Diamonds in the rough

This weekend was all planned out. But, the best laid plans of mice and men…

The initial plan consisted of just two vitally important parts:

• Stay in while decorator started painting my wood (on the house!).
• Attend my grandparent's Diamond Wedding Anniversary meal (that's 60 years people - 60 YEARS!)

It all started taking a different direction when I got a call from the decorator on Friday saying he was going to have to cancel because he couldn't get a ladder long enough. This was OK, mainly because it freed me up to do some other things like sleep in till 11:30. My original plan had been to get up ready for his arrival at 8am and then watch a load of DVDs - Batman Begins, Team America, Dawn of the Dead, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, stuff like that - while he slaved away outside. It was also OK because I'd not bleached the toilet and I doubt that while I was watching movies he would've wanted to see the Remains of the Day when popping to the little boy's room.

I subsequently spent a considerable amount of time on my Xbox, downloading various demos from the Xbox Live Arcade, including a game from back in the day: yes people, I now have Worms. What an awesome little game that is; I totally whiled away at least two hours on that.

Knowing full well that I'd want to start getting ready for the evening's festivities at around half four-quarter to five-ish (ready for the 1845 sit-down), I decided that I'd spend a little time with the latest Love and Rockets book I'm reading. This is where things went decidedly pear-shaped. One of my recurring concerns with reading while sitting on my bed is that I tend to get a little bit sleepy and then doze off, and I didn't want this to happen with my tightly-scheduled, erm, schedule. But this did not happen; no, because the curtain rail in my bedroom decided to rip itself away from the wall.

I have never been more awake.

I think I actually did a Doc Brown style "Uhhh!" - y'know, like he does in the first Back to the Future movie when the cable linking the top of the clock tower to the doo-dah in the street gets disconnected by the falling tree and he sees the connector swinging loose. I legged it downstairs, grabbed a screwdriver and my little granny-steps, and hoofed it back upstairs.

For about an hour I tried various methods of getting this friggin' thing to stay in the wall, but it was *not* playing ball. Bearing in mind that I live alone and don't have a tendency to engage myself in idle conversation, by this point in the day the vast majority of words that tumbled out of my mouth were of the deleted expletive kind. I was not a happy bunny. At 1740, way behind schedule and with five-minute filler all over my hands, I finally admitted defeat and headed for the bathroom. In addition to needing to shower and prettify myself up to a presentable state, I also needed to shave, because I was rocking at least two week's worth of manly facial hair. And what d'ya know? I'd run out of new razor blades. It took me at least 15 minutes to get that mutha off.

I FINALLY arrived at the very posh Petersham Hotel at about 1843, and casually presented myself at the front desk. "I believe we're dining in the wine cellar, my good man," I said to the dude on the desk, before being led down to a very nice, very private room filled with a grand table, a lot of wine, and a lot of family members.

My family don't tend to get together that often, which always puzzles me a bit because when we do we have a fantastic time. And it was doubly delightful to spend time with them and be able to offer up rather more in the way of conversation than I could the last time I saw them, when the pinnacle of my conversational skills probably amounted to "and look, it turns from a CAR into a ROBOT."

Anyway, an awesome night was had by all; the food was *lovely*, and Sparky Ma made a speech that even had me, despite my Vulcan-levels of emotional control, feeling just a little bit emotional. And most importantly, my grandparents had a wonderful time. Sixty years - great googaly-moogaly!

Incidently, the evening ended on a hilarious note when a minicab driver mispronounced my grandparent's surname and said "minicab for Mr. Spock?"

Awesome.

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No rest for the wicked today, either. I woke up early, glad to find that the curtain rail hadn't come away totally in the night and impaled me in a special place, because I had plans with the lovely Jo who had wangled free tickets to a screening of Brad Pitt's new movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - which, I think you'll agree, is quite possibly more of a synopsis than a title. Anyway, up to Leicester Square we went at stupid o'clock on a Sunday morning.

Like its title, the film was also very long, but I really liked it. It started quite slow, but built up steadily as it went along; I know I liked it because I'm still thinking about it now, which is a good sign. I don't know when it's on general release, but I'm going to suggest you seek it out. You might want to consider taking a cushion or some Preparation H with you though.

And what about the curtain rail, you ask? Bless 'im, Sparky Pa fixed it while I was out!