My arrival at the pub in London, being surprised by the appearance of my old friends...
As I look ahead to my 60th birthday later this year, I can't help but reminisce about my brilliant 50th birthday celebrations.
One of the many highlights was a "surprise university reunion" that Paul organised in a London pub with a gaggle of my old university buddies from Bournemouth.
Wayne - these days a professional photographer - snapped some incredible images of the day, as well as a selection of stylish portraits.
Here's a small sampling of his amazing photography.
Me and the missus...
Portrait of Jon...
Paul, Pricey and I pretend The Lord Mayor's Show fireworks are for me...
Yours Truly: Dressed To Impress...
Best Of Friends: Lou and Rosie
Paul & Rachel
Jon, Paul, and Lou
Paul - part of Wayne's portrait project
Rachel broke her glass, but still managed to hold on to her wine...
Rosie and Midge wend their way home after the reunion...
Group shot (taken by Rachel, after coaching from Wayne on how to use his camera)
Having exploded at the end of the original movie, Deathstalker has regenerated into a younger man for Deathstalker II - Duel Of The Titans. Or it's a prequel. Or, most likely, no-one really cared.
One of the things that made the original Deathstalkerso great was that it was played straight so the sequel's ham-fisted attempt to turn the franchise into an action-comedy, buddy movie was a serious step in the wrong direction.
Whereas before you were laughing because it was so awesomely bad that it was brilliant, here you find yourself groaning at the pathetic, laboured one-liners, squirming at the bad acting and virtually seething at the "humorous" anachronisms (e.g. the wrestling ring... and yes, there is still a car parked outside the barbarian camp).
To make matters worse, Deathstalker II even blatantly recycles a number of scenes from the original movie that don't add anything to story - and having only rewatched Deathstalkeryesterday really stick out.
This time round Deathstalker (John Terlesky - with a permanent cheesy grin and finely coiffured hair) teams up with Reena The Seer (Monique Gabrielle) - whose inability to act convincingly is only saved by her willingness to disrobe - to save the kingdom from the evil sorcerer Jerak (John Lazar) and his hench-woman Sultana (yes, that really is her name), played by Tori Naples.
A swordsman as well as a sorcerer, Jerak - who with white hair and pink eyes would make a pretty decent Elric - has 'cloned' Reena (who is really Princess Evie) and has his puppet princess on the throne, only she needs to consume human flesh to stay corporeal (which is possibly the most interesting aspect of Neil Ruttenberg's dire script).
Along the way our dumb-ass heroes outwit a bunch of assassins, encounter a graveyard full of the least effective zombies in movie history, and team up with an army of busty Amazons led by the rather delicious Maria Socas (also known as Naja the Sorceress in The Warrior And The Sorceress).
Even though Stalker - who, let's be honest, is a total tool in this movie - appears to be using The Sword Of Justice and we see a pair of the pig-men (orcs?), as well as shots of the original, Deathstalker II really has no connection (bar the lead character's name) to the earlier classic of trash cinema.
Even the flesh and gore quota is markedly down in this half-hearted affair.
Let's hope things improve for tomorrow's Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell, which is where we enter unknown territory.
Admittedly I haven't seen Deathstalker II since I was at university and had blissfully blanked its awfulness from my mind (except for the car parked outside the Amazons' camp), but the final two 'official' movies in the original Deathstalker quadrilogy are totally unknown quantities.
With a new iteration of Deathstalkerfor the 21st Century recently released Stateside on home video, it's time to revisit its progenitors.
Deathstalker, a cornerstone of my old VHS collection at university, is one of those classics of the low-budget sword and sorcery genre that is so truly awful that it is awesome.
The plot - what there is of it - sees the titular Deathstalker ("Mr and Mrs Stalker, do you really want to name your newborn son Death?"), played by Rick Hill, on some half-baked quest to find a magic sword (which is in the first cave he stumbles across) and then kill an evil wizard, Munkar (Bernard Erhard), who has taken over the kingdom.
Hef's ex Barbi Benton pops up as Princess Codille, daughter of the rightful king (not that that is really important) and demonstrates quite ably why her true vocation lay in the pages of Playboy.
Female nudity is pretty much a given in this type of film and Deathstalker is overflowing with buxom young ladies willing to disrobe.
Story, however, in this Roger Corman-produced "classic", isn't as evident. Things just seem to happen for no apparent reason, such as the whole "boy who is not a boy" prophecy sequence where Mr Stalker is turned into a kid for about two minutes.
