Suzanne Stone has nothing on Lou Bloom. "Good things come to those who work their asses off," Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) says in Dan Gilroy's directorial debut, Nightcrawler — a thriller that mashes up To Die For and The Fast and the Furious, with a hefty dose of American Psycho. Indeed, you can't help but admire Lou's industry and persistence, even if there isn't much else to like about him. As the film opens, Lou is a small-time thief seeking work. He's even willing to do an unpaid internship, but for some reason — mainly because he is seriously creepy and unscrupulous — no one wants to hire him, even though he has done a lot of online research into how to have a successful career. By chance, he happens upon a crime scene and spots a stringer filming the footage and selling it to a local TV network.

He buys himself a camcorder and a police scanner and his business is born. At the first late-night crime scene he visits, he manages to make a complete fool of himself and miss most of the good shots, but when he rocks up at the lowest-rated Los Angeles TV station with the footage, he manages to impress the night shift's news director, Nina (Rene Russo), who thinks he has a good eye. She gives him some tips and hands him a cheque for $250, and then Lou goes home to watch his clip airing on the morning news.

Pleased with his success and having read online about the importance of growth, he sets about hiring an intern: Rick (Riz Ahmed) has no job, no home and no experience but Lou offers to pay him $30 a night for his help and the two of them capture some impressive scoops, much to the consternation of some of the more experienced nightcrawlers. And although Lou continues to impress Nina, some of her colleagues at the TV station, such as Frank (played by Mad Men's Kevin Rahm), who doesn't like Lou and questions his integrity and ethics. "Your job is to do the Tweet of the day and tell Deb to turn sideways in the weather forecast," Nina tells Frank dismissively.

As the film progresses, Lou becomes increasingly successful and is able to upgrade his camera kit and buy a flashy red sports car, which allows him to get to the crime scenes even more quickly. But the success goes to Lou's head and he seems to shift from creepy, unsettling and socially awkward to self-obsessed and sociopathic, as his desire to capture and sell footage soon overrides any instinct to help the victims at the crime scenes he visits. It isn't even as though he has a strong journalistic desire to get the story, either; he just wants the money and the glory.

Nightcrawler is a dark film, for sure, but it's also quite funny in places — there is plenty of incredulous laughter at some of the things Lou says and the way he behaves. The character reminded me a little of  Patrick Bateman from American Psycho in some ways — they both do things because they want to fit it, but see other people as a means to achieve what they want and view other people with a cold, clinical detachment. Vile as Lou is, though, we almost want him to get away with it, and this is mainly down to Gyllenhaal's brilliant performance. The chemistry between Gyllenhaal and both Russo and Ahmed is also interesting here. In theory, Russo's Nina should be the one in a position of power and yet Lou's scary ability to manipulate and persuade puts her on the back foot. Rick, meanwhile, stands no chance but he seems to genuinely believe his boss when he says he wants to help Rick develop his career and learn.

Clocking in at just under two hours, Nightcrawler is well-paced and suspenseful, with narrative twists as sudden as the U-turns Lou pulls on the darkened hills above Los Angeles; LA itself — or, at least, its dark, seedy underbelly — also has a prominent role in the film. None of the characters is very likeable, but Gilroy pulls together a compelling, if often ghoulish, story of ambition, persistence and vanity gone horribly wrong.

A number of the films I've seen this year so far have focused on the idea of the tarnished American Dream, from The Great Gatsby to The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Internship, and even, to some extent, Behind the Candelabra. Enter Sofia Coppola's new film, The Bling Ring, which tells the scarily true tale of a group of celebrity-obsessed California teens who, convinced that "reality TV star" and "it girl" are careers to which they should aim for (and, crucially, that they deserve), armed with the powers of Google, TMZ and Perez Hilton, carry out a series of robberies at the homes of the celebrities they adore while their idols are out partying or filming. The movie is based on Nancy Jo Sales' Vanity Fair article, 'The Suspects Wore Louboutins' about a real group of teens, who carried out such robberies and who became known as the titular Bling Ring. And it's the "true story" aspect that is so scary.

