Our friend Georgina and I both love to hate Jon Ronson. His Guardian column makes us both scream and yet we always read it, week in week out. That and Charlie Brooker’s TV review are the only things I always read.
This week Jon has Googled himself and discovered that some bloggers have said horrible things about him. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Jon in my blog, so obviously I have to put that right, right now…
Life on Mars finished last night.
Every week it begins with Sam Tyler explaining that he was in a car crash, and woke up in 1973. “Am I mad, in a coma or have I travelled back in time?” And every week I say to the TV: “You’re in a coma.”
And I think the final episode still bears this out, although it was slightly vague. He decided he preferred the 1970s life in his head to the humdrum reality of the present day.
Personally I’d have ended it with him jumping off the building, leaving out the bit where he makes friends again with the 1970s colleagues he betrayed. He runs, he jumps, roll credits.
This is the car driven by the woman who pulled into the parent and child space I was about to park in. She drove in at a sharp angle at quite high speed. Couldn’t see any children in her car. I had a very clingy 1 year-old in mine and I could have done with the space. I didn’t say anything of course. Just gave her, and her female companion, a Paddington Bear Hard Stare.
It was probably selfish of me to want that space. Probably selfish of me to have 3 children. I should slay them now to improve our family’s carbon footprint.
As you can tell, I’m in a good mood. I blame watching 28 Days Later back over two nights. Two nights ruined. Two nights alone staring into the abyss wondering if I could kill one of my children if they became infected with a zombie rage virus.
Okay, it’s only a film.
Incidentally, why does Danny Boyle always have to have insanely stupid things in his films that no-one mentions? In Shallow Grave I never understood why they just didn’t hide the money and call the police, turn the body in. And why did the coppers never notice all the holes in the ceiling? The holes! Look up, Sherlock!
In 28 Days Later, to be fair, they do say driving through the Rotherhithe Tunnel is an insanely stupid thing to do – but they still do it, driving over cars, bodies, rubble – and who’d'a’thunk it? They get a flat tyre! Also, assuming there is normal life going on beyond the shores of this infected isle, why can they not hear any European radio stations on Long Wave? I can hear several here in London. Why spend hours making beautifully perfect huge letters spelling ‘HELLO’ when ‘SOS’ would have done? Why… why… why?
I know. It’s only a film.
This morning in Manor Lane, Lewisham. White van emblazoned with the ‘Geographers A-Z Map Company’ logo. Driver parked at angle on side of road, utterly lost, consulting huge A-Z road atlas.
For the last few days I’ve been wandering around in a bit of a daze, feeling as if everything was a long way off. As if I were in an episode of Life on Mars and would wake up in a hospital bed at any minute. If the TV had started talking to me, I wouldn’t have been much surprised.
Anyway, it turns out there’s a fairly simple explanation. I need glasses.
