The Strangers (2008)

If you're saving money, suffering from cabin fever and thinking, 'Allow yourself a treat, a trip to the pictures - you deserve it,' don't, don't, go to see The Strangers. It's awful.

It lasts barely 90 minutes, thank god, but it's still boring.

Even pornography has more plot and certainly more of a climax, unless you count that last tired fake orgasm that's supposed to send you away vaguely satisfied.

I've nothing against movies that merely want to scare the crap out of you, but they only work if they scare the crap out of you; if they persuade you to suspend your disbelief or if they suck you in to a rollercoaster of thrills that leaves you no time to think. The Night of the Living Dead managed it, as did Hallowe'en and The Blair Witch Project.

But the 90 minutes I spent thinking while watching this were 'Please thrill me. I've paid good money (which I can't afford) to be thrilled.'

Who's cynical?

What women say – and what they mean


Yes = No
No = Yes
Maybe = No
I’m sorry = You’ll be sorry
I’m not upset = I’m upset
We need = I want
We need to talk = I need to complain
Be romantic, turn out the lights = I have flabby thighs
I heard a noise = I noticed you were almost asleep
You’re attentive tonight = Is sex all you ever think about?

What men say and what they actually mean

I’m hungry = I’m hungry
I’m tired = I’m tired
May I call you sometime? = I’d like to have sex with you
Do you want to go to a movie? = I’d like to have sex with you
May I take you out to dinner? = I’d like to have sex with you
I’m bored = Let’s have sex
I love you too. OK, I’ve said it. = Now can we have sex?
Let’s talk = I want you to think I’m a deep person and maybe you’ll have sex with me
What’s wrong? = For Christ’s sake, not again! Fat chance of sex now.
I’m not sure that blouse and skirt go together = I’m gay.

Still in the same universe

So, while I look at the spreadsheet I created to help monitor my spending and find I‘ve only got £5 left until Monday, what’s going on in the world?

There still is a world. Unless I’m writing this in a parallel universe, the big bang experiment at CERN doesn’t appear to have generated a black hole.

Actually I think we may be in a parallel universe because strange things are happening: England beat Croatia on Wednesday for a start. And after three months of trying I’ve managed to download Flashplayer. Don’t ask me how. I tried every trick recommended by bloggers and others and one of them must have worked.

On the other hand Harriet Harman is still there, continuing her campaign for the Labour leadership by regurgitating old rhetoric about the class war. And Gordon Brown is trying to buy your vote by promising to lag your roof.

And the EU continues to plot ways of bullying Ireland into rejecting its rejection of the constitution. I had to laugh when I read that some Eurocrats are blaming bloggers for the Irish vote. I’d no idea we were so powerful.

And then there’s that £5.

Big Bang Day

Wednesday 10 September. Big Bang Day. As I write the process has started, but quite when we disappear into a black hole, I don’t know.

If that does happen it will come as a surprise to a man who is the pub most days, scribbling in a small notebook. He assured me that the world will be sucked into a black hole – not one of our own making – in 2012. I forget the precise day and month, but I do remember it’s the year that my mortgage is due to be paid off.

Be that as it may, I expressed a little scepticism of his theory, but was generous enough to come and see me when it happens and I will feel very silly.

He reminds me of another pub Einstein who explained to me that our plans to colonise Mars – yes, it came as a surprise to me too – were misguided. He proposed going to Venus, ‘because it’s downhill.’ The sun’s gravity, you see. I thought Venus was too hot and gaseous, but large greenhouses will solve that problem. So now I know.

As for CERN, I don’t understand it at all. The figures for gigabytes, amps and temperatures – the boiling point of helium is 4 degrees above Absolute Zero – are beyond my comprehension.

But even less easy to grasp is how to stick to my budget of £60 a week. My first week was a complete failure. I went 50% over-budget.

It’s obvious where the money is going. Into the coffers of J D Wetherspoon. But it’s so bloody boring sitting at home drinking cheap cider and watching daytime TV.

Of course, I could become teetotal, but that’s a silly thought.

Before I go on let me draw attention to this article from The Times, which tells of a Bristol woman who managed to live on a pound a day for a year. The pound included everything except rent and utilities. So that means food, toiletries, transport; everything.

She did all the things I do anyway, but more regularly. She bought supermarkets’ own brand goods and ‘reduced to clear’ items; she got her bread for next to nothing at closing time; same thing with market vegetables and cooked chickens, reject pies, etc.

What she didn’t do was buy in bulk, something I like to do when possible, and surely a good economy even if only for a week at a time.

I’m fortunate to have friends with allotments and gardens – stuffed marrow, apple pie and rhubarb crumble on the menu this week - and one who works in a wholesale warehouse and has access to out-of-date delicacies like bacon and cheese.

No, food isn’t the problem; whatever those silly TV items would have us believe with their images of struggling families, crying onto their pizzas because the price of pot noodles has risen out of reach, it’s quite possible to eat a healthy diet on a pound a day. Smoking and drinking, unfortunately, require a fiver a day at least. Who am I kidding? Let’s call it a tenner.

Economy drive

Monday, first of September, I began to live within my means, which means £60.50 per week, Jobseekers Allowance, rent and council tax covered.

Despite what you hear that’s plenty. After all, you’re not supposed to live on JSA – and I intend no irony here - you’re supposed to exist on it.

After all, if you don’t smoke, don’t drink; don’t go the pictures every week, topping off the evening with steak and chips and a bottle of wine; and if you don’t need certain medication only available (without prescription) from the internet, what else do you need money for?

Well, quite a lot, it appears, as I’ve discovered after listing items on my budgetary spreadsheet and in two days using up half my weekly allocation. Boring things like beans, batteries, bus fares and bleach.

This is going to be quite an adventure.