Weeknotes 260

Oh, hello, I didn’t see you there.

This no man’s land between Christmas and the new year is when I’m at maximum risk of not even realising it’s Sunday and that I need to write weeknotes.

We’re already teetering on the brink of the new year but, crucially for yearnotes purposes, we’re not there yet. Until then? This.

Last Sunday I watched Die Hard. Society unanimously decided it was a Christmas film about a decade ago so it’s a nice traditional way to ease into the festive season. I know what happens but I still enjoy watching it happen.

I’m working on a Hans Gruber impression which is decent but not yet as good as my Arnie In That One Scene Of Total Recall impression. To be honest all I can really say is “John McClane” and “ho ho ho” but that’s all Alan Rickman really says too so that only makes it more convincing imo.

I also spent Sunday racked with the usual dread about picking up a rental car. I’d spent the preceding few weeks building up a backlog of latent potential of Christmas plans, food, gifts and so on, and it would only take one uncaring person at the car rental company to bring it all crashing down, and there’d be absolutely nothing I could do about it.

But it was fine. On Monday morning the sun rose during my walk to the car rental place and they gave me a car as promised. I loaded it up and drove to my parents’ house. When I arrived I discovered they’d got a Christmas tree this time so I sat on the sofa in front of it and stared gormlessly at the lights and baubles for the next few days.

That evening we watched Blitz which was visually impressive but otherwise pretty dull and pointless. Remember the past?

On Tuesday we watched the first half of Slow Horses season four, which was more of the same: Gary Oldman doing fart jokes, scenes shot on location near where I live, occasional bits of spy shit. I didn’t find it compelling but it’s consistently watchable. I enjoyed seeing James Callis play a different smarmy leader.

We also watched A Ghost Story for Christmas and it was unremarkable enough that I’ve forgotten everything about it.

On Christmas Day itself we finished Slow Horses: pretty comfortable, pretty watchable, very silly. The bit with the PowerPoint presentation made me laugh. I would gladly never hear the theme song again.

I didn’t have to watch Gavin & Stacey so that’s good.

On Boxing Day I watched nothing and stared at the Christmas tree.

I drove home on Friday and squeezed some extra juice out of the rental car by executing a daring manouevre in which I transported three televisions between different London locations, a chore which has been outstanding since I replaced my TV back in April. I was fully convinced that I’d cracked the screen of the B7 by loading it into a Fiat 500 and driving it around town but it was fine in the end.

It’s a huge relief to have sorted this out at last. As usual, I wish I’d bitten the bullet and done it eight months ago instead of letting it hang over me. As usual, nothing has been learned.

I returned the car first thing yesterday and had another dawn walk home afterwards. This discharged my final Christmas responsibility and I felt myself beginning to unwind at last.

Of course I interrupted the unwinding by deciding to take a trip to the dump to get rid of the now-useless TV that had just been displaced from the bottom rung, plus tons of other junk that had been piling up and waiting for that opportunity. I discovered you can collect a Zipcar 14 minutes early so I rented one of those for the shortest time possible and made one final push to clear the last big job of the year. Done.

Last night I watched Gremlins, a more explicitly Christmas film. It’s pleasantly silly and festive, although the gremlin antics in the middle drag on a bit. It’s fun to see the Courthouse Square set outside of the familiar context of Back to the Future.

Anyway, that was my lazy Christmas week. I hope yours was alright. I don’t think I want or need to eat any food again.