Fallible Fella

... and they're off ! ... well almost.

2011-11-01T01:22:00.000Z

It's now the start of NaNoWriMo 2011. This means that over the month of November, I will attempt to complete a 50,000 word novel. I entered into this literary race last year, but didn't get to the 50,000 word point because there were lots of other things going on at the time, but principally packing and moving.

One idea that comes to mind, is about taking a picture of something I see or experience in the course of the day, and make the writing that I do center or at least include the thing that I've seen. Clear ?

As crystal. Crystalised coal. An example would be that Saturday, when I went to pick up Chloe, there was a helicopter passing over Southsea. It was trying, I think to maintain a hover in a cross wind, and not really doing a good job of it.

Make sense ? Yah. Thought so.

Today's work was busy, but not as busy as I was expecting. So all good then ? No. I'd gotten up early in order to be able to pop into Tesco on the way to work to get some food for the Halloween buffet, and some decorations. I really don't get into the hyper Americanised theming of what is a pagan festival of the dead, (rather strange considering what a religiously insane country the USA is). My dressing up was limited to wearing all black. I had bought some face paint, but had not been able to get that on as I barely had time to sneeze all day. When I explained it earlier, I used a different bodily function to sneeze.

So. NaNoWriMo. Yay. All starts tomorrow.

smile, and the world smiles with you...

2011-10-29T01:38:00.003+01:00

Somehow, in the midst of all the stress, hassle and chaos that has been work this week it's actually been a very enjoyable experience.

Something, I think to do with the banter, fun and entertainment provided a good antidote to the burdens of the week. It's been very busy. Energy companies are pretty much the spawn of Satan in the eyes of some in the media. Despite my guys finding somethings tough, with us operating on a reduced number of bums on seats, they are being cheerful and playful about the whole experience.

When I think back to what the team was like, when it was first formed back in November 2010, things were very different. There was a lot more drama, a lot more pouting, shouting and stropping about. The amount of time I would have to spend with certain people, the fact that some people were pretty much escalating to me on a daily basis because they were creating problems being so argumentative with customers. God. How that all seems like such a distant, but painful memory. At the time my boss asked me 'how the fuck do you manage to make yourself come into work every day ?'. I guess maybe because as much as my stubbornness can be a problem, it can also be a strength.

At some point in the next month or so, I will be getting some new team members. These will be fresh newbies that have recently joined and completed their training. I know that this will alter the team dynamic somewhat, but I hope that we don't lose the really intimate and friendly banter we have.

You can really tell if people like each other by how much they take the piss out of one another. And that we all certainly do. A lot.

kindletastic

2011-10-28T00:44:00.000+01:00

Let's just see how long I can tolerate making a blog entry from the comfort of my own Kindle. Because dear reader, and I avoid the plural quite rightly, that is indeed what I am trying to do. The first thing I notice is that my blog actually doesn't look too bad in e-nk monochrome. The next thing I pick up on is how annoying it is that the editting window on blogspot doesn't fit on the kindle screen.

Aside from that it is actually a shock at how dependant upon spell checking I am. I am using what is now called 'Kindle with keyboard' and as lomg as I don't try to enter nanowrimo on it, It is a fine little keyboard. The temptation is to use thumbs as if the kindle is some sort of distant relative of the blackberry. Ah I miss my blackberry.

Slap myself around the face

2011-10-27T01:25:00.000+01:00

It's becoming quite common, this saying that the week's going rather badly. Well it is. Okay. It's going rather badly. The fallout from the work last week still drags on. The end of the month is nigh, so the inevitable end of month admin work looms like a particularly uninteresting relative that you don't really want to spend time with.

My life is no more remarkable, no less amazing than any other.

Find me somebody to love, find me somebody to love..... somebody... anybody....

2011-10-22T16:46:00.000+01:00

The rest of the week hasn't worked out significantly better, but it wasn't any worse. I was about an hour late getting out of the office today (Saturday) because I was helping someone on a call, and that was proving difficult to do.

Sometimes it's really hard, because you know you just want to do your best for someone, and really want to help them out, but they aren't perhaps in a place where they find themselves able to accept your help or your advice.

I guess it's part and parcel of dealing with the public that some people will make a seemingly simple thing that's rather easy to fix very difficult to resolve because they just don't get it. Some people however are determined to never get it. Determined that you are the big evil nasty faceless company that the press have told them you are.

Being told that I sound posh on the phone and that perhaps I should consider going back to school in order to get a more worthwhile job is always a way to make me feel really in tune with someone's emotional state.

To say everyone, would be wrong, but some people feel that their issue, their problem is the worst thing to ever happen to anyone in the existence of the industry. From a logical standpoint, this obviously can't be true, we just don't set new records for shitness on a daily basis. What I find hard to deal with, because it wouldn't be right to actually tell them, is that sadly some people bring this on themselves. We are far from perfect, and are quite ready to hold our hands up and admit when we get things wrong, but if someone is determined to not read the information we send them, warning that we haven't been able to get a true assessment done due to lack of access, or that reducing their payments below the average cost of what they are using then they play a part in digging that hole for themselves.

Unfortunately, those sort of people take a lot of time and effort to convince that they, at the very least had a part to play in why they have a large balance to pay now, and will be adamant that we should have done more. It does mean that there's less time and resources to help those that are in more fundamental need, that have done all they could to try and prepare, and yet just can't make ends meet.

Ironically it's the ones that get offended on the phone on behalf of the 'needy' that you can't please. 'You should do more to help them' they say. 'You should spend time with them, helping them save money' they opine. Well I would, if you'd get off the phone and let me go do that.

With the help of the beloved media, the 'Great' British public sometimes get themselves in a right tiz by proxy. Not seeing that actually taking up our time to explain to them all the things we do to help people stops us from spending time, er... helping people that they want to 'save'.

You don't go into Tesco and fill the trolley with £80 of shopping, get to the till and then say that you think it should be worth £20, or more accurately, having taken it home, eaten all the food call back a year and a half later and try to say you didn't eat it, and will only now pay a quarter of its value.

I want to cry sometimes at the more elderly customers who are apologetic, think that they should say sorry to us because they can't afford to pay their bills, that no one in their community or in their family (god forbid) has advised that they can get their heating replaced, insulation fitted all at government subsidy, or are entitled to extra benefits.

Sadly it is sometimes the case, that those with the money, are actually the ones most effective at finding ways to not hand it over to anyone else. They are after all the ones with the education, resources and savvy to wriggle their way out of things. I'm not a socialist, but this pisses me off. It's just not right, or fair.

If I could get a pound every time someone said to me 'oh, I don't read my bills, no one does do they ?' (you read this one okay, or you wouldn't be speaking to me now) I could set up a fund to help those that did read their bills, that sit there shivering, unable to sleep in fear that they'll be cut off or have someone knocking at their door. Some people think we have a button under our desk to just cut people off at will. Others seem to think that we have a bath filled with crisp £50 notes at the end of ever desk and go bathe in it at lunch time.

I just want to help people. Is that too much to ask ?

Tell Me Why (I Don't Like Mondays)

2011-10-19T00:25:00.000+01:00

Annoyingly my day off this week is Tuesday. This means that the rest of the week is longer than the start of it. so I have a long climb down to the weekend arrives, and 5 precious hours of it will be spent at work. Dammit.

Monday was a complete shit of a day. We were very, very busy and somehow this idea of half the managers doing coaching, and the other half dealing with manager calls seemed to work out that I ended up taking 6 escalations myself. Two of which I solved before the day was out, but nonetheless I was sodding well knackered and ready to escape come the end of the day. Had it not been 4 days before payday I would have gladly nipped into the pub for a pint or two.

2011-10-16T21:48:00.001+01:00

Sundays are such interesting things. I got an invite late last night to have roast dinner at my mum's this evening. If there's one thing I can't turn down, it's the opportunity of a roast dinner I don't have to prepare.

So, after dispatching Chloe (well, I took her home) and bouncing some ideas around with Alec to help with the current series of The 9th Man, I went round my Mum & Dad's.

Really good to see them again, haven't seen them in a week or so (if you don't count me waving out the window to my dad when he is having a smoke in the garden).

Also good to see my Sister, and my nephews. Bless them. When they're not trying to kill each other.

I also received a reply from Helen, to agree to arrange a meet up. We need to meet face to face to sort out our issues. All this sending messages back and forth just isn't working.We need to have 'the talk'.

A good old family weekend, with some creativity mixed in, and the cleaning too. Am I good, or am I good ? No Tardis, no screwdriver, three minutes to spare. Who da Man ? Oh, ok, I'm never saying that again.

Sunny Saturday... ooooh loook. Grass !

2011-10-15T21:50:00.002+01:00

After the roller-coaster experiences of the week, I'd been determined to make the most of the weekend and get up really early today. Unfortunately things didn't really work out that way. I'd been not so much fighting, as ignoring the alarm from 7am onwards, to the point that they (the alarms) both gave up, and left me to it. The cats even, were ever hopeful that I would rise and give them some breakfast.

Eventually I got up, but by this point it was 9 o'clock and gone. So after a slow start, I got to cleaning the flat, removing the covering of fur from the carpets, while two innocent looking kittens look on. You'd think they would be afraid of the vacuum cleaner, but they aren't.

The work in the area that used to be the Taylor Wimpey sales office car park has continued this week, and only today, did I see that they have started laying the lawn in that park area. This is great news. Nice bit of greenery right outside the flat. Right inside my wifi range. Guess where I'll be sitting doing some writing on sunny days ?

After cleaning the flat, I got myself cleaned up, and then headed off to collect Chloe. My rush to catch the

bus was such that when I sprinted on-board, and took my seat, turning quickly to sit down, my laptop bag swung round and nearly took the face off the person in the seat behind. Oooops.

So unintended assaulting of bus passengers aside, was actually on time to collect Chloe. In fact, early enough to pop into Palmerston Road and get some cash out. Yay.

Her phone's been incapable of accessing the internet and the Android Marketplace (the app store for Android phones) for a little while, and although this may be a good thing for the rest of us, it's been really annoying and inconvenient for her. Clever Dad, has now fixed this. I am sure thought that at some point in the future I will come to regret this.

My Mum's called me this evening, and invited me to a roast dinner at hers tomorrow. Yum. Roast dinner I don't have to cook. I'm rather liking this weekend. The other thing that's been great about today, is that whilst doing the cleaning, I've got some ideas formed in my head to use for the looming Nanowrimo. Yes, that's right, I'll be spending the month of November writing a 50,000 word novel, and this year I'm determined to have a better go at it than last year.

Out of the depths of despair...

2011-10-13T23:10:00.000+01:00

.... you come across some successes, and grab them, as seldom as they may be, with both hands and hang on like hell for dear life.

It's been another tough week, in so many ways. Within an hour of my shift finishing today, I felt pretty much invincible. Not only had I managed to resolve two particularly tricky customer complaints, but I also manage to 'negotiate' the tricky situation that had been brewing all week with Chloe wanting to spend some more money on yet another gadget from ebay.

12 year old ebay addict ? Maybe.

Taking those in reverse order, I'd spoke to Chloe's mother in the week about how we were both worried that she'd yet again wanted to buy something new (a radio controlled hover car). Having sold her old netbook a couple of weeks ago, the proceeds are burning a hole in her pocket. Not unexpectedly, her Mum is urging caution, and saying that she can't spend that money, and needs to set it aside. Chloe, reacting like an apprentice teenager saying that it was 'unfair' and that her mum was being 'out of order' not letting her spend her own money.

Apparently she'd even said that she thought that if she took her mum to court she would win, as it was her own money. Bless her, she is her Father's daughter. Her poor Mother.

In the end, a deflected suggestion that I go halves with her, and let her have the damn thing as an early Christmas present, we eventually stood our ground and agreed that if she really wanted it, should could have it for Christmas, but would not have it early. More decries of 'unfair' and 'out of order' followed, but eventually she succumbed to the reasoning that getting it in two months time is still better than never having it at all.

Happy daughter. Happy ex-wife. Good bit of parenting and standard setting. Joint operation. Job done. (until, of course the next crisis comes up). There had been some drama and crisis at the weekend about how things were going between Chloe and her Grandparents, who live next door to her. She had been rude to them, and used some colourful language. A bit of peacemaking, listening, understanding and then talking with her Mum seems to at least not made things any worse. For my part the explanation that treating her Grandparents, or parents like that isn't acceptable, no matter what she feels they did, and even so, if she wants to get them to change their minds and treat her differently, is shouting and swearing at them the way to do it? She's clever enough to see that it's not.

As shameful, cringeworthy it may be hearing that these things have happened, I'm pretty sure I said some choice things to my relatives over the years, and although I feel like I had more respect for them, I knew where the boundaries were but was resolutely determined to push them, not just a little, but with a full sized jump kick to the head.

Hopefully, whilst maintaining that this behaviour is unacceptable, getting Chloe to see that there are much more effective ways of getting what she wants will be a better way of getting her to chose the right way to be, and to treat people.

As for work. The things that are difficult don't get any easier. After all, I really do think that I would be in the wrong job if I actually enjoyed the things I'm talking about. I am being necessarily vague about some things that I have to do, as this is entirely proper. Some times it is hard to do the right thing. Doing the wrong thing is really, really, easy.

Now, to resolve that broken friendship.....

too tired to write..

2011-10-10T01:05:00.000+01:00

A long and arduous week deserves a weekend with excitement, enchantment... and some other stuff that begins with 'E'.

As it happened, it was pretty darn good.

A great day with Chloe, got off to a shaky start, with her mother telling me about how she's been behaving during the week. If she's been that bad, I'm surprised this is the first that I get to hear about it.

I've also been up to Steve's in Locks Heath to do some filming for The Adventures Of Stephen Brown. This was something unexpected (he only asked me on Friday) and rather a good night. Filming from about 6:30 pm until about half ten. Good script, good characters, great times.

I'm back home, and far too knackered to completely blog the events of the day and weekend. So I won't. I'll do it tomorrow instead.

Thank that day's over

2011-10-06T23:38:00.002+01:00

I don't know where to start about just how difficult my day has been. I've been close to tears I think for pretty much the whole day, feeling quite overwhelmed.

Sometimes its hard to do right for doing wrong. My day pretty much got off to a crap start when i was told within an hour of getting in that I had a meeting with the site manager about some of my team.

I felt rather taken to task for not seemingly doing enough to make sure people are at work, or that they are able to answer phones. It seemed to be that even though I'd done all the things that I had been advised to do, that wasn't enough. Sometimes I wonder what I would need to do to get a 'well done, that's a good job' reaction from these people. It's like being in a rose bush, manure dropped on me from above, and thorns to the side.

The brown smelly stuff just kept falling. Reports of complaints to investigate, end of month reports to complete. The day couldn't end soon enough. Tomorrow will be better. it WILL be better.

Here's something I wrote earlier...

2011-10-05T22:04:00.000+01:00

This is the review I wrote for Beacon of The Adventures Of Stephen Brown, the story was called Inversions...

This month is my first review of the eagerly awaited Specials of 2011 (or were they 2010, I get confused ?). With a reduction in output, greater care has been put into all of the technical aspects of the production, do we prove that less definitely is more ?

The previous season (whichever year it was) ended with a rather confused Lizzy (Sarah Miatt) discovering a gender confused Stephen Brown in the female form of Marie Ridley. This in itself is something that would have been very easy to go down the pantomime route and play to all the obvious jokes about the physical differences, and really construct a farce out of the situation. Thankfully this is not what Simon Doidge had included in his script. There was obviously the odd reference to the er.... chest differences, but the narrative focused on the other issues of the day.

Marie does a great job being thrown into a role that really would be quite tough to know how to play. This is made all the easier by Sarah's presentation of Lizzie's interpretation of events, and some very well set out camera work exploring the tension and confusion between the two.

Really, as I said earlier, this story does very well on the technical front, I can't see a boom in sight, and there's only one place where I think the transition cut in the edit was fluffed up a little (Marie's reference to chocolate milkshake), and where perhaps the sound needed to be better (John's audio matching image & lack of sound effect when Glenda & John disappeared from the antechamber).

Otherwise we can easily believe that buildings on other planets look like 1970s concrete high rises. We can certainly believe the use of sets (Vo's ship, the space fighters), and the CGI space battle scenes really have borrowed somewhat from Battlestar Galactica, but is a choice that works well. It's more than just watchable, it's believable.

The only area I would have to 'mark down' the story is in the story element itself. There's a lot of different things going on in these three episodes, and I struggled to follow at times what they all were, how they were interlinked and why they were important. I can't follow how or why we get Ryan back as Stephen. In previous Beacon work this would have been coupled with an assortment of technical issues that perhaps an audience would not be so forgiving of.

On this story, I think the enjoyability of the 'theatre' and drama of the images we are treated to, and the novelty of seeing Ryan in an RAF uniform (sorry mate, but John Barrowman still does it better) override or at least compensate for the confusions. For me it's the acting performances of Ridley & Miatt with the sets used and the CGI that saves this story. Knowing what happens in the next story doesn't stop me being interested in how this all pans out.... and if you're intrigued too then I suggest you fire up your web browser this minute and find out....

It's October, Damit !

2011-10-04T00:39:00.000+01:00

As I last blogged, we've had a couple of days of unseasonably hot, sunny weather. Not that I've had much of a chance to enjoy it, today, being at work. We were due to finish at 6, but with one thing and another, I actually got out of the call centre at 7. What surprised me was that outside it was very dark, like the middle of the night.

It was still rather comfortably warm. Wouldn't have expected that on October 3rd I'd be able to go to work and come home again in T-Shirt and shorts, and not at all be cold.

Really must shift my arse in gear about cleaning the flat. It's a shit tip and I've been a lazy arse.

I've also tried to get people interested in a drama session on Wednesday, but so far only seem to have a couple of people coming. Literally 2.

Here comes the sun...

2011-10-01T12:19:00.004+01:00

I write this, sitting outside (on my camping chair) basking in the gorgeous sunshine we are inexplicably blessed with. These things seem all the more special when you consider that it's October 1st today. Yes that's right kids, October 1st. Bloody hell, after all this furore about global warming, and how bad for us it is (going to be), no one stopped to tell us that it might mean I can write outside on a sunny day, in my shorts, IN OCTOBER. OCTOBER !

Did I mention it was October ?

I've gotten up reasonably early today (well, a shave before 9am) grabbed a coffee, after feeding the cats, and taken netbook with me to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine whilst catching up on some script editing and some reviewing for Beacon.

I even decided to risk letting the cats outside. It's so quiet, and there's probably no better time to let them have a sniff around than today.

Too often I lazily trap myself in my flat, in front of the television, or more often, in front of my Mac. Living on my own (sorry Midnight & Twilight, you don't count as people) that leads to a rather insular existence. Lots of moping and self reflection may be good for you, or at least required if you're a teenager, but at my age it's just a bit on the sad side. I don't feel a burning need to be with other people because I can't manage or survive on my own. But I do recognise that I learn the most from other people (usually all the ones I disagree with) and do enjoy the company of others, as long as they are the right people.

The group I work with (my team) at work the 'right kind of people'. Which I don't think is something that neither I or they would have said six months ago. It's been quite the roller coaster this year. I do feel good about the difficult times I've been through, because we (as a team) have all come through them together and that gives us a better understanding of one-another. I'm a great believer in whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. It's as true for immunity to virus and germs as it is to resilience to emotional distress and conflict. Having said that, there is still work to be done. There is more for me to learn (from them) and about how to get along with people better, and achieve more.

Times gone by I think I have been so eager to get a result that I've knocked everyone and everything out of my way in my determination to get there. Unfortunately this always involved knocking over the very people I needed to help me get there.

By far the greatest pride I feel about this year is that one person in my team managed to be successful in getting a job in another area of the business they were really interested in, when they've been overlooked a lot before, two others have been headhunted by other managers to stand in as their deputies, and another has shined so well that I'm convinced pretty soon the same will happen to her.

I'm sure that if you asked any of these four people, six months ago, that they thought they would be in that situation, and how well we'd be getting along, they would have all told you it was impossible and not to be so fucking funny or stupid.

I would have probably said pretty much the same. I've changed, they've changed. We've all grown. I'm sorry this all probably sounds rather mush and twee or terrible Americanised corporate bollocks. But it's true.

Someone who my relationship with has moved in the opposite direction is my friend of nearly 20 years. The person that I've written 4 plays with, countless sketches and created improvised videos for the world to enjoy (or avoid). We've always had diametrically opposing political views, and it's been something we have always been able to work with, ignore and manage. It's actually contributed to some of the balance in our writing. Now we can't seem to see eye to eye on anything. I don't think it's down to the politics. I think it's much more deeply routed than that.

