A Very Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year...

A new year always begins with Christmas, it being at the end of the year it always heralds the onset of a coming year.

Christmas! Ah Christmas, always leaves you with that wishful feeling that it could just last forever. It means that you have had a good time! For me its been familiar, un-surprising and blinking brilliant!!! The same is best! somewhere familiar, safe and un-believably comfortable to unwind, relax and enjoy the friends close to you and the family surrounding you. Nothing quite beats that feeling of sitting around the fire, Christmas wrapping paper overflowing the waste paper bin and just BEING with your family!

My family, according to many, are weird! we open our presents after lunch...and a walk! But it builds the suspense throughout the day! My Christmas days for many years gone by have all followed the same pattern: Awake, Stocking, Church, Lunch, Walk, Presents and Game/Film. I wouldn't change a thing - something consistent to go home to is a blessing.

Then Boxing Day! Dads v Lads football game! An event I have loved and cherished over the years. Followed by a mad dash through the shower - into the car- and a drive to meet my cousins, uncle and aunt for a walk! Blissful! Then back to ours for Champagne, another meal meal worthy of international acclaim, a few more presents and then either Categories, Consequences or the Adverb Game. The goodbyes follow, they always hurt but only because you know you have had a MINT time!

NEW YEAR...

On reflection I consider it to be one of the Highlights of the year. Friends, Family, Merriment and relaxation. Monmouth played host to the welcoming in of the New Year and 19 loved ones attended. We would talk, play games, go on walks, go to a pub for lunch, pop bottles of Cava and one bottle of Champagne as 2011 became 2012 and then visit the neighbours and sit on Ozzy Osborne's toilet! (true story) and partake in Piggyback races back to our house! Then when others would head to bed, a few stayed up to watch "The Hangover". Sadness hit at the thought of it coming to an end, but only because we had all had a SUPER time! 

I cannot convey in words how much I enjoyed my two weeks...a lot, immensely...just doesn't quite do it. There is something missing...I would have to name all those who were there to begin to describe it...but somehow I know I would fail to do it justice.  

Dependence

In the last few months I have gone through the agonizing process of acquiring the internet for my new house. Orange aren't the best at sorting things out quickly...and the flipping engineer hooked up the landline to a dead line!! Clever much?!


The point is that I went without the internet for around a month. This made me realize how much we depend on the internet, social networks etc. The few moments when I had access to the internet at friends houses and coffee shops where like coming up to the surface to breathe. Without the internet I felt like I was drowning in a sea of isolation and my world suddenly expanded. Our world is contracting, we scarce have to leave the house now with our friends, banks, shops, work, news, information, entertainment all at our finger tips a few key strokes away. I asked myself...how did people find out information before? They had to walk, talk and actually put in a bit of effort. 


We are used to having things so quickly and for such a minimal amount of effort that surely we don't value what we have as much. If you work for something, you enjoy it that much more, or alternatively if you make a mistake you learn the lesson, because of the effort you put in. Facebook is an excellent example of this. Currently I have 584 "friends" on Facebook, many of them are genuine friends who I love to spend time with and strive to keep in contact with. However there are many "friends" on Facebook that I haven't spoken to in years. There's that girl from high school, the same one that I never spoke to in high school, the same one that I haven't spoken to since  high school and the same one I wouldn't clock if I walked past them on the street. Another thing, you know when you "chat" with someone on Facebook and all is hunky dory....and then you see them in person and conversation disappears like a fart in a gale! Its totally different! Our perception of "friend" is being twisted by the internet.


Imagine if the internet died worldwide, forever. We would become fitter, more communicative (in person), place value on things that mattered and be really poor for ages because the world economy would be in the bin. Once more people would want to explore the world and its mysteries rather than just look at it on Google Earth and swiftly return to blasting away a few virtual people from across the world on COD.  


We depend on it...a lot! I challenge you, write a letter not an email the next time you want to catch up with someone, give them a call rather than "chat " to them through a keyboard.


Right I'm off to do my Christmas sopping on Amazon...LOL

A Journey: Newcastle - Cardiff

My Brother Ladies and Gents!

Watch him move!!

Rugby or Football?

Ok, for me this is actually a no brainer! If I had the choice to watch a premiership rugby game or a premiership football game, I would watch a rugby game any day of the week. There is no dispute however that there is substantially more money in football and is the more popular sport in the UK.

