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28th November I did something I don't do very often on Monday evening. I'd even go so far as to say its something I never do. No, I didn't go outside. It was odder than that. Much odder. I watched Doctor Who. Now, you're probably thinking I'm being deeply ironic or extremely annoying when I say this but its true. I don't watch Doctor Who. Not old Doctor Who. I'll watch the new stuff when its on (sometimes happily, sometimes out of a sense of outdated duty) but when a shiny new DVD of proper Doctor Who pops through my letter box of a seasonal morning I always - but always - do the same thing. I'll watch the main documentary, I'll glance at the other bits and pieces and I'll at least start listening to the commentary. But I don't actually watch it for real. I never sit down and actually watch the Doctor Who. I'll have it on in the background while doing other things, I'll have it on with a notebook handy so I can jot down occasionaly witty remarks about it. But watching it properly isn't the sort of thing which occurs to me any more. God knows why Destiny of the Daleks of all things should break that duck. I've got about fifty DVDs (I don't know how many but count all the ones you've got, add the ones you haven't got and you'll get there in the end) and this is the one I choose to watch. It isn't that it is bad so much as it is not very good. You spend an hour and a bit thinking nothing can be as stupid as the regeneration scene only to discover how the Movellans are immobilised. You take their power pack away and they wave their arms in confusion for a bit before sinking to the floor in a lifeless and unloved heap. It's like when you take a teenager's mobile phone away. Then there's the absurdity of the Daleks digging for weeks - months probably - to get down to Davros's level only for the Doctor to find a lift that the Daleks don't know about and scoot down in no time at all. And heaven knows how Tom and Lalla kept themselves together during the scene when a huge slab of rock - which moves every time Tom breathes - is too heavy to lift and leads to the stars splitting up and having exciting adventures. It's almost glorious fun. Not quite but almost. The blame is usually laid at the feet of David Gooderson (for not being Michael Wisher) and the Dalek props (for not being in a fit state to be in a home movie let alone a professional production) but Gooderson is fine and the tatty Daleks suit their presently desperate plight (even if, technically, their war with the Movellans hasn't actually started yet). Gooderson's best bit is when he has to move his Davros chair really quickly and the character loses whatever dignity it had left. I'd not seen it since 94 or 95 (despite having bought it on video) and I enjoyed it enough to carry on watching through the dumb bits. It isn't good by any stretch of the imagination but it pisses all over the self-indulgence of Resurrection of the Daleks, a po-faced tale of mass slaughter which has no redeeming features at all. Except possibly Tegan's legs. The big Tesco on the way home from work has finally unveiled its newly revamped upstairs. While work was ongoing it gave me a special insight into the male-female division. Four people having simultaneous conversations about the same thing. Women: They're going to have clothes upstairs. Men: They're going to have electrical goods upstairs. Well, they have both. It's a strangely cramped upstairs, fashioned as it is out of what used to be an airy ceiling. Getting up there involves travelling on a travelator. I suspect someone somewhere made that word up. It is a long, shallow escalator which does for people and trolleys. The trolleys are held in place by something magical for they cannot roll backwards nor forwards while under the spell of the travelator. An extremely patronising voice plays when you pass a certain point to remind you that when you reach the end of the travelator you have to push your trolley. Saying that phrase over and over and over a-damned-gain must be the dullest job in the world. Surely it is not beyond the wit of mankind to invent some kind of vocal recording system and free this poor woman from her torments. I got a stuffed crust pizza from there. I keep doing it - I keep believing that the stuffed crust pizza will become the king of all pizzas. It's a pizza but it has so much cheese that the surface area of the pizza isn't big enough. They have to literally pipe the cheese into the otherwise redundant area around the edge. It's a cheese-fest. Cheese-a-go-go. It is as close as we'll ever get to cheese-ageddon. But then you cook it and realise it isn't. The pizza itself is always sub-par, the cheese in the crust is not of this earth and you end up feeling disgusted with yourself for believing in something so obviously false. Or maybe its just me that places pizzas on too high a pedestal. The story of the teacher arrested in Sudan for naming a teddy bear proves once and for all that the idea that we should automatically respect peoples religious beliefs is a nonsense. Sooner or later we as a society (for it only seems to be our Western society which has the concept of respecting others beliefs) have to come out and say that the people running countries like Sudan are hideously backwards savages who don't deserve any respect at all. You read things like...
