By Roy Mathur, on 2024-03-17, at 23:01:13 to 23:34:05 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Friday was brilliant, but Saturday wasn't. So I need to decompress because and I don't see my therapist until Monday.
Brace yourselves, we're going in, though not by car.
Ordered and waiting are these Whitley Strieber novels, all of which, excepting Communion, I read many years ago.
The Wolfen is a clever and creepy twist on the werewolf mythos, proposing a secretive species of apex cryptids that regard humans as their primary prey.
The autobiographical Communion is Strieber's personal recollection of UFO abduction.
The Hunger, The Last Vampire, and Lilith's Dream are a trilogy of very graphic vampire novels. They are violent, sensual, and tragic. That is, everything good vampire books should be.
The Wolfen (Wolfen, starring Albert Finney), Communion (starring Christoper Walken), and The Hunger (starring David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve) have been adapted for film. The last is one of my favourite horror movies and Deneuve is icily incandescent as the immortal queen of the night.
Re-ordered recently when the first did not turn up is ghosthunter Peter Underwood's classic book on London hauntings, including one that turned out to be a proven fake.
The idea behind this book is that I add a little extra spice to my monthly London walks.
On Saturday (2024-03-16), Mum asked me to chose a film for her. I put on Alastair Sim's The Green Man (1956).
It's a delightfully nasty and extremely funny black comedy that begins with a first person voice over by Sim. He tells us how the nascent act of his career as an assassin was accidentally blowing up his headmaster. We've all had headmasters and teachers like that.
If The Green Man can exist, I can't see why Eric Frank Russell's Wasp (1957) can't be adapted for screen.
Wasp is a comedic science fiction novel I read many years ago, with a similarly troubling plot. Depending on how you look at it, the protagonist is either a heroic behind-the-lines saboteur or a terrorist.
Rememeber how I complained about just about everything about the Golf GTI Mk7.5? One of the problems was the insurance. However, I have since taken quotes on many different cars and bikes and, somewhat belatedly, realised that the UK motor insurance has been screwing us silly since last year. Serves me right for not staying abreast of the news (see AutoExpress and The Guardian). Even a bog standard seven year old 1.3 lt Fiat 500 would cost me 700 quid to insure, compared with less than GBP 400 for my now scrapped 2.4 lt Chrysler PT Cruiser. Even my little beginner 125 cc motorcycle only costs a little less than the Fiat to insure.
The vehicle insurance industry in the UK is a scammy scandal. The insurance industry claims parts are scarce and drivers are careless, but does that really account for such a sharp rise?
A demand for an inqury was recently rejected by the government. Successive governments of every stripe have destroyed the UK's public transport infrastructure, making us almost totally dependent on private vehicle ownership. Now it seems they want to take even that option away to everyone except the exceptionally well off. Bastards.
Follow up from pod 527, when we returned decided to return the Golf GTI to the dealer, given how expenisive insurance is, I wish we'd kept it, despite the comfort and noise issues. Idiot. What now? I have no bloody idea.
I took those quotes on Saturday (2024-03-16) and ruined my day. What I should have done was attend a local RPG meetup I had earmaked, but was too tired attend. I chose instead to spend the day almost destroying my mental health. Double idiot.
Is it all gloom and doom? No. Before financial worries made Saturday go pear-shaped, I managed to bargain down the on-the-road price of a new Honda Monkey from a local dealer. It has been nine months since my CBT, so I really need a bike. It's a comfortable, cute, little retro manual motorcyle that reminds me of my old yellow Raleigh Chipper bicycle.
Why not second hand? Because new isn't much more expensive. Superbike Factory offered me a decade old Suzuki RV Van Van for two and a half grand, plus about 500 for administration and delivery. Not that much cheaper, a very short warranty, plus no MOT-free years.
But every silver lining has a cloud because it's hardly transport for the whole family and that still weighs heavily on my mind.
Earlier today we went to the circus. Though we've visited circuses many times, each year the circus comes and goes to our city, but we never attend. This time we did. It's something Mum wanted to do for a while, she even keeps the colourful flyers.
The sparesly staffed human-only acts included acrobats, contortionists, tightrope walkers, and a three dirt bike riders zooming inside a tiny Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome-style cage at a bizallion miles per hour and no one died. My backside suffered the hardwood benches, but it was quite the event.
Forget cars, learn magick and fly on a broom or ride a magic carpet instead.
...its properties are singular and marvellous. Whoever sitteth on this carpet and willeth in thought to be taken up and set down upon other site will, in the twinkling of an eye, be borne thither, be that place nearhand or distant many a day's journey and difficult to reach.---The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 13, Translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton, Published by The Burton Club in 1887, Accessed via Gutenberg