Sweet Nothings

Hur hur hur From hearing and reading some of the reviews of Inception I was half expecting a David Lynch-esque piece of free-form art madness. "Don't go for a piss or you'll never keep up!" they warned. For the record, and this is not an attempt to show off, I performed my increasingly regular trick of nodding off for a while in the darkened cinema, thereby missing a whole chunk of action where they dropped down another Dream Level (or something) and yet I still managed to follow what was going on. This is not to say that Christopher Nolan has not made another very fine film, it's perhaps more a comment on just how vacuous the average blockbuster has now become. When one does come along that forces the viewer's brain to engage (and, unlike the rebooted Batman movies, isn't part of an helpfully established franchise), it can come across as far more complicated than it actually is. Nolan's work have never been overly arty - even the mind-melting Me...

From a spokesman for the Department of Education, as quoted on the front page of yesterday's Guardian , in response to allegations that the coalition may be trying to sneakily re-introduce pupil selection in schools: "Ed Balls's leadership campaign is so desperate it is reduced to confecting lies that even a child can see through." Wow, really showing your belief in the potential of the next generation there, guys. Good work.

FINAL SOWETO UPDATE: As it turned out, the tour operator person was very nice about our aborted trip, making various offers to take us out that evening for dinner/drinks. Offers which I kept declining because basically I was still annoyed with them and, no money ever having changed hands, I just wanted to forget about the whole business. Yeah I know, another gift horse stared squarely in the chops. Anyway, it's nearly the end of our trip now and it's often been a strange and fascinating experience. So, what have we learnt? South African petrol stations aren't very accepting of credit cards. Plus they all have attendants who fill your tank up to overflowing unless you specifically ask them not to. They have tomato sauce over here rather than ketchup, which is sweeter and tastes just different enough to be faintly annoying B&B/hostel cooked breakfasts consist of, at most: one egg, two bacon strips, one tomato and toast ONLY. There's normally plenty of cereal ...

Hmm , so it turns out we're not trundling round Soweto this afternoon after all. For whatever reason our driver failed to meet us at the designated location, or at least he didn't show up after an hour and 15 minutes, and so we decided to cut our losses and leave. I'm sorely tempted to NAME AND SHAME the tour operator in question, but as they came highly recommended by the Rough Guide I'll assume this was an aberration and give them the benefit of the doubt. Just.

So yeah, I was at the World Cup final. Admittedly it wasn't the best game, with the Dutch gameplan seemingly to kick several shades of shit out of the Spanish and hope that Howard Webb didn't give them a red card (having seen some highlights, he could have done so much sooner but apparently a kung fu kick to the chest doesn't merit a red these days). And admittedly we were right at the front behind one of the nets which, due to the many cameramen in front of us, was not the ideal vantage point we'd first imagined it to be. And admittedly you could only really get the full effect of the closing ceremony from high up in the stands, or from watching it on TV, and I only got the tiniest glimpse of Shakira in the flesh. But hey, I was at a World Cup final, which still feels pretty cool. More by accident than design, the last few days of this trip have featured not one but two theme parks - UShaka Marine World in Durban and Gold Reef City here in Joburg. Both of these were ...

Durban is an interesting old place. After our first visit for the semi-final on Wednesday night, we returned yesterday for a proper look around. If we'd stuck to walking the streets of the city centre and visiting the Victoria Market, we'd have seen no more than a handful of other white faces all day. It felt like a proper African city, bustling with hawkers and street traders trying to compete with the modern shops they share the pavements with. The market itself is a much more Indian concern, being part of the district where Durban's large community from the subcontinent is apparently based. I was slightly disappointed not to see more Indian folks around there, but I think the real heart of that community was further north, going into the areas which the Rough Guide only recommends for the braver travellers. I did have lunch in an authentic-looking Indian fast-food joint, a nice enough chicken roti roll which I then said hello to again later that evening. Going back d...

After yesterday's match in Durban, we've now been to seven of the ten World Cup stadia and seen eight matches in total. Thoughts on these as follows: Royal Bafokeng stadium, Rustenburg Basically a provincial athletics stadium which somehow holds 40,000 people (the minimum required for World Cup matches), with no video screens or working scoreboard when we were there. From our seats right near the front behind the goals (for England v USA ), we could barely see what was going on at the far end of the pitch and couldn't see the near touchline because of the athletics track and advertising hoardings, hence we only worked out that Robert Green had let Clint Dempsey's tame shot go underneath him by everyone else's despairing reactions. Plus, as recounted elsewhere, the organisation for the park and ride after the match was an absolute shambles. Frankly, an even worse football ground than Brighton's comical Withdean stadium, which was never intended to be used f...