You may recall that we fell out during the production of the last show. It really does seem to have been the death of our friendship. How she was feeling and reacting at the time was due I guess to the severe strain that she was feeling at home. She's had domestic issues for quite some time, in that one of her sons has unfortunately been caught up in the drugs world, and this has also made worse (or been made worse by) his problems interacting with people. He is afflicted sadlywith not being where you would expect a man of his age to be, in terms of social mental development. I am sure there's a medical or psychological name for such a condition, but I'm sorry, it escapes me. She also has, from time to time, problems where her other son gets involved in what could possibly be discribed as the darker element of society, or seems to want to declare war on the drug dealers as a whole for what he perceives as their decision to ruin his brother's life.

All of these pressures take a place in amongst all the others of money and time that an awful lot of people feel at the moment. She also has to deal with suffering from a debilitating condition herself called fibromyalgia. She works from home, as is sadly no longer well for long enough to be in the mainstream workplace. (this wasn't always the case).

We fell out because we disagreed about how to organise some things, or how to make things work within the show. Increasingly her ability to invest productive time and energy to the show became an issue. She became steadily frustrated that I (as she saw it) had taken over and was running things less as a partnership and more as a one man show, with an assistant director / producer. This situation was not due to a lack of effort on her part, merely that she couldn't seem to focus on the things that needed doing.

I steadily began to recognise the symptoms of stress in her, and what certainly looked like her heading toward a breakdown. I could see this, because I have been in that situation before myself, and have been able to move on with my own mental well being (if you like) because I can recognise these traits and take action to deal with things before they get worse. Unfortunately, she wasn't able or willing to agree that this was what was happening, and pretty much saw that I was being mean spirited and making her feel worse.

In the end, I had to manage to juggle not only my day job, and my own outside work pressures (they were nowhere near the sort of thing she was going through of course), protect her from the harsher elements of what I had been told or observed from members of the cast, and the some of the workload AND protect the show from the more destructive behaviors she was exhibiting. I do think I did a good job of this under the circumstances, because we managed to get to the end of the production with a show that was watchable, and enjoyable (although it could have been 1000 times better had we planned and organised better) and without our friendship exploding right infront of everyone involved.

I don't feel good about having to make decisions to do things without telling or asking her. I didn't like it, but didn't see an alternative at the time that didn't pose a greater threat to the show.

Somewhere along the line we have stopped communicating by telephone. I think this may be attributed to me getting cross with her after repeatedly being unhappy that she'd be on the phone to me for hours on end, when I've just come in from work and hadn't even had a chance to eat and was due back into work in 8 hours. These conversations would always be bad ones, that would make me feel shit, and would ruin my evening, or they would be ones that didn't actually achieve anything other than to moan about how much work there was to do, and how little time we had to do it. My observation at the time that we could achieve more by doing things than by sitting on the phone talking about them seemed to fall on deaf ears.

The paralysis of negativity is something I can see in people that are depressed, and also understand is hard to see past. I also know that the only way to feel good about achieving things is to get them done. You won't get the reward from finishing something if you never even start it.

She has now sent me several either lengthy (2000 word plus) emails or similarly long facebook messages, including one which she sent out to her nearest and dearest friends to 'brief' them on what's been happening in her life. In addition to this, she has now mentioned twice in different messages that she was offended because I haven't commented on her status at all. That I had 'hidden' her.

What's the netiquette about how often you should comment on your friends' status updates ? What if you don't want to, or feel the need to comment ? What if you don't because you're pretty much certain that what you say is going to start an argument ? Her updates are normally very political in nature, and mixed with rather lame personal attacks against those in power, that are usually all in capital letters. She also has the unfortunate habit of copy and pasting just about every pointless internet hoax or chain message that's doing the rounds.

I don't comment, because I think such things are either just rude or stupid, and say lots of things about how gullible and crazy the person repeating them is.

One of her longer messages that was sent out to a 'select' bulk of about 20 friends listed all the things that's been happening to her lately. Truly horrible things. Lots of our mutual friends made impassioned comments in reply to it. Was I wrong not to comment ?

I'm now left with the troubling problem of what to do. I'm not happy to be painted as the villain, but I'm also not happy to be expected to say things that someone likes just because they want to hear it, even if saying it will mean me lying, or being false.

2011-09-30T23:37:00.000+01:00

Right ! End of a good week. Sadly marking the last day that my current boss will be with us. Parting is such sorrow. I've really learned a lot in my time working for Heather. She's such a breath of fresh air.

So looking forward to the weekend though, as I haven't seen Chloe for two weeks. To tired to say that much more.

They were taking the piss... because we bloodywell werent

2011-09-28T23:37:00.000+01:00

... This is what greeted me this morning. Boy was I glad that I wasn't on a late night today, as I would have been rather pissed off to have been woken up by the digger working away at 7:30am. At least it meant that I didn't sleep in any longer than I did, which was a good thing, as had I done so, I would have been late for work.

One thing I forgot to mention in last night's blog was that at one point at work we were told that half the toilets in the building were out of order. When an office the size of a large superstore, and with about 2000 people working in it suddenly reduces the available facilities, it does rather have an impact.

We were the furthest away that you could possibly be from the working toilets. Just knowing that the nearest working loo is a good walk away plays on the mind, and makes you aware of the need to use them more. Also meant I wasn't quite so happy to drink as much coffee as I would normally. I don't know if this reaction is typical, but it's how it works for me.

Been another good day today, lots of things done, lots of fun too chatting along with my team. Visit today of the team member I haven't seen for some time went well enough. It's good to see people on the mend after not being themselves for quite a while. It's hard for them if they've off for any real length of time.

New toy for the cats

2011-09-28T22:13:00.000+01:00

I think the cats like their new toy.....

2011-09-27T23:58:00.000+01:00

Another day of progress at work. Many things achieved. Many people helped. Many problems solved. Looking good as the count down to the end of month compliance looms. (Like it does every month).

Haven't seen one of our work family for a while, and they're coming in tomorrow. It'll be nice, as this will mean that they get a chance to get used to being around us again.

Another thing looming is that my boss is moving on to greater things. She is being replaced by someone else, who seems very nice, but I am still more than a little bit sad to see my current boss move on. She's been really good for me in that I've learned lots of things from her about how to survive the at times false and insincere world of call centre politics. She is an inspirational leader who tells it like it is, doesn't put up with bollocks and rewards and appreciates effort.

Up sucking to one side, the cats decided to reward me for running out of cat litter (they did still have litter in their tray, it just needed changing). When I came home, after stopping into Tesco to buy some more, and feeding two hungry kitties I set about clearing out and then cleaning the litter tray. Whilst I was doing this, Twilight decided that rather than wait for me to finish she would squat and pee on the Asda carrier bag in the storage cupboard. Nice.

It's all rock'n'roll here.

Monday Monday... (text version)

2011-09-26T23:50:00.000+01:00

Been a good day today. Got an upbeat feeling about this week.

Chloe's back in the UK, the ship she was on docked into Portsmouth this evening. I'm glad to know that she's back in old blighty. I'm just a tad amazed that she didn't manage to start a major international incident, war with France, ejection from the European Union or something...

Her priorities are right on though. She was more worried that she'd missed some youtube videos from Yog's cast. (something to do with that Minecraft game she plays incessantly).

It's now the second month of life with my HTC Wildfire S. I am still rather impressed with the nifty little thing. I'm getting more used to it, and have managed (as you would have seen) to shoot some video on the go with it, and use that to include into my (v)blog.

I have completely forgotten all the excitement that temporarily besotted me about the prospect of an Iphone (4 or otherwise). They still haven't deigned to announce to the world what the future looks like. Personally I think they like messing with us.

No, not feeling like I missed out Iphone wise. I am, however still longing for the Blackberry. I lament about the battery life of the Wildfire S, and although that's got better since I got the Juice Defender App, it does run low to unusable after a day's work, and that's without me really using it that much throughout the day. It's the lack of the keyboard, and the frequency of updates that I could comfortably get on my Blackberry (without shedding loads of battery life). The decision to not pay for unlimited usage, when I don't need that much has worked out ok, I don't actually use it all. I'm not exactly being frugal with my internet usage on the phone, just careful, and I'm not running out of the 1 GB I got with it (£20 a month). Nowhere near running out of voice or text messages.

Either way, it's not possible for me to change this phone, there's no way in hell I can afford to buy a simfree handset to use with this sim, or to get a different contract just on the whimsey that I have yearnings for the joyous ease of the Blackberry real keyboard. Touch type is all well and good, but it's annoyingly inaccurate. It's that couple of milliseconds slow (not anything like the unusable of the old Windows Mobile in the late 90s. God that was torture) and the faff of typing with my fingers.

Maybe I should file my fingers down, to make them easier to use with my phone ? Sharpen them to a point or something. That'd work, right ?

my blog is boring

2011-09-25T22:37:00.000+01:00

Another one of those lazy weekends. Even more pointless because I didn't see Chloe this weekend, as she's in France with the school. I had meant to get some cleaning, and some creativity done.

Not cleaning creativity, these are two different subjects.

What is it about me not being motivated to do anything outside of work these days ? I haven't been bothered to put the energy into sorting out the direction to take for 'Made In Pompey'. I'm just not getting any enjoyment out of things, but that's mainly because I'm not actually doing anything to enjoy. What a stupid thing to expect reward without effort.

I have however, been blogging more. But what is it that I'm blogging about, if I'm not actually doing anything worth commenting on ? That's gotta be really boring to read.

Sorry.

After all, my blog is so boring, that I don't even get any angry comments. There are plenty of 'haters' on the internet (people that no matter what will say something horrible about anything that's uploaded). If I'm not provoking even hatred in people, what am I good for ?

Saturday

2011-09-24T23:40:00.000+01:00

A working day, being the end of a rather tough week. In human terms some exceptionally difficult stuff is week, I wouldn't know where to begin, even if I could really talk about it. Suffice to say there are some times when I really don't enjoy being a manager. If I did find enjoyment in the things that have been going on this week, then I would definitely be in the wrong job.

Still. You can't make an omelet.....

This half season thing with Doctor Who means that It's nearly October, and next week we'll be treated to the climactic ending. From the spoilers it looks like next week is really going to be a treat.

I'm going to be typically English now, and talk about the weather. We are rapidly descending towards winter, and I'm looking forward to it. Last night it was most definitely nippy. I felt this quite keenly as I'd been waiting around at Havant train station. As normal I'd gotten out of work late, but went for a swift drink. Feeling I deserved it after the week I've had. Today, was glorious warm sunshine. Perhaps Summer's last parting hurrah ?

I've noticed that all the occasions (as few of them that there are) that I've had an alcoholic drink lately, I've plumped for beer. My god. I'm turning into a man.

SOLD

2011-09-23T00:15:00.000+01:00

At the second attempt (after being screwed over by some arse from Nigeria) Chloe's netbook has sold on ebay. Sadly not in time for her to have part of the money to take with her on her school trip to France. I think I've done a rather good job of packaging it up..... Just need to get myself in gear and post it off on Saturday.

I'm Dan the digger....

2011-09-21T22:04:00.001+01:00

Fancy a spot of digging ? My day off lie in didn't get interrupted by the workmen from the site digging up the Taylor Wimpey sales office car park. Their turning it into the park area that it's meant to be. Which is rather nice. I hadn't expected them to be doing this until the site was much nearer to being completed.

I'm sure it'll be really nice, maybe I'll get to sit out there in the 2012 summer sun, nice cold drink, laptop, and all in reach of my wifi signal.

Chloe goes on her school trip to France at the end of the week. It seems quite a frightening prospect, but I have to catch myself and realise it's not like she is camping on the side of a mountain somewhere with her friends, she's going with the school.

Windy walk

2011-09-20T23:40:00.013+01:00

Aside from being woken up by two hungry cats, or the noisy antics of two builders outside the window, this morning had something else unplanned about it. That being that I was suddenly motivated whilst walking to catch the 700 at Hilsea, that I should take that, of all opportunities to try and record some video footage with the camera on my phone.

It came out quite well, I thought. The only grumble is how loud the wind noise is, but it was rather windy, so it is to be expected.

The day at work was strange in that there were only 4 members of the team in today. It's hard to inject some energy into such a small group of people, especially when they aren't the lively ones. Lovely as they are.

Still at least I managed to get on the bus going in the right direction tonight. Here's the film that I made on my mobile whilst walking through said wind, to get to work....

The Magical Mystery Tour

2011-09-19T23:45:00.000+01:00

Today, work was, well. Rather work like. Apart from the distinct lack of people in (some off sick, some on holiday) it was unusually quiet - at the start at least - for a Monday. It did get busier later on in the day, but that wasn't until after I'd had my bit of mini drama with Mike.

Every now and then his mickey taking crosses the line, and he seems to be fixated on winding me up to the point where he wants to watch me cop. That's normally annoying enough (annoying that a colleague would do that, annoying that I would react that way, that he's able to 'play' me in that manner), but today he did it in front of the rest of the managers in the zone. In the end I got tired of it and asked him to back the hell off. It all sounds a bit vague, and maybe a tad overly dramatic. Behaving like a premenstrual teenager. Not cool.

Not really something I ever claimed to be. Still I managed to get my point across without swearing, or raising my voice. Much.

When I finally got to the end of my day, without any other dramas. I walked to the bus station, knowing that I needed to get home before the man from Asda turned up with my home delivery. So eager was I to catch the bus home when I got to Havant bus station, that I ended up getting on the number 23 that was traveling the wrong way. I realised this as we went past the college and into Leigh Park, and by this point had figured that even if I got off the bus, the next one that was going to be going back the way I wanted, was the one that I was on, when it made the return journey part of it's circuit.

Luckily I had my Kindle with me, so was pretty well occupied during my little trip. It's quite a nice thing to do, be on the bus as it goes round. Maybe I will try it one day, to get away from any distractions. Just sit on the bus and go round and round, doing some writing. After all with my week pass, it wouldn't cost me anything more than I normally would have to pay out anyway. Hmmm...

Chloe had put her netbook up on ebay (well, I had for her), and we'd both gotten excited about someone that had taken the buy-it-now price of £100. Chloe is really eager to get the money so she can spend some of it when she goes to France at the end of the week. I had a suspicion that something didn't quite ring true, when they contacted me by email. Initially giving a UK address for shipping, but then, when they said they'd completed payment (which they hadn't) they then supplied a Nigerian address.

About as Kosher as a bacon sandwich.

I am still here...

2011-09-18T23:47:00.000+01:00

I've got so many ways of getting my opinions 'out there' that I actually don't bother using them.

So, after a gap of 3 months, here I am, September 18th, in bed, sat at my netbook whilst half watching 'He's Just Not That Into You'. Drinking a cup of hot chocolate.

Anyone in the know, may have been reading the blog, and wondering if I'd actually made it to my 39th birthday. I did, and as I am sat here typing this somewhat meandering entry, have made it way past that point.

So many things have happened, all things that you can (if you are at all bothered) catchup with from my vlog.

I don't really do this because I kid myself that other people are remotely interested in what I have to say. I do this for entirely selfish reasons. It's the only time I can get my point across without someone trying to argue with me.

As it is now three months since I enthusiastically decided to document each day counting down to my 40th birthday (and over nine months since I gave myself the new years' resolution of blogging daily). Time to catch myself up, decide if the targets or goals that I set for myself this year are really ones that I want to achieve, and if so, make sure that they do come true.

Last year turned out to be all about buying the flat. It wasn't until June time that this became apparent. There was a part of me that felt the need to find someone to spend time with, in my new home. I make it sound so clinical.

Have I changed any of my habits ? Have I done anything different ? So why am I expecting to get a different result ? I'm always telling the guys (in my team) at work that if they want different outcomes (in their performance) then they must do something different. As I believe Einstein said 'only a fool does the same thing and expects a different result'.

Just don't do this consistency thing very well. The bit where something becomes routine. Normal. Mundane.

T minus 1

2011-06-12T22:11:00.000+01:00

Being the last day of my 38th year, I decided to record a little video. Not really a lot to it, but anyhow... the video goes like this :-

I've been for a nice dinner at my Mum & Dad's tonight. It's not even actually my birthday yet, and I already have two great gifts. (The office tidy set from my daughter, and the money from my parents). I sense some clothes shopping is in order.

Poker face

2011-06-12T00:21:00.000+01:00

Been so long since the last post, but what can I fill this one with that isn't pages and pages of anger and frustration ?

I know, let's fill it with love and understanding and.....

Ah bollocks to that !

This week has been hard. Looking back on last week's blog, I can see that this is becoming a regular thing, something that I am steadily accepting, and rather apathetically shrugging my shoulders and carrying on. With a tough, hard fought week at work where everything went mental (one of our competitors announced that they would be increasing their prices and it seemed that everyone in the world wanted to speak to us). On the good side, we have two new guys in our team who seem to be getting along really well, but have had great success to show some of the more established hands that you can do things if you put your mind to it. Progress with a couple of the team who have perhaps struggled to take charge of things, and seeing them realise that they can have an effect on their results if they chose to approach it in the right manner. Great to see, one in particular pretty much shining all week with a brilliant 'I am going to get this done and nothing's going to stop me' focus.

It has been non stop though, hard work. Really seeing the fruits of their hard labour. Feeling exhausted by the week, but elated with how things ended up.

It has been the usually roller coaster ride though of the highs and lows of elation and near depression. The yo-yo ride of emotion inside work has not at all coincided with the operation of the same ride outside of work. Elation at finally submitting the poster design to the printers, and getting some publicity material 'out there' has helped start off the week, but Monday's rehearsal left me feeling rather flat and with the desire to run away as fast as my legs could carry me. Wednesday, on the other hand, we focussed on going over and over a couple of the really intense scenes in the show. These are the ones with lots of things going on at the same time (our trademark chaos), and are hard to plan and direct. Even harder to execute with people still holding on to scripts for dear life.

With some gentle encouragement, they were able to drop their scripts (for the most part) and we got through three different scenes, with great progress being made in the timing and performance of all concerned. No easy feat, but was helped certainly with everyone actually dropping those pesky scripts and with all the cast actually being there, which must be about the first time that has happened.

Still only three weeks to go before the show. There is now a crowd from work going along, it will be great to have that support.

Guess what ?

2011-06-05T23:40:00.000+01:00

Another flipping flat tyre !!! Seriously. What ?

Interesting couple of days. Work has been quite far from easy. At some point the reality that we are not doing as well as we think we are, and that action needs to be taken to correct that. Some people are not, I think being honest with themselves about how good they are. Others are overlooking how good they are, which is a damn shame.

Air conditioning not working on Saturday, which was a swelteringly hot day anyway, without having to spend 5 hours inside a baking hot call centre. Normally this wouldn't have been something that really bothered me (apart from the discomfort, and the smell - only kidding - there wasn't a smell) if it hadn't been for the fact that I was meeting up with a nice young lady after work, and hadn't really wanted the first time she met me for me to be this scruffy, sweaty dishevelled bloke getting off the bus.

We met up, as planned, after I had stopped into Tesco to get some food. (Cooked chicken and some salad). Met her at the bus stop and walked her round to mine, so that she could meet the kittens. Yup, that's right, so pathetic am I that I used my kittens as part of my chat-up routine. (yeah right, anyone that knows me, would really find the idea that I even indulged in chatting people up, let a lone that I had some sort of routine to follow hilarious. Routine. No. Spreadsheet - maybe).

She is a very nice girl, and it's amazing that even in this day and age when you get to know all sorts of things about people from the internet, from looking at facebook (oh common, you'd have a peek, wouldn't you ?), and that you get to see various images of them before meeting them for real, that they still look different and aren't entirely how you imagined them.

My imagination could never have envisioned how gorgeous she is, nor could I have realised what sort of a person she is, or the things that she's been through. Makes me think perhaps I should shut the fuck up moaning about my life. Like the saying goes, there's always someone worse off than you.

How do these sort of things work ? I've never known how to interact with people at the best of times, let a lone beautiful women, who probably think 'god what a plonker'. I think the standard advise, is 'be yourself', be 'cool'. Cool ? I've never been cool. Bow Ties are more cool than I am. Fezzes are more cool than I am. I am most definitely a mad man with a box.