...and wonder what has gone so wrong in their brains that they can't function as normal human beings. Then you discover,
and wonder what the really hard-line clerics in Sudan would want to happen next. Presumably they'd be demanding that the bear be stoned to death. Anyway, hopefully this whole disgusting business can be sorted out soon. We'll probably end up giving lots of "aid" to Sudan in exchange for her safe release. When in fact we should boycott the country entirely until they realise it isn't the sixteenth century any more.
24th November I'm reading this book at the moment. I'm half way through it and it is not going well. The two hundred and something pages have been lists of disorders and symptoms rather than anything genuinely useful or interesting. The message of the book is that if you have any of these symptoms, get a therapist. The book is, needless to say, written by a therapist. The problem with it is that it is just like reading a book about diseases - the average reader will find him- or herself nodding to themselves and saying "I've got that." So you can imagine what it is like for me - 250 pages and the only conditions I've ruled out are pyromania, kleptomania and anorexia. At this rate I'll be stuffed after my death and placed in a psychiatric museum of curious. I've got every disorder known to mental health and all Pamela can suggest is a breathing exercise and a therapist. Well, alas, I've tried breathing before and I wasn't cut out for therapy so I think I'll go away and read something vicious by Charlie Brooker instead. Maybe - just maybe - if I start stealing things, throwing up dinner or burning down buildings I'll give Pammy another chance. Either that or book my plinth in the psychiatric museum of curious. I'd hate some better prepared nutter to beat me to it. The aftermath of England's pathetic, almost French-like, capitulation continues to amuse. The Daily Mail were especially comical - they dubbed Steve McClaren "The wally with the brolly". That is literally comic gold. Although it could be argued that of all the decisions Steve McClaren made as England manager, using an umbrella during heavy rain was about the best one. The irony of course is that if Andorra had scored against Russia in the last minute, McClaren would've kept his job. He would still have been the same man with the same failings and the same miserable record but events hundreds of miles away would've vindicated him. Now the pages of our beloved newspapers are filled with one top manager after another ruling themselves out of consideration for the job. There is a lot of hyperbole in football but I think it is realistic to say - at this point in time - managing the England team is the toughest job in world football. Except possibly one of the South American ones which will get you murdered if you do wrong by the syndicates. Jose Mourinho is the obvious choice. Now he is no longer with the sporty face of the Russian mafia I'm all for him. He's still a twat but most people are twats. He's the right sort of twat for the England job. But he doesn't want it - he says he wants a week-in week-out job not one which has the peaks and troughs of international football. At the very least I think the FA should rule out appointing anyone British. There are no British managers (apart from Alex Ferguson) who are big enough to make a difference right now. They should also rule out any foreign managers who haven't won either an international tournament or the Champions League. They need firm rules to prevent them settling on a compromise candidate who is a lame duck from day one. Steve McClaren was the footballing equivalent of John Major and look how he turned out. John Major - grey haired, wore glasses, smiled when he had nothing to smile about - you must remember him. At the time he was known as "the Steve McClaren of politics" but people didn't understand what being Oxford United's first team coach had to do with being Prime Minister. Prescience and wit seldom go hand in hand. I was rather shocked when I saw the news that Verity Lambert had died. She never struck me as being that old (even though she'd been in television since the 1950s). I suppose 71 really isn't that old these days. She was still going strong - the second series of "Love Soup" which she produced hasn't even been transmitted yet. There is no doubting her legacy - Doctor Who was created by committee but she was ultimately responsible for what ended up on screen. Without her Doctor Who would've been very different. She defied Sydney Newman and allowed the Daleks to go on. Plenty of ambitious and slightly cowardly male producers might've taken Newman at his word and avoided "bug eyed monsters". There have been several producers in Doctor Who's long history who have done great things - creating the idea of regeneration, casting Patrick Troughton, reinventing the show in colour, discovering Tom Baker and keeping the series going when the unions and (later) the BBC themselves were determined to destroy it. Not to mention RTD's recent revolution. But none did more than Verity Lambert to make Doctor Who the most successful British television programme of all time.
