What I meant to say, as we reached the three quarter point of Avatar (3D) that we had eventually got round to seeing this weekend, to the man sitting behind us in the swanky West End cinema was "Would you mind awfully not repeatedly knocking the back of my chair please as its quite distracting."
What I actually said was, "Can you stop kicking the back of my......
......
.....
fucking seat"
Before realising it was his friend sitting next to him that was doing it. So I quickly turned forty five degrees and added,
"Yes you...it's you...I can see your foot"
I'm so glad I didn't go into the diplomatic corps...
It was during the big battle near the end of the film, so the adrenaline was pumping...its an excuse of sorts...
Does anyone know why Apple insists on updating iTunes so frequently that I regularly haven't installed a new version before an even newer version needs to be downloaded. I spend more time downloading than listening, which seems somewhat perverse.
Having not been married for a decade, I'd forgotten about the little tiffs and squabbles that can populate family life.
This weekend we toddled off to see some friends on the other side of the M25. A journey long enough to require music. Of course radio is not good enough, so three of us decided to bring our iPods. In an act of uncommon charity on my part, I suggested we listened to songs from The Cat's collection. The Cat is, of course, a teenage girl. Which was fine until The Cat's Mum insisted on taking control, and further still insisted on playing the sort of music that no self-respecting teenage boy, and his father, could tolerate. Britney Spears, Avril Lavine and Bryn Terfel among them. After much lively discussion, I tried awarding points out of 10 to each played song as a gentle hint. The Cat's Mum was hitting a lowly 3 before I resorted to switching to the radio, switching to the CD, and disconnecting the iPod. It all seemed quite fun as we tried to avoid the enormous queue on the M25 which was sending stress levels dangerous near the 'heart attack' point.
On the return journey, The Boy was given the chance to plug in his iPod...and all seemed to be going well, as The Cat was given the chance to play a couple of tracks. but then it all went horribly wrong. it may have been The Verve. It may have been Radiohead, but suddenly The Boy was on a roll, and refused to allow anyone near the music. We tried to mediate, we tried to reason, we tried the application of commonsense. We even tried humour. But to no avail. The Boy disconnected the iPod from the car stereo and put on his headphones. With jaws dropped, the rest of us were left in momentary musical absence. The CD player was then switched on, and we sat in silence apart from the thumping out of Bachman Turner Overdrive...