And you've got to a love a film that ends with the hero seemingly blowing up!
Deathstalker may be bad but it's never dull. There's enough cheesy dialogue, portentous music, shaky scenery, severed limbs and general madcap rough housing to keep most viewers' attention.
And you've also gotta respect the warrior-woman Kaira (Lana Clarkson, who was shot and killed by music producer Phil Spector in 2003, had quite the track record for playing these proto-Xena roles) who not only disdains armour but any more clothing than a cape when she's off adventuring.
Street Fighters Ryu and Ken reunite when Chun-Li recruits them for the World Warrior Tournament. As they face a hidden conspiracy, they must confront each other and their past - or face destruction.
I've never really been a video gamer, but I used to enjoy mashing the buttons playing Street Fighter at university (we occasionally had a set-up where the game was projected onto a giant screen in our lounge).
Fighting games and demolition driving games were my favourites, as you could trade off a lack of skill with furious button punching up to a certain point.
Anyway, if nothing else, it means I recognise more characters in this line-up than I did when I watched the Mortal Kombat film the other year.
Street Fighter, starring Jason Momoa, 50 Cent, Cody Rhodes, and David Dastmalchian, is currently scheduled to hit cinemas on October 16, 2026, while Mortal Kombat II beats it to the punch (despite being pushed back from its original release date of last October) with a new opening date of May 15.
"This is turning into an obsession now, isn't it?" joked my old pal Nick when I shared my purchase of the (controversial) new autobiography of former Lioness goalkeeper Mary Earps, signed by the legend herself.
Nick was referring to the recent surge in my fandom for women's football (which has resulted in Rachel telling her friends - with tongue-in-cheek - that she has become a "football widow").
The thing is, I'm never really been a football guy. I'm not even a sport guy. I'll watch baseball when I can (I'm British though, so it's a rare treat when a game comes on that's available for me) and, for some reason, I absolutely love international football, especially when England are playing.
I guess it's like my passion for the Olympics, I enjoy seeing athletes at the peak of their game - competing on a broader arena than just the weekly slog of domestic league tournaments.
I simply had no interest in the sport at club level.
It’s not as if I haven't tried.
As a youngster I read football magazines and comics (I was a big Roy of The Rovers fan and even converted one of my Subbuteo teams to his Melchester Rovers).
When I was working Matt and Nick would take me to the occasional Plymouth Argyle (their team) match and once I went to uni I even attended a couple of Bournemouth matches on my own, as my first residence was just round the corner from their ground.
I even used to watch Fantasy Football League with David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, but I suspect this was more for the fact that the hosts were two of my all-time favourite comedians than the subject matter.
But none of this actual football made any lasting impact on me.
That is, except when it comes to the national squad playing in a major tournament - the men's or the women's teams - and I find myself invariably glued to the TV.
For those couple of hours I'm a veritable football pundit.
This was taken in Rachel's old flat about 20 years ago!
I'm not even sure how (or why) I acquired an official England Umbro top in the first place, but I now dutifully wear it whenever it feels appropriate to throw my weight behind our country.
However, one of the 'problems' I've always had generating any enthusiasm for watching team sports is, even pre-brain damage, I have no capacity for retaining the details of what I've just watched.
Give me a superhero movie and I can tell you the minutiae of the plot a year later, but the moment I step away from a sport's match, either on TV or at a sports ground, I couldn't even tell you what the final score was... let alone who scored, or any fancy passing combinations.
That was always Matt and Nick's ability: they could regale you with trivia from football matches several decades or more earlier, with encyclopaedic accuracy.
I have to say I always envied them that. Not the specific facts that they were recounting, but simply their ability to know with such confidence the details of an event from such a long time ago.
However, now, in the wake of the women's second, back-to-back, victory at the Euros, and the increasing coverage of women's football my interest has skyrocketed.
My treasured Euros prize!
Strangely coinciding with my recent decline in physical health (which has also contributed to a rapid decline in interest for one of my oldest passions, roleplaying games) and my adoration for key stalwarts in England's line-up, such as goalkeeper Mary Earps, and, most particularly, the amazing Lucy Bronze (who played through our recent, triumphant Euros campaign with a broken leg), I now find myself actually drawn to weekly, club football as well.
I don't know if it felt like discovering a whole new sport to me or that I was getting in on the ground floor (neither of which, of course, are actually true), but I can now be found watching regular games, reading match reports, catching up on YouTube clips of thrilling game moments etc.
