Dose

Had a double dose of culture from late afternoon, with 70 lengths sandwiched in between. Film. Swim. Play. Back to back to back.

Quick heads-up then if anyone's likes a bit of word of mouth.

Film was The Kid With A Bike at Filmhouse. Very good indeed, another simple, low-key movie from the Dardenne brothers that shows some people doing not-so-good things and other people doing good things in equal measures. Like in real-life.

Play was The Marriage Of Figaro at The Lyceum. A contemporary setting in the world of finance and played pretty broad. The considerably shorter 'half' after the interval seemed to last nearly as long as the smart and snappy much longer first 'half' and I did laugh and I did enjoy being out at the theatre like I usually do but I'm so much more of a fan of the kind of plays you get at The Traverse, usually single act pices that come in at under 90 minutes and still leave you fully satisfied. This one tonight, it d-r-a-g-g-e-d.

(I won't write a wee review of the swim in between, I'll spare you the details)

Best stick a bit of music in to close. One track has been on my ipod today, must have had a half a dozen listens. Bloody love it. The soon-to-be-released single from Spiritualized, 'Hey Jane'. It's like two songs in one and the second half goes on for ages and gets all grand and sweeping and euphoric in a fantastic way. nostatic was talking about it recently and he reckoned that it "lacked the punch of old". I reckon at a decent volume on decent headphones it more than packs a punch. We're going to have to meet on neutral ground and duke this one out I feel, in the world's first J Spaceman-related title decider ;-)

There's also a very surprising and graphically violent official video for this 9-minute track which is really pretty unpleasant but, well, no spoilers, it's over on The Guardian site if you're interested. There's also a more palatable and rather great performance of it here from Irish TV.