18th November I went to see Beowulf on Thursday - premiere and all that - and while it was an ok movie in more or less the true sense of the word, it was not without its problems. The biggest was that it was in 3D. Remarkable 3D. Stunning 3D. 3D that will redefine cinema in the years to come. But 3D which required David Tennant style glasses to be worn. Which meant I got very blurry and fuzzy 3D because I'm absurdly short sighted and no amount of BIG SCREEN compensation is going to change that. If I hadn't been told in advance, I wouldn't have known they were CGI people. That's how blurred it was. But I could still appreciate the 3D to some degree. I swapped glasses after the exciting and heroic climax and watched it in 2D clarity. Unlike ye olde 3D which put a flat filter on the film, this new technology adjusts every single element to give real depth. Watching it in 2D meant I could see the grey ghosts around everything move around in an attempt to fool the audiences brains. There was a queue when I arrived - late - and it was a singularly annoying queue. For example, tickets to this cinema cost £5.80. Remember that. Customer: Ticket for Beowulf please. Cashier: That'll be £6. Customer: What? Cashier: £6 - it's a bit extra because you get to keep the 3D glasses. Customer: When will it be £5.80? Cashier: The regular version is on next week. Customer: Can I book a ticket for that? Cashier: It opens next Thursday... And so on. The other bit was only for pizza night. I can't tell the story in a way which doesn't make it look like I'm mocking people who shouldn't be mocked. Pizza was good - I caught up on what's been happening during my fortnight off. At least those bit I didn't already know having remotely logged on five times. Which sounds a lot but (a) right at the start I said six times wouldn't be excessive and (b) more than half of them had legitimate reasons (including two connected with the Citrix patch not being Vista certified and it throwing up errors). It seems not much has happened. There have been developments with the Christmas Do. It now looks as if we will not only be subjected to pub stand up but we're having a joint night out with another area. Which could mean another twenty people I don't know sharing table and just generally being there. I don't like this idea. But, having got my way over not going into Manchester for fun and topicality I will probably be expected to go with the flow. Conversation turned to football and how it was inevitable - corruption being what it is - that Russia would beat Israel on Saturday. I was told "they could play you up front and still win" by one of m'colleagues. TheArtist saw his chance to land a cutting blow. "Surely your best position is full-back... as in full-back in the dressing room." Silence. Then someone asked "Don't you mean left-back in the dressing room?" "Oh yeah" he admitted. Between that and having discovered a noise which reduces him to jelly, going back to work won't be quite as bad as I thought. Speaking of football and Israel vs Russia in particular, one tries to be cynical and say how much better it would be if England were eliminated and got the wake up call they needed. But when p came to s I still found myself cheering Israel on. I'd like to think it was because there is no point hoping England will fail and that this will change anything because England have failed many times before and nothing ever changes. If Steve McClaren gets sacked, the FA will court some of the biggest names in Europe. And they'll all turn the FA down and we'll end up with Gareth Southgate or Mick McCarthy. It won't change the youth policies of the top clubs, it won't stop them buying foreign players, it won't change the culture of not caring about playing for your country and it won't stop the tabloid press destroying anyone they choose to. All it will do is keep things exactly as they are. England were failures when McClaren took over - he's done nothing but keep them ticking along in failure mode. Now an act of God in the holy land has done us a favour. If nothing is ever going to change, it might as well not change next summer in Austria than not change on a cold November Saturday. Here's an old favourite from the ADBS archive to celebrate four consecutive weeks of shows.
14th November I went back to the Science and Technology Museum in Manchester today. I went there in September with the Doctor Who exhibition as the main course and perhaps half the museum for pudding. I did the other half today and jolly good it was too. The main part I missed last time was the Air and Space Hall. The first thing you meet is this enormous aircraft. It was one of the first super-sonic test planes ever to fly really quickly. Or something. Actually, the first thing I saw was a part of French school children running around and shouting like our children do but in French which our children never will.
