Clean Cut

There’s work to do, but I figured I deserved a day off. Sitting back from the computer, and having a look at the mess of papers and reference books littering the desk and the surrounding surfaces, there was only one thing for it: a massive tidy-up.

Granted, there’s the thrill in wondering whether the pile of papers, files, and magazines will teeter over and crash down onto the floor when I yank out reference pages from near the bottom. But there are times when it’s nice to see what colour wood the desk is. So that gets cleared up first.

Then there are the shelves with half-filled notebooks of ideas, printed-up emails, script pages and newspaper articles. What doesn’t get dumped has to be wedged into any of the drawers of the filing cabinets – and at some point they have to be sorted out too.

Books can go back on the shelves. Then there are the stacks of magazines. Mainly film magazines. What puzzles me is, not that they have been left lying around, but that they are here to begin with. I hardly ever go to the cinema anymore. So far this year I’ve seen Inside Man and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. That’s it. And I had to think long and hard to remember that I had seen Inside Man.

I’m always tempted by the trailers of the big summer movies. Superman Returns – Oh, yes! Miami Vice – I’ll be there for that! But when the time comes, either I’m too busy, too tired, or can’t face being in a room filled with a mob who left some of their social skills at the door.

While certainly not some kind of crazy shut-in, I guess I’ve reached the age where I prefer waiting for the DVD. Even when it comes to new films by favourite directors. The last Ridley Scott movie I went out to see was Gladiator. Everything since: DVD. The last Michael Mann film was The Insider. I cried off scuba diving practise, during a holiday in Key West, to see it the afternoon it opened. I even like The Keep for Chrissakes! But Ali and Collateral... DVD.

Which means, of course, that the global decline in cinema admission is really my fault.

But it still doesn’t explain what these fecking magazines are doing here.