When you buy a Groupon deal, even if you feel like you're getting a great bargain, somehow the house always seems to win. About 18 months ago I bought a deal for a one-year subscription to Time Out's London edition, which, at £35, seemed like a reasonable enough price for me--a sporadic reader, at best--to hit the button. When my year was up, I was going to cancel the subscription but they let me renew at the same rate, and I decided that I got more than £35 of value from the magazine, even though most if not all of their content is available online. 

n00b (L) and old skool (R) versions of Time Out

Size matters...

I had only planned to do three Christmas gift guides this year but since I posted the last guide, I've spotted a couple of cool tote bags. I included one in my gift guide for girls but I also culled a couple of others from my original longlists, so I thought I'd do a special round-up of my favourite tote bags. These make great gifts: they're stylish, light, eco-friendly, easy to wrap/mail, and you can even put several smaller Christmas gifts inside them--definitely much cooler than a stocking!

Bags for readers and writers
1.  Kate Spade New York for Strand canvas tote. $12.95. Stand Books in New York are famous for their tote bags, which are ubiquitous in Manhattan and beyond but Kate Spade's collaboration with Strand is a much more colourful, girly version. It's also a nice way to give someone a Kate Spade bag without breaking the bank.

2. Daunt Books totes. £1.50 and £8. When I first moved to Marylebone, I realised I had to buy a new it bag. Fortunately, the Daunt totes, which I've spotted in Cannes, New York, and beyond, as well as well as in the quartier, are a bargain at only £1.50 for the smaller, natural cotton version and £8 for the larger, sturdier, green version (which also has an interior pocket for your phone or keys). If you buy enough books, you may also get one of the bags thrown in free. Either way, I use my green tote almost every time I do a big shop and it's showing no signs of wear and tear. Edit: I spotted someone on Marylebone High Street today with a dark fuchsia version of the large tote, which looked totes amaze, as they say in Chelsea, apparently.

3. Vintage typewriter tote from TheBoldBanana via Etsy. $10. Perfect for a writer--or would-be writer.

Stylish sacs
4. Grey alphabet tote from Oliver Bonas. £12.50. These totes have a bright yellow zipper, which looks gorgeous with the light grey fabric of the bag (very Philippe Starck) and provides extra security for your belongings.

5. 'My other bag is made of solid gold' tote from Rob Ryan. £22.95. This double-sided tote has the same anti-bling slogan and star on both sides, blue on one side and pink on the other. Blue and pink are my favourite colours, so this would go with all my outfits! Ryan's contrary 'I love what you hate' design is also nice.

6. Liberty print tote. £20. These bags are a relatively inexpensive way of buying a Liberty print accessory. I really like the subtle band of print at the top of the bag and in the lining. Another version of this tote has the print on the straps and side panels (£15).

Totes for foodies and oenophiles 
7. Bordeaux wine tote from Maptote. $13. These totes are the perfect size for slipping in a nice smooth red and would be a great way of making a bottled gift more interesting. Maptote also has different designs for other regions.

8. Pun-tastic tote from Puncontrollable via Etsy. $17. Puncontrollable's totes have minimalist designs and cute captions; 'whisky business' and 'you Chinook me all night long' word work well for a gourmand.

Miscellaneous
9. Modern Toss tote from Magma Books. £5.95. This bag, which displays the command, "Buy more shit or we're all f*cked," may well have been commissioned by George Osborne.

10. Totes for geeks from Our Shop. £9 and £12. This tote with red or blue grid lines would make a nice present for anyone who has a bit of a graph paper obsession. This 'geek' tote makes a more obvious statement.

This afternoon, I found myself scanning Thursday's newspapers in search of stories about the research I've helped to promote, as I do most Mondays. We only get the broadsheets delivered and it's always interesting to see which stories some papers avoid and which ones are, in Private Eye's words, exclusive to all newspapers. By the time I've finished, I usually feel like I would have done really well on the BBC News's 7 Days quiz if only I'd read them earlier.

