For anyone with the slightest interest in contemporary, non-children’s fantasy, the forthcoming HBO adaptation of George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (or the first volume thereof, at any rate) has has to be the most eagerly anticipated TV series for a long while. Entertainment Weekly has some exclusive pictures.
I finished watching Prison Break on the ferry over to Korea. It got silly towards the end, in the sense that the writers seemed to have added so many plot threads that it became impossible for them to resolve them in a sensible, self-contained fashion. So (warning – spoilers follow), with Lincoln now trying to retrieve Scylla for the Company, working against Michael, and Michael recovering from brain cancer and working against his mother, a greedy, calculating Company operative who wants to sell Scylla for big money and is willing to kill to bump up the price, with Don Self gone renegade for no good reason other than it ups the drama quotient, with T-Bag toadying up to whoever holds the whip hand, with the FBI finally appearing to do something about all the mayhem, with agents for buyers for Scylla wandering in from the cast of Lost and being rapidly killed off, the hand of the writers intervenes to resurrect Paul Kellerman (killed off in season two) to solve everyone’s problems and hand the magic hard drive over to the UN. The denouement worked nicely, though.
Then (warning – spoilers continue) episodes 23 and 24 saw Sara imprisoned for the murder of Michael’s mother (she shot her in the back as the older woman shot Michael in the shoulder) and the series returned to its original theme – breaking out of prison. And we see how Michael dies. These last two episodes were probably meant to be a whole fifth season and the speed at which the plot flies by and the lack of tension (we already know from episode 22 how everything turns out) make them a damp squib compared to what went before.
I didn’t sleep well on the ferry – lots of rocking and rolling in the literal sense. I did a fair amount of reading. The ferry got in a few hours late, but I had my phone on and charged and Habiba called often for updates. I disembarked and passed through the Quarantine, Immigration and Customs with little problem, walked from the ferry terminal to Dong-Incheon Station and took the subway bakc home.
At home I was finally able to relax a bit in a familiar environment. I laid out everything I’d brought back from China on the table for Habiba’s perusal. She seemed very pleased with her gift – a pair of shiny, colourful bracelets – which I was fearing wouldn’t be quite to her taste. We had a leaving party to go to, but later in the evening we had a chance to (very successfully) try out the sexual position die I’d brought back.
The very next day we had an early start as we were taking a free bus down to Gyeongju a capital of one of the three kingdoms of medieval Korea and site of many tumuli – burial mounds – and other historical structures. We went with Jessica and shared a room at the motel, Nokwonjang, I’d stayed at a year and a half ago. (We had tried to check into a place a little closer to the bus station, but the old ladies working at the ‘Romance Hotel’, wouldn’t allow the three of us to share a room.)
We had a look round one park containing several tumuli – Daereungwon – and the pretty, pavilion-lined pond – Anapji – and east Asia’s oldest observatory – Cheomseongdae – on the Saturday evening. On the Sunday, after breakfasting and checking out and storin our bags at the railway station, we took a bus over to Bulguksa, one of Korea’s most important temples and saw the Dabotap and Seokgatap. The first of which (a pagoda that appears on the 10 won coin) was covered up with scaffolding and screens when I visited Gyeongju in 2009 – so it was satisfying to go and see it in the stony flesh.
Then we had lunch and took a bus up a mountain to Seokguram Grotto, a man-made cave that houses a beautiful statue of Buddha. We paid our four thousand won to enter the site knowing that we would have to be quick to catch the two o’clock bus back to get the free four o’clock bus back to Seoul. After a short walk, we arrived at the entrance to the grotto, but there was a huge queue of people, so we decided we didn’t have time and walked back to the car park. Shame – especially as Habiba and Jessica probably won’t return to this important site. I’d been there before, so I wasn’t heartbroken about it.
After two more bus rides and a taxi ride we were back at the Concorde Hotel in the big hotel area (by which I mean the area of big hotels) a little outside Gyeongju on the shores of a lake, which was our pick-up point for the bus to Seoul. The reason this bus was free was that it’s Visit Korea Year (2010 to 2012 … somehow). And, of course, we weren’t the only ones who wanted to take advantage of the freeness. In Seoul, at least one person had to be turned away; and in Gyeongju, several people were turned away – possibly because they hadn’t obtained tickets – the guide, while he spoke reasonable English, just didn’t express himself very clearly when trying to explain to the people on the bus. This delayed our departure a little, but, by the time we got back into Seoul and off the bus, it was nearly 11:30 – two and a half hours later than advertised. This meant Jessica couldn’t return to her home in Osan, a city south of Seoul, and had to stay at ours and go home in the pre-dawn darkness.
