h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This always happens after a holiday doesn’t it? I remember being a bit blue after my skiing trip in January. Now after a wonderful time in Switzerland I’m down in the dumps again. It’s been a pretty slow week, but that’s probably mostly because I’m having difficulty motivating myself to do anything.

I went to the cinema with my girlfriend on Tuesday. We were originally going to see Princess Mononoke, a Japanese animation directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s supposed to be really good and I’ve wanted to see it for ages. It was unfortunate then, that when I phone up for tickets they told me they were showing a different film instead. Undeterred we decided to see a later film called In My Father’s Den which also looked really interesting. But this time, when we turned up they told us that they were showing yet another film instead. By now we’d worked ourselves up so much for seeing a movie that we’d even have watched Howard the Duck if that was what they were showing.

In the end we saw a film called The Consequences of Love (or Les Consequences del’Amour) an Italian language film set in Switzerland about a former stockbroker who lives out his life in a hotel doing nothing but carrying a bag of money to a bank once a week. He smokes, plays cards and refuses virtually all forms of human contact; he quietly observes the other people in the hotel in particular the bartender, though he never speaks to her. Occasionally he calls his wife and children who treat him with distain and barely talk to him. Then each evening he retires to his room and does not sleep.

As the story progresses, the bartender gradually breaks through his cold exterior and we begin to understand how his life has come to this. The film is beautifully shot and smoulders like a cigarette on an ashtray. It’s darkly humorous at times and at others quite tragic. All in all, it was a very good film and not at all bad for a random choice. Sometimes it’s nice to just watch a film with no preconceptions at all.

As I said, the rest of the week has been pretty slow; I’ve been feeling really tired and have been trying to catch up on lost sleep all week without much success. I don’t mind being tired when I’ve been out enjoying myself. But lately I just seem to have loads of washing up to do and laundry to hang out. My life is one wild adventure at the moment isn’t it?

Anyway, the weekend doesn’t hold much in store. I’ve booked tickets to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Saturday evening and am planning on going for a meal with my girlfriend beforehand which should be good. I want to get chance to fit in a nice long run as well. I haven’t raced in about a month and I feel like I’m loosing my motivation a little, so I’ve lined up three races in August in an attempt to scare me into doing some training.

Well, I guess that’ll do. Hopefully I’ll be in a bit of a better mood next week.