This is a long-winded way of justifying why I was reading Thursday's Daily Torygraph and why I found a short piece by Alison Weir, who is pimping her new book about Mary Boleyn (a review of the book will follow as soon as I've read it; it's still on my shelf at the moment). The story is hooked to the announcement that Hilary Mantel's sequel to Wolf Hall will be published next year, but Weir quickly gets on with dissing the rather cavalier approach to the truth and historical accuracy taken by the film of The Other Boleyn Girl and the now, fortunately, defunct TV show, The Tudors. She then asks:

What is it about the Tudors that we find so compelling? Easy to answer: they were the most charismatic and dynamic of monarchs, who ruled over an age of great change. A king with six wives, two of whom he beheaded? A young woman (Lady Jane Grey) executed after nine days on the throne? The first women to rule? You couldn’t make it up.

Not that that stopped the likes of The Tudors sexing it up to the max. I did used to enjoy The Tudors during the first season. I tried not to think about the inaccuracies and the campness of it all, but it was good fun and at least if people are watching this show, they might learn a tiny bit of history, which you can't say for the "structured reality" crap that seems to dominate most TV schedules. < /rant > The trouble with a Tudors TV programme is that when characters are popular, you can't exactly write the script to allow them to live on for another season; after the death of Anne Boleyn, The Tudors was hanging by a thin thread.

In her biography of Anne's older sister Mary, Weir, it seems, is on a mission to debunk some of the myths perpetuated by The Other Boleyn Girl, which will be interesting given how little information there is available about Mary. Weir writes biographies and historical fiction and I've enjoyed both genres, so I'm looking forward to her treatment of the elusive Mary Boleyn.

I've been out every night this week and I'm a bit behind on blog posts but I just got back from a recording of The Now Show and I wanted to write down my thoughts while they are fresh. It was a fun evening but clearly, I should have read my own advice from the last time I went because we made some of the same old n00b mistakes.

Poor photo of Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt

We got there earlier than I did last time--6.45 (when the front doors open) rather than 7.15 (15 minutes before the studio doors open)--but there was a big queue outside Broadcasting House, with about 200 people ahead of us. Random security checking of Balham Babe's bag delayed us and meant we were the first people to enter the second holding room, rather than the last people to enter the first room. As all of the first room people got to go in first and there isn't a queuing system inside the rooms, this didn't work out too well for us, and we ended up in the second row on the balcony with two tall guys in front of us. We also missed out on getting to fill in an answer to the audience question: the woman in charge of our room asked why no one was giving her the answers and we explained we hadn't been given the sheets but apparently they had run out. The funniest answer (which probably won't get included in the show when it airs) was a hilarious example of someone missing the point of the question--or maybe just wanting us to think that...

That aside, it was a good show, with a couple of good songs, a reference to research I publicised, and plenty of naughtiness, although as ever, I found Henning Wehn's segment a little boring. One part, which described a wonderful new variety of a class A drug in the style of a Christmas advert for a popular, middle-class retailer, involved Pippa Evans reading out a number of long, jargony, science words, such as mesolimbic and "exogenous catecholamine transporter ligand" (straight from Wiki, I see). During the "retakes" at the end, Steve Punt made the mistake of asking if there were any chemists in the audience and of course there were, one of whom took the joke far too far by loudly correcting Evans's pronunciations four or five times, until the chemist was persuaded to pipe down. I know it's the Year of Chemistry, but still...

And yes, next time I really will try to arrive a bit earlier so that I can finally get to provide a supremely witty answer to the audience question of the week.

I count the number of times I've ventured east of EC1 on one hand, and some of those don't really count because I was driving through. It's nothing personal; I'm just more of a west London girl, born and bred.

I'm always up for a craft market, though, and so when I saw an ad in this week's Time Out for the Designers/Makers Market in Hackney, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for me to acquaint myself with a new quartier. So, I took the 30 bus, which usually deposits me at King's Cross when I go to work, all the way through Islington, Highbury and Dalston to Hackney Central and wandered down towards the market. It felt like a bit of an Apprentice pilgrimage as I walked past the Hackney Empire (which featured in this episode) and the Hackney Town Hall (which featured in this episode).

