Hot Cold Winter Weekend

It was a busy schedule of socials last week and I was looking forward to Friday evening so I could put my feet up and relax. A bottle of wine was uncorked and Lou and I settled down to watched Trailerpark Boys: The Movie. The TV series is hilarious so I was interested to see what a film would pan out. To my surprise it turns out that the series was spawned from the success of the movie and not vice versa.

The film itself was shot in black and white and follows two anti-heroes as they are trailed by a documentary crew making a living as pet-exterminators. Annoyed neighbours are only some of those that recruit the hapless criminals to silence animals for good and there's a particularly hilarious scene where they chase a kitten around a bedroom and when it's caught it begins to play with the gun pointed to its face.

As much as the film was watchable and often hilarious, the series differs in two important facets. One is that the characters in the series are very different. Two, and most importantly, the series is always hilarious. I highly recommend tracking it down. There are six seasons so far so there are plenty of laughs awaiting to be let loose.

On Saturday morning I decided to tackle the rest of the leaves in the back garden. Winter has slowly creeped up on us despite record temperatures of 2.6°C above average, making this the third warmest October in the entire 347-year long record and sunshine in Northern Ireland 15% above average. To compound this, the MET office declared autumn the warmest on record. On Sunday morning I saw a snippet of Countryfile stating that certain farmers in 30 or 40 years will be able or forced to switch their output from food to wine in the form of vineyards in order to survive.

On Saturday night we headed out to Ryan's on the Lisburn Road. It was Cheryl's birthday and it used to be our old haunt when herself, Colin and I lived across the road so it's been a while since we've been there although we were upstairs recently for a dinner. Inside nothing has changed except for the patrons. It used to be younger crowd of students and those of the 18-24 bracket although judging from Saturday night it's now firmly in the 25-34 section which is fine by me since I fit the latter profile.

We sat there chatting until closing by which time the weather had turned nasty. We ran for cover across the road in the Bithika and tried as we might we couldn't get through to any taxi company. We eventually shuffled out into the blustery rain filled night and Jenny attempted to flag down a taxi as we stood under the eaves of a Subway. Chivalry is of no use when attracting the attention of a driver for hire as a bunch of men waving their hands is not the ideal taxi fare at 1.30am.

Eventually a car stopped and we piled in leaving Colin and Brian waiting in the rain. I felt awful about it and hoped they wouldn't have to wait long until they found a ride home. Unfortunately they had to walk all the way to Ormeau before they found a lift. There is a complete lack of taxi provision in Northern Ireland and you should not have to wait in excess of an hour at peak time on a Saturday night to obtain the services of one. I found an interesting blog from a local here that deals with the issue.

Sunday was a more subdued affair and after our gaming session, I retired home to watch ER where a guy who was hearing voices stabbed himself in the head with an ice-pick. Despite the morbid aspect of the act itself, it was actually a very humourous side plot to the episode as no department wanted responsibility of removing the object. Even though the show is in its thirteenth series, it is still above most other dramas in terms of character development and plot pieces. It also makes me yearn for another series of NYPD Blue - in my opinion, one of the best ever TV dramas and the best cop show.

For the last few Sundays, the weekend has been concluded by watching Planet Earth. This programme is fascinating and better than any other wildlife documentary series that has come before it. It is good to see that Sir David Attenborough is in the top contention for the Culture Shows Living Icon award which he deserves to win hands down.

Finally some bedtime reading and sweet slumber. That's the weekend in a nutshell. Thanks for stopping by. Hope you had a good break yourself. See you tomorrow.