The weekend

Rose and I watched The Man Who Fell To Earth on Friday night. Strangely enough, I'd never seen it before. I really enjoyed it - though some people might find it pretentious and a bit dated. I thought Bowie was brilliant and that it was nice not to have everything spelled out for you. The story-telling was very linear. It was just that there were sudden jumps in time and location, not to mention the surreal inserts, and lots of things were left for you to fill in.

We had some friends round for lunch on Saturday. Sarah was dropping off a small proofreading job for me, so we decided to 'make it a bit social' (as Sarah put it). It was a stinking hot day. We took the table out on to the balcony and had lunch out there. Very nice.

On Saturday night, we went to Festival stuff. Rose had manged to double book herself - gettings tickets to go to Saltarello with her daughters and to Tan Dun with me at the same time. Rose ended up going to Saltrello and I went to Tan Dun with Paul. Tan Dun was excellent, particularly the water percussion in the first half and the integration of videos of Chinese folk music with the orchestra in the second. I really liked the stone drumming.

On the front page of the paper this morning is a big story about the al-Qaeda no 2 man apparently coming to NZ in the early 90s. No doubt that'll get the pundits buzzing.