Because of my massive fanboying over Lucy Bronze - and knowing nothing about the state of the teams in the Women's Super League - I elected to follow Chelsea (Lucy's team) and see how that went.
It turns out Chelsea are, probably, the strongest team in the league (which was a bonus for me, I guess), with a squad that features a large number of Lionesses.
So, now, I watch - when accessible through our Sky TV package - weekly Chelsea league games and the occasional UEFA Women's Champions League match (when Chelsea are playing, that is) on Disney Plus.
I've been pestering my family for an official Lucy Bronze England jersey for my birthday or Christmas - but they are ridiculously expensive (£99 plus shipping), so I'll be sticking to my increasingly tight Umbro shirt for the moment.
Meanwhile, there’s definite irony in the fact that, given my current state of disability, I won an “official Adidas match ball” in a Women’s Euros sweepstakes, via Amazon, back in late July (see picture above).
I had been entering a ton of competitions in the hope of winning myself the Lucy Bronze England football shirt (so I didn't have to employ puppy dog eyes and quivering lip on Rachel).
It should come as a surprise to no one that I wasn't a great student at school, always being way more interested in my own "stuff" (that was, primarily, escapist movies and TV shows, comics, roleplaying games... and, of course, girls).
That's why the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon above (recently stumbled across on Facebook) struck a chord with me as it particularly reminded me of my English A-Level exam, back in 1985.
I was supposed to be writing essays on Charles Dickens's Great Expectations… only I hadn’t read Great Expectations and so, instead, wrote about the works of HP Lovecraft which I was much more conversant with.
I think I'd read, maybe, the first two or three chapters of Great Expectations, got bored and distracted, and picked up a Cliffs Notes on the book (or some study aid like that), scanning that instead, just before my exam.
As my old school chum Nick pointed out though I still passed (I got an E, which I'm pretty sure was lowest pass rank). He suggested that the examiners were "followers of Cthulhu".
Part of my problem with school was simply that I found subjects I really should have been interested in, such as English Language and English Literature, were taught in such a dry, rote manner. We were told that Dickens and Shakespeare were great and we should worship at their feet, but it was never explained why.
Thus, I found the books and plays we were forced to study to be dull and, largely, uninspiring (although the Dungeons & Dragons player in me loved Milton's Paradise Lost, but I don't recall that being part of my A-Level exam).
I was also a bit of a sucker for the works of The Metaphysical Poets, but, again, I don't remember these being part of the final exam.
It seems to have boiled down to anything that I studied for exams left no lasting impression at the time, while literary works I was allowed to explore "for fun" had a much deeper effect on me in those formative times.
It would be many years after school before I actually came to appreciate the works of Shakespeare and Dickens on my own terms (for instance, I now try to read/listen to A Christmas Carol every December).
By the time I went to university, having been in the workforce for a decade, my attitude to education had turned round completely.
I feel that I thrived much better in the university environment... possibly because, on my scriptwriting course, much of my years of accumulated geeky knowledge stood me in good stead.
It also helped that coming from a very deadline-orientated career (ie journalism) I was easily able to prioritise my assignments and ensure they were done on time, allowing myself the maximum amount of time for fun and enjoyment.
My well-thumbed Penguin book of The Metaphysical Poets. Guess I really should see if my old school wants it back after 40 years?
One New Year's Eve - at a virtual gathering of Rachel's friends during COVID - the discussion came up about what "arty posters" people had on their walls at university, with Klimt's The Kiss and Kandinsky's Concentric Circles proving to be the highbrow hits.
However, I vividly recall that in my 'cosy', downstairs room in our previous Bournemouth residence, Len & Jenny's House, the wall over my bed was decorated with the classy cherubs poster (a doctored version of Raphael's pair of chubby cherubs)pictured above.
Honestly, I have no idea why. I guess I must have thought it was funny. Or some kind of satirical statement on university life!
I also remember the cupboard in that room that I decorated. One door was coated in pictures of Shirley Manson (from Garbage), while the other had a full-page advert cut out of a newspaper that featured the lyrics of R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts (one of the most beautiful songs ever written and guaranteed to bring me to tears).
I have a feeling that the advert was probably for the Samaritans - or a similar organisation - and was thus a wholly inappropriate use of their public service announcement to have it pasted to a student's cupboard door as a kind of 'rock poster'.
Between that and the random cherub poster, I start to realise what a messed up soul I can be at times.