Violet's mini-cupcakes

It was perhaps rather unusual that large numbers of trendy, affluent, 20- and 30-something females were wandering around the area where the market was supposed to be, looking slightly confused. When I went inside the studio that hosts the market to ask what was going on, the receptionist said it was cancelled for the next few weeks. They were looking for a new venue as not many people were showing up. Great timing there--calling off the market the week it gets featured in Time Out. That's one way of guaranteeing people won't bother trying to find it in future.

Climpson & Sons

Luckily, I'd already prepared a walking tour for myself and so I didn't feel too annoyed about the long bus journey. First, I went to Broadway Market, which I'd been meaning to visit for a while. I had a macchiato from Climpson & Sons' stall, which was great; I'd like to visit their shop, at the other end of the market, too. Also on offer were: lots of cakes (I opted for a mini salted caramel cupcake from Violet), flowers, breads, clothes and accessories and, of course, jellied eels. There was also a great independent book shop, The Broadway Bookshop, a branch of a Fitzrovia boutique I like called Black Truffle and a cool-looking bar called Off Broadway.

Regent's Canal at Broadway Market

I carried on down to the Regent's Canal (a new stretch, for me, of a very familiar canal), and walked just past the Kingsland Road bridge, where there was a really nice café called Towpath, which serves coffee, drinks, ice cream and light, simple, but tasty-looking food and you can sit at little tables right on the towpath. A very nice place to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon. I then continued down the Kingsland Road, along Shoreditch High Street and on to the Old Truman Brewery, to take a peek at a couple of sample sales, although I didn't purchase anything. I also discovered the original branches of Rosa's and of Nude Espresso.

Canal-side sunflowers

I normally like walking through the City at the weekend because it's almost eerily quiet but today, probably because of the sunshine and school holidays, it was pretty busy. Eventually, I reached the Fleet River Bakery for more caffeine and a brownie, which I enjoyed while sitting in the gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields. And then it was only a few more miles back to NoMaRo (via Anthro, where I did cave and buy a t-shirt, although I also resisted buying a skirt and lots of yummy-smelling candles). The whole route was 9.5 miles, which explains why my legs are now a little achey.

But I enjoyed my visit to Oriental London and some of the canal-side apartments were even funky enough for me to add parts of the area to my list of "areas in which I would consider buying a flat, if I can ever buy a flat" --any area where there is a good independent bookshop, good coffee, cool bars, hipster shops and a nice water feature (well, the canal) definitely wins my approval.

Why does even a whole week in New York have to fly by so quickly, returning me to the rain of London before I've barely even had time to blog about it? Until this trip, the furthest south I've stayed in New York has been 24th Street and although I did once stay at the W on Lexington Avenue, my hotels and hostels have almost all been west of Broadway. This time, though, my hotel was on East Houston Street, right on the corner between Nolita, the Lower East Side and the East Village (possibly NoHo too), which meant I got to explore plenty of new areas within the city. Here are a few of my favourite new places that are east of Broadway, in approximate order of the time in the day I would visit:

1. Bluebird Coffee Shop (East Village). Bluebird has been on the to-visit list in my NYC Moleskine for quite a while but it always ended up being too far south and east. Happily, it was just across Houston Street from my hotel, this trip, and I made several visits. The espressos and macchiatos were very good and on a sunny morning when the huge windows are open, it is gorgeous to sip and caffeinate on the porch.

2. Think Coffee (NoHo). This is another coffee purveyor I've been meaning to try, having walked past the Mercer Street branch on many occasions. On this trip, I found that the branch on the corner of Bowery and Bleecker was the perfect place to stop for a bagel and a coffee on the way uptown or to the West Village. The coffee was great (and the triple- and even quad-shot coffees sound like heaven) and the bagels were pretty tasty too. Unlike many of the too-hip-to-have-more-than-three-seats coffee bars, there is also plenty of seating at Think.

3. Everyman Espresso (East Village). I wasn't quite sure I was cool enough to drink here and I'm fairly certain I was deducted points for asking for my macchiato to go (some of these coffee bars won't even let you order a macchiato or espresso to go; paper cups ruin the flavour, you see). It was, however, a good macchiato on a fairly quiet stretch of 13th Street. Close enough to Union Square to be very handy, however. I'll just remember to wear my fake tattoos next time.

