Children of Men

With the rain intensifying through the evening, William and I slowly dried off after our Ryde ride back to the hotel as we had dinner. Unwilling to venture out again, we opted for a quiet evening together in our hotel room, looking through old photographs of him growing up in Umeå. Though memories never tell the whole story, it was heartwarming to see all those photos of me and the boys, especially now that we have spent so much of this autumn apart.

Having reached the present in Google Photos, we debated which film to watch before settling on a true dystopian classic from 2006: Children of Men. Set in a decaying, fascist England in an alternative future where no children are being born, its extraordinary extended takes were as brutally realistic as ever, even if reality has not quite turned this dark (though sometimes, as with Gaza, one wonders).

Having won five of his seven rounds, William is now playing against an opponent with a much higher Elo rating, while I am recovering at Espresso House after a mad ten-kilometre run on the treadmill. With only a week having passed since Malmö Marathon, my legs were not really up to it, so I had to compensate by pushing my cardiovascular system harder, with my heart rate averaging 163 bpm.