I've been enjoying the unseasonably hot weather here in the UK this week, especially after work! My Missus is struggling in the heat so has a rest in the cool upstairs so to keep the noise down I relax in the garden with the dog for a couple of hours till tea-time.
Alas my blogging and answering comments/ emails is suffering. I hope to catch up soon.
Its baking in the garden so Blue and me head for the shade offered by two large parasols and an old drooping crab apple. Thus cooled and loafing on the sun lounger I've been relaxing with a book.
My current novel is The Hatching by Ezekial Boone, which my older brother Steve recommended. Just like Steve and his gothic passions the Hatching is right up my creepy alley too.
Like those terrific pulp killer bug paperbacks of the 70's and 80's by the likes of Guy N. Smith, Boone's book is a pest-fest of spider mayhem on a global scale. Arachnogeddon!
Alas the summer heat seems to massage my eyelids shut and I often fall asleep reading! It is incredibly hot for Britain at 300C. Today was the hottest day of 2018 and amazingly there are moorland wildfires in Lancashire. I can well imagine record-breaking temperatures in July or August this year.
Super hot weather makes me think of one my favourite disaster films, which I only recently watched again free on You Tube, The Day The Earth Caught Fire.
Made and set in 1950's London this black and white gem concerns itself with the environmental fears of the cold war: nuclear tests, missiles and the Earth's orbit.
The film is told through the eyes of hard-pressed and dehydrating newspaper journalists at one particular paper. The combination of the hacks buckling in the heat trying to uncover the truth and the increasingly catastrophic weather events around the world makes for a fascinating and exciting disaster movie, intelligently made and convincingly set. Almost SWORDesque!
If you like films about investigative journalism like All The Presidents Men and Spotlight you should like The Day The Earth Caught Fire.
Have you seen it?
Yes Woodsy. Have the DVD in fact.
ReplyDeleteAs a teenager, when I first saw it, I found it a bit dull for a sci fi (no spaceships, aliens or robots e.t.c.). But now think it's a bit of a classic, along with movies like 'Dr Strangelove' and 'On the Beach'.
Mish.
I will have to see On The Beach. never seen it. Is it a Neville Chute novel Mish?
DeleteMind you, from what I've seen on the news today about Saddleworth moor, there could be a new movie out soon...'The Day The North Caught Fire' !
ReplyDeleteMish.
It does look bad dosn't it. Poor sods if they have property caught up in those moorland fires. My West Yorkshire lawn is turning brown too. I'm expecting a hose pipe ban soon.
DeleteIt is indeed a Neville Chute novel Woodsy, though I've only seen the film.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite drawn out, understated and grim, but that's the point of it. To make us despair so much at the thought of a nuclear war that we don't let one happen.
Mish.
I think that novel was in my house when I was a kid in the Sixties and Seventies. I will have to catch the flick and maybe the book too Mish.
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