The bells, the bells...

Judging by the apocalyptic landscape that was once our flat, it would appear that we threw a party last night. I opened the door of our bedroom to a feral wasteland. The only possible chance of recovery is to burn the place to the ground and start over. My last memory is spraying beer from my nose and mouth while hysterically criticising Boris Johnson’s clean air policy to a confused stranger who had probably only asked me where the toilets were.

When I am confident enough to move without vomiting, we’ll be dragging ourselves to the cinema. I had come close to swearing a blood oath to never pay money to watch any film again after watching Sherlock Holmes. It left me feeling mugged, but mostly confused. Not confused by the witless plot, but struggling to comprehend how anyone could conceivably still employ Guy Ritchie to make films. I can’t claim to have read the books, but I’m fairly sure that the original character Arthur Conan Doyle created used sleuth, guile and wit to solve crimes. Dispensing this to Ritchie is the equivalent of handing a Ming vase coated in banana juice to a chimp. It is going to get fucked. Every man out there would be lying if they claimed to be entirely repelled by violence, and for instance, never to have typed ‘brutal one punch knockout’ into a YouTube search (do it), but when I see a Sherlock Holmes film I expect cunning revelations and ingenious detection. Ritchie has the guy hitting people in the face for 90 minutes, before revealing that the bad guy got away with it for so long by using some rare drug which made everything seem like it was the work of the dark arts. This is wheeled out at least three times in the film, like some disabled relative, and used to cheaply patch over all the gaping plot holes. It is the modern equivalent of the ‘it was all a dream’ move, used to bring JR back to the show in Dallas. Ritchie might as well have appeared on screen, smirking and flipping off the audience while burning fifty pound notes.

Sundays in Switzerland are generally a painful experience. Apparently it’s a national law that every occupied building must be within ten yards of a church, and that the church must have bells capable of producing a decibel level which would shame a Metallica gig. These instruments of torture are employed at 7am every single bastard morning, but on Sundays they love to rub it in by having them go on and on for hours. When the inevitable day comes when I flip out and go on a rampant killing spree, the heartless fuckers who ring those things will be the first target. As an added insult, they drag you out of bed to a country where every single shop is closed. The Swiss have many fine characteristics, but customer service is most definitely not one of them. Here, as a paying customer you are a nuisance to be avoided at all costs. To achieve this, the shop will be barricaded closed at any point when anybody might conceivably be free to visit them. If that fails, they will treat you with such fierce contempt and disgust that you will run crying from the store to lock yourself a darkened room with a bottle of whisky and a razor blade.

On a positive note, getting up early does mean I get to witness the miraculous sight of the Sunday Match of the Day rerun. This, like the McDonalds breakfast, has entered folk lore as a whispered legend. Friends of friends will have claimed to have seen it, but nobody could ever be certain. Now, thanks to central European time and the incessant promotion of Swiss Christianity, I can confirm it is real.