Our good friend Anthony is visiting, and I caught up with him on Monday night down by the river. We sat outside and just chatted for a couple of hours — good, geeky stuff like the future of software development, or human-capability assessment and enhancement. So great catching up with him!

On Wednesday we kicked off the film festival with a preview screening of Vincenzi Natali’s “Splice”. It’s a great movie, and the highlight of the festival for me: exactly the right balance of “disturbing” and “plausible”, and with a personality that is missing from most “creature” films. Oh, and the most comfortable seats I’ve ever experienced in a cinema (at Apollo, Piccadilly). Anthony even won a DVD!

Thursday I took Dee to another Natali film, a black-comedy called “Nothing”. It opens with the statement, “The events portrayed in this film are true. Really true. 100% true. Promise.” and quickly turns hilariously ridiculous. A good night, although I wish Dee had come along to Splice as well.

The next night was the comedy event “Geeks Night Out”. Some funny comedians, although one or two of them played up the self-defensive “I live in my Mum’s basement,” angle and I wanted to shake them: you don’t need to put yourself down for liking comics! Not here! Not now! You are amongst friends!

Saturday was a day off sci-fi, although I could happily have watched more. I dropped Ant off at the station then walked the long way home, har-har. Even stopped for Pimms on the south bank! A beautiful, sunny day.

Today we watched the strangest of all the films, an adaption of Stanislaw Lem’s “One Human Minute” called “One”. Mind-bendingly lovely. We walked home from that one, too, and stopped at the appropriately named Mad Hatter pub for a drink before heading out to Del A’ziz for dinner with Dayna and Bruce (now they’re back — with all the films I’ve hardly seen them!!).

One more film tomorrow: Vampires, a documentary about a family of our favourite blood-suckers living in Belgium.

(Edit: back-posting again. Perhaps when we’re travelling I’ll have more time to write these damn things?)