Anything for a double six....

So that was the week that was, was it? Can I have a fresh one? Someone spilt something on mine. For reasons too cliched, ridiculous and self-pity-enducing to go into, it's been a week to prove my mother's adage that 'I want doesn't get'. I hate it when she's right. So unjustifiable heartbreak doesn't get any better from 17 onwards? That's a bit of a pisser. Still, I didn't stick a fork in anyone, so I suppose that's something.

In other news, I spent three days temping at the Uni. I like temping at the Uni - my backgammon always improves given the 8 hours a day I am given nowt to do and I can play against serious players online from 9-5. Another week of this and I'll be a grand master. I am always available to play all comers for money, of course.

Yesterday I went to see two films about miserable Europeans. The first, LE CLAN, I really liked. Three brothers locked in a homoerotic spiral of familial dysfunction and small-town trauma. Oh joy. In it’s favour, it was beautifully shot (none of this deliberately wobbly hand-held shite that does nothing but give me a headache) - instead there was actual drama from interesting writing and some fine acting. A rarity. Trust me, I just sat through an entire film festival where disappointingly little of this went on. Also, the three leads are breathtakingly beautiful, and spend silly amounts of the film naked, so even if you don't give a damn about them dealing with maternal bereavement, the eye candy is bloody sublime.

After that, I went to see WHISKY which is a Spanish movie about a sock manufacturer who asks his ageing staff supervisor to pose as his wife when his brother comes to visit from Brazil for their mother's stone-setting (stone-setting being the Jewish ceremony of putting up the headstone a year after the burial, just so's you know). It is one of those films that doesn't do very much but is dryly and sneakily funny from time to time. None of the obvious things happen and it's just three people with very little to say to one another, skulking around the coast in Autumn, watching their lives go by. An odd wee film and I expected to be bored or annoyed by it and was neither.

Last night I went to see the most recent John Waters movie, A DIRTY SHAME. Ever since I saw Divine getting shagged with a claw hammer on a filthy, stained road-side mattress, I've loved John Waters' films. This one is silly, puerile and childish which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. Johnny Knoxville stars as Ray Ray, a sex saint who preaches a life of filth for anyone getting accidentally concussed (an act which switches them between sex addict and neuter each time they get clobbered).

To be honest, if Mink Stole, Patty Hearst, Johnny Knoxville et al were just to lay around in a room drinking and talking shite, I'd still go watch it, but the fact that the last surviving neuter is turned to the wet side by being hit on the head by one of David Hasselhoff's turds ejected from a plane is worth the entry (ahem) alone.

It's main flaw is that it stars Tracey Ullman who doesn't seem to have got any funnier or more talented but for me her one moment of glory as a frustrated sex addict is when she stands, arms and legs akimbo on her neighbour's porch and screams to the stars - "won't somebody somewhere please FINISH ME OFF!!!"

I liked that bit. Maybe it's a girl thing.

What else has happened? Oh yeah, Mo sent me a big bag of skullcrushers which I ate in undignified haste. Huzzar! Also, I emailed a guy I used to go sailing with and he emailed back. One of those weird 'didn't I used to know you nearly 20 years ago' correspondences. Interested to see how that goes....

Dunno what else. My lovely publisher wrote to me and said what I'd written so far isn't shit, which is rather encouraging in a crippling-insecurity kinda way and so I have started writing again, thinking hell, only another 39,500 words to go. Sob.

Yesterday I also watched 17 short films that have come in for the next festival. That is enough to melt anyone's brain but as ever there was treasure to be found. I did also find a very funky feature that is quite definitely not a horror film, but I really liked it anyway. It was twisted and mean and really very invasive and head-fucky but it looked lovely (I was slightly distracted from the interesting story, beautiful lead and sharp writing by frankly the funkiest apartment I've seen in a long time…)

And I'm still sulking that Tony was off to the Iron Maiden gig on Friday night because if I'd had any cash at all I'd have given GNER a silly amount of it and taken up his offer of a spare ticket, but sadly it wasn't to be. Now I get to look forward to him gloating about how good it was. Grrr.

Tonight we are off to Princes St Gardens to watch the fireworks and picnic as if our lives depended on it, and I am totally looking forward to that and am eternally grateful for how organised Seth and Lara are :)

But apart from 'ooh' and 'aaah' from a horizontal position (in the dressed, in public and missing the bod of choice way) there's not much else going on. Emotionally things have been up and down faster than a hoor's kecks but there's sod all to be done about that other than breathe and wait for the universe to go play silly buggers with someone else's head and heart.

And today I should be doing the festival's accounts which are now four months overdue and have the bigger number in entirely the wrong column and I am so dreading trying to explain that one away. But instead I’ve found a backgammon master to challenge. D’oh!