Fri
15-Aug-2003

matt's new phone

Matt has a remarkable new phone that takes pictures, has polyphonic ringtones, and is generally more excitable than his old one. He's also broken away from Nokia, shockingly, into the land of the Sony Ericsson T-610. He took this picture of me this morning, holding Bear. The quality is quite good for a small device you're meant to use for talking to people! Slightly soppy picture I know.

doggets terrace bar

Images

Last night, after Spanish class, I joined Matt at the catchily named ICE Advisory Summer BBQ! It was a fancy dress do, and in Doggets, a basic centre of town pub, but with a rather splendid terrace overlooking Blackfriars Bridge and the Thames. The sun was setting gloriously when I arrived and there was lots of meat and wine! Hurrah!

Chatted to two girls about Switzerland. We spoke of the strange combination of wealth, tradition and rudeness that characterises the Swiss, the fact they have a really well-equipped army and a hardcore system of national service (everyone goes in the army for two weeks every year), the fact that in Bern marijuana is legal, and we'd just got on to Eliot - 'by the waters of Lake Leman I sat down and wept' - when I had to go and chat to some other people. These included a very drunk and amusing girl called Kerrie, who has a place in Dorset as well as London and was keen to wax lyrical on the joys of fossil hunting on the clay beaches of Dorset. We exchanged anecdotes on ammonites and I told her about my mother and her love of walking up and down beaches with her eyes on the ground.

the believer

Last night Matt and I dropped in on Josh's flat after work, on Gray's Inn Road. The three of us drank wine and had an amazingly nice Chinese takeaway. I keep having slightly dodgy Chinese takeaways, to the point where I really don't hold out much hope of getting something nice when I have a Chinese, but this meal was delicious. Cheap and quality food, with prawn crackers too!

Then we watched The Believer, Henry Bean's film about the making of a fascist. I had been quite moved by it when I saw it last, and seeing it again confirmed how good it is. Bean's script has some inspired moments, when Danny Balint, played by Ryan Gosling, has articulate rants about the cruel, inhumanity of god and about the weakness and submissiveness of jews who undermine societies through their nomadic talent for abstraction and adaptation. It is Ryan Gosling who bears the weight of the film and he is excellent in the role. He's amazingly sexy as well, though hating his own sexuality - there's a scene where he pillories jews for their alleged love of sexual pleasure. And his preoccupation with submission runs through the film, as when Carla says that the greatest pleasure may be to submit to god. The film generally draws out the contradictions in his character, without particularly trying to explain them, which is how it should be. As Henry Bean put it in an interview, 'he wants to be a living contradiction'. The ending is excellent as well, leaving you excited and thoughtful.

When it had finished we turned over to the television, where Death in Venice was playing, so we watched the long wordless scenes play out, with Dirk Bogarde shuffling around becoming increasingly pathetic while the boy in his nineteenth century bathing costume stood around looking haughty and angelic. Beautifully, beautifully shot film. Amazing ending as well, as Dirk quietly dies in awe and pain at the beauty and futility of it all. You can see why its an amazing classic film. Very odd central story though.