The situation that I wrote about the other week, between myself and my creative partner, Helen is not going away. I received a rather long email from her last night, which I have had to stop myself from responding to. I can say how I feel, but I don't feel that I can without hurting my friend. I am also feeling frustrated that we seem to have covered the same ground, again and again, and my point of view doesn't seem to be sinking in. I feel at the moment, sadly that the very best we can hope for is that we can get this show produced and finished with without irrevocably damaging our friendship. I don't bare grudges, it actually takes a lot to really piss me off, but I can be belligerent and judgemental. I do like to know that I am right (but this only gives me any comfort whatsoever if I actually am right).

What's a guy to do ? I'd like an easy, relaxing hassle free part to my life, please. I guess that's not going to happen any time soon, now. Is it ?

Oh yes, did I not mention. Another flat flipping tyre, now repaired, I can only hope that it stays repaired.

... and where was it you spent your Wednesday evening Simon ?

2011-06-03T00:48:00.000+01:00

In the toilet.

With some friends.

I think I'd better explain. Quickly.

Upon hearing that we would be 4 people short for Wednesday's rehearsal we struck upon an ingenious plan. (Okay, so maybe I'm only saying it's ingenious because it was my idea). Having already noticed that we were struggling to arrange for people to be together to do the filmed pieces for the show, we decided that we would film some of them with the people that were able to attend that session.

This meant that the 'Dumping Ground' scenes. So, in rather a rush, and nothing less than an absolute hurry, we did indeed mange to film four segments.

This only leaves us with two to do from the toilets. The rest of the filmed spots will need to be shot in my flat. We didn't finish till very late, but it was well worth it. While all this was going on, Helen was busy going over a couple of scenes with some of the rest of the cast.

Both Helen and I are getting really worried about the amount of lines that people have actually learned. The play really does need people to be natural as possible, and they sure can't do that whilst holding the heavy tome that is the script.

Another thing that had been worrying us (along with all the other things to think about regarding the show) is that we don't have a poster.

Well not anymore. Lin's friend, Mo Welch, who has done a brilliant poster for us emailed it across to me today, and I then spent the afternoon messing around in iphoto to get the other information onto the picture.

Helen and I are very pleased with the result.

Deflated. Mk II

2011-05-30T23:59:00.001+01:00

After fixing my bike on Wednesday, and consequently cycling to work each day, (well, ok, most days) I managed to pick up another flat. More precisely it could be described as the son of the previous flat tyre - The one that was caused the day I stopped off to put out a small fire on my way home from work.

This week's puncture was in fact caused by the piece of metal that I was left in my tyre from that incident. Despite checking the tyre over before fitting the replacement inner tube (I keep a spare to make it a bit easier to fix them) I now have had two inner tubes with punctures in exactly the same places. I will probably have to replace the tyre soon as well. Was a sizeable bit of shrapnel in there. Nowhere near as disastrous as the effect of a piece of metal piercing a tyre did on the Concord taking off in France in 2000 (the plane crashed, 113 people lost their lives), so perhaps I shouldn't complain so much.

I've had a mixture of laziness, followed by drunkenness interspersed with some creative activity and more than a little cleaning over the bank holiday weekend. Completed a review for Venturer Magazine again, this time reviewing the second story that I wrote for them. I have very painful memories of it because when it was shown to the rest of the company it was nowhere near finished. It was in such a state that it made it impossible for anyone to follow the storyline, and it was meant to be really important as it marked the departure from the show of one of its main characters.

It's hard to be objective about your own work, I know there were failings in the script, but a bucket load of whole fresh ones were created by the presentation of the story, with the usual challenges around direction and acting. I know it's amateur, but I still would want the story to be just that, something that tells the story. All the technology and the pretence and performance, if done right, should be invisible. The suspension of disbelief.

I was invited to meet up with some of my colleagues from work at a pub last night. I sidestepped my initial negative response and made the effort to go. I did indeed drink away quite merrily and got a little bit drunk, which was a nice change. Good to let my hair down, what there is left of it.

Despite not seeing my daughter, she has sent me regular email updates and text messages. I really do appreciate it, as otherwise I would really feel the emptiness of not being able to see her until next weekend. I'm glad that she gets to go away on holiday, but it doesn't mean I don't miss her when she's gone.

deflated / re-inflated

2011-05-26T00:57:00.000+01:00

Another attempt to get an early foothold on the work of the day. Another failure to quite manage that. Having spent the day working away solidly spending some quality time with the team the afternoon made the morning look positively organised.

Ever get the feeling that if you were trying to tread water the sharks would be circling and licking their lips ? (do sharks even have tongues ?)

Anyway. Stayed late from work, missing completely the chance to get to drama (it was just as well that Helen and I had planned for the eventuality that I may be at best very late tonight). When I had eventually managed to leave, the cycle home wasn't exactly without incident either. As I passed through the railway triangle (place at the top of Portsmouth where the east and west train lines join to head south into the city), I noticed some smoke, and realised that some little darlings had set light to some rubbish left on an embankment. Borrowing a bucket and some water from a nearby house I easily managed to dowse the flames of the small fire that had been started. Would have felt rather stupid calling out the fire brigade, but equally I couldn't have left it.

To prove that no good deed goes unpunished, I got back onto my bike to find that I now had a flat front tyre. At least I wasn't that far from home by that point, so it wasn't too much trouble to wheel my bike the rest of the way, where I promptly fed the cats and then replaced the inner tube so that I could be sure to be able to cycle in to work again tomorrow.

It's near the end of the week. This weekend being a longer affair owing to the bank holiday monday at the other end of it. I don't want to sound like I am kicking a gift horse in the mouth, but I had just got used to the normal run of things !

I'm really only bitching because we'll have this lovely long weekend and I won't get to see my daughter because she's going away on holiday for the week.

Taking the cats to the vets for their followup jabs on Friday. They do seem to be growing so fast. After that's done they would be allowed outside, if I decide to do that. I think they have already made their feelings plane on that front having made a break for it the other week.

Plummeting towards Bank Holiday..

2011-05-25T00:08:00.000+01:00

There's nothing we can do, the world hasn't ended, the Tiger wasn't real.... we're plummeting at warp factor 12 towards a long weekend. The last bank holiday weekend we get until August in fact. Will it shine ? Will it rain ? Either way it's going to mean three whole days off work. Whoop Whoop.

It does of course also mean that we are another week closer to show week. Arrrggghhh !!!

Helen and I had made some alterations to the script, which we communicated to the cast on Monday. I think this was a bit worrying for some of them, who aren't used to dealing with scripts as a rather fluid thing. On one hand it's a bless, but on the other it is indeed a curse. There was only person so far that did not need their script in the scene that we did. I am getting rather worried that more people haven't yet dropped their scripts. We are, after all, only four weeks away from the show week. There are still people missing sessions, no progress with dropping scripts, no sold tickets. Worried ? I don't think worried is the right word.

(slams door and runs screaming to the hills)

Leopard escapes...

2011-05-22T16:09:00.000+01:00

not the actual leopard that caused the furore.
This one available from jollydollies.co.uk

A major alert was started near Southampton (a city near me) when a member of the public warned police that they had seen what they thought was an escaped leopard whilst they were watching a cricket match through the zoom lens of their camera.

After a temporary halt to the cricket match at Southampton's Rose Bowl, thermal imaging scans from a police helicopter and the work of brave officers on the ground discovered that the 'animal' in question was in fact a life sized stuffed toy. Plans were put into place to enlist the help of zoologists from local Marwell Zoo, and to close the nearby M27 motorway.

Earlier in the week, there was an escape of the feline variety. Midnight & Twilight managed to get out when I had left the front door open whilst rooting around upstairs for an attachment I needed to use to pump the tyres on my bike back up. I'd left the inner door open at the top of the stairs without realising. The first that I had heard about this was when I went downstairs to greet my sister and my nephews (who she had just picked up from school), and instead came across my beloved kittens running towards me up the path to my front door. Quickly I grabbed them and secured them upstairs. Needless to say until I they have had their booster shot they are not meant to go outside. I haven't even been able to get them to keep on their collars, they are too big (the collars are), both kittens are growing really quickly so it won't be long before they can keep them on, or should that be 'before they can't get them off' ? The follow up shot is due the end of this coming week, so they are getting closer to being able to have that freedom.

It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

2011-05-22T15:47:00.000+01:00

Jan Luyken's picture of 'The Rapture'

According to some crackpot American religious nutter, the world was due to end yesterday at 6pm.

The fact that I am writing this, and you are around to read it (assuming there are some people that actually do read my blog) seems to indicate that they, like all the other doom merchants before them got it spectacularly wrong.

Apparently all the deserving Christians were going to Heaven for 6 months, but the rest of us get to suffer in hell on Earth for that time before the world is completely destroyed.

Just to make the whole thing easier to understand they (the group spreading all this about) had arranged for their website to give regular automated updates for those left behind on Earth. So the world's going to end, we're all going to die... but DON'T PANIC ! We'll still have internet ! That's okay then. For a minute there I was thinking that I'd actually have to talk to real people or something.

What are all those sheep who sold their possessions, gave up their jobs etc to prepare for the 'end of days' going to do now ? Get a job stacking shelves in a walmart or something ? How gutted would they be if they'd cancelled their life insurance and then had an accident at 6:05 ? Ooops.

Statistically though, if you keep saying every day that it is the end of the world, eventually you're going to be right.

2011-05-19T21:39:00.001+01:00

What is this fog that has dominated the early part of my week ? This feeling of unease and upset with one of my longest and dearest friends.

I posted the other day about how Monday's rehearsal had gone, and how I had become annoyed at how things were going, how disrupted they had become.

When was it that I became so self centred and immovable, so blinkered and bloody minded ? Perhaps I have always been those things, some of them, or all of them I'm not sure. I've always had strong opinions and been singleminded, but this breakdown in communication between Helen and I is really hurting. My instinctive reaction seems to have been to be annoyed at her, and to not want to talk to her.

It's fair to say that I'm not really seeing much enjoyment in the production process for the show at this point. The last two rehearsals pretty much felt like a waste of time and an abject failure. With the opening of she show looming ever larger on the horizon, I feel very keenly that no one in the cast as dropped their scripts yet, we have not yet finished blocking out any of the scenes - and although we will do this in the next week, I am uneasy. The show is very visual, and very complicated, (it's the rod we have most definitely made for our own backs) and it will only come together when people have stopped having to carry around their scripts in rehearsals and when we have everyone in every rehearsal.

My feels have been such that with the chaos, and probably fair to describe as anger about Monday, I have shut myself away. I really needed to close off the show part of my life whilst not actively preparing for a rehearsal as I just need to limit its effect on the rest of my life. It sounds rather selfish, but I've come to learn over the years when I am overwhelmed by events, and when I am feeling that I need to take a step back.

You might say that's great for me, but really great for my partner in the is enterprise, Helen. There is a point, when with no intended disregard for her feelings, I have to say 'stop !'. I do not need emails, texts and voicemails telling me to contact people as soon as I can, to discuss something that is not urgent. If the theatre isn't burning down, (and even if that happens, there's nothing I'm going to be able to do about it) there just isn't anything to do with the show that's urgent enough to warrant such a dramatic badgering.

I try, but don't very well succeed to segment the different areas of my life. When I fail more to do that, I do feel compromised. Not from a secrecy point of view, but the situations that occur where I might have a disagreement with someone in one area of my life, but if I am close to them in another part of my life, that tension translates to another entire area, and gives me no peace or rest from it.

I am getting alerted to this kneed jerk reaction to shut people out, to close off the communication, to not go to things. It could very easily lead to me becoming increasingly isolated and alone. These are not reactions I am used to observing in myself. The amateur psychologist within warns me further that this sounds very similar to the behaviour of someone descending (for want of a better word). If I 'back off' from involvement in creative activities (either with M27 or with Beacon) then what would I do with the rest of my time, and would that be something that made me feel better, or worse ? I think worse.

Helen and I have had a rather long, deep and emotional conversation, where we exchanged how it was that we are feeling. I can't say I got my point across in the best way I possibly could, which in itself leaves me feeling rather hollow. There was no 'battle' to win, but it most definitely feels that both of us have lost out of this situation. Helen repeatedly commenting that she feels we may both have changed so much in the last 5 years that it would not be possible for us to work together in this way in the future. By which she means we could never write and direct a show together again. I would agree, that we cannot work together again in THIS way, because the chaos and lack of organisation, and the fact that so much time has been wasted (when I think about how much time was wasted in the actual writing of the show - we started writing it in August, or September last year for crying out loud !). I can't work like that anymore, and I don't know if it was that these complications didn't occur before, or if they did, but it didn't matter.

ok, so I've blatantly been reading the news....

2011-05-18T02:09:00.000+01:00

And ANOTHER THING....

Botox. It's a toxin people !

This one is certainly more serious, but I also read this article on the internet on the BBC news site (other news websites are available). Some 8 year old child has been taken into care by the local authorities in America (could only happen there - we hope) because her mother has been injecting her with Botox.

I don't know whether to cry or shout at my computer when I read this article. This poor kid. The quotes from the Mother make me really, really sad. What sort of person not only allows her child to do such a thing, but actually administers them herself ? It's one thing to 'harmlessly' mutilate your child with tacky earrings, but this is irreversible and dangerous.

The mother, who is a part time beautician, wouldn't reveal where it was that she got the drug from. Hmmm. Does that mean it wasn't legally obtained ? What was she thinking ? Oh, hang on, we get an idea with quotes like "It's a tough world in the pageant and the kids are harsh. Being confident is something she has to be with them." Er.. but isn't being confident by changing your appearance just some shallow method of tricking yourself that you'll feel better ? And isn't it your job as a parent to teach her to accept herself for who she is ? Oh, it makes me so cross. Maybe not entering her into petty pageants would be a start.

No dish. No Glee ?

2011-05-18T01:46:00.000+01:00

What !!!! It cannot be allowed to happen !!!

sad about Glee leaving free TV.
Even sadder to see I look like a freaking turtle

According to this disastrous news from the BBC news website, Glee is to leave E4 as the channel was outbid by those dastardly bleeps at Sky TV with deeper pockets. NOOOO !!!!!

How will I get over really tough days / weeks without being able to resort to watching an episode of my favourite TV show that has glitter and jazz hands included ? Fine, back to alcohol it is then.

No seriously. Seems that Sky were able to stump up double what E4 were able / willing to pay.....

Boo hiss. Sad face.

Grumpy old man

2011-05-18T01:34:00.000+01:00

Am I getting less patient as I grow older ? Less understanding of others ? Less accommodating of the downright stupidity of other people ?

I wonder this, because I feel myself getting steadily more impatient and cross with Helen, my long term friend and cowriter, coproducer, codirector for The FatCat And The Grafter. I don't want to launch into a major whinge, but think that after that sentence I had better explain myself.

On Monday's rehearsal, which I have already documented as being the hardest session so far, there were some elements that made it harder to make progress. Helen had changed some of the lines in the scene, and made some other alterations, which she had not gone through with me before I started directing the scene with the cast, she also wanted to put in some suggestions about things that her character could be doing in order for her to get to be doing what she felt the character should be doing. Again these things were not explored in detail before the session, so when mentioned required that I had to then work round or ignore them in order to direct the scene the way that I had planned it. Interruptions and delays were caused by the sometimes attention grabbing silliness she employs whenever she feels embarrassed about something. The thing that I was embarrassed about was that the scene wasn't working, and it wasn't made to work any more, or look any better with interruptions of messing about from my co-director.

We had agreed a couple of weeks ago that as we were directing most of the scenes separately, that if we wanted to make any suggestions to scenes the other was doing that we do it after the session, so that the discussion would not hold up the rehearsal or make us look like we didn't know what we were doing.

I don't want this to come across in the wrong way, it's not about Helen, bless her, it's about interruptions themselves. I feel like I spend a part of my working week trying desperately not to tell people to stop being such twats. Polishing a turd doesn't even come close. I'm not angry though. As much as sometimes the odd thing will slip out, I am amazed at how tactful I can be. Sometimes it's like it's not me at all.

Things can only get better ?

2011-05-17T00:24:00.000+01:00

After a weekend that was all too short, back to work, and back then afterward to rehearsals. Nice enough, but I think from having planned the blocking of this scene that I have realised somewhat that this scene could easily be removed from the show and no one would miss it at all.

My inner editor tells me that I should get out my filthy big red pen (metaphorically, as I don't actually own a red pen, big, filthy or otherwise) and strike if from the play. Helen wants to err on the side of caution and leave it in until we do a paced run through the second act, so we can see how it falls into place with the rest of the show.

I don't remember this shared directing lark being such a test either. Normally things go perfectly well, but tonight things kept going off track, the scene was complicated enough, but Helen did keep wanting to descend the scene into farce, and needed reigning in. I worry that some of the patience, faith and trust that the cast have in us may not be entirely limitless.

Helen pointed out today that we really need to pull our finger out with organising the show. We have not sold a single ticket yet. hopefully all this will change once we have the poster, and we can start advertising properly.

Hopefully.

Tyred.. but ready for another week

2011-05-16T00:03:00.000+01:00

Tyred.. did you see what I did there ? Ho. Hum. Sorry.

Yes, amongst the things that I got whilst out on my exciting shopping trip yesterday was some replacement inner tubes for my bike. With the desire to save money (the weekly buss tickets cost me nearly £70 a month) and an urge to be more physically fit, AND get home from drama a bit quicker I have decided that I need to fix my bike and 'get back on the road'.

Although I've put to the back of the list of things to do this weekend the actual repairing phase of this grand plan, I am sure that by the end of the week I will have the old girl working again. I'm day off on Wednesday so I will have a chance to fix the tyres whilst I wait in all day for the man from UPS to come pick up my old busted kindle.

I am still over the moon to not be without one, thanks to those lovely folks at Amazon.

Moved the cat tree into the living room, as it gives them a much better view of what's going on. Managed to move it without disturbing Midnight, who was resting on it at the time. This does seem to be a hit with the cats as they do indeed like to laze on the top most part of the cat tree and watch whatever is going on around them.

Yes, that is Midnight on the left there, precariously balancing on the top perch, trying to share it with his sister. Looks damn uncomfortable if you ask me, not the Twilight seems to notice.

The other brilliant news this weekend was the revelation that my daughter wants to go on a school trip to France later in the year. Somehow having to find the money for that, on top of all the other things just makes me smile. It shouldn't really. I am glad though that she wants to go, sounds like it will be a great thing for her to do. I think they will be staying in Normandy for 4 days. She didn't seem to make the connection when I reminded her of our trip to Hastings a couple of years ago, where we did go the Battle (the place where the Battle of Hastings took place) and walked round the very field and looked round the abey.

Oh dear, history education just not what it used to be I guess. More than likely, it would be the case that like myself I didn't really take an interest in history until people stopped trying to tell me about it.

2011-05-14T11:44:00.000+01:00

This week has just been a non stop rollercoaster ride of fun.

The massive revelation last weekend that due to some poor planning and self control on my part, I have no freaking money. This has seen me taking food to work each day, instead of being a lazy idiot and buying stuff in the restaurant there. I say restaurant based not on how many stars it has, but the fact that it's a place where people go to get food and sit down and eat it. Here I am, on a Saturday morning sitting at the iMac with a cup of coffee and some marmite toast. Only problem being that I've actually ran out of Marmite, and that I've also ran out of spread.... so really I have dried toasted wholemeal bread with the dregs of the Marmite spread onto it. Hmmm. yum. I think if I ate a box it would taste better.

confusingly named 'shrapnel Jar'

That definitely means that it's time to get off my backside and get some food. Ah. One small little problem. Finance Error. Grrr. I guess I'm off to see if the shrapnel jar has enough for me to be able to buy a week's shopping out of it. Shrapnel Jar is in reality neither a jar, nor does it contain shrapnel.

Don't worry folks, the important thing is that I've got enough kitten food in to last the week. The kittens will most definitely not go hungry.

I'll be getting off this chair in a moment and taking myself and my 'shrapnel Jar' off to the nearest store that has one of those coin converter things that allow you to tip in wads of coinage such as contained in the above 'jar' and change it up into real money (well a voucher) that you can use to spend in the store.

Only thing is that the nearest two places that provide that facility aren't exactly nearby. One is the Tesco store in Havant (near where I work) the other is the Asda store in Fratton (further into Portsmouth). Really does require me getting up off my arse doesn't it ?

Here's something I wrote earlier...

2011-05-12T00:32:00.000+01:00

As I've mentioned before, I write reviews to be included into the in-club publication 'Venturer Magazine' for the good people at Beacon. This month I'd written a review, and that being the first one that I'd managed to do for quite some time, I thought I would include a copy here.... (excuse the formatting differences, and the fact that I've not been able to port over the document as published exactly)..

