film weekend

I'm still struggling with this virus - all of the obvious symptoms have gone, but I'm left feeling absolutely wiped out. I went to the club swim on Friday night, but was exhausted by half way through, but couldn't bring myself to get out because.... well, once you start, you have to finish. So, I forced my way through to the end, but was useless all weekend as a result.

The perfect excuse to sit about, and we ended up seeing three films this weekend - the first was Up In The Air, which is hilarious, and disturbing, and has the undeniable bonus of having a lot of George Clooney, who scrubs up very nicely in a suit. Then we watched two water-based DVDs (which gives me a justification to include them in my swimming blog - George Clooney was a gratuitous inclusion about which I feel no need to apologise).

Saturday's film was The Cove - everybody should see this. It follows the fervent activism of Ric O'Barry - the guy who trained Flipper in the 1970's, and holds himself responsible for the subsequent rise in the performing dolphin industry (and its associated slaughter and general suffering). The film documents their (ultimately successful) efforts to film the killing - the footage they eventually gather is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. It's worth seeing just for this, but there is also some of the most amazing footage of a freediver, wearing one of those huge single fins, swimming with dolphins and whales. It's just the most gorgeous thing, and I just kept rewinding and watching over and over. If you haven't seen this already, go watch it immediately.

Then on Sunday, we watched Big River Man - the documentary of Martin Strel's swim down the Amazon. I had great expectations of this, but in the end, I found it pretty disappointing. It's a very well made film, and is a brutally honest depiction of a deeply flawed character, but I found him too unpleasant to be sympathetic, and for all that what he did is extraordinary, he doesn't really have that much to say for himself - probably because he's drunk most of the time. So we both ended up getting quite bored with the film... although his descent into madness (and even more notably that of his navigator) is intriguing in a road-crash sort of way.

In between films, Peter went out on Sunday with Penny and a bunch of others to do the 54 mile Stratford Reliability Ride through the Cotswolds. Unfortunately, at around 16 miles, Peter hit a pot-hole and went over the top of his handlebars and then Penny hit Peter's bike and flew over her handlebars and landed on Peter. They then took out the cyclist behind them (Colin), leaving everyone in a heap. Peter landed on his hands, but amazingly, doesn't seem to have broken anything, although there's obviously quite a bit of soft tissue damage as he's got pretty limited use of his arms today, and Penny is a bit sore, but generally unhurt (mostly thanks to Peter providing a cushioned landing). But poor Colin, apparently, has broken both his hands and possibly his jaw. Poor guy. Peter feels terrible about it, even though it wasn't his fault - just an accident. Everyone keeps going on at me about how dangerous Channel swimming is, but it strikes me that this cycling business is far more risky!