out the Smart for Four.

Alas, when we got there, they told us they had stopped making them. Right next door, was the Mercedes lot (Mercedes are Smart’s parent company). We figured they would be too expensive but we should have a look anyway as we were there.

And that was when I saw it. The A-class Mercedes Elegance. Black and shiny. My precious. And we wants it…

I’ve done a little writing for the British Comedy Guide. The latest thing I’ve done for them is an interview with Ras Hardiker. If you’re interested, it can be found on this link;

http://www.sitcom.co.uk/features/rasmus_hardiker.shtml

Living on a building site is no fun.

It used to be the case that sequels were bad. Everyone new this, it was just one of those things. With the honorable exceptions of Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back, sequels would at best be pale imitations of the original and at worst, cynical attempts at cashing in with none of the qualities that made the original any good in the first place.

But that has changed in recent years; Toy Story, X-men, Spiderman, Shrek, The Lord Of The Rings. All good first films with actual character development and tight scripting and direction in the sequel. But Spiderman 3 and X-men: The Last Stand were well below the standards of the first films and even The Return Of The King fell into the trap of being too indulgent and way too long.

For my sins, I just rented Shrek the Third. It’s bollocks. I’m now rather concerned at the prospect of Toy Story 3.

Should you be in Rome on the 6th, 7th or 8th of December, you could do worse for an evenings entertainment than come to Winters Tales (not A Winters Tale, Shakespeare-philes/phobes).

With the patronage of the Comune di Roma, assessorato alle politiche culturali,
Ford Entertainment presents The English Theatre Of Rome in
WINTER’S TALES MMOMM: More Men On Modern Monologues

A series of brand new monologues.

directed by Christian Boyle by and with Rick Brecco, Doug Dean, Micheal Monkhouse, Jon Penate, Matthew Reynolds, Giovanni Samaritani & Steven Spelar.

MMOMM is conceived as a recurring event which introduces new authors and seven men on stage through a series of monologues and short dialogues. The work comes from different backgrounds and reflect the varied life styles, choices in the twenty first century. The situation is both human and humorous resounding the upbeat, down trodden and mind boddling aspects of love and life.

December 6, 7, 8 at 9pm

Quentin Tarantino has been the darling of the media and well received by critics since he first shot to fame with Reservoir Dogs. I loved RD, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown (probably his best, if less commercially successful), Kill Bill I and II and even quite liked his quarter of Four Rooms.

Because he’s been so loved by the critics for the best part of 20 years, I thought the reviews for his latest film might be part of a backlash; after so long building him up, it was time to knock him down.

Alas, I was wrong. Deathproof is rubbish. It’s indulgent, self referential, bollocks-awful plot (such as it is), utterly bereft of interesting characters and pretentious.

Annoyingly, two of the areas Tarantino has always excelled are very poor too, namely dialogue and soundtrack. Remember how you were drawn into the characters at the start of Reservoir Dogs - Madonna’s Like a Virgin, the little black book, not tipping? Great stuff. A Royale with cheese, the selling points of an AK47, all seemingly effortless and memorable. How about Stuck in the middle with you, Girl, You’ll be a woman soon or the whole Wu Tang soundtrack of Kill Bill? QT really can do great things but didn’t bother this time.

But what I really wasn’t prepared for was just how dull Deathproof is. I’m not kidding, it’s bum breakingly tedious.

While I’m in film review mode and just to prove I’m not always grumpy, I recently got around to watching A History of Violence (shouldn’t that be AN History…?), which I didn’t get around to seeing when it came out.

What an excellent, taut, thriller. I like David Cronenberg’s work but thought he needed the bizarre and grotesque. Here, he simply tells a story; presents you with a simple tale, some good characters and lets you make your own mind up without ramming too much down your throat. Great performances all round too. Sometimes less is more. But in Deathproof, less is just less. And lots of it.