It was a lot weekend...

Back from staying with my pal HL for the weekend and I've just enjoyed the 45 minute Dr Who Confidential on the iPlayer.

We had a fabulous weekend of wine and food and conversation and mucho DVD watching.

Friday:

• Primeval S2 'making of' documentary "Through the Anomaly" (loved the pool playing btw!)
• Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords (S3 finale)
• Casanova - all three episodes (sob!)
• the ending of 3.10 to Yuma (the Crowe and Bale version)
• and the final hour or so of LA Confidential (from when Exley tells Vincennes about Rollo Tomasi)

Saturday:

• Selected poems from Daisy Godwin's Essential Poems to fall in love with (featuring Douglas Henshall)
• a good proportion of If Only
• the final third of Lawless Heart (Tim's version of the narrative)
• American Gangster - which I had missed at the flicks but which I really enjoyed
• episodes 1-3 of Takin' Over the Asylum
• Doctor Who - Midnight (on the telly: more on which separately!)
• selected scenes from Orphans
• selected scenes and the ending from Gladiator
• ending on the Doctor Who episodes The Shakespeare Code and Family of Blood

Today I got dropped off at home listening to Pest Control - the Doctor Who audio story with a hilarious and accurate portrayal of Donna's vocal intonations by David Tennant.

I think I have slightly square eyes now, but hell, it's only once a year we get the chance so it's wild indulgence for us to talk without Neil or anyone else interrupting! 'Course when I get in pretty much the first thing Neil does is josh "by the way, you had a message, and he's sorry he missed you...". Cue rolling eyes and groans. Oh Neil you are SO funny...

Nice to be home again though. Here's to next year!

PS would have watched some of This Year's Love but the bloody DVD player wasn't playing ball...

Improved weekend

Well, after the Dalai Lama incident, we moved into happier territory with a nice National Trust visit (Kedleston Hall) albeit that this was via Ripley because the signs along the A52 do not quite make it clear that 'City Centre' = A52... hence we ended up trailing up the A61 to the A38 junction completely confused until we reached Ripley (way, WAY past the A38 turn for Kedleston) and had to re-route ourselves back along the A38 all the way back to where it joins with the A52 just outside the city centre and go back along the one-way dual carriageway to turn off for Kedleston hall....

Gah, you lost interest there didn't ya? Me too. Sorry about that.

What we learned from this: National Trust directions that emphatically say DO NOT TAKE A52 but take the A38 North only apply if you can stay on the A52 despite it not being clearly signposted as such.


Anyway....

Yesterday we availed ourselves of the final day of the free Pulse music festival in Nottingham. Paid for by the tax money of the good citizens of Nottingham City. (We live in the borough of Broxtowe). We enjoyed a lively set by The Blockheads followed by some ska fun courtesy of The Beat. Tres enjoyable even if the sun did not shone on us (however it WAS dry. Hurrah!) It has to be said that even though we do not live in the City, do not really watch local TV, do not have the local paper and do not listen to local radio, it still felt like a bit of an under publicised event.... contradiction? 300 acts were apparently performing this weekend: it just shouldn't be possible to live within a 20 mile radius of such a thing and scarcely know it's on! (We live within 5 miles) And NOWHERE was there an obvious list of running orders for the main Market Square stage: how rubbish is that?! We found out by accident and virtue of a passed on message about the website (which in itself was poor and difficult to navigate).

To end the weekend, we watched the rather confusing Kiss of Death. Not sure it worked as a pilot or one-off drama but it was a gruesomely dramatic way of spending 90 mins of tv. And Louise Lombard is always pretty watchable.