The Dark Knight does not disappoint. Finally throwing off the shackles of the Burton/Shumaker films*, this installment progresses the story of this new Batman, raising the emotional stakes while keeping to a raw street level. These people feel real, which is quite the achievement in a superhero film.

The centre of the movie is definitely Heath Ledger’s extraordinary performance as the Joker. Almost all the hype of the film has centred on his last acting role, and it is all justified. Every moment he is on the screen is electrifying, and he provides us with a Joker who is completely unlike anything I’ve seen in the comics or Jack Nicolson in Batman, and who makes twisted, dangerous sense. It’s quite an achievement to make the villain of a comic book film the must-see performance of the year.

All the other performances manage to hold up to Ledger’s level – Chris Nolan’s idea of hiring actual actors and giving them actual acting to do pays off really well. Gary Oldman continues to give a beautifully understated performance as James Gordon, Michael Caine is his usual excellent self, and Christian Bale continues to impress as Bruce Wayne.

If I have a criticism – and obviously, I do – it is Bale’s Batman voice. I’m sure it’s meant to be a terrifying bestial rasp, but now that Batman actually has some things to say, I was waiting for one of the bad guys to ask him if he needed a cough drop or something…

In summary: go see.

I felt that Batman Begins‘ big elevated train end sequence was a throwback to the gothic excess of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin.

I kept buying this piece and that piece in order to fix it. I bought a new axle, but it turned out not to come with bearings. I buy a set of bearings, only to discover none of my spanners actually fit the nuts on the axle. New spanner set, and then I find I can’t remove the freewheel. A new freewheel spanner thingy, and again none of my spanners fit it. I buy an adjustable spanner, and the freewheel just doesn’t budge. Finally, I get some WD40, and the freewheel comes off! Hoorah! I now oficially have everything I need.

Except I can’t get the damn axle to work. The wheel is supposed to turn without turning the axle, and more specifically, without turning the various screw-on parts that then creep up the axle sending the wheel steadily towards the right, away from the left-hand bearing, thus making it wobbly again. No matter how much I lubricated it, no matter what way around I put the bearings in, it didn’t matter.

And now, the cone-shaped part that actually engages the bearings on the right-hand side won’t even go onto the axle. I can screw it down a little bit, but then it gets completely stuck, in a way that feels rather final. So I can’t even put it together again for another try.

I also managed to nearly lose one of the bearing rings through the gap between my floorboards and the skirting board. I managed to get it back, but I thought I might never see it again.

I’m too frustrated to do anything more with it, even to pack the bike up, despite the fact that it’s sitting right in the doorway to my living room, and is really rather inconvenient.

I’m just sick of this thing continually thwarting me, even as I keep overcoming each obstacle in turn. I think I’ve even lost the rear brakes, which I removed to take the rear wheel off.

Anyone know how to repair bikes? I can offer nothing more than a pathetic look of gratitude in return, however. But it will be particularly pathetic.

However, I now have a nice workstation in the corner of my second bedroom, which has been pretty much unused up until now. It came with a small computer surplus to Mum’s requirements, so I’m going to set that up as a dedicated work computer – no games or entertainments. Hopefully, if I have a place that’s only for work, I’ll actually do some from time to time. I have two NaNoWriMo efforts I could in theory make into actual novels, some script ideas, and a lot of stories in my head I’ve never written down. I’ve never had a designated “office” before; we’ll see if this helps. Although, if I’m serious about this, I may have to uninstall “Spider Solitaire”…

I’ve already written up a quick book review, of the books I’ve been reading this week; I may even do that on a regular basis.

Along with the computer desk, and about a month’s worth of food, Mum got me a couple of bird-feeding items. I’ve had them up for a few days now, and finally some birds have noticed the Energy Ball feeder. There’s at least two of them (I’ve seen them fighting over them), but I don’t know enough to identify their species. The seed feeder seems to have failed to attract anything just yet, though.