It's called the Air and Space Hall but there isn't much space (except literally) and it has old cars in it. Not that I've anything against old cars - this is a rather splendid old machine.
Hiding, as if embarrassed, under the wing of a massive plane is this little piece of history. Yes, amongst all the wonders of twentieth century flights is a Sinclair C5. Fantastic. That made me day.
Here we have a fighter plane. I don't know much about it but the French kids were drawing it.
Three guesses as to what this is.
The answer is a black box. It neither being black nor shaped like a box probably fooled you. Another guessing game - what is the small plane in the middle of this rather cluttered scene?
It is a Japanese suicide plane. A genuine (though unsuccessful) kamikaze plane of the type used to attack American ships towards the end of the war. I think the placard said its Japanese name literally translates as "cherry blossom". This even more than usually massive plane is an early warning craft. The sort of thing which flew around detecting things before anyone else could detect them. It is huge. I can only imagine it was the first to see things because it blocked everyone else's view.
And this is one of the things which went inside it and detected things. I have a strange desire to play with it.
This, if I read the placard correctly, is a Spitfire. The plane in the background that is, not the strange model which someone left there for no obvious reason.
In the main building of the museum I found this contraption. I've no idea what it is but it is very Jon Pertwee. You could take the whole planet backwards in time with that lot. And Martin Jarvis obviously. You wouldn't get anywhere without the Jarvis.
The Power Hall contains lots of locomotives and enormous machines which turn wheels and let off steam. They are magnificent even if I've absolutely no idea what they are for. They remind us how innovative our ancestors were. Our modern marvels are knocked up by cheap labour in foreign parts and last a few months before they are either superseded or they fall apart. Their marvels were built out of proper metal by craftsmen and lasted for hundreds of years. I don't know what this one does or ever did but it is impressive.
There was lots more but it was mostly displays in cases and things projected onto walls. MOSI is a great place to go and really easy to get to if you happen to find yourself in Manchester. Just don't take a short cut back to the Metro station. I did and it turned out to be this.
13th November My new computer has arrived. Yesterday was fraught - everything seemed sluggish and flaky. I didn't sleep much last night and my plans to go out today were scuppered. I think (touch desk) things are looking better today. I've removed a bunch of useless crap from the running tasks thingummy, tweaked a few settings and persevered like heck and now I'm reasonably happy with it. I've not touched anything new and Vista-y yet - once everything is good and happy, then I'll see if there is anything new and cool. This really isn't a very interesting paragraph - I'm just checking whether it will work. Laters.
11th November I'll say this for Dell, they're swift. After umming and ahhing for a while I ordered a new PC on Wednesday afternoon. By Thursday night the thing had been built to my demanding specifications and shipped to the couriers. On Friday morning I had a phone call asking when I would like it delivering. The upshot of all this is that I've been doing a little tidying in my technical department and was reminded yet again that amidst the solid mass of cables (half of which don't go anywhere) is probably the power lead for my printer/scanner. Some years ago I blew up a printer by guessing which lead was its power lead. I plugged it in, heard a pop, smelled something burning and that was that. I followed up that trick by doing exactly the same thing with my scanner. Same guess, same pop, same smell, same end result. So I got a new printer/scanner combo and all was well until I moved it and lost the power lead. It's been sitting on a shelf ever since. Things have been put on top of it which is usually a sign it has fallen into fairly terminal disuse. Yesterday I pulled it out and had a look round the back. Then I discovered that it doesn't need anything fancy - not for it one of those leads which goes into a conversion box which goes into another lead and ends, fairly pleased with itself, at a plug. All that converting nonsense was built into the printer. All it needed was a bog standard power lead - the sort of thing you'd use for a ghetto blaster in the 1980s. Of which I have lots. So for two years I've been looking (admittedly not very hard) for something which doesn't exist. I