“SIMON

SAYS...”

REVIEWER Simon Sansbury

THE ADVENTURES OF STEPHEN BROWN

KAOS EFFECT

WRITTEN BY

Chris Wilkes & Neil Miller

DIRECTED BY

Matthew Hampton

It's been sometime since I've been able to pen a review, last year in fact. So long I'd actually forgotten which episode it was that I had reviewed last. After the chaos of moving home to my lovely shiny new flat, and all the other things that kept me from you, it is to another kind of chaos that I draw my attention. That being Kaos Absolute, story three in the 2009 series of The Adventures of Stephen Brown. The winding up of the story lines that involve The Death, Kaos and the Augury, not to mention young Sally Crawford's revenge against Stephen Brown for murdering her father. Much tying of lose ends to be done then. There's not a moment to lose.

The opening CGI shots of the Venturer were really nice in setting the scene, maybe a 'previously on The Adventures Of Stephen Brown' might have reminded anyone (like me) who'd forgotten how it was we got to this particular peril in the first place might have helped. Being really limited within the confines of the Venturer set does limit cameramen and directors alike. As the thing gets blown up every couple of years it does give us a chance to do something a bit different. Some learning of lines, and some different camera shots might have made things move along a bit better.

When we transport down to the planet, we are treated to the first half of a swear word left onto the audio when Blocklon (Matthew Hampton) walks into Stephen Brown (Ryan Brady), this along with hearing the director saying 'action' on an earlier bit of footage is a shame. Things start to look sparkly again when our intrepid heroes are walking towards Augury's cave. Some nice, but not too clever computer work there has created a cave entrance where there wasn't one, and later on we have the effect of Kaos' life force approaching it. It is again the challenges of fitting so many people into so little space that contributes to making the performances in the Augury's cave looks as realistic as the greenery that's draped all over the set. The Augury (Sassi Page) is meant to look really ill, but doesn't. The lighting here just doesn't do the set, or the actors any favours, and is perhaps too clean and too bright for my liking. I like things a bit dirtier and darker. But the least said about that the better.

Chris Wilkes' rendition of Kaos inhabiting Stephen Brown's old body isn't all that threatening or menacing, but he pulls some interesting faces as he fights Stephen Brown. There's some nice touches here in the lightening flashes etc of the phantasmagorical nature of the bitch fight between them, but the fight itself isn't always as tense, fast or threatening looking as it is at other times - but that's not helped by the return of those awful punch sound effects. There must be better ways to get realistic punch sound effects. (without resorting to actually punching people.. hang on.. that might work....).

The lack of effect to the already clinical lighting when Kaos' life force enters Chris (ahem) coupled with three people trying to roll around on the floor in such a small space really does harm the suspension of disbelief here. Which is a shame, as this scene, and its elements, is a staple of science fiction stories since, well since before November 23rd 1963. The storytelling could have been helped with some flashbacks to go with the dialogue while Ryan explains to Sassi how they got to that point.

Episode 2 starts off with a good recap of all that's gone before. Watching The Death (Robert Hampton) threaten Sally Crawford (Hazel Whiteland) by squeezing her cheeks was just as convincing as her reaction to it, and the threat afterwards. This story has some really brilliant elements to it that really mean a lot in the canon of the show. The script by Messrs Wilkes & Miller could have been shown off much more effectively, there's a couple of points when perhaps a line might have been0changed to better effect, but most of the time it really zings along, and attempts to deliver a real sense of pace and drama. Something the actors seem to have missed entirely.

Ryan, Matthew and Katie 'rush' to escape the cave, helping along the wounded/ill Augury only to be confronted again by Kaos, still in the form of Chris Wilkes. There's some fancy light show battle on the shingle there that is done rather well, and the dispatching of The Augury is a rather good shot. The conviction, urgency and fear is completely absent on all of the actors' performances however. After she's dead, The Augury has a telepathic conversation with Ryan's Stephen Brown. This scene, although spoiled by a very cheesy ending that looked like a toothpaste commercial, was very well lit and executed by both Sassi and Ryan.

Some more clumsiness from the crew means we have such a good shot of the boom at the bottom of a shot while Ryan, Katie and Matthew stand and discuss the danger they are facing that I thought perhaps we could have dressed it up as some sort of furry alien. As Ryan explains that Kaos' life force is still around us (although without the sound or lighting effects that hinted at it before) there is again this very static delivery of what should be tension building lines. There's a 'walk, stop, say line, stand talking, talk about danger, walk off at a normal place' formula to the acting. The CGI here of the planet cracking up comes without explanation or reason, and doesn't at all match up with what's happening in the live action shots. There's absolutely no evidence of the planet destroying itself on location. Obviously 'blessed' with a brilliantly sunny day didn't help.

Episode 3 reminds us that for a planet under destruction it still looks remarkably like a rather nice Sunday walk in the country. Could we have done something to darken this down or muddy up the image a bit in post production ? I don't know, but it's something we have done before. The exploding planet illusion isn't helped by the inconsistently applied synchronised stumbling of the cast to the camera shakes. The camera effect works rather well (although not applied in later shots - perhaps there was someone else on camera, perhaps they just got bored of it), but the cast manage to make it look like they are trying to find their way home after drinking too much on a night out in town.

Ryan has some lines in another moment of 'we're running away, but we'll stop long enough to deliver our lines, pause for a bit and then not hurry off again', where the sound is rather poor. We also get to see how close the sound man is to the action, because his leads are dangling into the edge of the shot.

The shots from the point of view of Kaos' life force look rather like someone threw some compost on the camera lens before shooting it. It doesn't match up however with the shots from episode one, and doesn't quite convey the atmosphere of the moment. Some lines delivered by Ryan about how Kaos is sapping his life force makes him sound like a whining teenager (ala Kev & Perry style) than our hero struggling to keep it together.

Death, despite saying he wasn't going to be a hero and die fighting Kaos, does just that. A really vital moment in the history of the show, and we have no shot of our star's reaction to the death of his brother. The moment is further spoiled in the next episode by the smiling and laughing as Blocklan lifts up the now deceased Death to carry him back to the Venturer. Really pivotal moment in the story line and it's completely ruined. The episode ends with the now correct and faithful restoration of Kaos to his former self, aka the intergalactic hoodie in the form of Neil Miller. It has to be said that Neil works the menacing look very well and delivers the only believable performance of the story. He really does look cross enough to bite your ear off. Chris now gets his telepathic Skype call from the Augury. Again really well done with the mood and atmosphere. Although this does come across as a self referential last outing (until the next time) for Wilkes' Stephen Brown it's so expected that we get away with it.

Miller's appearance on the shingle to fight Ryan's Stephen Brown is a great show of lights, only spoiled by the fact that it isn't lip synced right. The unconvincingly delivered fighting talk from Ryan, coupled with the leaping together into combat makes it look like they need to get a room more than a referee. The magically convenient (for the writers) ability to transport himself allows Ryan to take Chris with him back to the cave where another 'fight' in the form of a hug off ensues. Wilkes' hands look like he's about to start massaging Miller rather than strangle him, but at least he still manages, mid fight to put his hat back on before hugging Miller once again. This story has in it all the key ingredients of a fantastic forty minutes of entertainment, I hope the audience could see past the flaws in the acting, directing and production quality to that cracking story underneath. Just imagine how epic it would have been if they didn't have to do that.

I should be in bed...

2011-05-09T00:25:00.000+01:00

But instead I'm sitting up catching the end of 'How To Lose Friends And Alienate People' - the film staring Simon Pegg, from the book of the same name by Toby Young. I really enjoyed the book, and have to admit that I am rather enjoying the film.

They have got one hell of a line up of cast in this thing.

Sadly this weekend has only two days in it, well, a day and a half for mine. I didn't get to see Chloe either as she's attending a friend's birthday party and sleepover. Again time where I could have done so much more. I should perhaps stop being so hard on myself, or maybe I shouldn't.

Kindle joy

2011-05-08T11:10:00.000+01:00

Those lovely people @ Amazon turned this..

On my way to work yesterday I managed to collect from the post office the replacement Kindle that the very helpful and apologetic 'Alex' from Amazon had sent me. Overjoyed would be something of an understatement.

I'd gotten up early enough to allow myself time to go and get the new kindle, and to then stop off somewhere with free wifi in order to get it synced and up to date with my books.

..... into this !!

This I did at the McDonald's in Havant. Admittedly this was rather cheeky of me, standing suspiciously by a pillar (not wishing to take a seat as I thought that would have been one infringement of their hospitality too far). Not having used their free wifi before, I had to take some time to setup an account with 'the cloud'. Easy peasy. Whilst I was doing this, the power kept flicking off in McDonald's. OK, so dodgy looking man, with strange looking hat, standing next to pillar, with strange device... when he walks in, the power starts going off. Hmm. That's.... strange. One of the workers did, in the end, come over and ask me if what I was doing would have any effect on the power situation. I thought it was quite funny, but I guess had I been in their situation I would have thought the same thing, and she was perfectly nice about it.

God I've missed my kindle. The real coup for me was the service given by the guy at Amazon. Such a shame that it is not the norm elsewhere. I've just got to package up and send back the broken one.

Last night I went with Helen, Bill, and Lin (and her friend Mo) to go see Phoenix Players' show, It Runs In The Family (by Ray Cooney). It's a very fast paced, farcical comedy which was very tightly written, acted and directed. It's a great script and we all really loved the show. There were some brilliant performances from some of the cast with particularly shining efforts from Ben McCready, John Lewin and Jeremy Fletcher.

After the show we decamped to the utterly deserted pub over the road. Sadly for such a lovely pub, it looked like we were the source of the entire evening's takings. In the conversations, what we'd figured out was that Lin's friend, Mo is an artist, and she has wonderfully offered her services to create our show's poster. We tried (as best we could) to explain the point of the show - having to remind ourselves first - and what the characters are like - so that she could get some ideas of what sort of things to incorporate into the poster design, and figure out what sort of thing it was that we were looking for.

There is this excitement building about the show, coupled with the 'calm before the storm' that is the final few weeks of production. Need to get our thumbs out of our proverbial arses to make sure that people know about the show. If we don't we are going to go to all this trouble and no one will come see it.

What price democracy ?

2011-05-05T22:50:00.000+01:00

As it happens, quite a lot really.

I have had a rather unplanned long walk this evening after a long day at work in the quest to cast my vote for the local council elections and the referendum into the voting system used in general elections. If you're expecting some sort of informative and fact based entry about what the difference between the two options in the referendum are, or indeed some trendy analysis into the merits or risks of each, you are sadly going to be disappointed.

On my day off yesterday, as I had not received a voting card in the post I rang the council to check that they had registered me to vote at my new flat. The very helpful lady on the phone confirmed that they had, and apologised that I hadn't received the voting card, some have gone missing in the post, she said. No worries, she didn't say, as she then proceeded to tell me the location of the polling station for where I live. 'Great' I thought, I can pop round there after work.

So, after a day that started earlier than 8am (although only by 15 minutes), a pleasant enough trek in the sunshine round to the newly discovered polling station. I might not be like a lot of people, in that I feel my right to vote is like a muscle. I use it, or I may lose it. Okay, so there's no real danger, even remote danger that my ability to vote would be removed, but I just have this great sense of duty and pride in exercising my vote. Bizarrely I find it more important when I think it's likely that my vote goes against that of the leading opinion.

Walk on round I did, only to be told that my vote registration arrived a day too late to be used for this referendum and local election. One obvious question formed almost immediately upon my lips.

'it would have been handy if the person I'd asked yesterday had told me that'. To which the very helpful lady who was in charge responded 'they were right to say that you were registered to vote here, but they wouldn't realise it was for this vote'. Well, really what the hell else did they think I would be calling to check for, with it being the day before the referendum ? I mean really ? What did they imagine that the reason for me calling would be ?

Seriously, I know they are probably busy with preparing for the referendum and all, but that is such a lame arse response. I would have been happier with 'I'm sorry, but they got it wrong and should have told you', but to try and pass the information given as the right information, but only if you squint enough and look at it in the right light is just trying to make intelligent people look stupid.

I feel really sorry for all those people that work for the council that have either suffered pay freezes or even lost their jobs, but if that's the sort of imagination they have, I'm not at all surprised.

workaholic ?

2011-05-05T00:45:00.000+01:00

Today was meant to be my day off work.

Like the conscientious person that I am, I figured that I could go in, and spend a couple of hours completing some end of work admin that needed doing. Every month this situation comes up, every month I chastise myself for not getting things done sooner.

I do this not because it is asked or even expected of me (in fact my boss told me I didn't have to do that and that I shouldn't have come in) but because I would rather know that it's all done and out of the way, than have to struggle over the next few days to complete the tasks needed and all the stress and hassle that involves.

Job done. I can rest easy. (well, I would if I wasn't up at such a stupid hour writing a blog entry).

This evening's drama session went exceedingly well too. Although the clock is ticking and time is certainly not our friend, it did become apparent tonight that we are way past he mid point of blocking out the scenes, and are indeed making lots of progress. This can only be helped in a week or two when Andy becomes available to play Melton.

I would like to blog on a bit more, but I am rather tired, and have work early in the morning, so if you don't mind, I am going to close off this entry and get some well earned rest. Night to you all.

Kindle ist kaputt

2011-05-04T00:13:00.000+01:00

I've killed my kindle. By beloved Kindle. It's dead. No more. It is now an ex-ereader.

Very, very, very not a happy smiley face from me. Was there anyway that the day could have gotten worse ? Well, of course, there were plenty of ways it could have gotten worse than that. In the grand scheme of things, not really a biggie, but I do love my kindle. Did -sniff- love my kindle.

To Vlog, or not, to Vlog. That is the question.

2011-05-02T15:23:00.000+01:00

I've been playing around today with the camera and Final Cut Express to see how easy it would be to put the same person in one scene three times. It turns out that it's actually very easy, when you've spent half the day figuring out how the hell to do it.

After messing about with the technology vs my lack of skill and finally getting to a workable solution. Which I have uploaded onto the M27's facebook page for all the world to see.

I've also decided to have a little play with some of the footage that I've taken on my Blackberry of the cats, and edited that quickly in iMovie. Example of this :-

Flip camcorder

I have been a little inspired lately by the vlogging style of Nerdzrl who seems to pretty much just take her flip camcorder with her wherever she goes, and record her conversation to camera, and with real people too. I don't know if the good folks of Cosham would react in the passive way that the public in Canada seem to be happy with being filmed, which is funny really given our propensity to shove a CCTV camera in every conceivable location. (by conceivable location, I don't actually mean the ones people conceive in, although you never know....).

When I was a teenager, like most teenagers, I was pretty convinced that I had a unique and special way of looking at the world, and no one else really understood. It wasn't just me they didn't get, THEY also didn't understand how the world REALLY was. THEY just couldn't see it.

Well now that I am (ahem) older. My opinion is pretty much the same. Except maybe just a little (a little I said) arrogant. I do think I look at the world in a slightly different way to most other people. Does that make me some sort of undiscovered genius ? Hell no. It probably means that I am more socially backward than normal people and have far too much thinking time on my hands.

Anyway, I have digressed. When I was a teenager, I kept a diary. That's not that uncommon. A lot of teenagers do. Inspired as I was by 'The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole' (By Sue Townsend) in all it's generations, I picked up whatever writing implement was to hand at the time and committed to paper the workings of my demented, self absorbed teenage mind. There are volumes of my diary, pages upon pages of it. I told my impressionable, naive, and intellectually reckless young self that 'one day you can publish this, and it will be of comfort to anyone that reads it... ' not so sure about that one now or that 'your children can read it when they are teenagers and will be happy to know that the sort of things they are going through are the same things that their dear old dad was going through when he was their age'. hmmm. If there is one thing that is certain in the universe it is that teenagers most definitely do NOT want to be reminded of any similarities with their parents. As my daughter rapidly approaches her teenage years, one thing comes to mind. There's no way she would ever be interested in reading it.

For one thing, it's pages and pages of self opinionated drivel (see nothing changes). Deluded is the word that comes to mind.

So in the face of my daughter reading my diary, and suddenly having a tearful revelation that I too, suffered as I was a teenager, that I too did awkward uncool things. (still am doing - how's the hat going ?) That I too was a jumbling mess around the opposite sex. A mess around the same sex for that matter.

My point, my point ? Oh yes, there WAS a point. Is the written word more suited to this kind of outpouring or is the video blog (vlog) better ?

Script Frenzy - FAIL

2011-05-02T00:03:00.000+01:00

... now we are into the fifth month of 2011. Year is racing past at speed, is it not ? All those hours, minutes and seconds, gone. Spent, or wasted ? Never can be sure.

Well and truly failed to complete this years script frenzy. I still must finish the script though. If its worth doing, its, er... worth completing. Can't stand the idea that it will just sit in a draw (digitally of course) and never see the light of day again. Perhaps I should think about ways to make it myself. Certainly wouldn't take a lot to bring it to life.

I have actually completed something else though, that being the review of The Kaos Absolute story for The Adventures Of Stephen Brown. I had been asked to contribute an 800 word review, but ended up writing 1600. Hopefully that's not going to be a problem.

So, May 1st, and I haven't entered any writing competitions, or sent anything I have written off to anyone. Seem to remember being here before. Am I going to end the year with a different result, or will it be same old, same old ? Hmmm. Only way to get things done, is to do them.

Resolutions seem to break like...

2011-04-29T20:07:00.000+01:00

...china cups dropped onto my kitchen floor.

Not that I've done that you understand. Puft ! Like I'd have china cups !

I'm remonstrating myself about not blogging as much as I had wanted. I have taken my eye off the ball. It's not for lack of events to blog either, it's more a case of lack of time. Before I got home last night (to start a 4 day weekend) I hadn't actually turned on my lovely iMac since last weekend. Poor thing.

So what's been happening ? The kittens have well and truly settled. Very comfortable, and are loving their new cat tree.

..thank you Daddy x

Dr who is back. And Stetsons are cool.

Progress is being made, sort of, with the show, but we've had some set backs. Gemma, who was going to play Starlight, has had to pull out as she realised she has family commitments the week of the show. The wonderfully talented Faye has let us know that because of increased workload (at work, I guess) she has had to drop the larger of the two parts that she had been cast.

We may well be able to get Nick's Mum to do one of the now vacant roles, it would be brilliant to have her involved in a show again. Fingers crossed. So pretty much looks like we are only one person short, instead of two. Monday's rehearsal involved us going over one of the call centre scenes, which are the complicated ones. We did this easily enough, despite the lack of a Starlight, and with Helen getting herself distracted, becoming too carried away with the background antics of Polly. Even so, scene got blocked out and was working well. We'd actually planned to only do about 5 pages of the scene, but decided to do the whole scene in the end. The comedy is coming alive, the (hopefully) wonderful visual comedy that is laced throughout the show. Wednesday night we blocked out a scene set in the Manager's office, and again the comedic talents of Lin (Bone) and Faye came to the fore. Such a shame that she (Faye) won't be able to do Hermione, but I understand if she's at risk of being overwhelmed. Much better that she let us know now, than in about 8 weeks time. 18 Rehearsal sessions left until the show opens. Clock is ticking. Clock IS ticking.

The blocking, on the whole is taking less time than we imagined, which is good because we will have to go back and do some of it again for the benefit of the characters that we will now have to recast. We also need to make sure that we can sort out the filmed pieces in the show, as if we can't get them to work, we really do have a problem.

Dr Who returns. Fantastic, thrilling, scary and funny episode. The Impossible Astronaut, at risk of running out of superlatives, it was a brilliantly sharp script. I've now watched the episode 6 times, and it sings every time. Really tight. Really well done. Again laden with phrases that will, I am sure to be copied by millions of fans up and down the country.

I've brought a sun hat. After shaving off all my hair again, and the recently gorgeous sunshine, I thought it would be a good idea to protect my poor noggin from the sun. I have become rather attached to my sun hat. I am sure that the prevailing opinion may be that I look like a prat, but I don't care. I like it, so I wear it. I am ready to pick Chloe up tomorrow, and have her laugh uncontrollably at me.

I wear a sunhat now

I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to be able to complete the script Laptop for Script Frenzy. Now I know that I sure as hell WONT achieve it with THAT attitude, but as I am only at page 25 I really would have to cane it completely to even stand a chance of getting it finished before the end of the competition. This is sad. I really had wanted to make sure that I did complete it, as I had failed so miserably to complete NanoWriMo in November last year, using the move as a reason/ excuse.

