I am a Sponge

Starting work at 10am felt a bit cheeky but I'll never say no to an extra few minutes in bed! Gently ingratiated myself into the new job, like a sponge in a vast bathtub, I just sat inside and gradually soaked up everything I needed to know. A coworker is already popping off on a long weekend as if tomorrow so I'll be covering for them a little bit and picking up where they left off. Plenty to keep busy with and a decent run up of time to do it in. Very happy with my team too, all signs point to a nice first week.

Little Blue

With my bags already packed I had oodles of time to mope around the house before my coach trip to London. I'm starting up my next job as of tomorrow with a familiar company, while I'm very much looking forward to the work I did feel a little guilty about leaving Rebecca behind once again. You can only glean so much company from a cat so I'm aiming to be back in Bristol for the weekends. I felt oddly morose walking to catch my coach though, as if I was homesick even as I walked down our street. Once my head is in the job I'll be fine, but today I'm just a little blue.

Coffee Concerns

Rendered the house spotless and ready to receive Rebecca's parents. I've kinda become the unofficial barista for their visits so expectations for delicious coffee is always sky high. To the best of my human abilities I try to make them something delicious but there's always a worry in the back of my mind that sometimes not to their liking. Naturally they're too polite to say otherwise, but on occasion they leave mugs with more than just dregs in the cup. One day I'll nail it.

So Much Hummus

Made reservations for a legit falafel and hummus place that opened up recently on North Street. In my infinite wisdom I ordered a huge platter of hummus, once that put it on the table with two plates I quickly realized I ordered a sharing platter all to myself. No man or beast could eat that much goodness so I had to take it away with me in a little pot - that's tomorrow's lunch right there!

We have Rebecca's folks heading round tomorrow so we got the house more or less ready for a royal visit. It's Rebecca's mum's Birthday trip so there was a fair bit of cake baking going on too. They always enjoy our hospitality so it should be a nice visit.

Revisiting Writing

A time old writing technique suggests that after something is written, you should put it in a drawer for a week or two, then rethread it with a fresh pair of eyes. I revisited a script for an Eyebrow Owl video I haven't made yet and I was honestly pleased with what I'd done. Did a tiny tweak here and there but otherwise it's off to the races. When I get another spate of free time I can finally get around to editing it all together.

Met up with a chum for drinks tonight that I haven't seen since early Spring - such is the nature of adult friendships, especially in my line of work. I need to make more of an effort to keep up friendships these days, increasingly I find that's the best spent time.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Sent off my Youth for Europe report, hopefully it won't get cut off mid sentence again like in a previous newsletter. Begun mentally preparing myself for 6 weeks working in London soon, gonna be a lot of MegaBuses. If only they had a loyalty scheme, I reckon I'd be a patron at this point though. 

Today's film was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Coen Brother film that slipped through the cracks for me on release. Usually I'd be a sucker for 6 Western short stories but for me, the project failed to coagulate, outside of being a showcase for the Coen's penchant for genre and dialogue (which is always a treat). Every now and then there's a good moment or image and the shorts themselves are generally fun and occasionally absurdist in all the right ways, but after they're over they don't echo in the mind. Not even Tom Waits as a curmudgeonly gold prospector managed to win me over which is really saying something.

The Act of Killing

Got to work on my Youth for Europe report and very nearly finished it. Mostly looking for photos now so I'm combing through the many hundreds of snaps the group took and uploaded into a big shared folder. About 90% of them are shots of the oven or blurry images of Oxford gardens so they're pretty unusable but we'll make something work. 

I'm using this week to get through some more films from my backlog and no documentary has been on my watch list longer then The Act of Killing which was a disturbing yet toothsome watch that's still running laps around my mind. The more I think about the crazy film the mass murderers tried to make and the main perpetrator's relationship to cinema the more I begin to ponder the limits of humanity and the power of karma. A documentary with a dreamlike narrative - Excellent stuff.