Hustle

 An interesting film which my wife and I watched yesterday. To be fair, I would not have picked it, and she picked it thinking that it was a different film! 

Normally films about US sports are not that relevant to me. Fever Pitch was different, only because I wanted to see how it compared to the original.

This was actually a decent film. It is strange to see Queen Latifah and Adam Sandler in their roles. Ultimately if I had watched this after reading the reviews, I may have been disappointed, but watching it expecting the worst, it was quite good.  However, if you do wish to watch it, do not watch the trailer as it gives away too much. 

Family wise, things were relaxing, mostly. It did involve a bit of cleaning and some paperwork but we had a chance to relax at the end of the day at least. 

Dogma

 My daughter and I watched this last night/early this morning. I have seen it before and loved it, I think, that despite her ideal wishes, my daughter liked it as well.

I understand why some considered this to be blasphemy but, I love the way it portrays God and religion. It did lead to an interesting discussion about the existence of God between us. My faith is easy to have considering how lucky I am in life, unlike the lead character in the film.

If you liked Clerks and Mallrats, this is a must see. If you did not, then avoid this like the plague. 

Anyway, back to the family. My wife took my daughter to Aylesbury to shop, my son staying at home with me before he met up with friends in town.. I had intended to catch up on work but needed to rest.

Let us see what tomorrow brings…

We need another investigation into Partygate

As has been posted before, there are concerns that Sue Gray was biased in her report into Partygate.  I do not think that is the case, but I agree that we should look at things again.

I had thought that the only person to have been fired as a result of this was Allegra Stratton (though technically she resigned). She had not attended the event in question, and when it came to jokes being made in the mock news conference, she was not the only person to be involved.  It later turned out that there was a quiz held at Downing Street, though as you can see from this link, it was claimed that there were no drinks. That claim unravelled when it was seen that there was a bottle of sparking wine present. 

I have since been reminded that there was another resignation, this being Shaun Bailey who resigned after breaking the rules by being at a work party.  

So while I had previously said that the only person to resign was a woman who had not attended a party, it turned out that a black man did so as well after attending one.

Boris Johnson has stated that he had been told that there were no parties. It later turned out that there was a garden event at Downing Street where people were asked to bring their own booze in May.  There had been one before on the 15th of May, but it could be more reasonably argued that although mixing was taking place, it was a work event.  

On the 18th of June, a work event took place with alcohol and a karaoke machine. The following day, the Prime Minister was ambushed with a cake.  While a violation, again I would have to say that this was a silly but more excusable breach of the guidelines. 

The most interesting one is the party of the 13th of November.  The PM had denied that an event took place when asked over a year later, but later it came out that he had attended it (though this may have been for a very short period of time) and the photos came out.

And of course, there was the quiz in Downing Street after all this.   

Yesterday there were people defending Boris Johnson saying that he had not misled Parliament.  Today he admitted he had done so, but did so in good faith.  I doubt that the Metropolitan Police would accept that excuse from someone who is black. 

Considering the lack of people being held accountable for this, I do think that this should be investigated again, and those who advised Boris Johnson that he was not breaking the law should be sacked for incompetence.

Yesterday was a busy day

My wife had a good day yesterday.  Last year, the children had not got her a card, this year, things were better as she got flowers, presents and a card. In work today, I have talked to other mothers and some had a great day, others not so much.  After my wife got her card we went to the Red Dog for breakfast and later had an amazing lunch at The Three Horseshoes. On getting back after lunch, she got her flowers and the children gave her the present they had got.

I had to miss the football as lunch was a late lunch but after, we went to see some friends and I got to watch some of the highlights of the victory of Arsenal against Crystal Palace.  I think that Palace were insane to fire Patrick Vieira before the match as with him in charge, the result may have been different with him being a former player.  We are now 20 points ahead of The Scum and eight points clear of The Team That Rhymes With City.  And with each game, I am actually becoming more nervous.   

Stand By Me

It has been an eventful twenty four hours. Last night, my wife and I watched Lucy Porter who was at the Colchester Arts Centre. She was great and watching her talk about being middle aged and her past put things in perspective for both of us. The music before the show was soundtrack’s that we grew up with. If anyone has not watched her I would recommend doing so, especially if you are above the age of 40!

During this, she talked about the film Stand By Me. I remembered bits of it from when I had watched it in the past, my wife had never seen it. So when we got back from seeing our parents, we watched it. My Mum had not seen the kids this year. She was meant to see them at New Year’s, but that did not happen as she had declined to see us. Things have been busy since then and while I saw her last weekend, today was the first time in a while. She told them about what was going on in her life, which is quite a bit as she has been spending her retirement keeping her mind and body very active. My parents-in-law have not seen the kids for a while as well, having just come back from being abroad. My kids noted that their grandfather was being more affectionate than normal and my son loved getting a late birthday present.

When we got back, through terrible weather, after resting and eating my wife and I watched Stand By Me. I could remember bits, but not much, so really it was like watching it after seeing a trailer (I tend to only watch trailers of films I am not going to see, or of films after I have seen them). It is odd watching a film about people who would grow into straight white men, and I am not sure such a film would be made now, but it has to have no diversity considering where and when it was set. I have lost touch with most of my friend group from back then, but that was my fault. I will have to message one to see how he is.

Cocaine Bear

What an interesting film. The plot has a few holes, but as a gore fest with humour, this is great. I feel it balances humour and horror very well, and although the film has a few issues, this may become a classic along the lines of Braindead. 

Fulham 0 Arsenal 3

The weekend was tiring. I had a full day at work on Saturday, which in a way was a more tiring day than a normal day at work due to the way the day was set up.  In addition to this, I went to visit my mother yesterday.  She rightly got annoyed that I kept looking at my phone (another Twitter argument) but I did start to behave and stopped doing that. 

Watching Match of the Day was odd considering that there was no commentary and no analysis.  While there are those on the right who said it was better, it was not.  I did watch the highlights of the Arsenal game on Sky yesterday and it was great to see another victory.  Of course, I am getting more nervous as the season goes on as I pray that we will win the league.  Based on the highlights, the game was fairly one sided, but we need to keep winning against all teams and seeing us win was one of the many highlights to the weekend.  

I did get to spend some time with my son which was great.  My daughter who had friends round who apparently said that I was quite good looking when I was younger.  However the downside was that they also said that I aged very badly!