Sunday miscellany

 It is something of a small joy to be writing here again.  The morning routine is linseed, porridge, kefir and a cup of tea, wordle of the New York Times followed by Codeword on the Simple Puzzles site followed by More Wordle which is an alternative set up to the New York Times.  Those three things start the day.  I go back to Codeword after I have finished the More Wordle to time myself and test my memory.  The first go at Codeword can take anything from 2.5 minutes to about 14.  Usually one word will leap out at me but if this does not happen it can be a bit of longer journey to place the letters.  I go back to it after completion several times in fact in order to give my memory a good test against the clock.    

Now the breakfast routine includes a brief blog post.  It is fun to talk here to myself because nobody other than the London Borough of Brent has visited.  If I were to leave a comment on a blog then I would be easily traced as my profile is not hidden.  But I am not inclined to leave a comment anywhere for the time being.  I miss loyal people like Linda and Dave and Meike who were the regulars and the ones who didn't forget me. 

I continue with the films and went to see After the Hunt on Friday.  A failure of a film that should have been good.  Mark Kermode sums it up beautifully on his podcast of film reviews.  Julia Roberts will regret ever being part of this film I think.  Michael Stuhlbarg was outstanding as her husband although it was a relatively small part he played but I do love him since I saw him in Call Me By Your Name my favourite film of recent times.   After the Hunt failed in so many ways.  The music score was dreadful to the extent that I almost got up and asked the Odeon if there was a problem with some ticking clock in the audio room until finally it stopped after what seemed like gruelling hours of ticking at the opening of the film and was probably only 5 minutes.  It was like a student film gone wrong with "let's use a ticking clock to build up some tension'.  It happened again much later during the film.  It was dreadful.  The plot was muddled, the side we took  as viewer was muddled and lots of annoying things like unable to read text messages and see exactly what was what in written material shown by the camera to the audience but actually unclear.  Films with text messages  and pieces of significant written paper bits should blow them up so that the audience can read them otherwise don't bother to show them.