I am home, physically and emotionally tired and grateful that I have experienced such a full, engaging and satisfying week, during which any difficulties have been out weighed by all the good things that have happened. I had woken early but stayed in bed savouring the feeling until needing to visit the bathroom, them made some coffee and eaten the fruited cereal with the purchased skimmed milk which I had kept cool overnight in the gap between the outer and inner windows designed to reduce the incessant noise from the motorway as vehicles hurtled by as if on some race track. When I felt up to it I packed slowly although there was not much thought given to any order or separation between travel bags other than clothes in the large standard case which is also where I placed the laptop. I was not wrong in anticipating that with a leisurely start I was soon thinking of food. I had hoped the radio commentaries from the Test match would have kept me going but with Anderson out at the second or third ball of the day I sensed what was to come. Admittedly there was a further rally during which the lead crept to a point when there was a chance of bowling out the South Africans but then a sudden collapse and it was all over. There was no immediate breakthrough at the start of the South African second innings and their captain came across as being in brilliant and determined form. I stopped at the Wakefield service area for an early lunch and as anticipated became drowsy soon after setting off, stopping again at a busy service area on the A1M for a doze in the sunshine. The good weather was continuing and did so until I reached Tyneside when it was evident that there had been severe rain which continued shortly after arrival battering the roof of the garage and drowning further the plants crowded into the space open to the elements. I made a priority to sort out the plants as soon as the storm ended, emptying the surplus water from some containers. There were some good developments. The unusual blue flowered hydrangea which had promised much when bought in flower three seasons ago had performed badly last year with few flowers but had grown apace in my absence, (was it only a week?), and with heads of flowers and others to follow. The petunia tree which had nearly died when left out in the Spring frost and which had showed sign of recovery had also burst into leaves with one flower and the promise of others, and the look of others improved, once the dying and bedraggled flower heads had been removed. I wondered what the weather had been like here while I was away. There was a pile of post which appeared mostly concerned with the switch to AOL wireless and the technology package had arrived and was waiting at the main post office which closed at midday on Saturdays and would therefore have to wait until Monday. The new handset for the TV had arrived and was needed as the exiting one played up again shortly after putting on the TV to watch the cricket. I knew the free lap would take longer and there was still no sign of the Daily Mail at war series or a response to my requests for information on medical records. My usual practice was to bring in all the luggage and then unpack but my mood was such that I tackled one bag at a time. I cleaned the fridge and placed the used clothing in the washing machine but decided to leave the actual washing until Sunday as I did the washing up of kitchen and easting utensils. The Test Match was not doing well so I switched the TV off. I was not in the mood to do much, even play chess or Hearts. I enjoyed a glass of wine and a few salted peanuts, the remainder of the large green olives and then an olive pasta bake although the pieces of olives were hard to find. I fancied some pears with custard but as with much else there was no inclination to do anything. I decided to watch the film Déjà Vu with Denzil Washington playing Denzil Washington bit this is not a film for serious acting performance but an ensemble science fiction thriller within the style of 24 hours with the plot centring on a horrific one man crank bombing in which 500 revellers, including many families with children, are killed on a New Orleans vehicle and passenger ferry. The reality of this opening horror is such, with a little girl devastated as her favourite dolls accidentally is dropped and lost in the river before she is blown to buts, had me deeply upset and all the rest of the film was at first secondary. Denzil plays an ATF agent which I found out is a member of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau who investigated the Oklahoma bombings and which revealed the need for the Homeland Security reorganisation as this is not an organisation which I had come across before, or if I have then it has not registered between city and state cops and the FBI and CIA. Reviewers Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat for Spirituality and Practice described the role of Denzil as akin to Sherlock Holmes, seeing what is there to see if you have the eyes to see and the experience to know what it is you are seeing. I think they make a good point about a character who others welcome as someone who will help them to track down the perpetrator. While everyone flaps around in distress and anger, Denzil hit on the fact that a body recovered from the water which appears to have been on the ferry has a time of death put at one hour before the explosion and therefore he rightly believes she holds the key, and he becomes quickly affected by her death, how it impacted on her father and that the evidence suggests she was kidnapped because it was her car used to place the bomb on the ferry. So far the story is about who and why. It is at this point that Denzil is introduced to an experimental governmental time travelling device which enables all the information available through satellite, video camera, cell phone and computer technology to be harnessed in such a way that it is possible to focus on a situation, or a person and replay what happened in detail in real time commencing four days beforehand. This is one shot recovery but the machine raises the possibility of sending back in time warning information and eventually Denzil himself after they identify and catch the killer and have a case for prosecution but the higher authorities do not wish to intervene further. Denzil wants to prevent the death of the woman and if possible the destruction of the ferry with its horrendous loss of life. The film is good enough to leave you uncertain if he will succeed with either objective and the pace is such that you are taken along as a believer, and as mentioned in the review by James Berardinelli, it is only afterwards that you see holes in the plot. For me this was not about the story, a good one, by what we mean by time and reality and which fitted into a radio programme previously heard about how our mind processes time and how this changes with age and emotional experience. I believed I had also watched an interesting programme before a continuing comparatively early bed time but when after various attempts I found a TV schedule for Saturday I remembered that I had seen the Last Choir Standing Programme but nothing compared to the treats of yesterday. I was back
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