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

I guess it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but not much really happened last week so it didn’t seem worth the effort. Anyway, my girlfriend came over for the weekend which was really nice so I think I’ll write about that.

She arrived on Friday night and we ate dinner with my parents then went out to the cinema. We drove into Birmingham to a movie theatre called The Electric Cinema. It’s a lovely little independent cinema a bit like The Little Theatre Cinema in Bath. They only have one screen so you have to watch whatever film they happen to be showing, but from the looks of their programme, they usually have pretty good movies on and change them regularly.

I’ve never been there before, though I must have walked past it a thousand times. It’s a pretty unassuming building on the outside, but inside it’s really gorgeous; the décor made me feel like I was in a 1950s cinema. They have a fully licensed bar (they even do cocktails!) and you can take your drinks into the movie with you. Best of all though, they have sofas at the back which you can book (£20 per couple) and watch the movie in real style and comfort with waiter service (via text message) so you don’t even have to leave your seat if you run out of popcorn.

It was a really cool little place and we’ve resolved to go back as often as we can and maybe if there’s a special occasion we might even splash out and have one of the sofas.

Anyway, back to the movie. Showing of Friday was Syriana, with George Clooney and Matt Damon, a complex story of corruption and espionage in the oil industry. The plot is hugely complicated and I confess I kind of lost track of some of the intricacies at times. I felt I missed some of the subtleties and would actually like to see it again for that reason. Maybe the filmmakers took on a bit too much in trying to capture the entire spectrum of politics behind the story and at times the movie felt fragmented and disconnected, or maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention, but nevertheless it was an engaging and interesting film.

On Saturday my Mum wanted to get the family together for a meal so my brother and his girlfriend and my two nephews came over for the day. They got here before lunch so we all went for a walk round the local nature reserve in the afternoon and then had dinner together. My girlfriend and I made an easy trifle as our contribution to the meal. It was really nice to spend a whole day with them. My eldest nephew is now six and my Dad found out some of my old toys for him to play with which was nice to see.

On Sunday we had a bit of a lie in and had pancakes for breakfast (alright lunch) then went to the NEC for the Destinations travel show. My girlfriend is lucky enough to be going to a conference in Mexico in early June and will be turning the trip into a bit of a holiday. If I’ve managed to get myself gainfully employed by then, then I might be joining her out there so we went to the show to get as much information about Mexico as we could and figure out where she (or we) would like to go. While we were there we obviously picked up loads of brochures about every country we’ve ever wanted to go to and spent the afternoon dreaming about holidays and working up some real wanderlust.

At the exhibition they also had loads of demonstrations, everything from Tai Kwan Do to Salsa dancing and they had a display of travel photographs which we spent some time looking over. We also took advantage of the last day sales and returned to my parents’ house loaded down with cut price Danish pastries and apple strudel.

My girlfriend decided to stay over for an extra night so we spent a nice quiet evening last night in front of the television. We watched the new BBC wildlife documentary Planet Earth which was quite, quite stunning. But we made sure we got an early night because we had to be up early so she could drive back to Bath this morning.

After my girlfriend left I went for a really long run and have spent the rest of the day in a bit of a haze. I’ve decided to start focusing my running towards Cardiff Marathon in October so I’m trying to get some heavy mileage in over the next few months including some weekly long runs stretching out towards 20 miles. I’ve covered about 150 miles over the last couple of weeks which is apparently a reasonable average for a marathon runner. I have the last in the Team Bath 10K series on Sunday and I’m expecting to be pretty tired so I’ll be interested to see how things turn out. Then the following week is Bath Half, so I’ll probably have an easy week leading up to that.