29/05/08
The End of The Road -
Categories: Ive spent a large amount of time in the last week suffering the curse of comedy that is having to spend a lot of time by yourself in tiny remote seaside towns with little in the way of entertainment. The first of these occasions was not so bad, as I was stranded in Weston Super Mare between gigs. Now yes, you are right, that does sound bad, but at least there were places to walk around and I managed to waste several hours by watching Iron Man. I was the only adult in the cinema that wasn't accompanying a child which meant I looked immensely suspicious. More so when I laughed out loud at Westwood looking like the king of dicks in the new Radio 1 advert before the film started. Its an advert that really shows why some people have a face for radio, especially Steve Lamacq. Poor poor ugly ugly Steve Lamacq. More importantly than that though, the advert shows that Westwood really deserves to be beaten up for speaking and acting like a mega twat. It can only be a matter of time before someone tries to shoot him again.
Iron Man itself wasn't too bad. I feel very wrong for saying that the main let down of it all was the lack of fighting and too much storyline. I've never ever said that before, but I really wanted to see the metal man kick seven shades of shit out of more things and it just didn't happen. I can only hope the new Hulk film doesn't disappoint in the same way. Filmmakers need to realise that most people don't give a damn about love stories when they could see a radioactive green man smash a building up. 'Nuff said.
So I survived the Weston Super Mare weekend relatively unscathed, but yesterday and today were truly bleak times that will need some recovery from. 10 hours of train journeying to get to and back from Aberystwyth, a place that is truly at the end of everything. There is nothing further than Aberystwyth. Its so far away that I was sure that when I was looking out at the coast I could see the point where the world ended. The town itself is quite a pretty place with a beautiful beach, and a bustling student population although I'm fairly sure that many of them visited the town for the open day and could never be bothered to travel all the way back.
Once there things were ok, but it was the travelling that sucked. The trains there do not cater in any way for the bored. Having only discovered the wonders of free train wi-fi several months ago I had packed my laptop with hopes of scrabulous fun and some writing opportunity. Instead there was no wi-fi. There were also no plug sockets to charge said laptop for any aforementioned writing opportunities. As well as the lack of these things, by my seat there was also a lack of window, a lack of leg room, air flow of any kind, and seat cushion that cushioned anything larger than a gnat's arse. So uncomfortable and bored, I was pleased to remember that I had packed my book. Unfortunately for me the book of choice happened to be the brilliant but bleak as hell 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy. Its a riveting read, but its essentially about a man and his son trying to survive in a world that has been burnt away, leaving just ashes and several mad cannibals.
As I got further and further into the book, my journey took me further and further into the desolate Welsh countryside. All I could see where parallels between the book and outside. The man and his son travel for days and weeks without seeing another living human being. I saw some people between Welsh Pool and Borth but I'm not sure they were alive inside. The entire Earth had been burnt leaving just a wasteland, which is what several of the stops looked like. In the book the skies are gray and always overcast, and in real life let me re-iterate, I was in Wales. I breathed such a sigh of relief when I finally got to my destination and the locals weren't waiting for me with shotguns and masks. Although to be fair, had they known I was coming they might have been prepared.
Lucky for me I'm back off to Wales again on Friday. I'm going to have to choose my next book a little more carefully before I board any more trains I reckon. I might just skim through a holiday brochure and a Beano...
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