My tiny downstairs room in the house we rented from Len & Jenny
During my 50th birthday weekend return to Bournemouth (as covered last week), Paul was able to direct us to all the old houses we had stayed in during our three-year stint as students (20 years earlier!).
Above you can see the former guest house that I was billeted in during my first term (we were assigned accommodation initially by the university, but as mature students - I was 28 at the time - we were sent out into the sticks, stuck in random guest houses or family homes who liked the extra income).
In this first term, Paul was in a family home on the other side of the graveyard opposite my guest house.
After that first term, a few of us got together and moved to "Len & Jenny's house" - called that after the landlords.
Len & Jenny's
Len and Jenny's was an old, cold, house, with a dark green Victorian colour scheme. I had the downstairs room (which necessitated me sleeping in an old jumper and a track suit most nights to stay warm).
Eventually we moved to our final house, which was a five-minute walk from university (hooray!). Although the rooms were allocated by lots, I was allowed to take the master bedroom - which you can see below, peeking over the hedge - which was gorgeous, bright and airy.
I posted pictures of my surprisingly neat room back in January.
The best house we stayed in...
And as a little bonus to our jaunt down memory lane, Paul and I were able to point out to Rachel the barber's shop, just round the corner from our final house, where we had got frequent haircuts.
Sadly, it appears to have (possibly only recently) finally gone out of business.
For my 50th birthday, back in 2016, Paul arranged with Rachel for the three of us to make a flying visit back to Bournemouth, where Paul and I had gone to university, studying Scriptwriting for Film and TV.
Alice was dropped off with Rachel's parents, the neighbours agreed to look after Barney, and we were off.
We rendezvoused with Paul (who'd travelled down from London by train, while we drove from Tonbridge) at our wonderful seafront hotel, then went round the corner to an old Beatles-themed café where we had lunch.
After that we headed to Poole, so I could I could pick up my latest shipment of comics from Andy at Paradox Comics, before heading back towards Bournemouth.
We dropped in to the main university campus, to have a drink at the student union (Dylan's) and a wander round, to show Rachel where we'd been "educated".
Not only were we slightly baffled by the lack of the students (or the fact that nobody asked us who we were and why we were wandering round) but also by the ease with which we wandered in and out of several lecture theatres!
Paul had phoned ahead to clear our visit, but neither the security guards nor the bar staff at Dylan's batted an eyelid as we sauntered in, or asked to see any ID.
Our next stop was the town centre Wetherspoon's The Moon In The Square - for drinks and a meal - that we had frequented often as students, before ending the evening with a beverage at O'Neills (another favourite haunt from our days on the south coast).
In O'Neills there appeared to be a band setting up, so - although there was nowhere to sit - I said I was quite keen to stay and see a live show.
However, the band spent, what felt like, about an hour going through their sound check, played half a song and walked off. It was most peculiar. Whether they actually got round to ever playing a full song, or even a set, we'll never know as we'd finished our drinks and decided to head back to the hotel.
On Sunday, it was an all-you-eat fry-up at the hotel before we drove out to the "suburbs" to see where we'd lived all those years ago.
We then dropped Paul off at the railway station and headed home ourselves (stopping off to pick up Alice on the way).
Although there had been a lot of improvements made to Bournemouth in the 20 years since we lived there, what was really noticeable on the Saturday evening and night was the paucity of obvious students.
There were stag parties, locals and tourists, but we didn't see more than a handful of students (even at Dylan's) until we passed a mammoth queue on Sunday morning outside the town centre student union venue (The Old Fire Station) which was hosting a vintage clothes sale!
It was a great weekend, full of some incredible reminiscing and the usual mix of anecdotes and BS. Instead of making me feel like an old man (even though the phrase "well, that was 20 years ago" got a lot of airings), it actually, for a moment, made me feel young again.
I have great friends!
Childish conversations in The Moon In The Square
Rachel enjoying her wine in The Moon In The Square
I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a video game player, especially since my stroke left me without the requisite attention span or hand-eye co-ordination to be any good.
However, I'll admit to a fondness for fighting games and mashing some serious buttons in my university days playing Street Fighter (side note: I tried rewatching the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie the other week, and it has not aged well).
That said, as far as I recall, I never played Mortal Kombat, so have no real knowledge of the game's mythology or investment in the characters.
It seems there's a supernatural martial arts tournament every century (it's not really clear how often) and if the Bad Guys of the Outworld plane win 10 tournaments in a row the Elder Gods will allow them to invade Earth (or something).
