And now the weather (an accidentally political post)

From today's BBC weather site for our area:

Sunrise 05:16 (BST)
Sunset 20:56 (BST)
77°F high
61°F low

A typical pleasant summer's day. Just thought I'd record that for posterity before the next ice-age/ hurricane global mega ecological disaster arrives (for which we are no doubt supposed to feel responsible and consequentially miserable and GUILTY). Anyone noticed how damage to the environment is the new SIN!! We are all SINNERS for using tescos carrier bags and we will BURN (well, once the ozone layer has gone anyway). Really bugs me this. I didn't break the planet, it was broken when I got here and it'll still be broken when I depart. Yes I'll do my bit to ease the damage caused by my passage through life but I'm not going to let some no-hoper politicians distract me from the crappy job they're doing by making me worry about this all the time. Ditto for the credit crunch, pension black holes and the general state of the world economy.

Hmm. Actually, this is not an original thought: I appear to have just espoused Michael Crichton's theory from "State of Fear" (but not the plot, since that was bobbins), which I read in the Maldives a few years ago whilst watching some blokes heave chunks of tsunami debris off the island's reef. In it, Crichton basically says that politicians use these issues as a form of control - subjugate the popoulation by getting us to worry about things all the time. Same way religion was used to control the uneducated masses in the middle ages. Since we're more educated now though, something else is needed for the western world's populations to worry about (poorer areas of the world still get religion as the default option though). Etc. and so forth. Ooh, and London gets youth on youth knife crime to worry about as a special bonus.

Deluded or cynical? Well, since no-one seems to have actually gone on record saying he was talking nonsense, I guess that at least goes to show most of the western world leaders don't read Michael Crichton anymore when they're on the beach. What does Gordon Brown read on his sun lounger? I wonder..?

When I Grow Up I Want To Be Nathan Muir

This week, I thought I would reveal a well-kept personal secret, namely that when I grow up (or at least when I hit retirement age), I want to be Robert Redford. Not Robert Redford in any old film mind, or even Robert Redford as in Butch and Sundance. No, I want to be Robert Redford as Nathan Muir in Spy Game.

Now, you may not have seen Spy Game, and it's fair to say it doesn't stick in the memory for many as a great film. It is however one of my all time favorite films for the following reasons, even before I get onto the character of Nathan Muir:

a) it's got David Hemmings in it, who just steals every scene he's in as Harry Duncan;

b) it's directed by Tony Scott, who did Top Gun; and

c) Brad Pitt (co-superstarring with Redford) comes off very much second best to said Redford's character, which I suspect was not entirely the idea when he signed on.

These things do not however make the film for me. No, the reason it is my favorite film is because Nathan Muir, who spends all of the non-flashback parts of the film stuck in the CIA Headquarters, just owns the entire organisation. He's not in charge, and he's on the verge of retirement, and he is seen as a throwback by his peers to a bygone age. He is however sharp-witted, always two steps ahead of his colleagues and in the end, sacrifices everything he has to save Pitt's character when, on his last day at work, he is supposed to be signing out and retiring to the Bahamas. Perhaps Tony Scott was making a point when he signed Redford and Pitt..

OK, so why does it appeal to me so much? Firstly, I think it's because if you work in a large organisation - as I do - there really are people like this out there, who know everything but who are seen as old warhorses with little to contribute. Yet when the real problems crop up, they just get it sorted without breaking a sweat. I'd like to be like that please.

The other thing I love is the fact the way Robert Redford rescues Brad Pitt and the personal cost he incurs in doing so. This redeems a number of morally-dubious decisions you see him make during the film, and I'm a sucker for any film involving big-time redemption. Yet at the end of the film he just drives off into the sunset in a beat-up antique black porsche, oozing coolness and untouchability.

I know everyone raves about Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, or Daniel Craig as the new Bond, or even (...) Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, but seriously, Redford has the retired superspy thing all sown up. Shame this is a genre that's never going to make any money.

So if you haven't seen it, watch this film, and I'll see you in 24 years at my retirement do in Berlin. Or maybe stroking Mendehlson with long numbers in Hong Kong.