4. Prune (East Village). Prune is open for lunch and dinner but everyone really goes for the weekend brunch. You can't book and you'll probably have to wait a good 45 minutes but on a sunny day -- and when Bluebird is just down the block -- who cares? As well as more standard brunch fare (pancakes -- or, rather, one large pancake -- with bacon and maple syrup), the menu also contains dishes as varied as spaghetti carbonara and sausages and oysters. Unusually, I didn't order the pancakes (I wanted regular and not Canadian bacon) but opted for the scrambled eggs with bacon, potato rosti and an English muffin, which was delicious and filling. The Prune juice, which actually contains OJ, grapefruit, lemon and lime, is a good alternative for those who can't quite stomach one of the vast number of different bloody marys.

5. Market NYC (Nolita). When it's time for a gentle wander to walk off brunch, Market NYC is a good first port-of-call. It's open from 11-7 pm at the weekend and hosts a huge number of different independent jewellery designers selling their wares in an old church building. It's definitely difficult to narrow down your choices if you only want to buy one or two items. I got a bargain from Delicate Raymond: this gold initial necklace is $48 online but was on sale at Market NYC for just $10. I also bought a lovely purple necklace from a seller whose business card I've lost, unfortunately, which was only $22. Later the same day, I saw a very similar necklace selling in a shop in Williamsburg for closer to $60.

6. Walking over the Williamsburg Bridge (Lower East Side). Another great way to walk off brunch. Not only is the walkway a pretty shade of pink (well, pale red), but you also end up in Williamsburg, funnily enough, which is a great place to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I can add yet another item to the list of things that are dangerous for me to be doing/feeling while shopping: checking the BBC Sport website on my phone every five minutes to find out whether or not my consistently inconsistent football team have been relegated. Although dear ol' Wolves have been hovering in or near relegation for much of the season, they've actually been doing reasonably well. The trouble was that this has been a rather high-scoring season for the bottom of the table and depending on the results of today's matches, any two clubs from Blackburn, Wolves, Birmingham, Wigan and Blackpool could have joined West Ham in being relegated.

The nerve-wracking relegation saga really began last Sunday. We'd already won our match against Sunderland and so on Sunday afternoon, Maman and I were listening to the weekend's other matches on the radio on our terrasse. We wanted West Ham to beat Wigan, Birmingham to lose to Fulham and Blackburn to lose to Man U. Having gone 3-0 up on Wigan, West Ham proceeded to lose 4-3. Man United, having just been declared the most successful team of all time, in the known Universe (well, in England, anyway), couldn't manage to beat Blackburn. At least Fulham did what we wanted.

Today, though, was Premier League D-Day, according to the BBC website (surely R-Day?). By the time I checked the scores today, mid-shopping, Wolves were 3-0 down to Blackburn, Blackpool were beating Man U (sounds like a variation on the Sports Illustrated jinx to me), and Wigan and Birmingham were drawing their matches. If everything had stayed like that, we would likely have been relegated on goal difference. And then came the desperate goals. The Wolves managed to pull two goals back -- not enough for a draw but it at least looked a little less embarrassing. Luckily for us, Birmingham and Blackpool ended up losing too and so even though Wigan won, thanks to their late goal, we were safe, while Birmingham and Blackpool went down with West Ham. If Spurs hadn't scored a winning goal against Birmingham in extra time, though, we would have ended up on the same points as Birmingham. We would also have had the same goal difference -- hopefully, the next criterion used to determine who stays up wouldn't be alphabetical order. (Incidentally, the names of the bottom seven clubs in the Premiership this season all begin with b or w -- my initials -- coincidence? I think not).


This was all rather stressful at the time and having been fairly good on the shopping front for the past few weeks -- this weekend I had already resisted the temptation to buy Anthro's lovely Lido Light skirt based on the fact that I own enough blue skirts already (almost all of my skirts are blue) and TopShop's nautical stripe sundress (which didn't quite fit perfectly), among other things. But it was getting close to full time when I was in the TopShop changing rooms with the floral print flippy skirt and a couple of cheap vest tops, I caved and just went and bought the lot. OK, so it was only £38 for the three items and I have wanted this skirt for almost two months. In fact, I've tried it on several times before in various combinations of size eight and size ten, regular and petite, but the eights were too short and the tens too loose. Finally, I came across a size eight tall version and tried it on and despite me not being even average height, let alone tall, it fit well.