Outworld is a grey Zack Snyder-filmed Burning Man Festival kind of place, full of people in black pleather BDSM costumes.
Anyway, these guys and gals have already won nine tournaments in a row (just how rubbish are the Earth's champions?) and Outworld's Emperor Shang Tsung (Chin Han) wants to ensure victory in the 'final' tournament by sending assassins to Earth and killing our contenders before the tournament even begins.
But... if he can do that already, why are they even bothering with the tournament?
Because reasons, I guess.
There's an awful lot of hand-waving when it comes to spelling out the backstory and deep motivations of all involved, ultimately meaning the plot of Mortal Kombat has holes in it you could fly an Imperial Star Destroyer through.
The Emperor of Outworld's assassins are led by Sub-Zero (amazing martial artist Joe Taslim of The Raid fame) who has incredible ice-based superpowers to complement his martial arts moves.
In the pre-credits flashback to Ancient Japan, he sends the great ninja Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) to Hell, establishing an enmity between the two men that spans time and space.
Back on modern-day Earth, unsuccessful cage fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is drawn into these shenanigans because his bloodline marks him as a champion, and he ends up getting recruited by a pair of special forces operatives, Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and Jax (Supergirl's Mehcad Brooks), to protect him from Sub-Zero.
There's a quest to find a hidden temple, which gets resolved quick sharpish, and soon they are joining the forces of Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), Elder God and protector of 'Earthrealm', to stand against Shang Tsung's fighters. Mortal Kombat is dumb and occasionally nonsensical but has enough superpowered beatdown chutzpah to power through.
One of the film's problems, on top of its logic-lacking narrative, is that by being all post-modern and having the Bad Guys trying to circumvent the titular Mortal Kombat tournament, there ends up being no actual Mortal Kombat in the movie at all.
That said, the film is at its strongest when there's fighting going on. And, unsurprisingly, there's a lot of amped-up fighting going on in its 110-minute duration.
It also, as befits the reputation of the Mortal Kombat gaming franchise, features a lot of brutally violent 'finishing moves'.
So, there's that.
Sadly, Cole and Sonya, the two nominal leads, are quite bland, but luckily they are initially teamed with the foul-mouthed Australian mercenary Kano (Josh Lawson), who pretty much steals every scene he is in.
The lack of strong leads is countered by the sheer number of different fighters involved in the story.
This isn't one of those superhero movies where powered characters plough through hordes of faceless goons.
Mortal Kombat is about small groups of unique combatants beating the shit out of each other.
And if that sounds like your sort of thing, then you'll probably enjoy Mortal Kombat.
As part of the first year of our Scriptwriting For Film & TV course we each had to give a 20-minute presentation on the "Theory and Analysis of Broadcast Texts".
Mine was entitled "Shallow Grave & Trainspotting or How Danny Boyle, John Hodge and Andrew Macdonald were The Saviours Of The Multiplex Generation".
I won't go on about the subject matter as that's not what made the presentations so memorable.
Several of the finest presentations were made by people who didn't stick with the course beyond the first year.
One young girl - who was, to put it euphemistically, quite flighty - did a talk on A Room With A View (that she'd clearly done no preparation for), which primarily consisted of her finding different ways to say "I just really love it".
But the most glorious part was the purple dye running down her face and neck throughout, where she had hurriedly dyed her hair that morning and not counted on getting caught in the rain on her way to the presentation.
However, the presentation we all remember more than any of the others, as much for the reaction from Paul and I as anything else, was from one of the older students on our course.
This gentleman was using slides to illustrate his talk, about "the importance of character".
Unfortunately, he was clearly nervous and mumbling, and gradually the slides got out of sync with his script.
Paul and I were both trying to control our giggling fits, but then suddenly a slide of sheep in the back of a lorry appeared - and, to this day, I have no idea why - and we just lost it.
Paul - facing down glares from a couple of our female friends - had to excuse himself and leave the room, as I wiped the tears from my eyes and bit my lip as my face turned redder.
It was definitely a "you had to be there" moment, but it's one of those memories that all of our group still holds dear, a touchstone for the laughs we all shared during those three years.
Here are the faded notes for my presentation, and as you can see from the pictures below, they included overhead projection sheets (both photocopied and handwritten). That's how high-tech things were back in the Dark Ages of the 20th Century.
My pop culture Odyssey: a slice of super-powered geek life with heavy emphasis on pulp adventure, superheroes, comic books, westerns, horror, sci-fi, giant monsters, zombies etc
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