Monday,

as usual,

 was a quiet day for us, a couple of friends from the UK called but the afternoon and evening we just watched a few DVDs, the first, Great Adventurers: David Livingstone and Stanley, a good semi-documentary about two of Britain’s great explorers, John Rowlands, a runaway from Wales who at the age of 16 or so who left Great Britain and sailed to America where with the help of a benefactor changed his name and fame to Henry Morton Stanley, and  Scots Dr. David Livingstone,  the DVD is a good listen, the tropical scenes being shot in what appears to be the Palm House at Kew, but that apart, informative and a great insight, not only into the two men, but the culture of the times, take John Rowlands, at the age of six his family could not afford to feed him, so they sent him to the work house where he remained until he was sixteen years old or so and ran away to get a job as a cabin boy and sailed to America,

 there are not many, if any films that I feel sorry for the murderer, but seeing Dr, Crippen I was almost cheering for him! American-born Hawley Harvey Crippen (nicknamed "Peter"), killed his wife, of that there is no doubt, but this film gives an insight into why, and ponders the question did he really mean to kill her? or was it by shear happistance that he administered a fatal dose of what was at the time considered a sedative to his drunk wife just to calm her down, we shall never really know, but a masterful performance by Donald Pleasence as Crippen in any event,

we rounded off the evening with the Andromeda Strain, a space probe tasked with collecting space dust to look for extraterrestrial life actually finds life, but not as we know it, for the time, 1971, not so much great special effects, but a look into technologies to come as the team races to save the plant from this new life form, and with the end of that we were off to bed.