Although this wasn't exactly an impulse purchase, I do blame my football-related nerves for going ahead. I must remember not to go shopping this time next year when my consistently inconsistent team will no doubt be in the very same position.

State plates spotted: 32
Mad Men locations visited: 4

Post-run yesterday, we all headed for Bloomie Nails, our favourite manicure place, so Mum and I could get manicures and Dad a pedicure. Afterwards, I did a little shopping and then walked to 405 Madison Avenue—according to Time Out the address of the Sterling Cooper offices but now a Chase bank.



We went uptown for a great burger at Shake Shack—fortunately, Maman ordered a peanut butter shake so I could try some of hers; I wouldn't have managed my own—and then a browse of Green Flea, a flea and craft market.


I then received an early birthday present: a new camera, as recommended by David Pogue and hurried home to charge it in time for cocktails on the glorious rooftop bar of the Peninsula Hotel. I hadn't even learned to use most of the settings on the S95 but it already takes amazing pictures so I'm very happy.





Then, it was dinner with some family friends at Bar Americain where I just had time for pumpkin soup and a lovely filet mignon before we headed down to TriBeCa, where we happened upon B Flat, a cool, jazz-themed basement bar in Tribeca where I tried an appropriate Autumn Leaves. Afterwards we joined some friends in Macau, a cool bar just up the street; Josh Hartnett was in recently but not last night, sadly.

Thanks to subway incompetence, I didn't make it home until 2.30 and was up at 8.30 this morning to run. In the circumstances (four cocktails and a glass of wine), I don't feel too bad.

I've been called a grammar nutter before (a pedant too, although I take that as a compliment) but the truth is I am, like many linguists, a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. Still, it irritates me more when people make grammatical mistakes when trying so hard to avoid "things wot they've heard iz wrong." The classic example of this is when people say "I" instead of "me" because they've heard that saying "me" is bad (saying "Alex and me went to the cinema" instead of "Alex and I..." is supposedly bad therefore one should also say "he came to the cinema with Alex and I" --technically, one shouldn't). This is hypercorrection. It doesn't just happen in English either, although is common in the speech of those who wish to sound as though they are from a higher social class.

As a child, I was precociously good at spelling. So much so that at age ten, I was pointed towards the Oxford English Dictionary and told to pick my own spellings to learn each week. No one taught me IPA, however, which meant that although I could spell Madagascar, chlorofluorocarbon and other similarly lengthy and/or difficult words, I never found out how to pronounce them. I was fifteen before I found out that Madagascar isn't pronounced ['mah-duh-guh-''saah-kuh] and that [in-dikt-munt] is usually pronounced [in-dite-munt]. Even now, from time to time, I will say a word I've seen in writing but never heard in speech before and will be me with stares and then laughter.

Most recently, though, I've been a victim of orthographical hypercorrection. On the radio, I've often heard people mentioning [mef-uh-drone] and as many people in southern England pronounce th as f, I assumed this drug was spelled methedrone. I was hypercorrecting, of course, and am clearly a massive snob for assuming that everyone else is just labialising their dental fricative (th is pronounced by pushing air past the tip of the tongue against the teeth; f involves blowing air past the teeth against the lower lip).

On the other hand, mephedrone has been in the news a lot recently. Both methadone and methedrone are also drugs and I have potentially heard them mentioned on the news in the past. I have definitely been hypercorrecting recently but this error may have been reinforced by having heard the other two words in the past.

From my radar this week:

1. Pretending I'm in New York. Although living in London (rather than the sticks) can usually ward off my New York cravings for quite some time, once I start getting close to six months since my last visit (as I am now), I start getting antsy, especially given that my parents are going in a few weeks. I want to wander through the West Village and run in Central Park. I also want to shop. Luckily, of the three American shops in which I spend most money, two of them (Banana Republic and Anthropologie) have Regent Street branches, both of which are staffed partly by Yanks. This means I can amble up Regent Street on a Saturday afternoon and I could almost be in NYC. The prices of the clothes are, of course, way higher than in New York but today I discovered the sale room at Anthropologie where I picked up a gorgeous, colourful top on sale for £9.95, reduced from £60. Both the sales assistant and the woman behind me in the queue commented on what a great bargain it was.

