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Ah..it's back at last!!! Met up with Em after work yesterday and went for a drink with her and Beth. Beth is a Nice Person and we like her. The drink was marginally overhsadowed by the presence of a scurrying mouse creature. This is the price you pay for drinking in an old gaff down Borough Market way I guess. Beth went off to meet up with her squeeze, John so Em and I headed off for summat to eat. Bankside being full (unreasonable I thought for a Friday night - they should have known we would be hungry) we went to Petit Robert instead. Ahh the food is good there... I had warm mackerel and smoked eel on a bed of celeriac coleslaw to start and then steamed sea bass with grapefruit scented stir fry. Sounds a bit odd, but was yumissimo. Then home to veg out drinking cognac and watching the top ten electro-pop 80's songs.. How come all electropop bands were gay?

Today into Bromley to shop for birthday pressies for the girls. Always fun - no, seriously. Cos we get to buy 'em books. They are voracious readers - much to be encouraged in 10 year olds. Selections included Alan garner (Brisingamen and Gomrath) and some SF - Asimov and Arthur Clarke..

Really should so some food shopping. *sigh*.

Movies tonight: should we see Gangs of New York, 8 Mile or City of Gods ? You decide.

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I just did the honorouble thing and coughed up me $25 *proud look*

I've been trying to find a good community for posting reviews of stuff - books, restaurants, films, music etc. - but can't seem to find one....

Book Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

The witch Agnes Nutter accurately predicted the future, with the emphasis on those things that would affect her descendants. One of those things is the coming of the Antichrist, the rise of the Four Horsemen and the Great War that is Armageddon.

The book takes a beautifully updated slant on the build up to Armageddon, focussing on the activities of Aziraphale (an earthbound Angel) and his opposite number, Crowley (an earthbound demon), a changeling Antichrist and his hell-hound (Dog), and the modern-day remnants of the great Witchfinder army.

Numerous manic threads are brought together as the Great War between Heaven and Hell approaches - building to the climax by following an insane underlying logic, seasoned with very, very funny asides throughout. For example, the Road to Hell is not, as we might have thought, paved with good intentions. It is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen - and at weekends, young demons go skating down it.

The style is a very pleasing mix of the haphazard weirdness of Pratchett (an author I have never really got to like) with the much darker and more controlled oddness of Gaiman (an author I like a lot). Setting the cataclysmic events in today's bizarre world works very well and makes you almost yearn for it to be true..

Funny, well-written and oddly thought provoking. Read it.