could've had two years of happy scanning and printing if I'd only bothered to have a look round the back. The punch line is, of course, that the internet tells me said printer/scanner combo isn't Vista compatible which means tomorrow it becomes useless again. All of which explains why I've forced scans of the 1983 Big Daddy annual upon you all now. It isn't a feeble attempt to copy Mr Hart and his World Distributors nostalgia fest. I just happen to have these scans now and am operating in a very narrow window. Like the sort they have in castles to make it hard to shoot arrows through. How long it is since I last went to the cinema is almost as shocking as how long it is since I last went on holiday. My little nephew was two weeks old when I last went to the cinema. The two events are not connected as it would be another four years before I actually met him. I was about to start my first job and the reasonably new Trafford Centre cinema was showing Barry Blaustein's documentary "Beyond the Mat", which includes such classics as Jake Roberts turning up to a show and insisting he be paid in crack instead of cash and hearing Mick Foley being pissed off with the Rock not for having just hit him in the head with a metal chair twice as often as they agreed but because he didn't pop round after the match to ask if Mick was ok. Anyway, I decided enough was probably enough so I went to the cinema again. It was only because the new Elizabeth film was out - there is literally nothing else which sounds anything like anything I'd like. Most films it seems to me are rubbish. We had twelve minutes of trailers and the only one which didn't look absolutely dreadful was a Will Smith film. That's like leafing through the Christmas Radio Times and circling nothing but a Noel Edmonds gift-giving and high jinks special. I liked the first Elizabeth movie - not enough to have watched it more than once but it was one of my early DVDs. It came in the briefly-popular all-plastic CD jewel case style box. I can't review films as you know. I liked it - Cate Blanchett was once more excellent as Elizabeth, the supporting cast were perfectly adequate, technology has reached the point where a sea battle can be convincing and I don't feel too many liberties were taken with history. Some will quibble about Walter Raleigh replacing Francis Drake as the hero of the battle but it didn't annoy me too much. What did annoy me were the pair behind me. It was an almost empty cinema - I went at midday - and they still chose to sit right behind me. They had their choice of hundreds of other seats and they chose to piss me off. They babbled throughout. Not even in a whisper. They babbled in their normal not-quite-sounding-at-proper-speed voices. The woman kept asking what was going on. Raleigh said he was going to send fire ships into the Spanish fleet. He started setting fire to his ship. "What's he doing?" asks the woman. This was by no means isolated. Anything which involved anyone doing anything was questioned. I guess she went into the cinema with two options - she could either watch the film and pay attention or let the thing wash over her and let her other half sort out the complicated bits. Like dialogue or changes of location. Apart from them - and all the crappy adverts - it was fine. The King of Spain was a two dimensional comedy villain in the Anthony Ainley tradition. I was pleased that they didn't try to see both sides of the issue. He - along with the rest of Catholic Europe - were the baddies and Elizabeth's England were the goodies. There were no shades of grey and that is a good thing. Mary Queen of Scots was the other villain of the piece - often portrayed as a foolish pawn in the game but here apparently taking an active role in the plotting. She's never going to be a great character but here she is used extremely well - her death has more significance than is usually does and Elizabeth's reaction to it is more than mere guilt. There are some very over the top shots - visual arsing about simply because they could - but they are permissible because they do everything else so well. Elizabeth's big speech on the eve of battle is moving but in two senses - in addition to bringing a lump to the throat she is delivering it on horseback and the horse won't stand still. It's a great film and one I thoroughly recommend. One of history's greatest figures has another marvellous outing and history doesn't get too much of a kicking. I wonder what will be on in seven and a half years time for my next visit? Probably "Episode VIII". And this exchange overheard in The Works amused me. Two staff members are going over some sheet of paper or other. Staff 1: Give me a day that's not Tuesday. Staff 2: Last Tuesday?
