Lazy Sunday

Ah! The usual soundtrack to a lazy Sunday in Cardiff: lashing rain. I haven’t been out of the house all day, unless you count stepping out to see the partial eclipse of the moon late last night!

It gives me a chance to consider Cardiff. To all intents and purposes, with only a few years in Swansea and Northamptonshire together with the forgotten years of my very early youth, I have spent all my life in the city.

In Rumney, the old County Cinema has been demolished and flats put in its place; the Eastern Leisure Centre has provided us with a swimming pool; Newport Road has been widened, but, apart from the roads in Pen-yr-heol gradually getting worse and worse, not much has changed in the area. The inappropriate trees which used to produce a literal blizzard of petals in the springtime have been uprooted and the wooden window frames have been replaced by upvc double glazing, but apart from those relatively minor changes what is different? Cosmetic differences to the front of houses, extensions without number: all the usual confections of bourgeois suburbia.

But to go to the centre of town is to feel that you are a stranger in a familiar city. The economics of insanity seems to have taken over in the centre. The new ice skating rink; the newish parade of shops in the Hayes; the brand new office development opposite The King’s Cross; a new city library; multi-storey car parks and a substantial chunk of a new shopping centre all seem destined to be demolished to make way for John Lewis Partnership et al. It seems extraordinary that this ravaging of a city centre can be planned and allowed, but who are we in the face of rampaging capitalism. I had always thought that Cardiff had been sold to Debenham’s who acquired their prime site in the Saint David Centre for a peppercorn rate just to get it there! I do hope I’m wrong, or has Cardiff found a new capitalist sweetheart?

The devastation of the centre will I’m sure result in a stunning new collection of yet more shops which can be found in any reasonably sized city anywhere in the country. And the dynamic of the city is constantly changing.

I wonder more and more about Rapports with its car park. This is a prime piece of the city and Rapports certainly doesn’t need to be there. I wonder what overtures have been made to the owners. The CIA would like to get its hands on the land immediately adjacent and the new development can only bump up the value of the land. Just like the prison which hold a key site in the city and I’m sure that developers are slavering over the opportunities that the ground would offer; but who knows what machinations are centred on real estate in the city centre?

I wonder what Cardiff will be like in the next few years. And I wonder how the inhabitants of Cardiff will like their new city.

‘Saw III’ is one of those films which makes you feel slightly indecent because it is such an unashamed rip-off from the previous films in the series. This is not the time to list those series of films which have baulked the artistic curse of trying to extend a series beyond its sell by date. They do exist I know, but ‘Saw III’ is not one of that illustrious number. It is a cynical reworking of existing material (quite literally in the sense that it uses extensive flash back) which confuses itself with a multiplicity of ostensible story lines.

Some of the horror is quite graphic; but arguably the most effective sequence is of a chained man trying to escape from his situation and as that happens close to the beginning of the film the rest of the action is something of an anticlimax.

The moral basis for the central character’s bizarre ‘games’ is not convincing and the conflict between him and his ‘disciple’ gives a new meaning to the word contrived.

The ending of the film uses the same cynical trick as the ending of the last ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film: there isn’t one. It merely points the lucrative way to ‘Saw IV’. Shameless!

Time for a long, lazy bath to soothe away all the stresses that I haven’t had today.

That’s the life!