It was a nice enough visit, but the weekend crowds were large and annoying. It’s definitely worth visiting Gyeongju, and it’s also worth going during the week.
The very first part of today’s journey (I’m writing this on the ferry) went well.
I got up at 5:30 in the morning darkness, showered and packed the remainder of my things that hadn’t been packed last night. I checked out of the hostel; there was a bit of a delay when I didn’t hand over the correct receipt with my keys – I needed the one that was specifically for the deposit, not just for the extra days that I’d stayed (and certainly not for the laundry service). I walked to Wangfujing Station, put my bags through the scanners that they have at all the stations and places like Tiananmen Square, bought a ticket for 2 yuan (about 20p) and took the subway to Beijing South Railway Station, where I’d entered the city the previous week. I had a McDonald’s breakfast (hopefully, my last fried, fatty breakfast for a while – my breakfasts at the hostel were generally fried eggs, toast, hash brown, maybe bacon, maybe cornflakes. I navigated the dimly lit concourse and found the correct gate for my train – the departure concourse is huge and has a series of escalators where travellers gather before being allowed to pass through the ticket barriers and down to the platforms. I got on the train and tried to ask a member of staff if two numbers on my ticket were my carriage and seat – I’m sure she said they were. When I got there, there appeared to be a man sitting in my aisle seat – he told me to sit in the window seat; I didn’t complain. The train left at 7:20. I got off the train at Tianjin when it arrived at 7:50 – the English part of the announcement helpful said that it would be a quick stop and people getting off should get ready.
This is where things started to go wrong.
I headed towards an exit of Tianjin Station; it seemed to be the only one available – signs for others had Xs taped over them. The station was huge and new. I ignored a couple of men who wanted me to hire their taxis and found a couple of toilets near the taxi rank – both were disgusting, so I didn’t go. Instead I queued up for a taxi. Once I got in, I couldn’t tell the driver where to go because he didn’t speak English, so, as he drove away, I fished out my ticket wallet, on which the woman at the Incheon office had written the name of the ferry terminal in Chinese, and I showed it to the driver. He looked at it and twigged where I wanted to go and off we went.
Superficially, so far, so good. However, the drive took a while. And then it took a while longer. And then it took longer still. Then I saw a sign that said ‘Tanggu – 30 km’. What’s Tanggu (besides being the Korean for billiards)? Tanggu is the city where Tianjin Passenger Terminal actually is. The driver seemed to be beyond the limits of his usual territory. 9 am, the time I’d been told be at the terminal by, came and went. I showed the driver a little map on my ticket wallet and he stopped and started asking other taxi drivers and pedestrians for help. It turned out the map on the wallet wasn’t relevant – probably the ferry company, Jincheon Ferry’s Tianjin offices. We kept going. I tried telling the driver I was in a hurry and I should have been there for nine. He seemed to tell me not to worry about it, we’d be there in ten or twenty minutes. He kept winding down his window to ask other taxi drivers as we went, though.
We got there towards ten o’clock and I handed over a massive 143 yuan. To find the value in pounds, you just have to divide by ten; £14.30 is not very much, but this is China – consider that the basic fare started at 8 yuan (80p). One of my souvenirs was to have been a full set of nice new Chinese banknotes. I had to hand over the hundred, the largest, of this set to pay; I thought my 100 yuan deposit from the hostel would have been enough for that and for my port fee of 30 yuan. I plan on buying another 100 yuan note once I arrive back in Korea.
I walked into the terminal, showed my ticket to someone behind a window, who told me to go to another window. The person there gave me a boarding pass, so I headed in through the main entrance – but was turned back because I needed my pass stamped. I went back to the first window and handed over the 30 yuan for the stamp.
Inside the main part of the building, after a baggage scan, there was a long line of people with boxes and packages on trolleys. A couple of them ushered me forwards as I tried to line up behind them. My bags were scanned for the second time in about as many minutes. Then I queued up for Immigration. But an officer asked me if I had a departure card – I didn’t and he showed me to the desk where they were kept. I filled one in, but was stumped over the box that asked for my flight number/ship name etc. The officer came back and wrote a couple of Chinese characters in there for me (although he botched one a bit). How very proactively helpful.