Grrrr. Frustrated with myself. Need to get a review done for Beacon, as I haven't done one since I moved. Need a great big boot and rather bendy legs, so as to kick myself up the arse don't I ? Yes. See. I knew I was right.

... and sunhats are cool....

What else has been going on ? Well, work has not been without its dramas this week. People can be funny things, and sometimes the hardest thing they find to do is to look into the mirror and accept what they see. Me, I'm always looking in the mirror, although you may not think so to look at my dress sense. It his heartening to realise that despite some difficult times, the world isn't against me. I work with some really great people, and I just wish I got more of a chance to get to know them in that context than the ones I am normally presented to them in. Hopefully the crowd from work will come along to the show, and will be able to let their hair down and have a really good night.

Royal Wedding. As someone who both dislikes the idea of royalty on political grounds, but has a deeply contradictory love of the royal family themselves - and all the things they do for the country I had decided that I wasn't going to be spending time on my extra day off to watch William & Kate's wedding. Somehow, my 'bah humbug' nature was overridden sufficiently for me to watch the spectacle and be very moved by everything that I saw. I really don't give a stuff about the ins and outs of their or anyone else's private lives. But to be a spectator on such a happy day reminds me of how much hope there is in the human spirit and in the love of another. I do wish them well for the future. Wishes I am sure they will not be short of.

It is at times like this, when pretty much half the country has gotten caught up in the fever and celebration and flag waving that we remember what it's like to be British. It is nice to see though, that because most of the flags are the ones provided by the Sun newspaper, and have a picture of the happy couple on them, thereby forcing Jo public to put the bloody flag up the right way. Otherwise I would be getting all anal about how some people don't realise that there is a right and a wrong way to hang a union flag.

iPhone tracks movements. Shock horror. NOT !

2011-04-22T10:35:00.000+01:00

You've just got to love how much some people have turned the iPhone vs other operating systems (there are some) debate into a story laced with fever pitched paranoia.

I am referring to the reaction to the unsurprising revelation that the Iphone (and the iPad and iPod touch) store date that records where it has been, and that this information can be accessed from the phone (if you know where to look).

It's not so much the obviously opinion led reporting (and perhaps this blog is no different, but I never pretended to be a neutral observer of anything - I have my opinions, that's rather the point of this exercise). What I find really disappointing is the comments on such news-sites where the story has been reported.

Seriously people, should it really be a shock that something that allows you to make a telephone call from anywhere there is sufficient mobile phone signal actually needs to record somewhere it's relationship with the mobile network's broadcast towers ? Really ? How did you think the system worked ? String between two tin-cans ? Fairy dust ? NEWSFLASH ! If the signal to and from your phone (and indeed anything else that transmits or receives ANYTHING) makes it to and from your phone, it stands to reason that somewhere along the line, if you pardon the pun, the location of your device knowing where it is, is going to be key to maintaining that connection. Simples.

The whole 1984 lobby want to bleat on about how positively Orwellian the iphone is, and how evil and twisted Apple are for putting something like this on their phones. Well, before all those shallow and rather thick people start turning their phones off in a panic (probably better they do that anyway, just to give them less ways to bother the rest of the planet, moe than anything else) this information has pretty much always been around on the device, it's just that Apple recently moved it to a more easily accessible location on the phone. It's always been there.

Then there's the lot that scream it is Apple in particular that are evil for making this dreadful thing possible. But don't all phones / devices that allow 'geotagging' or any other similar function needing to do that very same thing ? Truth is I don't think this technology is anything new, or unique. There are things stored on or by all of our devices that leave mucky little trails of what we've been up to. My advise ? If you're that bothered then either find a way to disable these functions or don't get a mobile phone, computer or even telephone for that matter.

http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

If we want to be connected, we need to be.. er, well, connected. It really is such a non story, that I just had to make more of it by moaning about it here as well. Pete Warden has written an application that takes this data from your phone and then shows you a lovely little map of where you (or at least your phone) has been. This is data that mobile phone companies would already have for example, based on your relationship geographically to one of their mobile phone masts (Cell Towers if you're an American). Nothing new, scary or terribly accurate either. When I use google maps on my blackberry similar technology pinpoints roughly where I am, with an accuracy of 1400 meters. Not terribly useful to anyone really trying to track me down, unless they know exactly where I live or work, and in which case they'd just try those places anyway.

Is 'Big Brother' watching you ? No.

So, bearing in mind this sort of data has been around for years, the only change here is that it's available (without the need for a data protection act request, or court order) to the person whom the data pertains to . I'd call that progress rather than snooping. No one is doing anything else with this data, why would they ? Sure there are all sorts of things that COULD be done with it, but why, oh why, oh why, would anyone want to ? Only if you are a person of some sort of specific interest, engaged in some sort of criminal activity would this be useful to the 'powers that be'. Of course, in order to get it in this country they'd need a court order or warrant. Personally I'd hope that our security services are using tracking methods a little more sophisticated, reliable and accurate to track down would be terrorists than their own iphones. I'm sure that functions like this are used by law enforcement agencies across the globe, but this again is nothing new at all. Often if someone goes missing the police will have asked the mobile phone company for the location of their last call etc. Besides, if 'big brother' really could be bothered to look in detail at all the data that we throw on the internet about ourselves anyway they'd learn so much more about us. I'm also struck by the sheer illogical nature of the thought that the vast majority of people are interesting enough to warrant such attention, or indeed that any government is organised enough to do such a thing.

Maybe this is the way to solve unemployment ? Pay people to just sit there looking at Facebook or Twitter and applications such as this to track the whereabouts of every citizen in the UK.

The show must go on..

2011-04-21T11:14:00.000+01:00

Sunshine has suddenly become an expected part of the weather in England. We've had glorious weather pretty much for about 4 days now, and before everyone starts moaning about it being 'too hot' or how stupid they were and that they got sunburned, I figured that I should just take a moment to enjoy it.

Done.

I now have a couple of days off work, due to the Easter holiday, and then am in for 5 hours on Saturday and not back in the office until Tuesday. This is all fantastic stuff, and really appreciated, coming as it does right toward the end of Script Frenzy. Realising that I haven't broken into double digits really does make it tough for me to achieve the 100 pages before the end of the month, but I guess that I won't get them sitting around on my arse writing my blog. I'll get them sitting around on my arse with a copy of Celtx open, writing some script.

I wasn't that well on Monday, and pretty much spent the day in bed. It'd been about 6 months since I last had a day off work through sickness, but I was absolutely wasted. Man flu ? Well, call it what you like, but I got up to get ready for work that day, and after calling in sick, went back to bed. I didn't wake up until about 7 hours later. Must have really needed that. Still got annoying cough and pains in my chest, from the coughing, but I am very much near mended. Went back to work Tuesday, but hate, hate, hate being off work. It also meant I certainly wasn't up to attending drama on Monday night.

This was the second session that I have had to miss. Poor Helen being left to carry the can. On both occasions the turnout from the cast has been lacklustre also. We can't afford to keep wasting these valuable rehearsals. Apart from the cost (£8 per hour), there is the cost in time. There are only so many weeks before the show is due to open. Helen was very good about the whole thing, and understanding. Wednesday's session was very good. We did about half of one of the more complicated scenes, and although I hadn't had a chance to go through it with Helen in advance, I planned it out on my own. The characters are really coming alive, with Jay Jay (Steve Penfold) and Troggie (Chris O'Connor) working very well. These scene was working out to show the desired amount of chaos and comedy, with Helen and I both finding it funny to watch, even at this early stage. Some of the cast, well most of them actually, haven't worked with us before and we've taken a bit of time to explain to them how our comedy works, why we have so many things happening at once and how at times, it appears to break most of the 'rules' of theatre, and get away with it.

We've gotten off to a rocky start, but if this is any indication of how the rest of the show will turn out, then we are on to a winner for sure.

Now on to some script frenzy !! If I'm good, and focused and get lots of work done, I may just treat myself with an afternoon out to Steve's BBQ tomorrow...

Like a house with all the children gone...

2011-04-15T23:36:00.003+01:00

.. or a flat with my daughter absent.

Chloe went home today, and the flat is only prevented from feeling completely void of life by the occasional noises made by Midnight & Twilight. It's been lovely having her to stay with me for the week. Can't put into words how much I've enjoyed just getting some 'hang out' time with her.

I can't remember at which point it was that I became able to deal with this separation the follows on from these glimpses at normality. What is 'normal' ? I will get back into my 'normal' mode, I guess, soon enough. The one where I get used to not seeing my daughter everyday, where I feel like a guest in her life. Those moments, all of them, the great, the fantastic, the special, the difficult, the impossible, the tearful. They are all warming. They fill an emptiness that I have had to manage to get along with for the rest of the week.

Telling myself to focus on the time that I spend with her, and not without her. Trying to make sure that I fill the empty time with other things, the near inability to leave work on time.. the drama. (oh the drama). I am sure I can't be alone in feeling this, but it doesn't seem to be spoken of very much. We hear easy headlines in the press about absent fathers, who run away from their responsibilities. We are often told of the children whose poor place in society, or abilities or confidence of the world were irrevocably shaken by the lack of a father figure, and how THAT emptiness shaped their world view. We don't seem to hear about the fathers that have to fight to maintain a place in their children's lives.

Sad really, and I hope that our story is not all that common, but it is not a hope that is probably founded anywhere close to fact. There are, I am sure people in similar situations, some better, some worse. Ours is by far not the worst it could be. Things have, admittedly gotten better in the last few years. The first few years after our divorce were very, very hard. On all of us. I can only write about it from my perspective, although I can, to some degree see it from 'the other side'. The only side I can't see it from, is from our daughters. When I say I can't see it, I don't mean that I kid myself it has no impact on her, but she does seem to have dealt with the situation admirably. Because of the age she was when we split up, she probably cannot remember us actually being together. I guess this helps.

I've been busy...

2011-04-15T00:07:00.000+01:00

I've been so busy, that I haven't taken the time to make a blog entry. It's not through laziness. Well, okay, looking back, perhaps there is an element of the latter to it, but I really have been rather busy. Not only have I had the loving company of my daughter for the last four days, during her Easter holidays, but I have also been rather absorbed by work for the show. There has also been the small matter of taking care of my two new arrivals.

Midnight & Twilight, our kittens joined our family last weekend. Ever since they have been a bundle of joy to watch, and look after. They've settled in really well, and have gotten used to me and the flat without any problems whatsoever. They are now starting to gain confidence and realise that they can jump up onto things like the sofa, or my bed. Time will only tell just how well they get on with the sofa.

...one of Chloe's pics with her iPod Touch

Chloe and I have had a great week, getting to know the kittens, but also going out and doing things together. We went to Marwell Zoo on Tuesday, with my sister and her two boys. Fantastic day out that we wouldn't have had the chance to do if it wasn't for my sister being able to drive. We had a brilliant day there, that for me was a little overshadowed by the determined dying of my Blackberry, leaving me without the ability to take loads of pictures like I normally would. I was though, very impressed with some of the shots that Chloe was able to get with her iPod touch.

Drama off the stage has overtaken drama on it at St Peter's. The PCC have taken what seems like the rather political step of sacking anyone on the PCC that did not agree with their view that they sell the Theatre and its land, and the church. This land-grab is supposed to be to release the capitol needed to build a new church somewhere else.

Now I'd probably upset a load of people by commenting that surely if god is omnipotent and omnipresent it doesn't matter a damn where you are when you 'give thanks', so I won't say it. I am rather angered by such a move by the PCC. I don't confess to understand the inner workings of the political machine here, but it seems to me to be callous, ungrateful and downright despicable that they get rid of all these people that have worked tirelessly for the church and the theatre all these years.

Shame on them. Shame on them.

Phoenix Players have been resident there for decades, and have literally raised tens of thousands to keep that building going. To see the potential of them being so summarily chucked out onto the street is galling. It also means that we should at least consider the reality that we may need to find somewhere else to put on the show, as a backup, just in case things get worse.

...and so the hard work begins

2011-04-07T00:30:00.000+01:00

.. I woke up this morning with a start. Brimming with energy and a desire to accomplish my goals.

Waking up at 7am on my day off is pretty much a goal in itself. Considering how late I'd gotten to be the previous night I was amazed that I had risen at that time at all. I hadn't set an alarm to do so, but the sounds of the gorgeous day that was unfolding outside my window lured me out of my bed and off to the kitchen. There was coffee involved at this point.

In a continued fit of application, I then started cleaning the kitchen, once this was done, I moved on to the living room, the hallway, my bedroom, the stairs, Chloe's room..... you get the picture ? I cleaned the flat, from the peak of its top most top, to the bottom of its lowest most bottomest place. Always love the satisfied feeling when the cleaning is done. Never seems to stay in that immaculate, show home image for very long though. Helen came round, that soon put a stop to that.

We finally got finished the work we needed to do on the play, have had a read thru tonight, which was intended to be a full read, but as we'd arrived 20 minutes late due to issues with my printer, or precisley, issues with me working hard to stop the printer being hurled out of the window.

The script was well received. The stress and hassle of completing the task of editing the script and printing it before the read tonight was rather pressing at times, I have called my printer, this evening all the names under the sun. Such outbursts may not have made any difference to the output of the printer, but certainly made me feel better.

If you see a Blackberry flying past you.... an angry me may be nearby....

2011-04-05T23:46:00.000+01:00

Blackberry battery death. My world has fallen apart two days running now. When I recount the event, it seems so insignificant and spoilt of me that I am almost ashamed. Though, I guess not so ashamed that I prevented myself from sharing it on the interweb.

My beloved Blackberry's battery decided to die yesterday half way through work, it had not been an extraordinary day in anyway, I had not taken or made lots of calls from it. I guessed that perhaps I had forgot to turn the charger on at the wall when I plugged it in on Sunday night, or that somehow I (or someone else) had left the wifi or bluetooth switched on. None of these things turned out to be the case.

As luck would have it, I had taken my netbook to work with me, so that I could make some progress with Laptop, this meant that I was able to hide myself away at the back of the bus on the way home, and get some charge into my phone from my netbook. This was just as infuriating, as not having the phone at all, as I began to be deluged with messages, voicemails and emails from people wondering why I wasn't responding to them. Why is it that people don't understand the definition of 'urgent call' when you advise them that you have next to no power yet ?

The evening was only completed by me having left work late, rushing to get home (as much as you can rush when you are dependant on whatever time the bus driver thinks is acceptable to get you anywhere), trying desperately to sort out the phone issues and ending up leaving the water running in the kitchen sink causing a small flood. What is it they say about more haste, less speed. Well it certainly was true last night. The more I rushed, the more annoyed I was getting. I realised that not only was I completely unprepared to go anywhere, but that with further public transport connections required I wasn't going to get there until about 8:30.

This on top of a succession of those text messages being from people telling me that they wouldn't be able to make it to drama. I could have screamed. I think I should have. Maybe it would have helped. In the end, poor Helen ended up trying to make a session of interest for the 5 people that did turn up, without me. I felt awful, and just wanted to go to bed so that the day would end sooner.

Today's battery death was entirely unexpected, having a decent set of charge bars at lunch time (4pm today due to a later shift), I was surprised (I am being generous, my feelings were better described as something else but I won't use those words here) to see that again the battery status was in red and the pretty much as I left the building, it decided that there was not enough battery left to do anything of any value, turned off the mobile connection, and then 5 minutes later shut down completely. It took all my strength not to hurl the bloody thing across the car park.

Ok. So now I am amazed and appalled by this pathetic overreaction to the loss of the ability to communicate with people so lazily as my mobile phone allows. In my typical 'there's no middle ground' style (it's just one extreme or the other folks) where I was only recently considering changing to an iPhone 4 when my contract comes up for renewal, I am now considering NOT getting a new phone or contract at all.

Yeah right. Anyone want to take any bets on how long THAT idea will last ?

wooooosh ! And the weekend is gone !

2011-04-03T22:31:00.000+01:00

With much of a plan to spend most of Saturday with Helen rewriting the show, and really looking forward to spending an evening with Becky the very same night I had hoped that the weekend would bring that ever illusive balance of focus, work, creativity AND plain old fun.

Sadly the reality was not quite the same. I am, as I type this a little worse the wear for a lovely roast dinner at my Mum's punctuated with some red wine and some port.

Helen turned up late, after some issues that she needed to deal with at home, this meant that we didn't get anywhere near as much done as we wanted to. It would be short changing to say that we didn't make progress, we made considerable progress. It's just that we had hoped to finish the much needed rewrite of ACT I and then a quick tweak of Act II, so that we could read through the whole of the show on Monday. This now will not happen, although we have got nearly half the first act rewritten. Oh dear. I'm beginning to feel the pressure of not only the show's performance date, but also Script Frenzy.

Think positive ! 6 pages is hardly an unrecoverable score at three days in.

It's on ! It's on ! It's on !

2011-04-02T10:35:00.001+01:00

GO GO GO GO GO...... GO !

What's with all the implied excitement I hear you ask ? Well, it's April 2nd and I've survived April fools day without any incidents to report. But THAT is not the cause of this unbridled enthusiasm. That is due to Script Frenzy 2011 now being 'live' and me actually having a chance, against my expectations to get some script down.

I managed 5 pages last night. Not sure that they are very good pages, but I am remembering that for the month of April, and for that script I will be suspending my 'inner editor', my 'inner critic', my 'inner poo-poo-er of things' and all their relatives, friends and family. I will need them all for the work that Helen and I have to do today on The Fatcat And The Grafter. Would be rather pointless doing a rewrite of that script without inviting at least an 'inner editor' along.

5 Pages ! Yeeek ! I'm off (wondered what the smell was). Talking of smell, the flat really needs a clean, but I have so many other things that I want to do that are, well, more interesting. Must clean, clean the flat, clear my head. I'm going to scrub at and vacuum away the grime that acts as a barrier to my creativity, and let it shine.

Also, in other news, I've only got a week more of work and then I'm off for a week ! Yippeee. The week off being punctuated by two really great things, (I have noticed how many times I have said that lately, like I'm always trying to make a list out of everything in life, but really suck at it because I only do two). Those two things being that Chloe is coming to stay, and that hopefully I will get to pick up the kittens next weekend.

I need something fawn over, and gush about how cute it is that isn't made by Apple ? I need to have an interruption to my rather set ways and 'spotless' living environment. Yup that's right, I think my lovely new flat is too clean, too tidy so I'm going to introduce two baby cats (kittens to you) to help mess things up a bit. My Mother thinks that I am mad. This is possibly not untrue.

Anyways, the script....

© Simon Sansbury, April 2011. A PDF can of Laptop, can be found here :- Laptoppdfcanbefoundhere

One script finished (almost)... another starts

2011-04-01T00:58:00.001+01:00

One o'clock in the morning... now 60 minutes into script frenzy 2011. Two things are terribly apparent.

One. That although Helen and I have finished writing the play 'The Fatcat And The Grafter', we do still need to edit / rewrite it before the read through on Monday. (This will mean that I cannot devote Saturday to some one on one time with my frenzy script)

Two. I really wish that I could sit and blast out, in an energetic eruption of creativity, a few pages, but I'm honestly too knackered to do that right now.

I will probably take my netbook to work, so that I can work on 'netbook'. I haven't sat down and worked out the characters, but I do have a pretty good idea of the flow of the narrative, so I will be able to get down a few pages before having to do any more really detailed planning.

Other exciting developments in the world of Fallible_Fella (is it cool to refer to your blogging name in the third person ? Possibly not). Well, Helen and I had more people turn up to rehearsal on Wednesday, and this meant that we were able to cast most of the roles in the show. There are still some that we haven't been able to give to anyone.

In a twist of fate, we now have more than enough men, and are unsure about how to cast the last few male roles. (Mycroft Cockburn, Trevor(s), Narrator). Starlight, the ditzy air-headed girl is a role we also have to fill, but currently do not have a girl that would be able to take the role on.

With some other people interested that may come along on Monday, we may well just be in a situation where we can have the show completely cast before we start rehearsals, and without me having to take a part. This is actually something that although I have said all along I would want to avoid, (incase someone backs out, we always have me as a backup) but now I think the realisation is dawning that I'm rather going to miss being on stage myself. I will, no doubt get to be in the 'filmed' pieces, assuming we can sort out the organisation of those and all the technological aspects.

Monday ? Did I say Monday ? Yes. That's right, we will be moving to two sessions a week as of next week. Exciting stuff. This only leaves us with 23 rehearsals to get the whole show ready, but I'm sure that we can do it. We may have to cram in some extra sessions somehow (god only knows when or where)... but it's all about the art of the possible.

