London: a trip to the theatre. Entirely performed in Japanese, with minimal sets that seemed to combine stage design of Brecht and traditional Japanese music
(Nõ). The first 40 mins took a bit of work to plough through for me, but after that, I was in. It became an intimate emotional experience, the language was no problem- taken care of by translations displayed on the wall. Would that I knew even basic Japanese. Anyway, full stars or whatever accolades you like, stuff like this makes cinema seem weak.

Cycling is called off today due to heavy rain. That gave me a chance ot paint- but the results are probably not going to look radically different to the last photos shown here.

Linseed: Worked on two paintings this morning. Chages are probably harder to discren from photos but both now have their first linseed layers- so some richness of colour is starting to form.

Here’s a short sequence to show the progress of the horseStalking

My lower back still aches and next Friday we’re going to Cumbria again to take on the mountain again- this time we’re not only going to beat it, but drive to the next one for a part dress-rehearsal.  Two climbs in one day, with a 5 hour drive between ( use that for recovery). This time, we know the route, I have some better gear- in a new rucksac that it partly packed right now.
That’ll be a tiring weekend then.

…there you are- a blog entry that should have been written over several nights.

Update: today the next issue of 3D World magazine was delivered. It has "Christmas 2006" printed on the cover next to the barcode. that means the date on the cover has an offset relation to the time it is printed. Note: last month I received the November issue.

That set me thinking about yesterday’s inane ramble about the seasons. Imagine a seasons set by the vegetable kingdom. We could have a season that runs from September until Early November and call it "Autumn" (radical eh?). That would mean recognising a season fully 6 weeks before its official start date. Winter officially starts on the 21st December and such dates are determined by astronomical features. I am now going to cease such a topic as it is a pile of b’locks.

Maybe I will append with a review of "Borat" instead.

Though there were lots of funny bits, it did have some rather dark and disturbing themes: from red-neck racists, fraternities and dreadful envangelical christians. The Khazaks were rather upset (I gather) at fun made of their country, but the real joke is on America in this film. The main characters are parodies, performing very bizarre scenes, the Americans performing very biarre scenes aren’t actors, they are doing it for real. They are indeed the profoundly unsettling ones.

Don’t take your mother-in-law to see this film!