Tidying up bits and pieces before I head off for the States. Backed up my computer files, started preparing scenes and plays to take with me on tour (I like to do a variety of readings over the course of a 2 or 3 week tour, to make it more interesting for myself!). Also started answering my Japanese translators questions about book 3 of "The Demonata" -- Megumi is the most thorough of all my translators and likes to pin down the exact meaning of anything she's even slightly unsure of. I suspect the Japanese versions of my books are as close in content to the English originals as it's possible to get!!!! I meant to add some more fan art to my site before I left, and maybe some photos, but that's not looking very likely at the moment ...

Went to see the new version of "Oliver Twist" at the cinema, the one directed by Roman Polanski. Quite good, but a strange choice for Polanski. There have been so many films of the book that I find it hard to get especially excited about new versions of it -- there's only so many times you can sit through the same story without losing a bit of interest!!! This was a good, workmanlike adaptation, but I found it hard to see the point for it. If you've never seen the 1940s David Lean version, with Alec Guinness as Fagin, you should track it down immediately -- that's easily the best film of the book ever! And Lean's other Dickens adaptation, "Great Expectations", is even better -- two classic movies that make all other versions seem more than a little redundant.