The other fantastic news is that Helen finally got around to giving me the contact details of the lady that has some Kittens for sale. (I was so worried, I was having Kittens about it myself). She says they may be strong enough to leave their Mother in the next week or so. I feel instantly cruel, taring these poor kittens away from their Mummy. If they are up to it, I will be able to pick them up the weekend at the start of my holiday, this gives two rather brilliant effects, being that I will get to spend time with them as I will be on holiday to settle the little darlings in. The other being that I will have Chloe for a few days that week, so she will probably be inconsolably excited when she finds this out. I am trying to stop myself from telling her, so that it comes as a surprise.

Can I keep my mouth shut ? Hmmm

Act II is done

2011-03-30T00:12:00.000+01:00

Helen came round tonight and we have managed, against our expectations to finish the 2nd Act of The FatCat And The Grafter. There's lots of tidying up to do, and lots of things that we need to revisit in Act I that perhaps now don't go so well with how the script ended up. Still as the evolution of the show goes, this is good stuff.

We're meeting again on Saturday to work on those points, and then, room being available, we're meeting Monday to read through the completed play to the whole cast. Yay ! We will still have a couple of roles left to cast, which we don't have people for, and there's a couple that we need to let some of the people coming along try out to get a feel for who would be best at what. I could tell you who's got what, but... Shhh !! Spoilers !

This under wire performance, is actually ahead of our usual 'ah lets start rehearsing the first act before we've written the second' which is kind of what happened last time. It left us with a rather bloated 2nd act when we came panic write it, a month into the rehearsal schedule. What On Earth (is Happening) was a long play as a result, and that was with us taking a knife to large parts of the script in Act II, about a week before the show went up as we recall. Ooops. Thankfully the great bunch of people that we had in the cast were able to take that in their stride, but it's an unnecessary hassle and stress for all those concerned that we want to make sure we avoid this time.

It does also leave me in the situation where I won't be able to devote a weekend to attacking Script Frenzy, my script 'Netbook' with vengeance until probably the 2nd week of Frenzy. Then, although I have a week off work I do have Chloe for 4 days, which I am really looking forward to also. I am sure there is a way round it all. It's funny how I feel better when I am tasking myself with doing more, and then achieving it.

There are plenty of empty evenings, even once I exclude the ones where I will be involved with rehearsals for The FatCat And The Grafter. I remember last year, it was only some point into the month that I decided to abandon the joint project that Helen and I had started, and write something on my own. Hard work, focus, vision, determination. I can do this. I'm like a coiled zebra, ready to pounce, and stripy.

Same bleep different day

2011-03-26T23:42:00.001Z

I'm curiously aware that I should be careful what I wish for.

I am so glad that this week is over, it really has been a supreme struggle, where I have been pretty close to giving up. I've managed to stop myself resorting to a spot of Apple based retail therapy as a compensation. It does look distractingly gorgeous, and is sooooo nice..... But, in reality it would be foolish to engage in any more big ticket expenditure. Especially with things feeling so fragile at work at the moment.

When I cast back to how I have felt at similarly low point before, I can see that at least on this occasion I am aware that I am not in a good place, that things need to change, before something else happens that forces that change in a more uncontrollable and destructive way. I'm not going to allow this situation, brought about as it feels by the particular demands of certain people to ruin my life.

If the way I feel good is when I have a clear plan, and when I am achieving steps towards a well defined goal, then it is a new plan that I need.

The world breaks everyone, and after, some are stronger in the broken places. - Ernest Hemingway.

The clocks go forward by an hour shortly, what is it that the people of the UK will do when they realise tomorrow that they have been cheated out of an hour ? Personally I will probably just be really pissed that I didn't get to spend another hour in bed, and get on with the rest of my day.

Tomorrow Helen is coming over, and we're hoping to finish the rest of the play, and then go back over the obvious flaws in Act I. If we can manage this, it would mean that at next weeks rehearsal, not only will we be able to announce the casting for most of the characters in the show, but that we will also be able to give people a near final draft version of the script.

THEN... it's onto the next big thing... 2011 Script Frenzy. There do seem to be some post-its missing, and this may be because some of them fell off the wall (serves me right for buying £1 shop post-it notes), or it may have something to do with me finding a couple of them stuffed down the back of Chloe's bed. Grrrrrr.

Just when you think things can only get worse....

2011-03-25T23:24:00.000Z

Well, lots of things are going down the shitter at the moment, but I am really glad to report that the play certainly isn't one of them.

We had a bit of a sad realisation last week when it suddenly dawned on us that we had fair few people coming to the workshop/rehearsals that were never going to actually be able to be in the play. (due to previous commitments). A mild, ok, less than mild set of panic set in, shortly followed by the determination to find a way of resolving this issue as soon as possible. (Or ASAP, as Jamie would say).

So, Helen and I asked the people at this weeks session to confirm if they were going to be able to be in the show, and also in which characters they were interested. This revealed real surprises itself, as has always been the case in our previous plays, what we normally find out is that the people that have shown themselves to be best at playing a particular role, the ones that shine at one part or another, are the ones that are interested in it. We've never had auditions, we've never really needed to. It always works out that in the workshop sessions and 'energised' readings of parts of the play someone stands out for each and every role. Everyone shines at one role or another, and this means that there isn't so much a competition for any part, more an evolution and natural progression.

It also means that everyone has a chance to do something they enjoy and are really good at. It's so simple, and works so well, we really don't understand why there other drama companies don't seem to do the same.

With the people that we've got, which initially we thought was actually much less than it works out, we have been able at this point to definitely cast several of the roles in the play.

It wouldn't be right for me to announce them here, before we've had a chance to speak to everyone, and I don't want to kill the dramatic and exciting reveal at next weeks session.

The roles that we aren't immediately able to cast right now, we need to give those interested a chance to play with the characters. This will help us, and them to see who is the best person for that part.

I was starting to think that we were so short of people that we couldn't continue with the show, but as it's turned out this isn't the case. Isn't the case at all.

This has, in no small way been made possible by the help of The Phoenix Players. They have been great in putting people our way that aren't being used in their currently play (which is on the month before ours), and some of those (Steve, Allison) have been absolutely fantastic in helping drum up more interest and exposure. They've put us in touch with a chap that has a half hour slot on a local radio show, and will be able to raise the profile of the company and hopefully get along the last couple of people that we need. He's also going to be try and get us mentioned the big screen in Portsmouth Guildhall Square. It really does go to show that it's not what you know, its who.

So even if work is like a pile of dog excrement at the moment, I am at least revitalised, recharged and invigorated by the things happening outside. I can actually achieve things, I can get things done, make things happen. Not so useless after all, eh ?

Standing outside

2011-03-24T22:17:00.001Z

... Because its dark, its a little cold and its the only way I can feel more than a little a live - instead of feeling numb and dead. All. Over.

Dramatic ? Sure. Self absorbed ? Probably. Wallowing ? Meh.

They call it work, well because its work dummy.

Tale my own advice, either suck it up, get on with it or get something else
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Glorious cold sunshine

2011-03-19T14:39:00.001Z

The weekend arrives with some fantastic sunshine, just none of the warmth. The need to do some cleaning has finally caught up with me, so to the bleach it is I went. Now much happier that things are clean and sparkly.

This week has been something of a trudge for me, it really has had some low points, but it definitely has had some highs. Must make more of an effort to remember those. I realised the other day that I should make sure I am playing to my strengths than to my weaknesses. The more time I get to spend with the team, the better I feel, the more I get to see what a great job it is that they do. Otherwise, there's a sad tendency that the only time they get to speak to me, and I them, is when something's gone wrong.

That creates a horrible expectation on their part that every time they have a conversation with me, it's going to be a negative thing.

The casual negativity and the ignorance of my requests has caused some problems before. I find it hard not to take such things personally, but what I have noticed this week, is that as I have started to challenge these things, and let people know how that is coming across they have responded well to it (the challenge). For sure this isn't always the case right at that moment, but in every situation they've gone away, thought about it, and come back with a different approach.

What strikes me from that is that it isn't a personal thing, it's just the nature sometimes of human interaction that we don't know how it is we are perceived by others. It is only when someone tells us that we have the chance to change that. Because they are responding in that way, it also becomes apparent to me how much they do actually care not just about how they are seen, but also about how they effect me.

It's been a tough couple of months getting these guys onboard, shaping them into a team of people (that came originally from other teams), and getting them used the different ways in which I work to other people they may have worked with before.

Sometimes you get in any group of people, someone that works against the common good, that creates an aura or wave of negativity that has to be worked round in order to achieve anything. These guys are sometimes difficult to get onboard, but that's because they are passionate about what they do, and want to be the best at it. It at times can make it harder to manage them, but I would rather have that any day than a team of 11 robots who just did everything I said. (I've gone and committed to text that I am okay with the 'push-back' there haven't I ? Oooops).

These people that I work with, are just that, people. They are not a statistical group of averages, they are individuals that all need to be helped, coached, encouraged or even chastised in a specific way to have the best effect for them.

It's a shame that the response at the offer of a pizza based celebration and the flat warming was so cooly received, because we certainly need as a group the opportunity to get out, let our hair down (those of us that still have some) and be silly together. Work can be so serious, and rightly so, but no one can survive being focused and official all the time. Work hard, play hard.

2011-03-17T22:19:00.002Z

Wow. What a day. As the journey to work progressed along, so did my feeling of impending dread. A depressing start with the greeting of a bunch of miserable faces. This day, however got off to a much better start thanks to an emotional and impressive time spent with a member of the team.

It's worth remembering that whenever I am feeling downtrodden and overwhelmed by the world, that returning to the basics and spending time with the people (sounds very, very cheesy, doesn't it ?) really works. It gives me hope, re-energises me and gives me the drive to carry on with the rest of the zone. Sometimes I find it easy to absorb all the negativity that some of them seem to exude on a daily basis.

Things can only get better ? They better had.

Last night's drama was not as inspiring as the previous week. Which was a shame. I was hoping that the unveiling of the first four scenes of act 2 would have gone better. Sadly Helen wasn't able to make it, as she wasn't feeling very well. Another couple of notable absences and some not inconsiderable tensions between two particular people may be to blame for the rather cool reaction. They may not. It may simply be that the script isn't up to scratch. It is a draft, after all, although I grow concerned that we risk losing some of the fantastic interest we have seen blossom recently because the script isn't completed. Helen and I are talking about meeting up either at the weekend this week, or early next week one evening and then again during the day on my day off.

This will mean we make some great progress toward actually finishing the damn thing. Then, oh then, the rewrite starts. We need to revisit first the aims and goals that we had for the show, the messages we wanted to get across, the situations we wanted to show. When I say messages, I don't mean there is a moral to the story, or that we are trying to be at all preachy. We aren't there isn't a moral to this story. The whole idea is to show people in their brilliant, wonderful ridiculousness and get people to laugh at that.

That's the idea anyway.

There's always someone worse off.....

2011-03-15T23:11:00.000Z

Working, as I do in a busy office, surrounded by people all day, speaking to other people that aren't geographically near them and imparting such obvious gems as 'The way to get better availability is to not select unavailable' I have come to several conclusions.

Opinions are like arseholes. Everyone has one, but some of them stink
Some people are miserable. Some people are happy. Some people are only happy when they are miserable.
Some people think so much of themselves, and how perfect that they are that they actually can't see the person they really are.

Today being a late start, I was up after a short battle with the alarm clock and a surprisingly good sleep, alert, energised and ready to start the day. The gorgeous sunny day that greeted me outside the window meant I walked to the bus stop with more than a chirp in my step. The fact that I missed by mere seconds (well, maybe about 120 of them) the bus that would have gotten me to work comfortably on time, didn't phase me. Nor did catching another that meant I had to frog march a mile at the other end, arriving as I did with seconds to spare before the start of the day.

Some days it takes more of an effort than others to actually travel that far and make it into the building. There are times too when I will nearly skip through the security pods.

In these perilous times I count myself glad that I have a reasonably well paid job, and security. In addition it's worth remembering that difficult as our day to day existences and jobs can be, we're not trying desperately to find the rest of our family, or rebuild our shattered lives under the looming threat of radiation exposure. In short, we got it bloody easy compared to others. There is always someone worse off than you. The pictures on the TV, and the information online is frightening, appalling, emotion invoking. How humbling it is to see the people in Japan trying to deal with the massive and unprecedented disaster that nature has visited upon them. An 8.9 magnitude earthquake, thousands dead, missing, injured and homeless. Yet they still manage to carry on quietly with dignity. The trains working the next day. Makes you wonder. If such things happened in the UK, I dread to think how long it would take us to get the trains working again (that relies on the presumption that the current level of service can be defined as working).

British people in general seem to be a nation of moaners. If you don't like it, bugger off and do something else with your day, and stop making everyone else pay for your bad decision. If you want to be something else, go be that.

Physician. Heal thyself.

Write here, write now...

2011-03-15T00:20:00.000Z

After the usual calamity that is work on a Monday (actually today it wasn't so bad), Helen came up to mine to do some more work on the script for The FatCat And The Grafter.

Despite starting relatively late, and both of us being progressively tired (and it's only the first day of the week ! eeeeek !) we have 'knocked out' three scenes this evening. Admittedly they are not very long scenes, but allow us the 'waaaahhaaaaayy' ok ?

Script is coming together, number of people is increasing. Progress by fuck is being made !

Benjamin Cook, what was it that you did ?

2011-03-13T23:25:00.000Z

I am confused.

One of the people that I follow on Twitter is Benjamin Cook, the writer and journalist. I first heard of him when I was reading 'The Writer's Tale', which he co-wrote with Russel T Davies. That was such an impossible book to put down, and so fascinating to someone like me who is both a life long Dr Who fan, and interested in anything that covers the differing processes people go through when they write. Especially when they are fortunate enough to do so for a living.

The 'Twitterverse' is abuzz tonight with a mixture of both condemnation, shock, insult and support (but mostly the shock, condemnation and insult). Apparently a tweet that Mr Cook had posted has caused such controversy and reaction. Such venomous bile being spouted.

Despite trying to look, I have not been able to ascertain what it is that has been said to prompt such a reaction. In his own later posts he says that it was something bad, that he regretted doing it.

Without knowing what it was that was said it is hard, or at least it should be, to form an opinion one way or the other. Others, it would seem, do not have such reservations. It is hard to imagine what words could possibly justify such hatred. Reading some of them back, with comments such as 'you should get the fuck off twitter now. I don't want to read what you say...'. Surely, just as if you do not like the programmes on a Television or Radio, you are more than free to change the channel, or turn it off, on Twitter you can easily block or just 'unfollow' a person. This way you would not get to see their posts and get so offended by them.

Is it really possible to react in such a way to mere words ? Words are powerful, to be sure, but they are just a combination of letters. They only have relevance or energy when attached to the meaning given them by the reader. This means that the same words will have different strength and impart depending on the experiences and opinions of the reader.

We all have said or done things that we regret, wish we could change, undo. The sad reality is that we cannot. There is no choice but to go on, and find a way to learn to live with the memory, the guilt, the pain and the lesson that the mistake has given you.

Who would you rather trust, someone who has lived a pure and blameless life, or a hypocrite, a person who has made this mistakes themselves ? Give me a hypocrite every time.

And you thought your day was bad ?

2011-03-11T23:12:00.001Z

My day has been absolutely shocking. Any grand plans for the day went out the window the moment that I was made aware of a high level complaint that I had been responsible for. This required some considerable investigation to see exactly how it was that this had come to pass.

Depressing ? Frustrating ? Embarrassing ? Yes.

Some mistakes, are easily made, but have profound and far reaching consequences. Making mistakes is one thing. Not learning from them is another.

There I was, not exactly feeling sorry for myself, but feeling that things have to change, some in large, some in not so large ways, when something brought me into focus.

On the other side of the planet, hundreds of people have died, as an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale hits Japan. Tsunami following the quake have added to the disaster, and surrounding islands and nations in the Pacific are all on alert.

Just goes to show doesn't it. No matter how bad your day is, there's always someone else who's having a worse one.

1001101101010

2011-03-10T22:07:00.001Z

Was it really any surprise that I raced home after work today to get to spend some more time on my new shiny ?

Not really much of a revelation there. I have spent quite some time this evening getting to know it better. I have sadly not been able to complete the review of Kaos Absolute, the story of The Adventures Of Stephen Brown that I have been due to write for the last couple of months (hassle of moving, Christmas chaos and a lack of internet being the reasons for the delay), due to the footage seemingly not being encoded correctly. I can watch on of the four parts to the story, but sadly without the other three there' little point in me doing the review.

I guess the review will have to wait a little bit longer. I am a bit sad that after the success of yesterday's writing and rehearsal sessions that Helen and I weren't going to be able to meet up and get some more of the script written for the show. (The FatCat And The Grafter).

Work is feeling a heck load more possible what with a tweak to how we do things, and the efforts of a superhuman Louise, although I did have to spend 4 hours in a room today, going through a questionnaire that's meant to help the business figure out just how much we (don't) know. Good idea. Makes sense, as people's knowledge levels seem to be all over the place. But 4 hours ? Didn't even manage to finish the booklet in that time. I hope that doesn't mean that the conclusion the powers that be will take from the exercise is that I actually don't know anything, and have been blagging it the last 4 years. I haven't. Honest.

The Eagle has landed

2011-03-09T23:55:00.000Z

It's so late, and it's been such a long and fantastic day, but I had to nip online quickly to report the much anticipated arrival of my beloved iMac. Despite the anguish, the expense, oh and the waiting, it is finally here. It does not disappoint. Helen had come up today rather early, well early for her. She arrive just before 10am, as she had promised to do. I on the other hand had been up since 7am to make sure that I was ready for the arrival of my new shiny.

Shiny it is. Although it didn't arrive until about 2:30 I was very excited when it got here. I practically threw myself down the stairs to go out there and meet the TNT driver, just to make sure that he had no problems finding my address.

Rather quickly I had the machine (somehow that word doesn't feel the right word to use) out of the box and operational within a matter of minutes. A little bit longer, but still a very short amount of time was all that I needed to get the all important Celtx installed and away we went, carrying on exactly where we'd left off, working on the script for The FatCat And The Grafter. Helen is not the most technically savvy person in the world, and would admit herself that what she knows, or cares about computers is very, very limited, but even she was impressed by how well everything was put together, and how well it all worked.

The arrival of my new Shiny was not the only great success of the day. We have made considerable progress with the play itself, and have indeed been able to plan out the storyline into the second act, and even get the first scene in Act II written.

The day seemed to take a bit of a downer when person after person cried off the session tonight, each citing differing reasons. Both Helen and I were beginning to feel that perhaps we would be better off if we cancelled the session, and carried on writing the script. We decided to push past those reservations, and boy are we glad that we did.

We had, in total, the same number of people at this session as we had the previous week. There were new people (Welcome Steve and Christine) joining in alongside the stalwarts that have become regulars over the last couple of weeks. The atmosphere worked so well with all the people there tonight, and everyone participated equally, there was so much laughter. Never a bad thing when you are trying to put on a comedy. Some of these people have now seen some of the scenes we were looking at quite a few times, but still, they laughed (in all the 'right' places). Tonight's session has really given Helen and I a boost, not really that one was needed, but it has shown us that we are on the right track, and we just need to get the script itself finished, and the show cast so we can move into rehearsals proper.

There's still a long way to go, and there's lots of work to do, but we have made great progress today, and this energetic success will embolden us further to press on and achieve what we need to do. We're starting assemble a cracking team of very talent and very nice people.

Things can only get better.

Here comes the rain again. (Is IT here yet ?)

2011-03-09T07:43:00.000Z

Getting up at 7:20 on my day off is by no means something of a norm for me. I am revisiting that excited 'kid at christmas' feeling. Waiting not for some old guy to climb down a chimney we don't have and empty his sack. I await the delivery of my new shiny.

Will it get here before Helen does ? In all probability, yes. My iMac has come from the Netherlands, Helen comes from Buckland.

Meanwhile the weather has done a classic bait'n'switch job, and having raised my expectations yesterday with glorious spring like sunshine, has delivered for today, my day off, miserable cloud and rain. Does the weather have a regulator ? Offrain ?

I'm only rushing to the window every time I hear anything that I think sounds like a delivery van pulling up. Wouldn't be so bad, but living across from a school means that in the next hour literally hundreds of lazy parents will drive up and drop off their even lazier children. They may argue that its raining and they don't want their precious offspring to get wet, but it won't kill them, they are 70% water anyway. They can't get wetter than they already are, some of them. Drips only get bigger.

