Oh the inhumanity...

It’s back to work for me today *weeps and wails*. Only another 50 weeks until Christmas. How do people in countries like the US put up with some much less leave than in the UK? I think I’d go insane. Anyway, I need to take a day off in the next week or so to have a chap come round to check that the fireplace that I want is ok to fit etc. I went to a few shops with my mum on Friday and he last one I went to was perfect. As it turned out, I knew the chap who served me and he is a really nice man and was very helpful and gave good advice; one of my concerns was that they’d turn up with the fireplace and then say my chimney etc wasn’t right, but as standard they come out to check your property in advance; and, I had already seen the fireplace I wanted but this shop was about £300 cheaper than the other place I had seen it. Result! So I just need to phone them today when I have checked my work diary to arrange for them to come round to have a look and then they will come round in a few weeks time and install it. If you’re very lucky, I might even post photos. Then I intend to redecorate my living room…

I actually had a very nice weekend and reached the end of last night feeling as though I’d used my time off well (despite three weeks not being long enough off work!) and that I had achieved quite a lot. I really want to watch more films this year. I don’t think I went to the cinema at all last year, but even if I don’t again this year, watching some DVDs etc would be good. After G went yesterday I watched a couple of films, one of which was Amelie, which I thought was a charming, if slightly off the wall, film and I really enjoyed that. It was quite a sweet film and just had some really good insights into brief moments of life. It was well worth a watch (I had recorded it on Film 4 and I think it is will be on there again and I think you can also watch it on the Film 4 website).

I then watched another film called The Dish, which was an Australian film about the first moon landing – it was the Australians who beamed the picture around the world of Neil Armstrong taking the first steps. That was also quite a good film. I really like Australian films and think they tend to have a really good humour to them, as did this one. The only thing that irritated me about it was that there was some chap signing in the corner of the film, which is fair enough but he kept obscuring various people – it was a bit like

Both the films I watched had a couple of lines in them that wriggled about in the back of my mind.

From Amelie:

“My little Amélie, you don't have bones of glass. You can take life's knocks. If you let this chance pass, eventually, your heart will become as dry and brittle as my skeleton. So, go get him, for Pete's sake!”

From The Dish:

“My wife said something. She said, "Failure is never quite so frightening as regret".”

Indeed.