As my cab back from the airport turned on to the Uxbridge Road I found it hard to believe that I had woken up this morning in Africa. Modern air travel may be destroying the world with its carbon emissions, but it is a truly miraculous thing and I think that on balance it is worth destroying the world.
The flight home passed with little or no incident. I was disappointed to find that the in flight entertainment had exactly the same films on the way home as on the way here. And there hadn't really been anything I'd wanted to watch on the way here. I had finally plumped for "Final Destination 3" and half of "Ice Age 2" on the outward flight. Hopefully this should give you some insight into how bad the films I had turned down must have been. I quite like watching bad films on planes, but couldn't bring myself to even look at one that starred the unlikely pairing of Gerard Depardieu and Queen Latifah - oh Gerard, whither Jean de Florette, whither Cyrano de Bergerac? What has become of thee? And after seeing the trailer for that film with Steve Martin and Queen Latifah in it (I make no apologies if I am spelling that stupid name wrong - I strongly suspect that she is the monarch of nothing) I vowed never to watch anything that this woman appeared in.
Today I plumped for "The Matador" which started badly, had a brief period in the first half where it looked like it might turn out to be OK and then degenerated into pointlessness and unbelievability. I then watched the second half of "Ice Age 2" - I don't know why as I hadn't enjoyed the first half, or seen "Ice Age" and am 39 years old. I was disappointed to discover that the part of the Mammoth that thinks it is some kind of rodent was played by Queen Latifah. I had been tricked and felt dirty.
On the flight here I had the option of sleep, but the return was a daytime flight and so I could only read or watch films. My new book was boring, so I had a go at watching "Firewall" with Harrison Ford, but only lasted three minutes - whither Hans Solo, whither Indiana Jones?
Finally I had to settle for the unpromising Pauly Shore (the male Queen Latifah, without the delusions of majesty) movie, "The Benchwarmers". I suspected it would be sub-"Dumb and Dumberer" whimsy and it was also all about baseball which being English I know little and care less about. It was exactly the kind of emotionally manipulative one dimensional puerile kind of ninety minutes that I hope to create in my
Hollywood version of Metamorphosis. It was relentlessly silly and I enjoyed it more than any film I have seen in the last two weeks. I wouldn't bother buying or renting it, but if you're on a plane with nothing else to do then it's worth a look. I hope they put that on the poster.
It was good to get home. I've put on about a kilo and a half, which sounds OK if you don't convert it into pounds, but sure I can shift that pretty quickly and to be honest am just glad I am not heavier than when I came back from Edinburgh, which was my major fear.