My new Apple shiny on the other hand will be hurt by rainfall. Clear the roads !! Man with Simon's new shiny (I'm assuming it's a man, it might not be) coming through !!

Day Two...

2011-03-08T23:51:00.000Z

2nd day in, and the progress continues. Hard, good and worthwhile work. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. It being pancake day, and starting with such glorious sunshine, set the mood (despite the hope that a certain delivery would take place not bearing fruition). I have been determined from the outset that it be a great day. A great day it was.

Sometimes you just have to hold on to your vision and push on through.

Tomorrow, it comes tomorrow.

1st day back.. and I survived..

2011-03-07T23:38:00.000Z

1st day back after my holiday, and it didn't go too bad. An interesting day where I learned lots about how I allow work to be created for me by not ensuring other people are doing what they should. Something that I will need to tackle.

I had arranged to meet up with Kelly, so she could come round for a kebab tonight. It was nice to see her again, we hadn't caught up in a while. She told me about how she went for a tarot reading, and the medium (or whatever you call them) told her some interesting things about her future :-

That she would be pregnant in the next year
That she would have 4 children. (either 3 girls and 1 boy, or maybe 3 boys and 1 girl - nothing like accurate predictions then ?)
She would have an affair in 2 years time.

She home, and then had a rather unbelievable conversation with her other half about how they were going to have so many kids, and how she was going to be cheating on him in 2 years time.

You can't make this stuff up, but someone did. Didn't they ? Well it's all recorded here, we'll check back in a few years time and see what happens. I'm certainly not putting any money on it.

The other exciting and disappointing thing that happened today was that when we got back here with our kebabs, there was a 'sorry we missed you' card from TNT, who had tried to deliver my iMac today whilst I was at work.

DAMMITT !!!!

Back to work we go....

2011-03-06T22:24:00.000Z

Tonight is my last night before returning to work from my holiday. This may usually cause feelings of listlessness or melancholy within me. Not so this time.

After a great conversation with my deputy on Friday and some hints at some things that are happening in a quick online conversation from someone else at work, I am actually really looking forward to going back. Not because I have hated my time off, the contrary is true. I have had productive time and slouching time in a pretty much 40/60 split during my time off. I consider this a good balance.

Too often I relax so much on holiday that I don't actually do anything at all, and then feel depressed at the lack of achievement. This I have avoided this time round. I have set myself some goals, some things by which I can feel that I have indeed gained something out of the time off work.

I'm pleased with the progress that is being made at drama, the momentum is definitely gaining pace. Already have more people going to the coming week's session than attended last week. Just need to pin Helen down long enough to finish the rest of the bloody script.

I am also feeling good about the progress I have made with preparing for Script Frenzy. Looking forward to all this week will bring. Go get 'em tiger !

Wednesday cannot come too soon...

2011-03-04T00:29:00.000Z

An email this morning from Apple confirmed that they had, at last processed my order, and would be delivering my new iMac on either the 9th or 10th of March. Next week. Of course it would be arriving after I go back to work.

At least I know that it's on its way. I am sure as the time passes I will get more excited, and will practically be impossible to be around on Tuesday. Inconsolable if it doesn't get delivered on Wednesday (as that's my day off).

An iMac, apparently cannot be rushed. Whilst I await my new shiny, Apple have gone and released another new such gorgeous machine, the second incarnation of the hugely successful Ipad.

As ever, they have produced a wonderfully exciting device, that is an improvement over the previous model. Astonishingly, the Ipad 2 is priced at the same level as was the first Ipad when it was released last year. When I wasn't frustrated about the time it is taking for my new computer to arrive I was salivating over the new ipad. I simply cannot afford to buy one. There are some deals at the moment with a variety of mobile phone companies (Orange & Three) - with Orange offering the Ipad (1, as I'm guessing we'll now learn to call it) for £99, with a monthly contract £25 to existing customers, £27 to new ones it is sorely tempting. None the less, as much as the kid let lose in the candy store feeling is exciting, in the real world you still have to find the money for the shiny thing.

When I wasn't either frustrated or dreaming (never saying that to a someone in Curry's again) I got some thrashing out of ideas for Laptop (the idea I'm developing for this years Script Frenzy). In short, there are more post-its.

It's probably not clear from the photo, but it is now evolving into three distinct acts. There are still plenty of gaps, but there's definitely a story there. You know, like with a beginning, a middle and an end. Feeling the glow of that creativity. Additional ideas pop into my head every now and then, and I just add them to the wall. It's a funny thing, the more I add, the more ideas I have. Once I get the ball rolling I find it has a life, a momentum all its own.

Far across town, in another idea..... Workshop numero three for drama. Stunningly there were more people this week. A whole 8 people turned up. This was the most we've had so far. It was a really good session for that reason, and also because rather than struggling to find ways to fill two hours with random games we spent the vast majority of the time playing with selected scenes from the show.

Those that hadn't seen the script before responded well to it, which is always encouraging. Hopefully by the next session then Helen and I would have been able to write some more. Helen is due back off her holiday, just as I finish mine, so our chance of cramming and writing a couple of days straight seems to have passed us by.

It's a bit worrying that our deadlines for getting the script completed are slipping away at a rate of knots. It is now four weeks since the initial readthru, and we haven't written anything extra in that time. A whole month. With now less than four months until the show opens, it's critical that we actually finish the script, and in good enough time to allow ourselves to edit it sufficiently and to give the cast time to get to know it.

T - 30

2011-03-02T11:16:00.000Z

Script Frenzy

30 days and counting (down) to Script Frenzy. An email from the Offices of Letters & Light (or organisation that runs the madness) reminded me that 'the frenzy' is fast approaching and I don't have one iota of an idea that I can develop into a 100 page script.

Remembering how crap it felt last year, when I wrote Retro Rocket (and succeeded in the 100 pages written during April target. Yay !) and didn't really have a plan, and how that nearly ended in failure, I wanted to make sure that I avoided that this year. When I'd entered National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) I had also neglected to plan, and elected for an organic free form approach to the writing. I just sat at my desk, and let the ideas poor out. Good, bad or downright terrible.

Having not succeeded with NaNoWriMo and only managing something like 17,409 words (when I say something like, that's the exact figure) I don't want to repeat the failure.

Fail to plan. Plan to fail.

So what does this writer do when he doesn't have a plan (can I call myself a writer ? - someone check that one out and get back to me) ? Post-its. Yes post-its. Those non-recyclable yellow gems that turn any flat surface into a 'brain storming wall'. Now that it's my wall I can stick post-its up with gay abandon. (Heterosexual abandon just doesn't work so well).

This works for me, may not work for others.. but you have to go with what works. I have progressed a little from the initial post-it driven 'floating of ideas' to the developing of one particular idea. I had considered using Frenzy (as it appears to be affectionately shortened) to write the first series of Retro Rocket. I have dismissed this as I have not revisited the idea since last April's Frenzy, so the 'pilot' script will, in itself need lots of editing. An attack of the big red pen (or in my case, the impatient pencil) is required. Also with Retro Rocket, I just haven't actually resolved those issues about show direction that had been the stumbling block. It was not answering those questions that I think made it hard to push on with the script originally. It didn't have a plan (return to previous point about planning).

I also discarded the 'man goes back in time to undo the mistakes that cost him his marriage - only to find out that he erases his daughter from existence' because, well, I just thought it was a crappy idea.

Likewise 'man on bus / train that isn't allowed to get off at his intended destination' is perhaps worthy of a short film (about 5 minutes) but I couldn't for the life of me see how I could get 100 pages out of that idea. It may be possible that the idea I have gone for ends up with elements of that. We'll have to wait and see.

Laptop (alternative titles being :- Feedback or Netbook) is the story of what changes occur in a man's life as a result of him buying a laptop (or netbook) off Ebay. The computer contains information that he is not aware of, and also has automatic sign-on enabled to internet chat sites. This draws or drags him into a world that he is initially intrigued about, but as he discovers more is increasingly scared as he gets more and more deeply involved in the things that were happening in the life of the laptop's previous owner.

What does the machine have on it that makes it so important to so many different groups (big business, criminals, government etc) ?

How did it come to be on Ebay in the first place, if it was so important ? (was the previous owner mugged ? Are they still alive ?)

So our hero, if that's the word is forced to try and convince these people that this was not his laptop before, and he has no way of finding out what's hidden on the hard-drive. He has a hard time convincing these people, a succession of organisations or individuals keep tracking him down to convince him to give them what they want. None of them believe him when he says that he's just brought the laptop on ebay. They believe him even less when it gets stolen.

He then has to try and find the laptop, as giving it to the people that want it so badly is the only way to get them out of his life.

This would be as boring as hell as a stage play, and is definitely suited to filming, even something that could be done on a low budget ,and with a bunch of amateur film-makers. (you see where I'm going here, don't you ?)

Let me know what you think, dear reader. Perhaps as I develop the idea, I post those onto the blog ? Hmmm. All this AS WELL AS , The Fatcat And The Grafter.

This is good. I like to be busy. When I'm not busy I'm sitting at home watching shit someone else has written on TV.

Are Women Better (Drivers) Than Men ?

2011-03-01T17:59:00.000Z

Shock of horrors, and utter absence of common sense has occurred at the hands of those dastardly European equality laws.

Apparently it will be illegal from the end of the year for insurance companies to charge different rates for customers Dependant on their sex. On the face of it, 'great news'. Everyone's the same, aren't they ? Well the statistics show that men are more likely to have accidents than women (despite all those derisive jokes that men make about women drivers, they are actually better at it). For example, the average cost of an accident to an 18 year old driver is about twice as much for a male as it is for a female (£4,400 & £2,700 respectively).

That's because young men, as a rule, behave on the road in a similar way to how they behave elsewhere. Like d@*ks.

Feminism seems to have scored a massive own goal with this one.

There's a line from a book that I once read, (and there are no prizes for guessing which book).... There's nothing more unfair than the equal treatment of unequals.

We are all equal, but we are all different. Surely when it comes to insurance you are not discriminating against people if you are passing on to them the associated increased cost of insuring them ?

If it's going to be illegal to charge women less for their insurance, because they are on the whole more careful drivers, does this mean that insurance premiums for men will come down ? Or does it mean that all the insurance companies will do is increase women's insurance to the same level as men's ? I know, I know it's vastly cynical of me.

This does seem to be a complete failure of common sense. The only comforting thought that I have is that I don't drive so none of this effects me whatsoever.

That was the weekend that was

2011-02-28T09:21:00.000Z

... and now I'm on holiday for a whole week ! Yipeee !

Should I show such gladness being off work for a week ? It's just nice to have a break in the exercise of pushing water uphill with a fork. So nice in fact, that despite a relatively late night while I try to sort something out with Celtx I am up with the lark. When I say lark, I'm up with the alarm clock/radio and the WAKE UP ! set on my Blackberry.

I even left the window open in my bedroom last night. How cool is that ? When I say cool, I don't mean that I was cold, just that the idea of fresh air, and the soothing, but distant sound of the M27 (the motorway, not my drama company).

What's this thing that you've been trying to sort our with Celtx, I hear you say ? Surely Celtx is so easy to install it doesn't take a late night session to get it to work.

Well, no, it doesn't. What I was trying to do, was see if I could get Celtx to run out of Dropbox (service that shares across all your installed computer the contents of that folder - an introduction to cloud computing). Does it work ? No.

The iMac cometh

2011-02-27T13:58:00.000Z

Never, ever, ever, go shopping with your daughter, and whilst standing in an electrical shop say to the assistant that offers to help you that you are 'just dreaming'. It's pretty much an invitation for them to tell you how you don't need to dream with their 6 months interest free option.. blah, blah, blah, blah.

To give him his due, he was very helpful, but I did kind of get the idea that he didn't entirely know what he was talking about. Not only did he try to tell me that the iMac I was looking at didn't come with a wireless keyboard or magic mouse, but when comparing payment plans he showed me a lovely chart for a repayment amount that was different to the value of the machine, and an APR that was a good 10% lower than the one quoted on the details.

I have been dreaming about getting a new computer ever since my Mac Mini died last year. It's never seemed like a sensible thing to do when I was trying to buy the flat, and then move. I'm wouldn't exactly call it sensible now, but....

Well, I work hard, I deserve it. Anyway, I'm not going to justify myself to you, who do you think you are, my mother ?

So many choices. iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro. Do I get in a shop on 6 month interest free, knowing full well I am not going to be able to raise the rest of the money by the end of the 6 months, so will get stung with loads of interest (which is racked up from the day you purchase the machine) ? Do I go for the option of paying about £500 now, and then paying a monthly contract fee with a mobile network provider ? (There was an option to buy one of the laptops for about £400 less, and then pay about £41 a month to get 5gb of data - this would have made sense if I actually had that sort of money knocking around).

So I did what every responsible adult should do. No I didn't flip a coin. I came home, and rationally set out a pros and cons list for each option. It became pretty obvious that as sexy as a Macbook or Macbook Pro look, how likely was it that I was actually going to take it anywhere ? Would I not be too nervous of damaging or losing my new purchase, or even that someone would steal it. (shock horror). Laptops are cool, and er... mobile, but a desktop is actually the machine that needs replacing, and the power on the iMac is substantially more than the laptop machines. With the bigger screen the iMac is also more suited to me using it for video editing. The activity I hate so much in connection with M27 videos, but a necessary evil. With an iMac that experience would surely be less painful that it was on my poor little macmini, and definitely more so than on a windoze machine.

So that's what I did. I went and ordered (online) an iMac. The really hard bit starts now. The waiting for it to arrive.

I want it here NOW !!!!!!!

Takers, please, and takers ?

2011-02-23T23:13:00.000Z

Had our 2nd M27 workshop tonight. Hard core of people. By which I mean that there was only 5 of us. Now this is the same number that we had last week. It is not, though the same 5 people we had last week. Okay, there was me, and there was Clive who had been to the previous session.

This week we were joined by Becky, Terry and Nick. No Helen as she's off on a holiday. (To Egypt no less, after having to cancel her holiday to he Maldives due to being struck down with a bug. Egypt ? Is she mad ?)

We got off to a late start, and again with so few people it was a strain to get some of the improvisation games to work. Some really good and funny times though.

All set for next week ? Yes. Although I am more determined that we do less improvisation and do some workshops around the actual existing script. There is only so much improvising you can do with 5 people and without the ability to bring / store any props to work off.

Hold the front page ?

2011-02-23T15:49:00.000Z

Indefinitely ?

Last night I was watching Newsnight, with a group of representatives from the 'establishment' media (The Financial Times, The Guardian and the BBC) and someone from 'Google'. It's interesting to see this lot come somewhere in between justifying their own existence and being media naysayers.

All of this talk about online news and media killing the traditional printed press, that the rise of the 'citizen journalist' doing 'quality' hacks out of jobs. I can't see it contributing to the unemployment numbers any time soon. It has, however, shown that it provides an invaluable multiple of sources at seminal events, as shown in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

Newsnight's piece included some location reporting about how a local newsagents was suffering because not so many people were having papers delivered anymore. This is a natural evolution of information exchange, in the same way that I commented recently on the demise of the posted written word. More and more people want their news there as it happens, live and in bite-size chunks that are easily consumed in the stolen moments of a busy life. Letters have been so much more effectively replaced with email for all but certain messages. Most communication just isn't that important that it needs committing to a piece of dead tree and physically dragging from one end of the country to the other, or is important enough that it can't wait the time needed to do that.

Did the press die with the advent or radio, or television ? No. Sure they would have seen a drop in circulation, as some people took advantage of the new medium, but all are still going quite strong. Truth is in 21st century society we are consuming much more information, but we are also accepting if from a variety of sources.

The internet isn't really all that new anymore, we are just exploring new ways of interfacing with it, as technology allows. Apple's Ipad has reinvigorated a previously failed market, that of the tablet pc. This old idea that your computer is this grey or white box on the side of your desk doesn't hold true any more. Our phones are now more like personal communications devices in every way, rather than just in making and receiving calls.

The industry observers, or representatives remarked that the advantage of a 'live' (as a pose to 'dead') medium like a web page or tablet pc content is that the publisher has a relationship with the reader, they can see who reads what, and for how long. This helps them understand more efficiently what stories are actually worth 'printing' and which are not. With a printed newspaper, you don't actually read all of it, you skim through it, sifting out the stuff you don't like or just don't have time to read. An attractive byline or picture will grab your attention and draw you into the article. This works the same if it's a book cover, content in a newspaper or topics on a website.

Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Paxman was trying to provoke reaction, or at least debate by asking if it was a good thing that people get a set of news items that's personal to them, as it encourages them to be increasingly more insular and self absorbed. Is this really the case ? I would agree that we all seem to live these days in our own little worlds, shutting out the physical world and people around us and absorbing ourselves in our smartphones, and blocking the interruptions with headphones. That is the bad thing, or sad thing about the use of this technology. Personally, I have stopped listening to music on my headphones on the bus because I don't like to be that cocooned form the world around me. It's also, despite whatever you may think about sound levels an irritant to the other passengers. Having said that, I am sat there either surfing content on my Blackberry or reading from my Kindle, but not all the time. There are times when I sit there, just observing the world that is passing around me, and taking in the effect of the different people that get onto and off the bus as I travel from one place to the other.

If people are disposed to be narrowminded, I don't think that technology is to blame for that personality trait. Nor would the lack of it make them any more enlightened. In the past people would perhaps polarize to prefer one paper or another, depending on their political standpoint. As much as mainstream politics doesn't recongnise it, perhaps the media just doesn't see that there isn't such a thing as a 'labour viewer/reader' or a 'Tory viewer/reader'.

Have we all discovered that we are not that different, and this is why politics seems to inhabit this grey mish-mash middle-ground ? Is it really for the publisher of any content to try and decided what I do or don't get to read or view ? Surely that's some sort of censorship, which is as unacceptable as it is unaccountable. In reality of course, what you print or show can influence opinion, if it didn't no one would spend money on advertising. Surely people need to take some personal responsibility to have an open minded view on things and not just trust one source. That is one of the beauties of the 'Citizen reporter' model. There's no censor. (There's also no editor making sure it's relevant or acceptable, or interesting. Editing is just a light version of censorship - right ?).

I've never heard someone say, 'I prefer Google to Yahoo, because that Google content is sooooo right/left wing'. They may say they prefer one or the other because of the page layout, and the responsiveness of the content. Maybe this means that instead of cheating ourselves into schoolyard style political camps, we are actually just reading the content, and judging the content on, well... the content ?

There are popularist online sources of information, and those that offer a more reasoned, rational, thought out view. This isn't something new, the printed and visual media are full of examples of both schools of thought. Always the quick and easy headline/byline/link.

There's lots of hot air about 'who controls the content'. There is, I suppose some validity to this in some areas, Apple for example are rather draconian about their content control and access to their soft and hardware. Having said that, you can still google, or yahoo search (or bing) from an iPhone. There are some programs or aps that you will never be able to get on an iPhone or iPod, but there are some things you will never see on BBC1, but that you may find on Channel 4. Does anyone only really every watch only one channel on TV ? No. They don't.

Maybe the reality lies somewhere in that media consumption and publishing is evolving as we get more used to these new technologies. What's different, is that it is the public that are leading the change, creating the groundswell. It's starting the other way around. Radio, TV & printed press, but the very nature of their respective technologies had to be driven into existence.

As for this supposed point about it doing scores of 'quality' journalists out of a job.. who is it that defines they are of quality ? If themselves, well, self praise really doesn't form any sort of recommendation. There are also scores of journalists, papers and TV channels that will propagate any old rubbish, accurate, true or otherwise that won't be missed. So if they are put out of a job by similar individuals that aren't professionals, at least we can comfort ourselves with the fact that we are not indirectly paying them for their .... rubbish.

How late finishing work ?

2011-02-21T21:50:00.000Z

Not only did I manage to not run screaming from the call centre, I actually left on time. This is something of a miracle, and the week before I go on holiday too. With some focus and drive I did manage to get done some things that I need to make sure are in place before I take a break, and on a Monday too. Amazing.

I was so astounded that I managed to leave early that I forgot my hoodie and needed to go back for it.

Sadly no distractions today. I think I've been a bit of an idiot, which I guess makes a change from being a complete one.

From the great beyond, or facebook, I found out that Helen has not been able to go on her holiday as both her and her husband have been struck down with some bug. I'm hoping they get better soon, poor old Helen, doesn't really need anything else going wrong.