As my living room has a wall of window leading onto my balcony, I can sit back on my sofa and watch the goings on. I’m going to see if I can rig up a camera to get some good pics of them, but for the moment you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

* If that’s the right word

On the Home Office front, I’ve got an official “we can’t find you” letter from them, asking for Yet More Information. Was 1983 so far in the past that they didn’t keep proper records? So now they want my Dad’s info, and I’ll be sending that, along with my youngest sister’s. We’ll just have to see. They are also suggesting that I apply for a kind of “I’ve lived here for ages anyway, why not let me stay?” status, and I’ll probably do that, although I’d like to be able to afford the fee, first. And that might not be able to get me my back pay, as it might not count as proving I was able to work at the time I was earning the cash.

Life in general is grinding on; mostly I get books out of the library (the three options appear to be Shotts, 1 hours walk away; Bellshill, £3.80 round trip away; the Mobile Library, which has a small selection and turns up once a week) and read them until I run out and head to the library again.

The libraries are also the only place I can get ‘net access (except the Mobile Library), but it’s only on outdated machines running Windows NT (!), which struggles to run IE6. Maybe it’s just the way I surf, but IE keeps seizing up and refusing to do anything (including close), so I either have to log out (as the machines are locked down to the extent I can’t kill them via the Task Manager) or start up another IE session. I vaguely recall when the ‘net was a strange thing only available at Universities; now I pretty much consider it a vital utility, like water or electricity. I wonder when that happened?

I have been doing some programming to pass the time, although it’s a rather typically daft and useless project. Many (many) years ago I started a project to convert Doom levels to Quake, and for some reason I suddenly decided it was time to resurrect that, despite both game engines being embarrassingly old and creaky. So I’ve been coding some C++ to read in Doom levels and output them – but not in Quake because it turns out I don’t have any of the Quake level building tools you need. Instead I’ve been turning them into 3d models. I seriously have no idea why.

Computer games also pass the time – Neverwinter Nights is doing sterling service just now. I’ve owned it for yonks, and never got much further than the first quarter of Chapter II (of four). I’m on Chapter III now with my main character, and have a few other characters going through the beginning bits to see what the different classes play like.

It’s not been a whole pack of fun – downright depressing, in fact. I’ve not been in to the library as much as I could have, and I’m sure sitting at home all the time isn’t good for me.

However, the extraordinary generosity of friends and family has kept me going – emotionally as much as the practical help that’s been given. It’s nice to know people care, you know?

The two things that annoy me is that I gave all this information on the online form and the phone interview and at no point did anyone tell me it was going to be a complete waste of bus fare.

And the second was people looking me in the eye and telling me that they knew full well how bad my situation was, and that they weren’t going to do anything about it, or even suggest somewhere to go for help.

Part of me hopes it isn’t due to the intervention of my M.P., the Right Honourable Doctor John Reid, as I would like to think a government bureaucracy would occasionally be able to do the right thing all on its own, but I’m very grateful all the same.

I’ve just spent one of the least pleasant weekends ever – pretty much the entire of Saturday was spent with a cloth over my eyes, fighting a migraine that was being fuelled by a racking cough. A hacking cough raises the blood pressure in the head, you see, and guess what that does to a migraine headache? I thought the top of my head was going to come off.

I was basically existing between doses of painkillers – unfortunately, I didn’t happen to have any cold/flu medication lying around, and the thought of the trip to the shops was beyond horrifying. Perhaps in retrospect, doing something about the cough would have made my life a lot easier.

Today wasn’t quite as bad; I was able to survive just by turning down the brightness of the TV and the computer as low as it would go and sleeping through the bright bit of the day (unfortunately, the flat doesn’t have curtains as such, just Venetian blinds that diffuse the light without actually impeding it in any way).

Some may question the wisdom of turning the brightness down on things instead of turning them actually off; however, I can tell you from experience that being ill and bored is far, far worse than just being ill. Boredom can, no matter how bad you’re feeling, prompt you to do unwise things, like open your eyes.

And that heavens for Cable T.V. There’s nothing better for being-ill-in-front-of-the-TV than a David Attenborough documentary marathon. Even if you’re not watching the pretty pictures because light hurts your eyes.