Once past Immigration I waited about five minutes behind a small crowd of people just inside the door for a shuttle bus to the ferry. When I got on the bus I realised the ferry was all of about 150 metres away. Oh, well. The wind was blowing hard as we got off the bus and climbed a staircase to gangway on to the ship.
This one is nicer than the one I took from Korea – which is just as well, as I’m going to be on for a whole day. (The scheduled times are 11:00 on Thursday morning to 11:00 on Friday morning – which is a period of 25 hours, taking the one hour time difference into account.) The common areas are cleaner and they don’t have that savoury Asian dumpling smell that I now associate with Chinese people. The other ferry had a restaurant that was only open twice on the journey and for less than an hour each time. This one’s restaurant is more like a real restaurant. The bathrooms are less grim. The demographic on board seems less working class than my outgoing trip.
On that previous trip I’d shared a business class room with three others. This time I plumped for economy. I’m in bed 48 of what I think is a 48 bed dorm. It’s not too bad at the moment – I have an upper bunk, and, once you draw the curtains, it feels fairly private. The bunk isn’t tall enough to sit up in it, though. It also has no convenient power outlet. I’ve spent most of my time so far watching Prison Break in my bunk or writing blog posts out in the ship near a socket.
I’m at 75% charge now. It’s 7pm Korean time. I should start thinking about dinner.
In the hostel I was staying at in Qingdao, I was sharing a room with about four other people two nights ago. Around midnight people started going to bed. I was on the internet on my bed, having spoken, briefly, to Charlie and watched some Prison Break. I prepared for bed, too. There was one Chinese guy in the bed next to mine, who seemed to spend most of his time in the room on his computer, conveniently placed on the table right next to his bed. He stayed up for maybe an hour or so, tapping away on an instant messenger program, his keystrokes amplified by the table. The previous night – my sick night – he’d been clicking away till the earliy hours on his phone. Even when he finally packed it in, his noise production continued – sniffing and blowing his nose, scratching loudly. Fucker.
Then, a bit later in the night, I heard a woman’s voice somewhere out in the corridor desperately saying things like, ‘No!’ and ‘Get out!’ I couldn’t hear any other voice. After a few moments worrying about what to do I got up and went into the corridor. The door to one of the twin rooms opposite was open a few inches and a man was standing inside. I knocked and asked what was going on. The door closed and the one-sided argument continued – the woman begging her boyfriend – I assume – to leave, the man not saying anything. I went down and told the two old Chinese men on duty and one of them followed me up and knocked on the door. I’m not sure what happened – I went to bed – but I think they probably just stopped the argument so the person knocking would go away.
My main task the next day was to travel to Beijing on the train. As I checked out of the hostel, I had one of the women at reception write down what I wanted in Chinese so I could show it to someone at the train station. As I was queueing up for a ticket, I noticed that one of the counters showed ‘English language counter’ on the display above it, so I didn’t need my translation. There was only standing room available for that day, so that’s what I plumped for. The ticket was 275 yuan, about £26 pounds or so.
For the first hour and a half of the five and half hour journey I was able to sit, but then a young woman needed her/my seat. She got off shortly after at the very next stop. However, by this time, the train seemed completely full, so I stood or occasionally crouched in the end of the carriage. I did a fair amount of reading on the trip. Fortunately, Marked Cards is a lot better than its immediate predecessor, Card Sharks.
Before I left Qingdao, I’d had word from Charlie that she’d be prepared to meet me off the train. Just before I left, I e-mailed her the details of my train. Unfortunately, she was busy all day and wasn’t able to read my e-mail or meet me. I’d printed out details for a hostel in Beijing that Habiba had stayed at when she was here a few months ago. I followed the directions on my printout and took the subway to Wangfujing Station (noting with a hint of pleasure and surprise the English accent of the English translations on the line four announcements). There, however, the directions seemed to break down.
I wandered round for a long while, my backpack weighing heavily on me and my less than perfect spine. I decided I couldn’t find the Tian An Men Sunrise Hostel, and so checked into the Eastern Morning Sun Hostel instead.
This isn’t really a hostel as we would understand it. It’s a cheap (in multiple senses of the word) hotel located on the 4th basement level of its building. On the pro side, I got a room to myself and cheaply – about £10. On the con side, the place is quite grim. My room is a fairly clean white box with a bed, desk, TV and chair in it, but it smells subtly but pervasively of old cigarette smoke. It made me think I was going to sleep in an ashtray.
