A new sickness....

I've had a couple of weeks off work - time taken to avoid doing my usual transcontinental power vacations (my friends tell me that I always come back from holidays in need of a holiday to recover from them). In so many ways, London is a great city to live in, but I always forget when I'm in the middle of my usual routine of work, party, commute, travel how much there is to see and do in this fantastic city.

So these two weeks off have been great. I've had a chance to kick back and just relax, not doing anything too stressful aside from reading books and watching movies. And while I've always loved watching movies, over the past few months I've managed to perfect it to a total sickness - my new addiction.

I think I always loved watching movies. It doesn't matter how good or how bad, how mainstream or how arthouse auteur - English, Hindi, Turkish, Persian, French, Korean, Chinese, Australian, Peruvian, Canadian, Norwegian, German, Bulgarian, Belgian, Mongolian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, South African - there are enough cinema genres, and movies, in the world to keep me entertained. And the only problem is that you don't have enough time in each day to watch as many movies as you'd like.

I realised that my current obsession with films, long standing though it may be, had reached serious levels when my local film rental store manager was telling me that I probably kept him in business. He said it jokingly, but I then looked down at my hands - within 24 hours, I had seen four movies, which I was in the process of returning, and was issuing four more. The specific movies themselves aren't of consequence - it was all about the experience of watching movies, rather than the individual movies themselves. For me personally, it didn't matter what the movie was about - it was the experience of sitting down and watching it that counted. I also realised that part of my sickness was watching movies at the cost of sleep - something that I picked up in university when a late night of work would culminate in the "movie of the day", something to help me unwind and put me to sleep. However, when deadlines would become pressured, the movie of the day would not be sacrificed. It would be my sleep that would be cut back. So the addiction started small, growing slowly, inevitably, till it came to full strength during this time off.

So the aim for the next week is to wean myself away from the movies - something that will be difficult, as it is for all addicts, but probably worth doing if I am to keep my sanity and ability to turn my neck....