HERO.

This morning I was all ready to go out the door for work, when I discovered my wallet wasn't in my pocket. Further investigation revealed it wasn't in my coat, or lying around the house. I looked everywhere but it just wasn't here, and walked up and down the hill, still not finding it. Once it was evident that it was not within the vicinity of the house, I had the biggest panic attack I have ever had; it was so genuinely unbearable that after about twenty seconds I blacked out briefly, coming round with a migraine. I was understandably gutted at my loss as it contained all my cards; debit, store cards and ID's; and also well over two hundred pounds. I don't usually carry such money around but by sheer sod's law I was only the other day paid back for a TV I bought my grandparents. Phoning Stagecoach to no avail, I had started to come to terms with it when the phone rang; it was the police who had just had a wallet handed in with my name in it! I was relieved beyond words, and genuinely surprised to hear that there was still loads of money in it too. I'll be picking it up tomorrow; apparently there's a scheme where 10% of the money is given to the person who handed it in as goodwill, but that's certainly acceptable; whoever handed it in has temporarily restored my faith in the human race and I am so grateful to them.

Moving on, I did not go to work after the events of this morning; it wasn't until mid-afternoon that it was sorted and the migraine cleared so I'm glad I didn't go in. I'll be back in tomorrow for the early shift, so I'll try and get the rest of this done quickly to get to bed. Not that I'll sleep however, but the thought counts.

I watched Machine Girl this evening; it's an ultra violent Japanese movie. A schoolgirl's brother is killed by a gang of bullied lead by a Yakuza boss' son. In trying to exact revenge on them she is captured by the Yakuza, escaping after her arm is cut off. She meets a mechanic who builds her a machine gun replacement arm in order to complete her mission. It is definitely the best of the crazy Japanese movies I've seen; the action is fantastic, filmed and choreographed very imaginatively, and the gore is ridiculously extreme, exaggerated by the really low-budget effects used. It has a dark edge of humour to it with the geysers of blood emerging from any wounds and ridiculously extreme violence verging on slapstick. The story is genuinely good though, albeit fairly standard Japanese b-movie/revenge fare. I give it 8/10 purely on entertainment value and imaginativeness.