I should be in bed, but it’s Saturday night, live a little. I happened upon this TV movie – Helen of Troy – and, as I’ve just started to actually properly read The Illiad (as opposed to putting it down after two paragraphs of clanging armour and intestinal losses), I thought “Hmm, give it a go, could be fun”.

How right I was. I started watching with an hour to go, and the duel between Paris and Menelaus was just starting. Hmm, I thought. But ok, maybe it’s in two parts, or something. Menelaus stepped forward, and was about 12. His bullying older brother Agamemnon (Rufus Sewell, not – I hope you notice – a redhead) was clearly the ringleader in this. I wondered if they’d stay with the text and have Aphrodite swoop in to save Paris. Probably not, on balance. Go with the Wolfgang Petersen version, much less silly.

So they fight, and tussle and such, then a mist appears and – this is lovely – they sit down for a chat. Menelaus asks after Helen, Paris doesn’t do much because Agamemnon poisoned the javelin used in the fight. Whatever. They both emerge unscathed from the mist and people look a bit miffed. Especially Agamemnon, who wants Troy, dagnabit. And Hector, oh yes Hector decides to take Paris’s place.

Meanwhile, I’m eyeing up the background characters, thinking “That looks like an Odysseus, and maybe that’s Diomedes with the slaphead. Or Ajax, could be Ajax..” and then the less-than-hirsute one steps forward and basically says “I AM ACHILLES! RAARRRRR! FEAR MY BALDNESS!!!!1!!!!”

WTF? I realise this is all about the Helen, but come on! The whole entire book is about Achilles sulking in his tent! What’s he doing here just after the duel of Paris and Menelaus? I was smiling quite broadly at this point. What next? He tells Hector to have the first throw, and turns his big bald back. And now I give you a script excerpt. Honest to god.

ACHILLES: You should have killed me when you had the chance.

HECTOR: I don’t fight that way.

ACHILLES: I do! Rarrrr!

[ACHILLES throws spear through HECTOR’S chest]

PARIS: Achilles..! Take.. me..!

ACHILLES: DIE, HECTOR!!

[Pulls out spear, rams it back in, shakes it about]

I am not joking. Then he – as suggested by Homer – ties the body to the bumper of his chariot and he’s off, and he just kind of goes away. When he turns up a little bit later (killed by Paris, arrow through the ankle, if you must know) in his chariot, I half expected Hector to still be bump, bump, bumping along behind. Sadly, he wasn’t. But I shall cherish “DIE, HECTOR!!” for a long time.

Also, when they found the horse was pretty classy, too. Apparently the Greeks built it so big reckoning that the Trojans wouldn’t be able to fit it in their gates. “Oh, yeah? Well, we’ll show them!” said the Trojans. They didn’t actually say it, but boy was reverse psychology much easier then, or what?

I made crumpets on Sunday. Oh, yes. And I don’t mean “I toasted crumpets”, no. None of your Sunblest for me! It’s not hard – contrary to what you may have heard – it’s just time consuming. But very very worth it when you see this start to form in your frying pan –

And then you flip it to seal those lovely bubbles and what should come out but this..

Fluffy! And delicious.

We’d been doing pretty well over the weekend. We’d marked out all the meals we were going to have over the three days (we both took yesterday off), bought the ingredients and on Saturday and Sunday we cooked them all. I’ll talk about Sunday’s lunch later, I have piccies.

But yesterday was a disaster. Didn’t bother with lunch, and dinner was a completely inedible mess. It was fried spicy fish, but it was bland and the linguini it was paired with was undercooked and underseasoned. So I have to apologise to the world in general for that.

On the plus side, the weekend was lovely. We did as little as possible and generally enjoyed being alone with each other, something that had been sorely missed through January.

Hello again!

I’m back properly now, so let’s just put the last month behind us and start afresh. How are you doing? Good, good, happy to hear it. I’m at work at the moment. Did I mention that we have new flat monitors and snazzy barcode readers? No, I don’t work in a supermarket. Though.. man, that would be pretty cool. No, it wouldn’t. Ignore me.

I had some peanut butter M&Ms yesterday. I must trek to Cybercandy myself sometime and buy their entire stock, just so Masterfoods gets the message. I WANT THEM HERE NOW! Stupid crispy M&Ms. Who wants them? No-one, that’s who. But peanut butter… I like the USA for one reason alone – its propensity to cram any and all foodstuffs full of peanut butter. Peanut butter M&Ms, Twixes, chicken kievs…

I’m not dead. Hello! How was Burns Night for you? I can’t tell you how much fun mine was. No, I really can’t. Looking forward to Australia Day now. And then the full-on party tomorrow for.. hmm.. Holocaust Remembrance Day, apparently. Way to harsh a party buzz, calendar makers!

Can’t get to computer. Send help.

I hit 28 running on the 5th and so far the only difference is that I’m wearing a jumper which makes me look like someone’s dad. Actually, that may be a sign of something or other, but I doubt it.

I spent most of the last week trying to help my parents help my brother who is in difficulty on the other side of the world – Japan, to be precise. Well, to be more precise, he was in Korea from Tuesday and… you don’t want to hear this whole story. It was a less than fun time, but it’s lurching towards finishment, with his arrival on Wednesday hopefully putting him back on the map and on the right track for the time being.

I wish to register a complaint. Why aren’t I worth more? I’ve been Blogging for ages and have lots of links from and to and yet I’m worth less that most of the bloggie-come-latelys I’m linked to. Yes, for some reason I care.

Okay, that’s celebration over with for another year. Or… not started for this year? I dunno. Oh, hey, don’t forget my birthday on Wednesday. That’s a bit more celebration, but not a universal one (I’m working on it being an international holiday, but as yet it’s only respected in the phatter parts of Northern Ireland. And Scotland, obviously, but they get Hogmanay off, so I don’t know if they really think about their national holidays too hard).

I’ll be somewhere in Lincolnshire soon. Watch out for me, I’ll be visible to the naked eye.

Furthermore, nothing.

I’m a little tired. Christmas has been uncharacteristically exhausting, as I may have mentioned. However, it was all worth it in the end. Christmas Day itself went off beautifully, with gifts and trees and turkey and boardgames and all things as they should be.

Hmm, speaking of which, my main present was a game of Monopoly from Flapjack. Oh, wow, big deal you may say. Aha, but you have not seen this Monopoly board. Is the first square “Old Kent Road”? No. It is not. Nor is it any of the other roads or places you may have seen on any of the many and various regional or licenced Monopoly boards. It reads here “Floor in Ealing”. Why, you may ask? Well, it is probably the low point in my accomodation journey. A homeless Moth crashing on the floor of a generous friend for almost two weeks when “between houses” on his first move to London. And so it goes on. The house where there were rats in the kitchen in Oxford. My first primary school. My halls of residence. The house I grew up in… You can’t imagine how amazing it was to see them all, familiar names on a familiar object but… I don’t think I’ve ever cried on receiving a present before. But I did this time. It’s just the most perfect thing in the world.

I bought Flppy several pressies, including her first carafe of the day, but none of them could really match up. I content myself that her birthday present from me was something pretty special. She also received a tree, a Japanese Maple which we needed to plant up. So that was what we did today. But first the roots of the old cherry needed to be, um, uprooted. No mean feat. But we did it! Oh, yes. I smote its body upon the paving.

Graaaargh!

Of course, I ache now. But sod it, the new tree is in. It’s the first thing we’ve planted in the garden, and it’s going to be beautiful.