2. Random London eateries. If I can't be discovering fun new places in the Big Apple, random restaus in London almost make up for it. Yesterday, there was Paolina's a cheap and low-key Thai restaurant near King's Cross, with very tasty food, friendly staff and a ski chalet-like decor. The other night, it was the Posh Banger Boys in Borough Market, which is basically a guy with a barbecue in an unheated, candle-lit garage, decorated with sparse furniture that looks like it's just been salvaged from a skip. The burgers were very tasty, though, and I speak from experience. Mori, meanwhile, is a smart new Asian takeaway on Marylebone High Street with a range of reasonably priced sushi, salads and other Asian goodies. I haven't eaten there yet but next time I need a quick bite to eat in the quartier, I will probably check it out.

3. The Blind Side. I went to see this film, like many people, to see whether Sandy B really deserved that Oscar. Also, I had a voucher for a free Cineworld ticket for which I only paid £1 so I decided to use it on a film I might not otherwise have seen. Two things surprised me: 1) there were far more men than women in the audience and 2) I liked it, despite the fact it was corny as hell. And yes, Sandra Bullock was very good, although I still think Carey Mulligan should have won. The premise is like The OC meets Friday Night Lights. Rich, seemingly perfect, BMW-driving family come across underprivileged boy from bad neighbourhood, take him in and under their watch, he flourishes (in The OC, Ryan is from Chino, is white and goes on to be a great architect, as opposed to Michael, in The Blind Side, who is black and very good at football, but otherwise, the concept is very similar). The family even has a slightly geeky, sarcastic sun who tries to help Michael out--a son who, despite being about ten years younger than The OC's Seth Cohen in the movie, reminds me a lot of him. Of course, The Blind Side is not borrowing from The OC as it is based on the true story of NFL football player Michael Oher. I genuinely enjoyed the film, anyway, although I wasn't expecting to.

4. RunKeeper. I really like my Nike +iPod sensor. It tracks the speed, distance and pace of my runs and syncs automatically with the Nike+ website, allowing me to track my training over time. Unfortunately, I've been having problems getting accurate recordings almost as long as I've had the sensor. Most of the time, it works fine but sometimes, if I pause the app while I stretch or try to change the music, it gives up and only records the time of the rest of the run and not the speed or distance. Also, the Nike system requires that I bring the sensor with me and as I regularly use two pairs of trainers, this is a hassle. Enter RunKeeper. This is an iPhone app that performs a similar function to Nike+ but using the GPS on the iPhone; this means it also automatically maps my routes on Google Maps and sends the information to the RunKeeper site without me even having to hook up my iPhone with a computer. I'm not sure which of the two is more accurate (RK's distances and paces are worse than the Nike+ ones I'm used to) but RK could potentially be a good back up and/or alternative to Nike+ -- and it's free!

5. Walking home from work. Yesterday was the first time I've walked home from my new office. It's less than 2.5 miles but a combination of really bad weather and the sun setting too early has meant walking wasn't a very appealing prospect until yesterday. It only took me 35 minutes and I was home while it was (just about) still light. Walking is also much less stressful than getting the Tube or waiting too long for buses. In the mornings, I usually get a bus to work but when you factor in the walking to and from the bus stops, waiting for a bus to arrive and getting stuck in traffic, I usually get into work 20-40 minutes later so perhaps I will walk in more often. On those days when it's not raining or snowing, I'm not running late and I'm not wearing high heels, anyway. The route isn't the most pleasant in London (unless you are a fan of the Euston Road) but at Great Portland Street, I cut up into Regent's Park and walk the rest of the way buffered from most of the traffic and enjoying the spring flowers).

There was a piece in today's Evening Standard about the fuss over the BBC's pronunciation of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince in "the English way" (rhyming Prince with wince) rather than the Haitian way (rhyming Prince with the way someone from Yorkshire with a cold might say dance). I was surprised to hear the city pronounced to rhyme with wince on the Today Programme today--in fact, I did wince--but it really shouldn't come as a surprise.