There is one thing however that really gets on my nerves. When rugby fans try and justify why rugby is better than football, more often then not the only reason they give is that it's more dangerous/violent! Pathetic reasoning, that's just a bit barbaric. For the same reasons I don't like the supporters culture in football. Some of the chants are just plain rude and the battle supposed to be played on the field moves to the stands. This doesn't mean that rugby fans lack passion! The atmosphere at international rugby games are SO good! When those anthems ring out, and some players are moved to tears you see the passion! Where as half the England football team don't know the words to it, and lets be honest, its not a hard anthem to know.

Respect! doesn't matter if you ware the word on your sleeve, when your mouthing off in the face of the referee, you don't need to hear what they are saying to know what words they are using. Rugby players swear, that's not the difference. The difference is that they don't shout it in the face of the ref, or the camera (Mr Rooney, I don't care if you were happy or angry, your life must be pretty good and there is no need for the language). I love it when you hear the rugby players addressing the ref as "Sir"! Too Flipping right!

To be honest, liking a sport, purely for the sport is totally up to the person, and rugby wins it for me. There are some elements of the football culture that I think are totally wrong and there is way too much money involved in football.

Super 8 is "MINT"

To say I liked this film would be very correct! It kept me captivated from beginning to end! 

With this film JJ Abrams remains as high as he has ever been in my opinion. In fact with this effort he has risen. Star Trek, Cloverfield, Mission Impossible 3 and any others are all films that I have enjoyed greatly. Super 8 however is in my humble opinion...the best. 

It very much takes a leaf out of Cloverfield (Big mysterious monster we don't see for ages). Considering I loved Cloverfield, that's fine with me. If you could stomach the way it was shot your enjoyment of Cloverfield was probably increased due to the fact that you didn't see the monster. A fear of the unknown. Same tactic in Super 8, there's something out there...BUT WHAT!!?

What made it great in my mind though, was the parcel in which the monster was delivered! That the main characters were a group of school friends trying to shoot a movie. The acting was "mint"! The Characters had depth and identity, their own background and past making them unique to themselves, but a unit as a group of friends. For young actors I think they did remarkably well. The very fact that they were young meant that you felt their peril so much more. If the characters had been adults there would be the sense that most of them were all monster fodder! As they were children, whenever  they were in danger you were seriously worried something would happen to them, any of them.

The monster itself was done really well in that we didn't see it at all for a great portion of the film. The film was surprisingly jumpy and it was good fun not knowing when something was going to happen. When we do see the monster and find out a little bit about it, it's always going to be a tad anti climactic, that fear of the unknown is gone. Despite this it was an interesting monster and I feel the ending supported the rest of the film as best it could.

Was a great watch, go and see it asap if you haven't. I reckon 80/100!! IT. WAS. MINT!

Captain America - Pretty Poop

 

It was a standard Wednesday evening... "what shall we do tonight?" says I. "I fancy going to the cinema" says my sister. "But there is nothing good out" I did retort "the only thing I might want to see is Captain America, and as its Orange Wednesdays so we won't waste full price on it" I add. "Agreed" say she. 


At the cinema we did arrive, to find a healthy  looking queue. A little later "Two for captain America please" - and so we proceeded up the stairs. If the queue downstairs was "healthy" the queue upstairs was obese! "This can't be for our film" I did exclaim, and walk straight on past it to the cinema door and the ticket collector. I was encouraged by the digital sign saying "Captain America - Take your seats". As the queue wasn't  moving I did assume it was for something else. "I am sorry sir, you will have to join the back of the queue"... apparently they were still cleaning the theatre. As we turned to join the back of the queue that was now trying to back down an escalator going up a girl from the queue piped up "Captain America is popular you know!", alas I obviously didn't know that! 


"So all these people are actually here because they have been waiting for this film?! - they're not just filling an evening like us?!". I was almost heartened by this, maybe the film was good after all... 


It wasn't. Apart from Tommy Lee Jones and Hugo Weaving, it wasn't. There were many things that got my goat about it. Firstly, the inevitably pathetic girl who falls for the American hero was British. Well done Hollywood, America is a bit bigger now!! Next, imagine every cheesy cliché from every other superhero film and put them all into the same film, yes yes, then you have Captain America. After a promising start where the small weedy guy is getting turned away from the army, all affinity with the character was lost when he became incredibly muscular and I was backing the bad guy for the rest of it.


Despite the 2 for 1 offer I still feel a touch robbed of my money, would have preferred to play scrabble at home...on my own. I give it a 48/100.