The communal toilets smell of piss – some I’ve been to in China just smell of sewage, so that wasn’t too bad. They don’t provide toilet paper, though – not even one shared roll outside, which is the general practice here. The showers were like something out of Prison Break. The shower room was done out in dirty, broken blue and white tiles, half of the stall weren’t functional, there was no door, there were no shower curtains (although there were rails and some loops to indicate that such things must’ve existed in the past). The water was hot and consistent, though, and I had the place to myself.
The place also has no laundry facility. When I approached one of the staff with my bag of dirty clothes, she showed me a plastic bowl. For this reason, if nothing else, I’m going to check out today.
I’m currently at a nearby Starbucks, where I’ve had a sandwich for breakfast. Can’t get on the internet here, though – it’s only for residents of China. I think I’ve figured out where that hostel is, though. I think I was simply facing the wrong way when I tried to follow the directions. My coffee’s nearly finished, so I’m off to take a look.
On Thursday morning I packed and prepared for my trip to China and I left home just before 1 o’clock. I took the subway down to Dongincheon (East Incheon) station – about an hour and a half journey. Then, on the basis of something I’d read online, I tried asking a taxi driver to take me to the Weidong Ferry Terminal – Weidong being the ferry company I was travelling to Qingdao with. He didn’t know where to take me. A second driver took me to the 1st International Ferry Terminal. Only that was the wrong one – I should have been at the 2nd Internation Ferry Terminal. We’d even passed it on the way and I’d seen a ferry that I thought was the one I’d be taking. I took a bus back.
I arrived just before boarding started at four o’clock – three hours before the scheduled leaving time. I bought some snacks for the journey, exchanged a pile of money and bought a ticket for my return journey from Tianjin. After security, Immigration (where I handed in my Korean Alien Registration Card) and a short shuttle bus ride, I boarded and was given a sheet of information in English and was shown to my cabin. I’d paid a bit extra for the privilege of a four-man cabin – probably worth it; my ticket back is for the cheapest class.
The ferry was fairly grotty. Most of the communal areas were well worn and not too well cleaned. At first I spent a lot of out on deck waiting for the ferry to start moving, taking photos and texting Habiba with updates. Habiba wasn’t talking to me as I hadn’t been sufficiently sensitive to her worries about her upcoming contract. Eventually, the ferry left at about 7:30. The journey was quite smooth at first. Habiba rang and told me she was feeling better and had had dinner with a colleague.
I watched some Prison Break in my bunk. The second to fourth episodes of the fourth and final season. I’d watched all the others with Habiba and she didn’t want to watch any more. The third season was pretty weak, and the first episode of the last one wasn’t much better, but I thought the episodes I watched picked up some of the quality of the first couple of seasons, although the science fiction part of it – a gadget that can copy data just by being within a few feet of it – was pretty silly.
By the time I settled down to try to sleep, the ferry was rolling in a way I found quite alarming. Obviously, by that time we were well into the Yellow Sea. I didn’t sleep very well. The occasional loud thud resounding through the ship didn’t help.
In the morning, I breakfasted on crackers and chocolate. Leaving the ferry and going through Immigration at Qingdao were fairly straightforward; the Immigration official, a young woman, was amused by the young, longhaired chap in my passport photo.
I got a taxi to the youth hostel I’d made a reservation at. I was pretty sceptical of the process. The general state of dirtiness and disrepair reminded me a lot of India – although the infrastructure here seems much more solid and comprehensive. The driver didn’t help when he started smoking and offered me a cigarette. We arrived and I handed over a 100 yuan note (about £10), getting a few scruffy notes in return.
It was indeed the right place – the Kaiyue Youth Hostel, housed in an old church building. I was feeling very crappy – I had a bad headache. I headed up to my room, had a brief conversation with a German guy who was packing to leave and lay down on my bed. I didn’t get better quickly. Over the course of the next few hours I started feeling nauseous and threw up a couple of times. I tried to sleep, but a couple of Chinese guys coming in and out all the time didn’t help. I had a little water with me and a mug of black tea I’d made earlier, but, even though I was very dehydrated all through the night, I could face consuming anything.
