I omitted to mention in my last entry that we visited a franchise called the Angus Steak House for lunch on the same day we went to Lords. It was late for lunch (around 2ish) and we were famished. Well, I can tell you that Angus knows a thing or two about steak, and how to host guests in an eatery. The steak was delicious and the service was fantastic. Only about £25 a head!

Last night I tried out my new sleeping bag… for about half an hour. After that point I decided that it was unsuitable to be perspiring profusely inside my ridiculously expensive bag, so I rearranged my sleeping environment back to my old bag with the goal of switching the new bag over at Nomads today. They were exceptionally helpful, allowing me to swap over my bag for one rated 15 degrees to 5 degrees C and talking me out of spending any extra money on a liner I mistakenly thought I needed. Nomads rocks.

Following that Tim and I headed off to Leceister Square again to see The Constant Gardener, which we had missed a couple of days earlier. We grabbed our tickets early and took a closer look at the Square. We found a restaurant coffee shop selling Illy coffee, which I will rate as the best double macchiato I have had so far in my time away, although it was tending to be a little sour. The ice cream you see in the corresponding photos cost £4.75, but it was totally worth it. The blurriness is courtesy of the first use of the timer photography on my camera, which took three photos after 10 seconds. The others were really cheesy, so the blurry one gets the gallery spot.

I tell you, The Constant Gardener is a brooding and melancholic film, which leaves you grasping for some semblance of meaning in the banal drudgery of Americanised Western life. The movie is a character piece portraying the way heavyweight pharmaceutical companies bend statistics and destroy lives in third world countries to test drugs which have no chance of passing stringent Western requirements. Upon leaving the cinema, I remained quiet and reflective for the whole train trip back to home, which is nigh on an hour, simply pondering the self-conceived complexity of our self-important lives. Watching people filter through the Square or cram through the Underground was like looking at my own steadycam epilogue being cut into the film, a stark and fitting contrast to the thousands of Africans the film contained or alluded to. Having seen a movie depicting such deep intellectual and social issues it made other feature films such as King Kong seem plasticky and childish. Exposing and putting to shame the petty bickering which is Western capitalism also made me struggle to understand how any one non-conformist could make a difference at all. My conclusion was that I may not be able to solve a problem completely, but I may still be able to be part of the solution in a small yet significant way.

And now, we’re off to France. Well, more precisely, we’re off to France at 7am tomorrow morning, which means getting up at 4am. Ouch. And I’ll be away from net connectivity for about a week. At some stage I’ll do my best to get in to a net cafe and write something, otherwise I’ll find some fixation to mention when I get to Berlin on the 4th of January.

Until then, Happy New Year!