Another Weekend Disappears
It is possibly very easy to turn into Victor Meldrew from One Foot In The Grave or worse to turn into Alf Garnett. Personally I would prefer to turn into Spike Milligan. That is it is too easy to moan about changes in society and of the passage of time. High Art has gone from complex Renaissance paintings by people like my personal favourite, Hans Holbein the Younger and Leonardo Da Vinci to the zenith of Contemporary Art in Britain; a man in a monkey suit running around a Berlin Art Gallery. Art can have such broad definitions that essentially everything could be art. It is also subjective. So, if certain people feel something is cool and artistic then it is art. We the sheep should follow. Many do. Yet, is art about the journey of the artist or the message they convey in their pieces? Are Van Gogh's sunflowers a wonderful piece of art because of his painting or because he cut his ear off? Personally I hope the answer is the former not the latter.
Sadly my favourite sports time, Aston Villa, lost 3-1 to Portsmouth in the Premiership. This was balanced by the arrival of a dvd from my parents of Villa beating local rivals Birmingham 2-1 at St.Andrews. Sweet. Villa will not be a force for a while but it is good to see them improving under Martin O'neil and also good to see the number of English lads playing for the team. We have some good players with a lot of potential like Scott Carson, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Luke Moore, Ashley Young, Nigel Reo-Coker and Gareth Barry. Though I must admit a lot of pleasure in seeing Liam Ridgewell score an own goal...Sonanakankenna!!!!!
At the moment Natsumi is watching her Kira Kira Afro dvds. They seem to be really funny. Of course Natsumi and watching truly translates as: "She's asleep on the couch." But this allows me to reflect on a good weekend. Saturday was spent finishing our christmas shopping. NO SPOILERS HERE. Let's just say that sometimes when Plan A fails it's a good thing because Plan B can be so much better. Now we've just got to wrap them and post them. As usual they'll probably be late.
After finishing our shopping we met up with Natsumi's friends. This time it was Megumi and Megumi... or Megu as we call her. We settled in at the Jacasse restaurant on the 31st floor of the Hankyu Grand Building in Umeda (Plum Field), Osaka. At night time the darkness falls and all the pretty lights come on to obscure the stars. With the buildings safely hidden we could see across the prefecture at the neon signs, tall towers and the illuminated castle. Starters of garlic toast, salmon and raw octopus salad and mozzarella/tomato on toasted bread were followed up with pasta. I opted for a traditional carbonara. Then we split a big Italian style pizza between us.
Today's writing has gone very well. Inspiration for some extra scenes of my novel was not forthcoming so I settled down to watch Aliens. It is one of the recent classic action movies that I grew up on in the 80s and early 90s and which I love to bits. They may not be high art but they are fun nonetheless. Then after that I settled down to read the online edition of The Daily Telegraph when I found an article on Apostasy and how Muslim families cannot accept their children's decisions to forsake Islam. It is another one of the injustices of Islam that really gets my goat and strangely, after watching Aliens and reading the article a new story spilt out. Its rare for a short story to plop out in one piece but that is exactly what happened with Cafeteria.