By the morning my headache was gone and I was feeling OK. I shaved and showered, dressed and had breafast at the large, atmospheric bar on the ground floor. I managed to get in touch with Habiba on Skype, then I headed out, after buying a map of Qingdao for 8 yuan. I walked around for a while, trying to follow directions I’d been given to the seafront. Eventually I got there and walked around some more. The weather was – and still is, as I write this – beautiful, although rather hazy. I had lunch – not very adventurously – at a McDonald’s. Right now, I’m at an Angel-in-Us – a Korean chain of coffee shops. Unlike Korean branches, this one is nearly empty on a Saturday afternoon. It also sells beer.
The Unbelievable Truth is possibly the best addition to the 6:30 pm comedy band on Radio 4. Listen to it and know the truth for yourself.
Monday’s edition contained revelations about Chinese funerals – they sometimes involve erotic dances or pornography (to get more people to attend, which boosts the honour shown to the deceased). The panellists started riffing on the usefulness of ice cream vans in military conflict: if you dropped ice cream vans with limited supplies of small change behind enemy lines in Afghanistan this would cause a distraction to the Taliban as they tried to find the correct change for their ice creams. Rufus Hound commented, ‘If there’s one thing we know about the Taliban, it’s that they hate change.’
Jeremy Hardy on the subject of the Zoo Quorum (he meant the newly abolished quango, the Zoos Forum), on Radio 4′s The News Quiz on Friday.
Ade Edmondson was interviewed by Lee Mack on Radio 4′s Chain Reaction on Friday (the format of the show is that one comedian interviews another and one week’s interviewee becomes the following week’s interviewer). He talked about his retirement from comedy towards the end:
You’ll think, I’m stuck. Do I have to constantly be this funny man? It’s a very big pressure to put on yourself. I equate it to, you know, I really like caviar. If you’re forced to eat caviar every day for 28 years, you’ll probably want something else – and that’s the same with comedy, I think, in the end. You really work at it and it takes up every ounce of your being and you have to think about it, you have to really concentrate all that time and constantly be trying to turn everything you ever hear into a gag. In the end, what are you doing? It’s weird. I just kind of lost the bug for that.
Lee Mack replied:
I know what you mean. A comedian once said to me, the problem with comedy is you can’t watch a sunset without trying to think of a joke about it. And I remember thinking for about the two minutes after that, I bet I could think of a joke about the sunset.
At the weekend, Habiba and I went to Osan, one of Seoul’s satellite cities, about an hour’s bus ride south of the capital. We went at the invitation of Habiba’s friend Jessica, and we stayed with Jess’s friend Laura.
We left on Friday evening, going from Nambu Bus Terminal in southern Seoul and travelling with Habiba’s colleague Aiden and a couple of his friends. Over the last two or three months I’ve been trying to up my writing output, so spending time away from home can be a great irritation, not to mention the fact that spending time with a group of people I don’t know well is very stressful for me. I was worried that going on the trip was a mistake. Habiba had the same thoughts, too, and talked about it on the the ride down.
When we arrived there, we met Jess and Laura at the modest bus station. Jessica (Canadian) took Aiden (Irish), TK (Korean) and Adrian (Australian) to a hotel; Laura (South African) took Habiba (American/Canadian) and me (British) to her place. After that, we had dinner at a galbi (Korean barbecue) restaurant. After that we went drinking at an American-style bar, WA Bar. And after that we went to a noraebang (Korean karaoke) place. The music at the noraebang was better that usual – some of it actually sounds like real instruments. I bored everyone with ‘Some Kind of Monster’ (it’s over eight minutes long – the intro is two minutes long).
The next morning, after far too little sleep, we were fed tasty blueberry pancakes by Laura, and we were joined by Laura’s boyfriend, Chris (British). Then we gradually made our way to the nearby, slightly larger, city of Suwon. I’d been to Suwon the year before last to visit the fortress, or Hwaseong. I remembered the station area with its big D-shaped road in front. Last time I walked; this time we taxied – once we found the correct taxi rank.
We didn’t actually get to the fortress itself – a large ring of fortifications that dates back to the 18th century – but we did spend an hour or so looking round the associated palace, Haenggung – an area I completely missed on my previous visit. After lunch, Aiden, TK and Adrian left us to head back to Seoul.
Much of the rest of our day was taken up with travelling back to Osan. The distance can’t be much more than ten kilometres, but it took us two hours. The problem was that there is a one-stop branch line on the subway between Osan and Suwon and we weren’t paying much attention as we were playing a word game (taking turns to name adjectives beginning with the same letter letter – angry, adroit, awkward etc). We first went to the branch line stop, then waited (I think we missed one train that would have taken us back to the mainline through inattention), then got off at the right stop and promptly got on the next train – which, of course, took us back to dead-end branch line. Eventually, we paid attention and got back to Osan.
