Pathos is not a holiday destination

In the film The Full Monty, one of the guys is told that one way to lose inches from the waistline is to wrap up in cling film.

We see him sitting in the garden shed, wearing cling film round his belly, and eating a Mars bar.

That is how I feel today.

Shameless self-promotion

Given the rather, shall we say, social nature of most of my diary narrative in A Kick up the Balkans, a couple of people have wondered what I was actually doing out there in Bulgaria at that time.

I thought it was obvious. I was teaching. English.

But don't expect lots of blogging on that part of my adventure. Oh no! Why should I give that away for free? People pay good money for that sort of stuff. You can get it all neatly packaged by Cambridge University Press under the title Lessons from Nothing.

Yes, that's my name on the cover. Sometimes I have received incredulous looks when I say that most of the hits for my name on Google refer to me. No, the looks suggest, it's this guy who wrote this book.

Erm, yeah! So work out the underlying logic, would you?

That means that I am officially listed as an author by Amazon. Oh, and because I'm looking for a casual way to name-drop it into a blog entry, an unrelated incident means that I'm also listed in IMDb, along with good pal taikataika, who really should get a blogger account, you know.

So maybe I do have some web presence after all.

Hype over. My only excuse is that it's my blog and, like everyone, my ego needs a little boost from time to time.

Reasons to be cheerful

Nowhere and nobody is perfect, and it is easy to be negative in blogs. Or at least I have found it so recently. Let me take up the matti challenge and try to achieve some balance. It takes the form of one of those dreaded lists. Things about Finland that are just great.

1. Summer nights
A cliché maybe, but I still remember the wonder of walking down the main street in Tampere in full daylight at 4 a.m. Even now, further south in Helsinki, I get a buzz out of being able to read a newspaper in natural light at midnight. In June and July, that is.

2. Lapland blue
You stand under the clear blue sky with the temperature at twenty below freezing and with the sun just peeping over the horizon. The land is flat and open all around, and the snow is bathed in deepest blue. There is total silence, apart from the occasional rustle of a reindeer. You feel as if you are in a magic spell.

3. Smoke sauna
A rare treat these days, but worth waiting for. Wood sauna is wonderful and a distinct step up from electric. Smoke sauna, an immersion in steam and the smell and feel of wood smoke, is another world entirely.

4. Aki Kaurismäki films
I have been critical of mainstream theatre, but Kaurismäki hits the spot. This is where it's at. My current favourite is Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds), which achieves an unfair amount of gritty optimism.

5. 24-hour hot running water
Any time, day or night, a hot shower for as long as you want. Air conditioning is another matter, but that's pre-empting the next list!

Me and Mr Bond

Last Sunday, I went to see the latest Bond flick, Casino Royale.

I have a soft spot for Bond films, and this has sometimes been difficult for one or two of my lady friends. For some reason, they have felt that if I watch a Bond film, I am wishing to use Bond as a role model. This is odd. Because if I watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon, they do not claim that I admire Bugs Bunny as a role model.

But Bond is different. These people seem to think that if I watch Bond, this means that I want to be a gun-toting sex-machine who coerces women into bed and throws lesser men off cliffs. Well, that's what Bond is, right?

Yes, but Bond inhabits a two-dimensional cartoon-like universe, where the bad guys always have poor aim and the women always, well, give Bond what he likes, even if it takes him two or three attempts. Bond, like Bugs, is entertainment. (And then the argument goes that such entertainment is a pointless waste of money. But let's save that for another blog entry.)

This is where Casino Royale starts to get disturbing. It starts to attempt to give Bond psychological depth. It starts playing into the hands of those who want a psychological reality in which they can demonise him. And I start to seriously dislike the dude.

I didn't dislike the film, apart from the lengthily drawn-out ending. For me, Bond films are strongest when Bond is at his weakest. The drama is in the struggle against the odds; superheroes who effortlessly crush all before them do not make for compelling narrative. This means that I like the George Lazenby film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where Bond gets out of his depth and needs to be rescued. I like parts of Goldfinger because Bond is, frankly, a lousy agent who gets absurdly lucky at the last moment.

In this way, Casino Royale is interesting because Bond is learning his own weaknesses. But then come the cross-references that act as reasons, or excuses, for behaviour in other films. Casino Royale, low on gadgets and high on pumped-up fisticuffs, teaches Bond not to trust, not to love, and to be a ruthless killer and sexual predator.

Perhaps in Bond film 22, Bond should be the bad guy.