vive le cinéma international!

Though I endeavour to regain the slender physique of youth there's always those moments when I like nothing better than to slouch in front of the televisual with a drink and nibbles, and watch a good film.

I also like to tease the old brain with a good read; there's never been an occasion when I haven't had a book or two on the go - at least not since I was 16 and picked up the novel we were assigned to study for O level - selected passages as prescribed - and, for the first time in my life, thought 'what's this all about then? '

It was called The Gun, it was very old, yellow, dog-eared and musty smelling but - and this was a revelation - if you began at the beginning and read the pages in order, it wasn't an altogether bad experience!

Why did they only insist you read certain passages is a question I've never had answered. Mind you, to be fair to the establishment, I've never actually asked. In my school you didn't ask. Not even if you were desperate for the toilet. Maybe if you were on fire, you might. But then it's a bit of a drastic measure just to be excused and you'd have to weigh up the consequences of damp pants against the total and wanton destruction by arson of one perfectly serviceable school uniform. Best wait until break.

Anyway, from that point I devoured much of what I didn't read at school and more besides - and, as the old jazzers might say, it's too late to stop now!

Back to films (or movies as they say across the water): To be honest, I've only recently come back to films. When I was away from home and didn't have a telly, we would often troop off to the cinema in town and catch a film, usually at least one a week. Then I returned home, settled down and forgot about cinema, only catching the odd blockbuster when it was shown on telly. They were okay, but not memorable enough - not like a damn good book.

So, imagine my delight to discover foreign cinema! Here's a medium by which you can watch a movie and read a story simultaneously, at the same time, together. And the stories are usually good too - much greater profundity than the usual hollywood fodder which, after all, put the business in the film business and seems to care less for the plot. Of course, we - by that I mean the Brits - don't even have a film industry now! We knock out the odd gem now and then but mostly I feel it's just big telly - not cinema!

But foreign cinema is just beautiful. And I've even managed to stop the wife saying oh no, not another of your bloody sub-title ones again. Not so often now anyway.

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The above, while true, is just an excuse to show what I got up to today, messing with Paintshop. I hope Richard Ebbs doesn't mind me nicking his pics - he's a scouser after all, I'm told. I think he's exceptionally good and I don't know why he doesn't blog. I guess he's got his reasons which I respect. Anyway, I like the portraits I found and the main one put me in mind of une femme fatale, a poster shot for a french film. I enjoyed playing around with it - well, I didn't have much on and it's all good practice.