Seriously, folks, I beginning to worry about myself. Several days have passed and I haven't even touched a book, well, except to sling a couple off the couch so I can spread out (and, boy, do I mean 'spread'!) in order to watch the 'telly'. I mentioned this a couple of posts back but that covered Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Now the habit has formed and I have been glued to the box ever since. Frankly, I blame my new ex-best friend, Rupe, and that damned electronic-recording-thingie he gave me absolutely free of charge, er, so long as I subscribed to something or other that costs a fortune. Anyway, it makes picking and recording things so much easier which I have done with gay abandon (Oi! I do the jokes round here!) ever since but, of course, me being me, I never quite get around to watching them them all, or even any of them! But now I discover how easy it is to watch and - bless Rupe's smelly 'Orstralian' socks - you can skip the adverts! In fact, skipping the adverts but getting the timing exactly right so that using the 'do-flicker-thingie' you switch back to 'play' at exactly the point the last ad' finishes has now become my new Christmas game and I give myself marks out of ten. How sad is that?
Anyway, one night I watched an astonishing film called "Unstoppable" about a runaway train. I vaguely remember it doing the rounds a couple of years ago but somehow, 'over here', a story about a runaway train puts you in mind of the 7.15 Woking to Waterloo and that is enough to put you to sleep instantly - which is what most of the commuters on it do! But, of course, 'over there' they always do things to excess and they have trains that appear to be several miles long. Also, instead of the nice, neat, little drivers' carriages we have, they have these enormous, oblong locomotives built like Russian tanks! Anyway, I can tell you that the entire film was total and complete tosh from beginning to end with sundry stereotypes rushing around pretending to be acting and shouting a script that should have been binned at first reading and anyway you knew it was all going to end happily so why bother and why don't I get on with finishing the book I'm halfway through and . . . and . . . well, the fact is that the 'Memsahib' and I sat on the edge of our seats with our knuckles showing white through the back of our hands as we convulsively hung on to the arms of our chairs and I swear we did not take a breath from beginning to end! Once again, in films as in theatre, I ask myself how such rubbish can be so totally gripping?
Anyway, last night I had a choice between two tattooed ladies - oh, do stop getting over-excited! - that was, the American version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" starring Daniel Craig, or the Swedish version starring various people with unpronounceable names. I chose the latter despite the fact that they all spoke fluent 'Yerdy-Derdle-Burdle' which I do not, and, that I had to sit a foot away from the screen to read the sub-titles. Never mind, it was terrific, as was the original book which brought forth a rave revue from me on this blog when I first read it. A variation on the 'locked room murder mystery' in which a sparsely populated island connected only by a single bridge, which is blocked on the day of the killing, provides the setting. The film was excellent and brought out most of the complex story line and so, now that I had formally become a member of the 'Telly Trog Tribe', I decided to watch the film of the second book "The Girl Who Played With Fire" which I had also recorded. Alas, it was the minor tragedy in Stieg Larssen's life, the major one beings his early death, that his two follow-up books were never as good as the first and thus it was with the films. I have yet to watch the third.
Needless to say, in between all this over-indulgent 'telly-trogging' I did manage to insert a couple more episodes of "The Wire", than which etc, etc. All I need now is the services of my local branch of TTA - Telly Trogs Anonymous - to wean me off the habit!
