Week One
I don’t really have any resolutions for the new year. What I do have is a determination to lose weight. This week I have been eating much less than I would do normally and trying to insert some activity into my otherwise sedentary lifestyle. As a result I’ve lost close to three pounds. This is roundabout where I want to be. The purpose (rather than engaging in ‘fad’ diets) is to change the way I live, to take better care of myself. The aim is improved health, as much as it weight-loss.
On Friday we went to see The King’s Speech. It was our first trip to the cinema in 2011 and a good reason to start. Original but strangely comforting, funny, moving, dramatic. It had all the components of a good story and at the same time was extremely cinematic, which gives it the edge over other royalty-based films such as The Queen. Colin Firth was convincing, as you’d expect. There’s talk of him being Oscar-nominated. On the way home we talked about whether or not he deserves an award for that kind of performance. He was brilliant, as I’ve said, but was the role challenging enough? We thought of The Reader, in which Kate Winslett played an utterly disgusting character yet made us feel sorry for her, root for her, and feel upset when she took her own life at the close. No comparison between the two.
All I’ve been able to read is Harry Potter. I’ve started with The Philosopher’s Stone, reading a chapter to the bump every night. It’s nice to read aloud, although the crushing repetition of adverbs is hard to swallow, and makes me a bit angry.
I finished Stewart Lee’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate (incorrectly titled as How I Escaped a Fate Worse than Death in previous blog posts) between Christmas and New Year. It was hilarious, and also quite touching. He segued nicely between his stand-up routine and an account of a debilitating and quite embarrassing illness. At times it was a bit wanky. The endless footnotes got annoying. Overall a funny and clever man.