We had dinner at a Thai restaurant near a US airbase along with another friend of Jess and Laura’s, another Jessica (American). Then we had more drinks (despite the fact that I shouldn’t be partaking with my bowels) and more word games.
On Sunday, we were resolved to go to a folk village somewhere close to Suwon. However, although I didn’t get noticeably drunk the previous night, I had a headache that got worse throughout the day – no doubt due to the hot, sunny weather. As headaches do when they get bad, it started making me feel nauseous. I informed Habiba by text (I was on the toilet) that I didn’t think I could make it through an afternoon on my feet outdoors. We ended up going to see Toy Story 3.
In 3D, no less. I wouldn’t have chosen to see it in 3D, but we didn’t have a choice – unless we wanted to watch the dubbed version. It was a good film. The Toy Stories are a solid bet for humour and emotional content, and for appealing to children and adults alike. Actually, 3 was probably a bit strong for young kids. Woody, Buzz and co are forced to face the final frontier – which for a toy is being thrown away and destroyed. Don’t worry – it has a happy ending. Probably the highlight of the movie was Buzz Lightyear being switched to Spanish mode and dancing a little flamenco dance for Jessie, including a hilarious crab scuttle move. As with the only other film I’ve seen in 3D (How to Train Your Dragon), it wasn’t worth paying the extra for what is effectively much lower picture quality.
Then we went back to Osan to pick up our bags and catch a bus back to Seoul. Given what I described in the second paragraph, it was a surprisingly good weekend. I didn’t get any work done, but we had a lot of fun and made a couple of new friends (we’re connected on Facebook now, so it must be true).
This coming weekend, I have a thing with work. They call it MT – management training – here, I understand. We’re going rafting. I don’t really know much about except that I’m on the white team, which means I’m supposed to wear something white. The only white tops I have – and I have surprisingly many – all have ugly yellow-green stains on the underarms.
Habiba and I are back at home now, and not terribly happy about it. Habiba, of course, wants to be with her father; I would rather not have to get up at around 7:30 every day to go to a job that is not at all strenuous, but still manages to be very tiring. Some time ago I promised myself I would never do a nine-to-five office job again. Somehow I forgot about that last year. At least I can’t complain about the remuneration.
Habiba’s dad is still hanging in there, but, while he isn’t getting much worse, there have been a series of problems that seem to be holding his recovery back. His kidneys weren’t so good for a while, then he had a fever; the latest news is that he has some bad bed sores. None of these seem to have been major problems, but they’re frustrating.
Habiba calls her mother every morning and night (Korean time; New York is 13 hours behind, so the times of day are reversed for her parents) to check in. If it weren’t for internet telephony I’m sure there’s a good chance Habiba wouldn’t have returned to Korea.
I’ve been feeling emotionally crappy since we got back. The other night I tried to tell Habiba what I was feeling. I talked about how stressful the visit to America was for me, how fed up I am at work and that I kind of wanted to kick it all in and go travelling, escape from responsibility for a while. Habiba was devastated.
She thought I wanted to abandon her and go my own way. I thought I was more just venting, thinking aloud. We sorted it out, and I’m feeling a lot happier today. Making up was nice – and there wasn’t even any sex involved.
On Monday I went to see The A-Team with Zach. It was surprisingly good. Even though it was a very beefed up, contemporary action movie and it was more of an A-Team Begins type of story, it was pretty true to the TV series. That said, it brought it up-to-date in various ways – especially in terms of action and special effects. There was lots of humour, and it didn’t take itself too seriously. Liam Neeson was great as Hannibal, although he looked weird with grey hair; and I’ve never really noticed what an unusual profile he has.
One favourite moment involved the bad guy, a CIA agent, in a car, watching a live feed from a bomber that was bombing the A-Team’s supposed location. After the explosion had blossomed on the screen he said, ‘It’s just like Call of Duty‘.
Today, I finished the first draft of the story I’ve been working on the past couple of months. Even while writing it I made notes of changes that need to be made to it. Still lots of work needed before it’s good enough for anyone else to read. I’m very tempted to write a completely different story before I get to work on that task, though – it’s been a slow, gradual slog and I think I need a bit of distance from it.
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Walking Commentary