My mother told me to be wary of fauns

Went to see Pan's Labyrinth at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square. It's a cheapy place, especially for bang in the middle of the West End, because it shows slightly older movies and also it's a bit jammy and a bit clangy, but in a good way - apparently Quentin Tarantino loves it, so they named the bar (well, small low-ceilinged room, if you want to be picky about it) after him, but Kevin Smith got a bit upset and had to be honoured with his own loo cubicle. I cannot confirm that he used it.

I absolutely love this movie but had never seen it on the big screen - one regret I now needn't have!

It's a beautiful movie, right at the top of my favourites list. It blends ferocious reality, at times so stark it's impossible to look at the screen, with an innocent, wish-fulfilling fairytale. The two overlap, so the harshness is sometimes tempered with sweetness while there are subtle dark undercurrents to Ofelia's tale. And in the end, we are left wondering whether the wish was ever really fulfilled - the movie is either impossibly comforting or too heartbreaking to accept, depending on whether you choose to believe in the magic.

I went to see it with ex-editor Tim, who may have stolen workmate Graham's crown as Funniest Bloke I Know. I haven't seen him in a while and, though he makes me laugh out loud in his emails (and alert everyone within a 20-yard radius that I am Doing Something That's Not Work), I'd forgotten quite how bad I get when he's in the same room.

I giggled till my eyes watered until the movie started and Tim, quite incomprehensibly, ceased to move a single muscle for the duration. When the credits had been rolling a while and he still wasn't flinching, I did start to wonder if he'd upped and died on me. Never have I been so aware of how much I fidget!

I'm considering making a blog devoted to the unparalleled wit of Tim and Graham (and new contender: Graham's Brother) and leaving it to everyone else to decide who's the funniest. It's definitely one of them. Tim once made me a house out of a small cardboard box with Spock in the garden because he couldn't find a dog, which he told me last night he knocked down because the land was worth more freehold. Graham once told his wife that the shoes she was trying on looked like a badly packed box of bananas. In the words of that annoying bastard from the Big Brother voiceover: you decide.

I can't resist it...

Where are you sending me, please?

I've added some links, so I thought I'd better explain what they are and why they're here!

SLNN is a news feed for Second Life, a virtual world I've been a resident of for almost three years. You can find articles there by yours truly under the name Willow Caldera, which is how most intermaweby peeps know me.

Style Disorder is a fashion blog, again for and by members of Second Life. You can find more witterings by me there as Willow Caldera.

Sew Cheap Date is a blog about customising your clothes, written by my fabulous best friend of 8 years, ever since our drunken university days. I met her before she met me, an impossibility facilitated by too much cider and a one-track mind focused on the party's stereo. She now lives in the flat below mine, being trendy and fabulous and still drunken.

Willow Z's blog is the (less drunken) musings of my Second Life twin (it's all in the name) and partner in most crimes. This month she is mostly sleeping because she's carrying new life in that tummy of hers. I've tried to convince her that Small Sarah should be its working title but she's proved unusually resilient in resisting the idea.

Dancing on Glass is a blog written by my close friend Sysperia, an artist I met on Second Life when I landed on her head and demanded she let me interview her about her work. She has since made me think, made me dream and, best of all, made me laugh on a daily basis.

That will do for now, plenty to read and stare at there even for the most bored of internet browsers.

Hoppity McHopperson

Today has been a day of lounging about with my feet in the air - not because I'm a lazy bastid, but because on the way to work yesterday morning I fell off my shoe.

Somewhere between the Silverlink and Tube stations at Willesden Junction I went flying across the road, flat on my face, and came to a screeching and terribly embarrassed halt near the opposite pavement.

I picked myself up and scurried (ok, limped slowly) the rest of the way, but unfortunately my ankle wasn't pleased with my bravery. It saw its opportunity on the way home and gave up the ghost as I stepped off the bus, leaving me in my second artistic heap of the day.

Happily I have a very kind long-suffering boss, who, after I bleated at him pathetically, said I should lounge about with my feet in the air today, and who am I to argue?

I can't reach the telly remote, but aside from that it's been a happy stretch of hours.

Carroty carrots

Sooooo I have a new phone...it's this one, on the left, the Samsung U600, which is apparently the world's thinnest slider mobile.

I don't think brand new sexyphones suit me, really. I can't get to grips with texting on the damn thing, so I'm as slow as a nan, and it took me half of today to work out how to turn the keypad volume down so that pressing keys didn't go BLAM BLAM BLING BLAM (a nan asked me to pipe down on the bus).

Best of all, when trying to add numbers to the phone book, I called no fewer than five of them.

...and, of course, had no idea how to end the call.

(Still don't, if I'm honest.)

However, the bright side of the story, aside from having a whopping £90 in credit on T-Mobile Flexi to spend every month, all for a mere £22.50 (there you go Mr T(-Mobile), a superfluous plug for you), is the GAMES!

Or, well, GAME! Bobby Carrot! Hop about as a bunny wabbit collecting carrots and stomping your feet impatiently!

I believe that is quite enough to justify my telephonial (that ought to be a word) decision-making.

Skin type: thick yet shiny

I've spent most of my Friday evening navel-gazing in a self-pitying doldrum of woe after discovering A Bit Of A Betrayal.

/me dons bonnet.

A few hours of introspection later, I am now channelling my grandmother. It wasn't like this in the War you know, bit of chicken carcass was all we had.

My cleverly buried point is that we're a bit bloody weak and feeble these days. How bad can it possibly be? And what good did it ever do anyone to sit about contemplating badness from every which conceivable angle?

Disclaimer: I am, of course, referring to every-day events, not serious emotional issues.

So anyway, I've given myself a kick in the shin and the Stiff Upper Lip has resumed operation. Nobody else is bored and wasting their weekend, after all.

As for the Bit Of A Betrayal, I shan't be melodramatic about it, one tends to look a bit of a poncing great wanker. But the lesson for today is as follows:

The you that people see is not always the you inside. Which is just as it should be.

Leg it, Jeff!

A friend of mine was on the Tube the other day and saw a young lady munching on a bag of Hula Hoops. Only, as the warnings about high salt intake and healthy eating had obviously sunk in, before she ate each one, she wiped it with a tissue.

As a result, and after careful consideration, we at the office have decided to remake the movie 28 Days Later featuring rabid intellectuals as the zombies, chasing down the chavs and the really stupid people (the ones who ought to have licences before they're allowed to breed), confusing them with fractions and then beating them into submission with copies of Dickens. Only it won’t be a fair fight....

"No, Jeff, no, don’t run towards them!"