On the Saint

The "Saint" is a popular TV program with the famous actor Roger Moore, who later starred in the James Bond films. The Saint, or Simon Templar was always very smart. He never seemed to use guns. I was watching the repeats. The Saint was always a kindly hero who was always helping attractive women who had family members kidnapped .

Apart from the fairly recent film about the Saint in the 90s or 200s that starred Van Kilmer most of the films of the Saint were similar to the TV series. However, in one black and white film the Saint was almost vicious, while he was still a dandy.

There were a series of 3 adaptations of the Saint on BBC radio, that I listened to recently. There was a hardness to Saint character that was missing in the TV series.

On holiday I have just read "Enter the Saint" by Leslie Charters. These books are not available on kindle, so I had to use a real paperback book. I am not sure if I can use a kindle on a plane so I have to use a real book to pass the time. The Saint in the original books is a dandy, but is also capable of  extreme violence. In the book a number of people were killed by people in the Saint's gang

So perhaps as usual the TV series was a watered down version of the character in the books.

Many of the Saint books are out of print -- at least according to Amazon. Even the books say that Templar is not a man of this time -- when the time was the 30s to 60s. Now it is very hard to have any positive feelings about the tweed dressed public school educated men, who know how to box and give their word of honour.

On being a God

About a month ago I was reading a scathing review of the new film about Tintin -- the boy reporter. The reviewer was clearly obsessed by Tintin and was a bit of a freak because he had read all the Tintin books.
He claimed that the original author of the Tintin had hidden he idea in his books that he was the king of Belgium. This struck me as insane in a grand way. I tried to think of a central theme about this blog.




What I decided was that the hidden theme of this blog is that I an in fact a God. Not the single sky God, because that would be insane and weird. But I like the idea of being a God.


In particular it would solve one of the problems that I have in winning the Templeton prize for corrupting science with religion. I don't see how they couldn't give me the prize, if was both a God and had a PhD in physics. What more could I do to get my hands on the million pound prize, One of the main problems with me winning the Templeton prize, apart from the fact that I don't deserve it, is my deep hatred of priests and vicars. I can see the fat bishop trying to shake my hand as he handed me my cheque, and me giving a gentle slap with my fist.




Of course if I was a God, I could happily punch a couple of vicars and not been censored, and more importantly still get the cash.




Of course you may be thinking Craig has finally lost his mind. However, I remember that an old Greek philosopher, who thought he was God. To prove he was he jumped into a Volcano. Where you might ask will I find a Volcano. Funny you should ask that, because there is a friendly Volcano on Tenerife.
Luckily it is quite a walk to the Volcano.

Stress and holidays

Tenerife

So here I sit in a hotel room in Tenerife, trying to think of some content for a blog post. This year I decided to spend the new year on holiday-- mostly because the last two winters were so harsh in Wuppertal.  I seem to be spending more time in these englishfied holiday resorts. In my defense you need reasonable weather, if you want to read outside.

So far it ha rained a little bit here but perhaps rain is not the right word, for only a small amount of
water fell from the sky. I do like to see the black clouds swirling in the night sky.




I should say that I tried to push myself to do many things at work  before I left work for the holidays. I was unable to complete anything, and the stress meant that I could not write any blog posts.

 The dead list

Last night I watched The Dead List
a film with Jean Reno in it.
It was a strange film with action mixed
in with some father versus son conflict.



I feel slightly guilty because the film
was set in France and I know from the Daily
Mail newspaper that the UK is almost at war with
France. That sneaky French president using
an underhand tactic called negotiating that
no proper English gentleman, such Cameron
would bother to use or understand. Doesn't Sarkozy
know that Cameron went to Eton and that his demands
should automatically be granted.

On the importance of goofing off

I have so much to do at the moment. I wanted to spend most of the weekend working on the backlog. Although I do a reasonable amount over the weekend, I did laze around after dinner for a while. I watched an episode of the "13 Warehouse" This is an american fantasy series.

I felt guilty, but somehow relaxed as well. If I wasn't working perhaps I should have been reading. If you are thinking, what is the guy talking about, because the last 4 posts have been on films. I normally watch films after 10:30 at night, when my brain is dead, and I have worked up a beer thurst. It was relaxing to do nothing for 2 hours and just watch TV.

We have been doing the theme of free time in my German class. Every essay I read said that watching TV is bad, but is passes the etime. In fact "supernatural" is on TV now, so I must finish this post.

Attack the block

Over the weeken I watched "attack the block" from Itunes. As I am sure many people have written it was really hoodies versus Aliens. I enjoyed it, it was fairly inventive. The killer aliens looked like cuddly toys with teeth, but they were scary.

Being cold is to be a man

On thinking warm

I feel so ashamed! Today I switched the heating on for the first time this winter. I am getting weaker -- I could have held out for a few more weeks, but I get cold when I am sitting down at the computer.

I have been going around the campus just wearing a T-shirt. This has been remarked apon by many people, so I am going to have to keep this up the entire winter. So because of my pride I will probably freeze to death this winter.

X-mas market in Wuppertal

Last night we hit the Christmass markets of Wuppertal. The Christmas market in Wuppertal is clearly a close copy of the famous Manchester Christmas markets.

First we drank a mug of Gluwein, after a problematic German conversation, about whether there was a deposit on the mug with the hot wine in. We them moved onto another Gluwin stand, where I had taste of mead. For a long time I have wanted to try mead, because it was the drink of the vikings. I was disappointed with the mead -- it was too sweet and tasted of honey.

There is a lot of food stalls at the market, but I just had the greasiest Wurst in some bread. My faith in the German sausage was restored. There is also a little area with animals close to the C&A. What you don't see, is the big goat trying to mount the little goat, that it spent about 15 minutes. An interesting way to end a short evening of drinking.