Lookout for Wormholes and Dawn

The two most recent Webflix movies watched are Contenders:Series 7 and Donnie Darko.
I knew Donnie Darko had a reputation for weirdness, and it didn't disappoint: There's no getting away from the fact that giant time-travelling rabbits are freaky. Great movie, brilliant 80's music and a story that was dream-like. I even got the ending. Contenders: Series 7 is a fantastic low-budget Film Four presentation, that only had a limited cinema release and Blockbuster shelf-life. Filmed in a mockumentary format, it's Big Brother with guns played out on a streets of small town America. It's ace. Go watch it!


Hear the Hooves of the Ghost Carriage and Horses

We've just had a great weekend away with Sara and Stasher. We stayed in the isolated Palmer's Lodge -- part of the Victoria Hotel -- in the grounds of the Earl of Leicester's Holkham Estate on the coast of Norfolk. We travelled up via Cambridge on Thursday, so it felt like a proper long weekend break.

Here's a brief report on what happened:

Sara and Stasher paid for our lodgings -- it was Vic's 30th birthday present.
We paid for the dinner on Saturday night.
The Palmer's Lodge is part of a great stone gate -- originally the boundary of the 25,000 acre Holkham Estate.
At midnight you can apparently sometimes hear the sound of hooves, as the ghostly apparition of a carriage and four horses dashes through the gate on the way to some tragedy.
Vic couldn't sleep -- she was worried about the haunting.
The hotel receptionist told us that the story of the ghost carriage is hogwash... but one of the hotel rooms really is haunted.
The Palmer's Lodge second bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and dining room is underground in converted cellars: With the low arched roofs and Vic's hairy Hobbit feet, I felt like Gandalf in Baggins End.
We drove through herds of deer, flocks of pheasants and colonies of rabbits each time we drove the two mile trip back and forth to the hotel.
The local Ice House lager is very good.
The beach at Holkham is the one Gwenny Palthrow walks down at the end of Shakespeare in Love.
When the tide is out, you have to walk miles from the sand dunes to reach the water.
The walk consists of stagnate mud-flats and quicksand: Not the best terrain for a baby buggy and flip-flops.
Stasher wore his shirt on his head. He looked like Lawrence of Arabia. Normally the first to fry with his fair skin, Stasher was the only one of us -- apart from India -- not to get burnt in the sun.
India loves sand.
India loves to eat sand.
There are no donkey rides at Holkham beach.
Having a picnic on the beach is one of life's true pleasures.
I mastered the art of boomerang throwing on the Holkham Estate cricket pitch.
I almost decapitated two tourists with said boomerang.
I almost decapitated a cricketer by throwing a cricket ball to him, whilst he had his back to me.
He didn't thank me for returning the ball.
We visited the estate church and left wanting to know what happened to Ann Cooper: There was an empty space for her on her husband's 1801 tombstone, but all her children and grandchildren had apparently died earlier than she (buried in the family plot). Vic guessed that Ann might have remarried, but it's one of those unanswered mysteries you always find when visiting graveyards.
Jamie Oliver has a house in Burnham Market. It's probably pukka.
Well-next-the-Sea has a rock shop which only sells one quality... THE BEST!
Sandringham Palace -- which we visited on Sunday -- is beautiful.
The Queen eats off plates adorned with cutesy animals, sat upon placemats that feature photos of her racehorses: Tableware that wouldn't grace even the most downmarket of 1970's public houses.
The Peterborough to London route is a race-track for F-reg Nova's.