Tick Tick Tock, It's a Quarter to Two

According to one of the poets of our age, time goes by, so slowly, for those who wait, when you're hung up, and hesitate. I've had a miserable two weeks here in Londinium. It all started when I fell sick with the flu, bed-ridden for most of a week, feeling sorry for myself, and seriously light-deprived. Let there be no doubt about the veracity of SAD as a legitimate illness. I felt the city, and especially my gloomy flat, closing in on me, threatening my sanity like Roman Polanski in The Tenant. Then the stress of finding a new flat reached a peak when I started to hesitate about where I wanted to live, missing out on a choice flat in the Barbican (1,2), and generally freaking out at the absurd cost of rent in this city. And finally, my spirits sailed through the floor with the belated realisation that my relationship with Paul is well and truly over. It hit me at work, inducing a mini-breakdown that peaked with me blurting my heart out to my boss. Dear me!!

I've had no better friend than Paul for the last five years, and in times of stress it was always him that I turned to for love and support. When you're in love, nothing else matters, and no problem seems insurmountable. It's been hellish to not have his love and support in these stressful times. On top of that, I consider myself very independent, and I hate feeling so damned needy. On the positive side, it's been a great opportunity to realise, once again, the strong base of love and support that I have from my family and friends, who are helping me immensely, and make every day a little bit easier to deal with, and thus easier than the last. When I think about it, I've had a pretty easy run in my short time in London, and my present predicament will not last forever. It's just so bloody frustrating that when good times turn to bad, everything f*cks up at once. It's like the synopsis for a trite reality show, When Things Go Wrong. But I'm determined to get through this nightmare, and move on, even if it (seriously) brings me down to think that things may not improve for some weeks yet.

I'm trying to distract myself with work and film stuff, but I'm not fond of my job, so I spend a great deal of the day looking for flats. (Of course, due to that unexplainable paradox, my boss thinks I'm most productive, generally wonderful, and a trooper for carrying on without letting it "affect my work"). I've done some minor re-edit work on Murder's a Drag, for submission in some North American film festivals. I know I have a perfectionist streak that is best to keep under tabs, but there were a few things that really annoyed me about the film that I needed to fix. I'm sure no-one else has even picked up on them, but when you've seen the film as often as I have, you can't ignore it. Figuring I'm stuck with the film for life, it's better to tweak it now and be done with it!! This is not a director's cut, or a special edition... this is the version. I liken it to Kubrick changing the end of The Shining, one week after it was released to cinemas, except of course, I'm not Kubrick, and the film is not The Shining.

Despite my depression, I had a wonderfully busy weekend. It started with dinner with the End End gang (Mark B, Greg, Howard and Barnaby, Martin, and his new beau, Luke) in Shoreditch on Friday night. Howard chose Song Que, an Indonesian restaurant on Kingsland Road. We ate until we were stuffed, and drank a never-ending supply of Asahi, and yet managed to only spend £20/head.

The next day, Saturday, I played with my friend Troy, whose boyfriend coincidentally broke up with him the week before. We consoled each other with lunch at the Spaghetti House in Knightsbridge, location of the 1976 Spaghetti House Siege, followed by a wander through Harvey Nichols and Harrods, afternoon tea at Cafe Richoux, and a lovely walk through Hyde Park. London is ablaze in a burst of colour, as spring-time flowers bloom. And since British Summer Time officially started on 27 March, the sun rises at 7am and doesn't set until 7:30pm. Such a magnificient contrast to the dead of winter, only a few short months ago. I cannot over-emphasize how London changes overnight as soon as the clocks go forward. It's not just the flora that's blooming, as people in the street seem cheerier than usual, especially when they stand on the footpath outside London's many pubs, for after-work drinks.

My day with Troy day ended with a viewing of Eli Roth's latest horror film, Hostel. I really enjoyed Cabin Fever, but hated the unnecessarily violent and sickening Hostel. I applaud Roth's courage to make a truly horrific horror film, which is not an easy task considering that the horror of America in Iraq is beamed nightly into our living rooms. But Hostel ultimately fails for the very reason that too much effort is placed on the shock and gore. There's nothing else to it, and certainly not the social allegory of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, or a Cronenberg film, which is a shame. There is a half-hearted attempt to comment on retribution for American brutality abroad, but who cares when the rest of film is so unrepentantly misogynistic and homophobic, the latter being curious given my suspicions about Mr Roth.

I also saw Basic Instinct 2 this week, and I loved it for all its glossy trashiness. Don't listen to the critics, and just go and see it... though you might want to expect very little, as I did, in order to be pleasantly surprised. In the sequel, Catherine Trammell relocates to London (like everyone, right now), to live in a a fab duplex apartment (I'm channeling £2500/week in rent), and continue her "research" for new murder mysteries. Ms Trammell, as the trailer suggests, has a risk addiction, meaning she likes to wear short skirts, drive fast cars, and have rough sex. She's also cold, manipulative, and on heat. We learn this in the first five minutes, when a detective enquires if she's upset by her husband's death. She replies "Of course I am, I may never come again". The dialogue is camp and bitchy, and the plot quite silly, but who can ignore a film where Stone drops howlers like "even Oedipus didn't see his mother coming". Basic Instinct 2 IS this decade's Showgirls, and is a must-see for that very reason. The other great thing about Basic Instinct 2 is all the London locations, which include Berwick Street in the heart of gay Soho, the Gherkin, the Limehouse Link Tunnel, and Canary Wharf. Doubling for the Old Bailey is the Freemasons Hall (pictured at right) in Great Queen Street, home to the oldest Grand Lodge, and just around the corner from my flat.

This post started with a reference to Madonna's Hung Up, so it's fitting that I end with another. A few weeks back, I visited the fabulous Borough Market, where I saw all manner of fresh food produce, including some very expensive rockmelons. Just nearby is Redcross Way, pictured at right, which appears in Hung Up as the location where the black cab drops off the L.A. teenagers.