Darkness, It's All Darkness

My Dear Fellow, 

The dark mornings and the early evenings are creeping up on us. As illustrated by a rather crappy picture I took on Lothian Road waiting for the number 22 at 7am this morning.

As you know, I like the dark. I find it relaxing. I wonder if I were a nocturnal creature in a former life, retreating into my cave and frightening neanderthals with my glowing red eyes, like a bat in an episode of Scooby-Doo.

It is worth thinking about.

Naturally, this lends itself to spooky movie season. As you know, my attempt to watch "The Conjuring 2" was disturbed on Monday by the ill-timed early homecoming of my non-horror-watching wife. I say it was ill-timed. It came at possibly the most scary moment in the film so I greeted her with open arms and a faintly hysterical laugh.

"Hahahahaha!! I'm so glad you're home early! Hahahahaaaaa!!" (subtitle: The nice lady can protect me from scary demon nuns.)

However, I steeled myself and finished it off today. It is a good, scary movie and I enjoyed it. However, what really impressed was the set design. It was amazing. The film is set in 1970's London and it's the best recreation of the era I've ever seen. From what was on telly ("The Goodies") to the cars, the dustbins, the buses. They even had a scene on a crappy old British Rail car with those horrible teal seats. The seats hadn't been slashed and covered in chewing-gum but you can't have everything.

Then I watched "Ash vs Evil Dead". In this episode, our hero Ash gets attacked by the digestive tract of an evil dead with outstandingly "pooey" results. I love horror.

But sometimes real life intervenes in an unpleasant way. Halfway through "The Conjuring 2" the bulb in my lamp blew. "Ha ha ha," thought I, "isn't this just like a horror cliche," as I blundered around in the dark. I changed the bulb and sat down.

Within 2 minutes THAT bulb blew as well. This time I didn't laugh to myself. And I turned the Big Light on as well. Demons may be able to influence the lamp, but Big Light is invulnerable to diabolic influence.

El P.