After all, radio presenters don't talk about the wonderful bike rental scheme in Paree or the football team Bayern München and for good reason--different languages have different sets of phonemes and so international pronunciations help non-polyglots to understand the places people are talking about.

It's not just us lazy, self-centred English that do this either. The French enjoy the cheap shopping available in Londres and might go for a weekend break in Cornouailles--these are even spelled differently. And there's the schoolboy's favourite, Sussex, which, when pronounced en français, is homophonic with a certain way of expressing oneself orally.

My favourite was always the admittedly rarely used Nouveau York, Frenchifying the "New" but not taking the Latin for York (Eboracum) and carrying out 2000-odd years worth of sound changes (producing something like Eboraque). The Italians, meanwhile, call the Germans i Tedeschi, which requires some serious historical knowledge to work out.

In fact, given that Paris, Brussels, Milan and other commonly used place names always get Anglicised pronunciations in this country, it seems that people who only use the non-Anglicised versions for more unusual place names are clearly only showing off. So, I don't think English radio and TV presenters do need to nasalise their Princes unless they are also going to pronounce --or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at all, for that matter.

The Tab, the new-ish Cambridge University tabloid-style news outlet, hadn't entered my radar until I heard its "Totty" section being mocked on The News Quiz and criticised in most of the rest of the country's papers. I don't particularly have a problem with hot, female Cambridge undergrads getting some of their kit off if they want to and the fuss over this seemed a little excessive. One piece posted on the website today did catch my attention, however: Cambridge vs Bridgeford.

I should have known better than to complain about shops not having things in the right sizes because now my bank balance is seriously suffering. Still, excluding the serious shopping fail in January, it's been over a year since I've last shopped Manhattan and I have been on relatively good behaviour for the past few months, so I've probably earned it.

Each Tuesday during July and August, a fireworks display is put on from a boat in the middle of the bay just off the Croisette. Each week, the fireworks are sponsored and/or designed by a particular country (although the relevance of this seems limited to the background music) and the citizens of Cannes can then vote online for their favourite at the end of the season. Tonight's fireworks were provided by Spain and were called, "Pyrofantasie" (the titles are all variations on a theme--the Austrian entry is called Pyrovision, for example). The beach-restaurants along the Croisette are all given special permission to open in the evenings (for some reason, they aren't usually allowed to do this) and you can pay 60 euros for a meal on the beach (or on one of the restaurants' little piers on which you can pay even more for sunbathing rights during the daytime) or you can rent a sunbed and sip a glass of champagne or a cocktail and watch the sunset and then the fireworks.

Today's Now Show has now aired and surprised me with a few of its inclusions, although to be honest, in the haze of today, I've probably forgotten about half the stuff they left out, apart from the intentionally for-the-audience's-eyes-only bits. The experience of going to the BBC Radio Theatre and watching a show (any show) live was great fun but hopefully, next time, I will be less of a n00b and will be able to enjoy the next one even more.

I went to see The Now Show being recorded tonight, probably lucky as I definitely had a face for radio tonight. A full post will be coming tomorrow when a) the show has been aired and I won't be spoiling anything and b) I have more time as I won't be needing to get up early the following morning to catch a train to Nowheresville.

Despite a decidedly mediocre performance since the end of November, my football team continues to confound me with its unpredictability as they have now been guaranteed promotion to the Premier League next season and will, in fact, probably come top too, unless we lose both remaining matches and Birmingham score about ten goals. My godfather, who went to watch Wolves beat QPR yesterday, said he hadn't seen them play better since last autumn, not that that's saying much.

It's good to know that some things never change. The football team that I (nominally, at least) support was nine points clear of the Championship in December and have now only one once in the past games (amazingly, we're still three points clear). Wolves need to blow away ghosts of 2002, sez the BBC Sport website, although it's not really just 2002 but pretty much every other season (OK, not all of them have involved being nine points clear and then almost getting relegated, but they almost always seem to lose momentum part-way through the season and end up in a decidedly mediocre position in the table).