I am safely back in London, and feeling rather zombified, but a long night's sleep should sort that out. The flights were not bad, just long.

While en route I read a couple of magazines and Death at Victoria Dock
Then I went for the movies with old favourites: The Usual Suspects and L.A. Confidential Then off to foreign language movies,
Flammen & Citronen is about two guys in the Danish resistance against the Nazis, in Copenhagen, 1944. Flammen has flaming red hair, and Citronen has his face in a permanently sour expression. I enjoyed it quite a bit, the atmosphere is somewhat noir rather than thrilling. It seems that in Copenhagen 1944, the only things to do in Copenhagen were: brood ominously in hiding, chain-smoke, do a drive-by assassination, double-cross someone, conduct a doomed love affair, drink. Repeat and combine. It had well-drawn, flawed characters.

After that I watched a couple of episodes of The Simpsons, including off-the-wall rock ones where Homer does a Kurt Cobain impression in a band called Sadgasm, complete with hilariously obscure and emo lyrics; and one where Bart is Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols, and Lisa is Nancy Spungeon. Yep.

Then a rather different film called Go Go 70s about rockers in 1970s South Korea. The plot arc is standard, but the cultural layering was rather appealing to me, as the band in the film gradually found their feet, going from bad Asian covers of "Mustang Sally", "Soul Man" and the like, to eventually building their own scene with hybrid influences. Or possibly by then I hadn't slept in over 24 hours and my critical facilities had shut down, which let me enjoy watching young Koreans jumping around to recycled soul/rock in 1970s clothes (and thereby somehow sticking it to the Man).

Doha on the way back was still flat, brown and hot (35C at 8am. Ouch) but mercifully brief. London on arrival was overcast and wet, a bit like Cape Town on departure then. Seasons, we has them.