christopher-hill.com

Training

With just two weeks to go before the Aviemore Half Marathon, I finally started training this evening with a short sharp run. It felt really good, my ankle felt 100% OK. Although it was the first time I've been running in a few months, I have been doing a large amount of walking to keep my fitness up, so it's not like I'm coming at it entirely cold. In fact on holiday, the half marathon informed my itinerary quite a lot, where it was physically possible I would nearly always walk rather than getting a taxi (or a furnicular). I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I must have walked a few half marathons over the course of the two weeks.

Saturday, September 30, 2006 9:21 PM 1 comments

Bollotics

I don't talk about politics much on this site but for some reason I am about to do so. Christ knows why, as politics these days is just a load of old bollocks. We have a criminally insane prime minister, a dour resentful chancellor, and a borderline pyschopath as home secretary, and they are probably going to win the next election because the main opposition to them is a bunch of self serving old school right wingers led by a man who is basically just a twat. Not only is he a twat but he's now a twat with a video camera which he is using to publish a You Tube style video blog in an attempt to out New Labour New Labour in the style over substance stakes.
The main point I want to make though is the curiosity that if Reid takes over from Blair instead of Brown (which I actually think quite likely), that will leave us in the rather strange position of having a left-leaning liberal Labour party headed by a staunch right winger, up against a staunchly right wing party headed by a (self proclaimed) left leaning liberal, who is also a twat. If this happens, I think my head will explode.
I say we just make all political parties illegal. That way spineless politicians won't end up voting for moronic new decisions simply in order to tow the party line (thus safe-guarding their careers). Imagine that! Politicians making decisions in the best interest of the country rather than their party! We'd have had no Iraq war, no erosion of civil liberties, and no useless yet ridiculously costly ID card bullshit.
Right that's it, bored of talking about stupid politics now. I promise I won't bring it up again for a while.

5:44 PM 2 comments

World Trade Centre

I just watched the new Oliver Stone film - World Trade Centre. It is astonishingly bad. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it is so bad that it is a disgrace that it's been released. If the studio responsible for it had any kind of humanity they would have not only refused to release it, but also burnt the negatives, sending a message to Stone and all other film makers that the deaths of 3,o00 people in a single event deserves more than soap opera style hackery.
This is the third film that I've seen that has dealt with 9/11. The first was Spike Lee's 25th Hour, a film set in the aftermath of the attack in New York which tells the story of a man facing up to his past and his future against the backdrop of a city doing the same. The seamless intertwining of these two stories told a single narrative that is probably the most honest film about 9/11 that will ever be made. This is in no small part because it was made just a few months after the actual attacks, before they were tainted by politics and wars and rhetoric.
Paul Greengrass's film United 93, was the first film to re-live the actual events of the day, and it does so soberly. You are not told what to think, you are not told how to feel, you are simply shown what you already know to have happened but from a different perspective: the perspective of those that actually lived it, rather than through the prism of the news media. By sticking almost entirely to the events as they were outlined in the 9/11 Commission, Greengrass delivered a powerful and honest film.
Unlike Spike Lee and Paul Greengrass, Oliver Stone believes that the only way audiences will understand the tragedy of the day is through him turning to every cheap TV movie hack in the book to help us out. I am even struggling to bring myself to repeat some of the lines from the film here. Every time I try I just shudder; partly out of embarrassment, partly out of anger, partly because I can't quite believe what I've just witnessed. If I write that when the tower collapsed, Nic Cage shouts in slow motion "Rrrrrruuuuuunnnnnn....iiiiinnnntttttooo tthheee eeeellllleeeevvvvaaatttoooorrr" and it came across exactly like those slo-mo parodies that are Ben Stiller's trademark, or if I tell you that towards the end of the film the endless drone of schlock strings pauses just long enough for Nic Cage to turn to his wife and say "You kept me alive" before the strings erupt again in an orgy of cheese, I can't help thinking that someone might turn to me and say, "No Chris, you idiot, what you've done there is you gone and watched a parody of Stone's film that was originally uploaded to You Tube by some undergrad film student as a laugh - the real film is nothing like that."
Please, don't pay to see this film, because if you do you will be legitimizing not only lazy film making, but also the further cheapening of 9/11. The politicians have done it, the media have done it, we really really don't need film makers thinking they can get away with it too.

Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:19 PM 5 comments

Holiday Photos

I've uploaded the photos from my Syria trip to Flickr. There's loads I'm afraid. If you really want to plough through them all, the slideshow is probably the easiest option. Over the next few days I'll try and pick out some of my favourites and give them some more background.

Sunday, September 24, 2006 12:51 PM 2 comments

as-sallam alaykum

I'm back. I'm tired. I seem to be coming down with some bad Damascene cold. If I buy no souvenir when I travel abroad, I can always be assured that some uninvited germs will hitch a ride with me. At least they waited until the final night of my holiday before announcing their presence by pinching my nose, blocking its airways and making my 4:30am rise more daunting than it already was.
So, "How was it?" you ask. I wish you hadn't asked that question. A better one would have been "Did you have a good time?", a closed question to which I could answer "Yes, thanks" before letting my exhaustion overwhelm me and collapse into sleep right here on the sofa. And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I can sum up the last two weeks in a single blog post.

I'll tell you this, it didn't exactly go entirely as planned, something I had plenty of time to consider as I stood alone on the Damascus highway, in the middle of nowhere, under 35 degree heat, surrounded by nothing but baked dust and the thunder of trucks and tankers passing me, while I tried to flag down a ride to Aleppo. It's a long story, suffice to say I didn't go from Istanbul to Aleppo by train as my lying cheating Turkish Travel agent never actually got round to buying me a ticket on what was now a fully booked train. So I had to go to bus, a bus that it turns out wasn't actually going to Aleppo despite what my lying cheating Turkish Travel agent told me, hence me being dumped at the road side and pointed in the direction of Aleppo.

I think for now I'll just give you a run down of each city I visited...
PARIS - Yeah, whatever. Very pretty and all that, a real picture. My advice, save your money by just looking at a picture of it rather than actually going there.
VIENNA - Well, everything you could want from a city, with the exception of a soul.
BUDAPEST - I really liked it and wish I had more time there.
BUCHAREST - Oh my god what a fucking shit hole. Its only redeeming feature is the fact that you can leave. The rest of Romania looks really nice though.
ISTANBUL - Great city, I'd highly recommend a visit. Visiting mosques has never really appealed to me before, but really that's because I've never really been confronted by their beauty before. With the larger mosques, no photo can do them justice, only the naked eye can take in their awesome scale and vision.
ALEPPO - The newer parts of the city are grubby and choked with traffic that threatens to suffocate you. But go for a wander around the quiet warren like back streets and hectic souks, and the place bleeds character.
DAMASCUS - Another city where I wish I'd allowed more time. As with Aleppo there's times when you simply can't remember why you came. As with Aleppo, when you hit the old city back streets and souks you are swiftly reminded. But unlike Aleppo, there's also signs of prosperity in some parts of the new city. At times it feels like you are in some liberal European country and you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself of the fact that you are in an often brutal socialist military dictatorship.

And that's that. It was exhausting. I think I have had my fill of cities now. The last couple of holidays I've seen big cities, small cities, up and coming cities, done and dusted cities, rich cities, poor cities, noisy cities and noisier cities. I think next year I shall seek quiet and solitude. Maybe a shall try and find the quietest place on earth. From Sheffield to silence, there's a holiday.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:55 PM 3 comments

Hurray, hurray, it's a holi-holiday!

If further proof were needed that I badly need a break from work, I just dialled 9 on my home phone to get an outside line.
Ouch.
Anyway, I'm on holiday now. All that's left to do is pack. You shouldn't expect much in the way from blogging when I'm away. In fact, be very suprised if you get any. But rest assured I will keep a journal like I did when I went to China, and also be assured that I will publish that journal online, just as I intend to do with my one from China (part 1 is complete, part 2 needs an edit, and part 3 needs quite a lot of work. Eh, manyana).
By the way, it often raises a few eyebrows when I say that I am going to Syria. Here are some facts about the place to chew over:
- They don't have any terrorism there. Well, they did once in 1996 when a bomb went off at a bus station, but that's it.
- It is safe to walk the streets at night alone, as crime is very low, being viewed as shameful.
- The main problem the British Embassy have to deal with is tourists losing their passports.
- This may come as a suprise to you, but not all arabs are terrorists you know. (Are they Arabs or Persians in Syria? I don't actually know...).
Anyway, look after yourselves in Britain while I'm away. Try not to let the fact that you're living in a country where you can get blown up on the bus to work or mugged and stabbed by some crack addict bastard on the way home get you down.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006 6:46 PM 2 comments