Le Weekend

It's been a good weekend for me, so I figure I'll let you in on it. :)

On Friday night Fran & I met up with the Hendershires, Mark & Rebecca, for a bite and a movie at The Electric Cinema. If you've never been, I encourage you to see your next movie there - it's absolutely fab. They have big leather armchairs, footrests, bags of luxurious space, a bar at the back of the theatre and wine-bottle holders between the seats. I think you know why I like it. It's a great place to watch movies, but on Friday night it was just a great place to drink. The projector broke. So all we could do was listen to Pink Floyd and finish the bottle we'd bought. In any other cinema I would have felt cheated, but there I was quite content. They were very good about it, and gave us replacement seats for next Friday's showing of H2G2, and the promise of champagne on the night.

Saturday was something of a mission: Disassemble Fran's room, drive to Twickenham, pick up a futon, drive back, reassemble room with added futoniscity, drive to Wimbledon, drop off the car and meet the Merivales for coffee. Along the way I learnt that Fran's dad does a mean bit of woodcraft and I may have a hitherto unforeseen enjoyment for interior design.

In the evening we went to see Hotel Rwanda, based on the true story of a Rwandan hotel manager who fought to keep over a thousand of his countrymen alive during the genocidal civil war of 1994¹. It was a strong and worrying film about how horribly a society can divide, and the whole film rode proudly on the shoulders of an Oscar-worthy performance by Don Cheadle².

Finally we got to Sunday. Having bought three new shirts this weekend, I went to my wardrobe and started a purge. I set about to throw away everything I will never wear again. I now therefore, own no corporate-logo shirts, no 'amusing' T-shirts and no Hawaiian shirts³. I still own the silver paisley jacket though, and it will return. I also, in the spirit of thriftiness, found a horrible red T-shirt I've never worn, took a pair of scissors to it and turned it into a hair-band. I have therefore turned something that would abuse my body into something that will (en)lighten my head. And that, ladies and gents, is a good way to end the w/e⁴.

¹ Historians may correct me here - was it counted as a civil war?

² Having written that sentence, I looked it up. It seems he was nominated for Best Actor this year, but lost out to Jamie Foxx in Ray. That's...not unfair.

³ Yes, you can hear Fran cheering from here.

⁴ Ah yes, I also watched Dr Who, and it was the best episode to date wasn't it?