7th November Well, I lost my nerve and didn't order an iMac. I'd been having doubts for a few days - whenever I thought about what I wanted and needed it always came back to Windows. Then I went to the Apple store in Manchester and played with an iMac for ten minutes and realised it isn't as responsive as I thought. The delay between clicking an icon and the program starting was only a few seconds but this is on a freshly assembled demo model - after a few months usage it is bound to slow down and I'd end up with a machine as sluggish as my existing Mac and PC. It was also a concern that I couldn't think of any particular use I'd have for the impressive looking Apple software bundled with all new Macs. Yes, iCal looks good but I doubt it would sync with my phone and that's what I want from a calendar so I'd have to carry on using Outlook. iTunes and Safari are available for the PC (I'd carry on using Firefox in any case), the photo and DVD apps aren't anything I'd really use and Time Machine is a basic incremental back up program with an extremely flashy interface. I've been looking through the third party software on the Mac website and I found a few things that would be useful but it was always things which would do the job of Windows software I've already got. Which begs the question why not just use the Windows software I've already got? Macs seem to me to be for both the novice computer user and the professional. They make the business of downloading photos, browsing the internet and listening to music as simple as they can possibly be. They are also remarkably powerful if you have the high end software a pro would use. But for the middle-range user like me they are lacking in something. Once I realised that I'd be using it more as a PC than a Mac I thought there is no point getting a Mac. For £300 less I could have a considerably more powerful PC from a reputable firm (Dell) and avoid an awkward transition and learning phase. So that's what I've done. Maybe next year I'll go back to my original plan and get a Mac Mini so I can switch between the two. But when push came to shove I wussed out. I can now look forward to headaches with Microsoft Vista. I met ShirtGuy for brunch today. That sounds so cosmopolitan. His little boy is a year younger than Banana so he has the utterly adorable year between 1 and 2 to look forward to. Speaking of my little Banana I went to see her at m'brother's last Sunday. She was absolutely captivated when I showed her a video on my phone. She has a fascination with Grandma's dining room hatch and will endlessly open and close it, giggling whenever there is someone on the other side. One day I went into the kitchen and recorded her opening and closing the hatch, playing her little game of boo. And that lead to the wonderful few minutes of her watching herself and giggling every time she saw herself. The best part was that the video lent itself to being looped so we carried on watching it over and over again without her noticing. I'm not going to mention the thing - you either know what that means or you don't. We're dealing with a crazy person and it's just easier to give in than argue. He's a bully and he is in the wrong but doing what he wants is the best way to make him go away. I know plenty of people online who wouldn't have been so craven but I'm not one of them. And that's it.
4th November Proof, if any were needed, that I'm not quite right these days. I ordered Big Finish's 100 from Play.com months ago. It was shipped in October during the postal strike. I thought yesterday that I'd quite like to listen to it but couldn't find it. I realised in bed that I'm not entirely sure I ever got it. I think I remember getting it but I didn't put it on my iPod, I didn't look through the booklet for a photo of Jac Rayner and I can't find it. I might be mixing it up with Son of the Dragon or Absolution - both of which arrived, were ripped and put in their correct release order on a shelf. Should I tell Play that I didn't get it even though I'm not absolutely sure I didn't get it? Or should I assume I'm a moron and somehow managed to get a CD and lose it a couple of weeks ago without noticing? Cuteness time - here is Banana feeding the ducks. I caught her saying "Wowww" as she was amazed by ducks she'd already seen before. It is adorable watching her feed ducks because she doesn't know how to throw (and will never know how to throw because she's a girl according to TheArtist). She lets go of the bread at completely the wrong time and it ends up at her feet. So the ducks come and get it and we end up further and further away from the pond.
I dosed myself up with caffeine yesterday and really had a bash at getting stuff done. All in all I managed 6,500 words across six items - none of which have anything to do with the recently advertised serial - in an attempt to get some sort of breathing space in which to start work on said serial. But it won't work because I'm not getting enough stuff sent in to let me get ahead. Most of yesterday's effort has already been swallowed up with today's update. The moral of the story is that now is a really good time to send me me stuff.
1st November Last weekend's overtime was part of a customer service restructure (another one but a sensible one this time). Today was the official launch and the company handed out free breakfasts to everyone. At first it was just bacon or sausage sandwiches but someone more important than me must be vegetarian because they added fried eggs too. A fried egg sandwich can be a perfectly fine thing. And it was. It just wasn't terribly generous.
I feel wretched at the moment. Not ill as such. Just utterly lacking in anything useful. As a result, this may be all you ever see of the fifth annual Brenty Four.
That's it - that's the plan. More or less. It has a beginning, a middle, an end and a few bits in between. I want to write it but I don't think I can, nor do I think anyone really cares whether I do or not.
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