I'm a bit worried about the number of people that haven't said they are going to the 2nd workshop. Perhaps I am being a lazy organiser and relying on facebook to do all the work for me. Some time hitting the phones is on order tomorrow night I think. An activity I will have to squeeze in before Becky gets here for our Rocky Horror night. There will be vodka, singing... and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I am sure the sight of me doing the Timewarp whilst doing my cleaning, on Sunday night, would have been enough to make my neighbours wonder what the hell I was up to.

Sunday, Sunday.

2011-02-20T23:48:00.000Z

A little late getting up today, made me late for picking up Chloe. Nice day. We stopped into Palmerston Road, to take advantage of the farmers market. Brought some rather delicious honey, and that staple of farmers markets, a hog roast. Yum.

A quick trip to Iceland, (the shop, not the country) to pick up some supplies, and we came back and set about preparing for dinner. Chloe had been asking me to give her some money, first to top up her mobile, and then so that she could buy a game for her Ipod. There then started the chat about how as she has so much pocket money, she can afford to buy such things herself.

£10 worth of topup a definite no. The £1.75 for the 'Plants vs Zombies' game, was something I was prepared to buy, if she did some chores. So after vacuuming her room, and the front room, running down to the shop to get some tin foil for me I let her buy it. Eventually she let me have a go.

For a nice change we had Gammon, instead of the usual roast Chicken.

As well as deciding that she wanted to move the dressing table in her room, Chloe had finally decided where it was that she wanted the cat pictures that she had been given by my mother. I'd also gotten round the changing which side the fridge door opens, so that it works better with its place in the kitchen.

After dropping Chloe back home, I came back, wasted some time before starting on cleaning the flat from top to bottom. There's only so much dust I can take. Actually the flat doesn't get that dusty, it's more a case of keeping things clear and tidy, and that nice 'just cleaned' smell I love so much. I really should get a life.

Ever since changing the opening side of the fridge door, I have struggled to still open it the old way. I guess I will get used to it, but there's something in it. Getting used to being on the other side. I think I'm being unnecessarily deep. That's just a generous way of saying I'm talking bollocks.

Suppose I just stopped making it more complicated than it is ?

2011-02-20T01:04:00.000Z

Ok, so the M27 first workshop session was a rather big part of last week. I'm sure I'll get to talking about that later. Maybe before the second M27 workshop.

For me there was another big thing about last week. That was me buying a valentines card and a single red rose for someone. Not something I'd done for quite some considerable time.

Without wishing to sound like a pathetic teenager, here's how the story goes.....

This person, whom I had noticed quite some time ago, before moving to work in that area, and thought was.... Very nice.... Is someone I had somehow managed to build up some banter with, remarking often on how nice she looks and laughing and joking with her. If I'd have really stopped and thought that I might think more of her then I would been paralysed by my usual inability to speak to women. I make the Indian guy off 'The Big Bang Theory' look like an inveritable Casanova. Anyhoo. I had most definitely not even dreamed that she thought of me as anything other than 'that weird old guy with all the cheesy jokes and the very gay t-shirts'.

This changed when I partially overheard a conversation she was having with another person at work. Trying desperately not to let paranoia or wishful thinking cloud my judgement, I tried to put that 'observation' out of my mind. (Is it still an observation if it's something you hear, rather than see ?).

Anyhoo. I was determined not to let my imagination run away with itself and leave my common sense shivering in the dark all by itself. The 'other' person at work, who for the sake of communication we'll call Sarah, wouldn't tell me what was said, but did 'subtly' ask me questions about what I thought of the person she had been talking to.

I pretty much told her that she was being completely ridiculous.

So when February 14th came by, although I was expecting the usual zero interest, I had secretly hoped that on my desk when I came in that day would be a card, or something.

Needless to say, my desk was empty when I arrived at work that day. It would not be wrong to say that I was a little saddened.

Sarah, made a remark in the morning about how said person was sad not to find anything on her desk.

Now as it happened, I needed to nip to Tesco at lunchtime, as a member of our team was going on maternity leave, and I hadn't arranged for her to get a present or card. Off to Tesco I went. Feeling a bit the idiot, but at least taking comfort I wasn't one of those boyfriends or husbands who were circling the flowers and gifts areas displaying all the fear of someone about to be sentenced to death.

So I 'secretly' placed the card and red rose on her desk, while she was at lunch. I've given the quotation marks to secretly because someone in my team saw me do it, and made a very big deal of it.

When she (the recipient of the flower and card, not the one that can't keep a secret) came back from lunch, I held my breath while she noticed them, heard her someone ask her about them and her say 'yes, but they're not from my boyfriend' (oooops). Look on the bright side I thought. She wasn't crying. Or laughing. Laughing would also have not been good.

So here I am. Now nearly a week on, and just realising I have now put myself in limbo-land. I can't do anything else. It would be wrong of me to do so as she's got a boyfriend. One who works in the same place no less. A couple of people have asked me if I did it as a joke, or if I was being serious. I have skirted (if you pardon the pun) round the issue without answering - which surely people must see is in itself an admission that it's not a joke ?

What's a bloke to do ?

At the same time (ok, not at exactly the same time - but the same day) I get an e-valentines from someone who has been round a couple of times, and I've been too scared to go on a proper date with. I fear I have, despite intentions for the opposite created a situation where I can only end up hurting their feelings. I seem to manage this wherever I go.

Again. What's a boy to do ?
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Can we include pictures ?

2011-02-19T14:15:00.000Z

...And I call myself a geek ? Well, ok, part-geek.

Trying to see if the attached pic on this email also gets posted. If it does you may hear the 'whooop whooop!' From where you are.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Blogging from my Blackberry ?

2011-02-19T13:44:00.000Z

I've never really bothered to sit down or faff about with the setting up of blogging from my mobile.

Attempts before have not worked out, but in a strangely intuitive way I have slapped myself on the head and realised that if I can email my blogs in (normally I write them straight on the blog site. But I used to mail them in) then I can just as easily do that from my beloved BB. This blog entry represents the first attempt at that.

If it doesn't work I've just screwed up my thumbs for nothing.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I Just can't get enough

2011-02-19T11:46:00.000Z

Bad blogger. Bad. Bad Blogger.

This week has really been quite hectic. We've had most of the week out of the office at work doing some training - with the whole team, which is nice. When they weren't having a 'daily drama' they were finally getting a chance to get to know one-another and spend some time together off the phones.

Maybe part of spending time together has the inevitable result that some people annoy each other a little bit and some annoy each other a lot. This is just human nature. What was really nice to see, was that despite those 'daily dramas' everyone put things aside and just got on. I know it sounds foppish and cheesy (just like my jokes) but I really do like this bunch. They are really good people and there's lots of personality to go round, and they all have a sense of humour, which is great. The first sign that a group of people get on is that they take the piss out of their team mates.

When it wasn't handbags at dawn in the training room they were laughing, joking (oh and learning). Bless 'em.

At the end of the week we did then go out into the big wide world, that is the call centre and speak to customers. On the whole this went well, although somehow in the space of 2 hours I gained the same sort of work that I would of a Monday. Ho hum. No one said it was going to be easy did they ? (But they could have given more of a clue about how impossible it is).

Tomorrow's the day... Mk 2

2011-02-15T23:19:00.000Z

Tomorrow, is the first workshop / Improvisation session for The Fatcat And The Grafter. We are meeting at St Peters Theatre in Southsea. (Map)

Fantastically we are going to get a chance to use the theatre itself. There it is, to the left, in admittedly pixelated glory.

I'm so excited I can barely sleep. If I could sleep, I wouldn't be on the computer now, would I !

You can follow the ups and downs of the production as it gains momentum, and hopefully more of a working script, and some, er ... actors at @m27online (on twitter). We can also be joined on the facebook group.

If I keep talking about it, people will come ? Right ? When I say talk, I do mean actually in the real world. I'm not just stuck in front of a rather battle scared laptop hoping people will read my posts..... Well, ok, I am doing that, but as well as doing that I am...

OH, look, it's late. You get the point. See you there !

Ready to make a fool of myself ?

2011-02-14T23:06:00.000Z

So. After not really expecting to have to force the door open to get to work today, because of the pile of cards from all those admirers... I was surprised to find.... that there were none.

Despite my bullish bravado, and disinterest. There was a part of me, no matter how small, that wished, hoped, that someone wants me.

Not to be. Alas not.

You have to give to receive, right ?

Well, perhaps. I did as it happens give a valentines day card and a flower to someone. I am not entirely sure this has had the desired result or reaction. I don't actually think I'm sure what the desired result or reaction was.

I notice a difference in how I feel at the moment. The person in question does brighten my day, and always makes me smile. It's difficult to build your impression of someone based on so little time having real conversations with someone. Work, I guess isn't the place for that. I guess, that's why they call it work.

Will you be my Valentine ?

2011-02-13T23:40:00.000Z

It's February 13th. It's cold and wet outside. How the hell will the postman be able to deliver all those valentines cards ?

I've never been one for the Valentines' day thing. Only really had one person that I was madly in love with and wanted to shower with gifts. Some things work out. Some things do not.

Ho hum.

After my last blog, where I wondered if social networking sites have caused a depression in sales in the celebration cards industry, I now babble on about the flip side.

The flip side being another of those pretty much commercially created events that encourage us to spend lots of money on pieces of card or horrendously over priced flowers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not unromantic. Actually I'd love to have someone to throw all my attention at, well someone that wanted it anyway. - after the court case I'd better not do THAT again. (I am joking, but you knew that, right ?).

Took Chloe on a walk round Foxs' forest (Hilsea Lines) today. After yesterday's brilliant sunshine, it was a bit depressing that it was so cold and wet today. Almost like the weather realised it had a target to hit of how much rain to give in a seven day period, and had buggered it up by making Saturday such a lovely day.

There's something about rain and mud that most children like. Even if it is freezing cold mud. Maybe it was the joy of trying to kick it in my direction and seeing me get all anxious about how dirty my trainers and jeans were getting. Truth be told, I was inappropriately dressed for the excursion. Fresh air, it's good for you it is.

Anyway.. wishing you a happy Valentines' day. If that's what you want. If not, piss off and put a DVD on or something.

Have we all stopped sending burthrday cards ?

2011-02-12T20:15:00.000Z

A thought occurred to me today, as I placed a comment on someone's facebook wall wishing them a happy birthday. Does anyone send birthday cards anymore ?

No wonder the Post office is screwed. Not only is everyone busy emailing each other instead of committing their important (and unimportant) messages on a piece of dead tree, but they aren't feeling obliged to send birthday cards to people they barely know or like.

Perhaps this isn't the case, as I haven't seen a rash of redundancies at Birthdays or Celebrations. There are, however more and more operators jumping on the Moonpig model for personalised cards.

The point I wanted to think about was, well, apart from showing what a tight git I am, do people think any less of me for adding some carefully considered words to their facebook page instead of spending over a pound, on a card I'll probably forget to give to them anyway.

Have any of them noticed that I habitually say pretty much the same thing to each person ? IE 'Happy Birthday mate. Hope you have / had a great day !!' (The double exclamation mark is really, really important). Of course there is the other comment 'Happy Birthday. Don't do anything I wouldn't'. Which may not leave them with much of a list of things to avoid, none the less. Hardly original is it ?

Looking by the number of comments from other people, I can only assume that perhaps not all of them would have bothered to buy a birthday card before the advent of social networking. (Internet stalking).

Does this signal a greater level of emotional attachment and well wishing, made easier by the technology, or does it demonstrate the absence of real feeling in a clinical world ?

Do we devalue the sentiment by not having to pay to send it ?

All I'm bothered about is that facebook handily reminds me that it's someone's birthday so that I can write my 'standard birthday comment'.

First time out

2011-02-11T00:57:00.000Z

Last night was the first night that Helen and I let lose 'The Fatcat And The Grafter' on an unsuspecting circle of friends. Quite a wide circle of friends as it turns out.

I had worried that at one point there would only be about four people, but my fears turned out to be entirely unfounded. In all there was quite the list of guests. Some very dear, old friends, maybe even some very old, dear friends.

It's clear, as we expected, that some 'trimming' is required. It is only the first draft of the script after all. What was perhaps a little more frightening, was that until about 20 minutes before Rob turned up, there wasn't a climactic scene to end the first act. There wasn't a scene 7 at all.

Helen had arrived characteristically late, and we had grabbed some quick lunch before sitting ourselves down in front of my battered computer with the tough task ahead of us to produce the all important scene we are relying on to make sure our audience come back after the interval.

Working to tight deadlines, under pressure, really does work for us. Interesting that this part of the play received at better reaction that some of the parts we had written at a more leisurely pace.

Anyway, I am still rather tired from that very late night, and rather need my beauty sleep. More later !

Forgive me Iphone, for I have sinned....

2011-02-09T09:11:00.000Z

Not that I spend a huge amount of time trawling through the Internet for ridiculous stories to blog comments about...

You can now get an app on your Iphone that allows you to make a confession. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Now I know that a lot of Apple fans are pretty near to registering it as a bone fide religion but this is enough to make you, well, laugh, cry or I guess pray. As if people didn't need any more encouragement to treat their shiny apple devices like demigods.

Now, I would try and make a joke out of it, and say 'what's next, a prayer app ?'. But that wouldn't be funny, as they already did that. Three years ago.

The cheeky thing, is it's not even free. If god is supposed to me almighty, and omnipresent, then a) why would I need my Iphone to communicate with him/her/it ? b) Why has he started charging ?

Maybe, just like Sky there's a premium prayer and confession app, or you can buy extra forgiveness ? I mean, that stands to reason, men are well used to spending money when they are feeling guilty. Even when they are not sure what it is they are guilty for, they have been rather efficiently conditioned to 'buy' forgiveness. The flower and chocolate industries are pretty much built and paid for by thousands of years worth of male guilt. Fact.

Now, what about all the Blackberry or Android users out there ? Are they sentenced to eternal damnation because they chose the wrong handset manufacturer to believe in ? No parallels there then. Ho hum.

When you open the doors, don't be surprised that someone walks through them..

2011-02-08T23:15:00.000Z

... and so... it feels like I've actually worked a whole week, but in reality it's only been two days !

Maybe there is some sort of time contorting machine in the heart of that call centre.

Press Complaints Commission

There's this story on the BBC news website.... about how the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) has ruled that Twitter posts are effectively public information. Well fair enough, if you want something private, why would you post it onto the Internet ? Sarah Baskerville works for the Department of Transport, and was unhappy that the Daily Mail and Independent On Sunday had published her tweets relating to her going to work with a hangover.

Really ? I mean Really ? There are lots of stupid things that I may have said, or quoted, or tweeted, added to my facebook page or blogged about. I wouldn't expect any mainstream paper (and I'm being generous to describe The Daily Mail as such) to waste column inches repeating any of it. Not because I have some deluded idea that something I put out in the public domain, and have effectively relinquished my control over by doing such, but because they have surely more interesting things to print. Maybe. Maybe not.

Nevertheless, I am not an employee in a government department, but even so, surely she has to accept some responsibility to filter what she is transmitting to the world. If not, then she should set up the protections so that only certain people can see her tweets, or better still - just not tweet it in the first place ?

I am glad to see this attach of common sense by the PCC. Not that it effects me, but I have to cling on, in some vain hope that there is still common sense in this much misaligned world we live in.

If you are going to invade your own privacy, don't be offended if someone actually takes notice.

Save St Peter's !!!

2011-02-06T19:27:00.000Z

There has been much to and fro, much setting of dates, and then the changing of them. This time. This. Is. It.

St Peters Theatre. Southsea.

I have now been able to secure a show date with St Peters Theatre.

The show, 'The Fatcat And The Grafter' will be on from June 29th - July 2nd 2011.

We have the first read thru of part of the show on Wednesday. The clock is well and truly ticking now. By our own admissions that means that we have 19 weeks to get ready for the show. 19 weeks ! It may initially sound like a lot, but we don't actually have enough people to cast all of the roles, even assuming we are able to find the right ones for the right parts.

Ooops.

Well you have to start somewhere, and nothing focuses the mind like a deadline.

At the same time, there are murmurs that the space in which we want to put on the play, is facing closure. I can hardly decry that this doesn't make sense, if obviously does, on someone's spreadsheet. The value of the ground on which the building rests would be worth a pretty penny to both the council and the church (who, I understand own it). Not quite sure how the council are involved.

I know in these trying times that any organisation, the church or council included are going to have to work hard to make sure that they get the most value for money wherever they can. Surely such a wonderful space, in the middle of an inner-city area can be made to make financial as well as community sense.

When I was a child we used to live over the road from it. At one point I even went to nursery school there. After the vandalism that was the destruction of the Portsmouth Arts Centre by the council in the 90s, I feel very strongly that this valuable space not be allowed to go the way of so many other community buildings in the city.

I've spent some time this morning, shouting and cursing at my printer. This has been due to my efforts, which in the end resulted in success, to print a couple of copies of what script we have ready for Wednesday night.

I hate printing at the best of times. Aside from the environmental lunacy of printing a set of scripts for everyone, when we know full well that both the script and the people are liable to change, much. There is also the issue that my printer is a right royal pain in the arse. It will merrily print along for a couple of pages, and then decides to chew up and ignore the next page. Rather than intelligently print the page that is messed up once it returns to normal, it just spits out a blank page and then carries on, as if nothing ever happens.

This means that printing anything more than 2 pages requires the patience of a saint and then some attention to detail as you are forced to go through whatever you are printing and list all the missed pages, and then reprint those. Hoping of course that the reprinted ones don't in themselves get chewed up.

Which of course, they do. Doesn't seem to matter what 'magic tricks' you try with the paper, or the printer itself, nothing seems to work. Magic tricks take various forms, such as :- blowing away any imaginary dust or paper fragments from inside the printer. - you blow them straight into your eye, whatever you do. Making sure you use non-recycled paper. For some reason, the printer is fussy on this point, and will stubbornly insist on having virgin paper. Flicking through the stack of paper, so that none of it is stuck together doesn't count for much either.

I printed three copies of the script, each of which had different pages missing. I condensed them down so that I had one complete script, and then set about printing the missing pages for the two remaining copies.

What a pain. Is it too much to ask that your printer, well, prints things ?

Walk like an Egyptian ?

2011-02-05T10:58:00.000Z

I've made some blog entries this week, and not mentioned, not even once all the stuff that's happening in Egypt. Should I ?

Well I guess there's no serious obligation on my part, but it's a very momentous pimple on the teenage like spotty face of history.

Egyptian uprising... (photo from CNN's website)

The peoples of Egypt have collectively had enough of the corruption or accountability in a regime that has been led by the same man for the last 30 years (President Hosni Mubarak).

The western press are showing us all the images of what was seemingly at one point a 'velvet' revolution, but that has steadily escalated as the regime enlists fists of those faithful to it. Thankfully the army have quite sensibly stayed out of it. The generals seem to back Mubarak, but the actual soldiers on the street are not motivated to start firing on their countrymen and women. No images of students being shot in front of a tank on international television then.

The people want freedom, self determination. They seem to want that holy grail of things, democracy. Good for them. As governments around the world try increasingly to tread a fine line between not supporting anybody and condoning any actions against the people of Egypt. Warm cooing words of encouragement that violence not be used against the citizens, that peaceful protest continue, and be allowed to do so.

The Egyptian government had initially cut off the mobile phone network, and the internet. Although they have now turned the internet back on, it is a reminder that any and all of our freedoms can be taken away just as easily. Maybe not as symbolically as the flicking of a switch, but the government here has similar powers. So before you all rush out and buy CB radios, lets calm things back down a bit.

What I was increasingly annoyed about was the mumbling sentiments of those on BBC Questiontime passing comment on what the Egyptian people should or shouldn't do, and on what sort of government is likely to replace Mubarak's. It's all balloon filling really. Surely (as was said by one of the guests) the destiny of the political system in Egypt is in the hands of the Egyptian people, where it should be. It is not for us to say which type of democracy we would like to have. It carries as much impact on the outcome as does a child wistfully wishing for a £600 new computer at Christmas. (Take note Chloe).

So what happens if democracy flourishes in Egypt, and the people vote, and they chose, and we don't like what they chose ? What if they vote, for example to become a Muslim fundamentalist state ? These are the questions that are being thrown about by the BBC and others.

Opinions are like noses, they all smell.

A fundamentalist state may not be the 'preferred' choice of the western governments, but you know what, it isn't their (our) choice to make. I'm pretty convinced that the people of Egypt weren't sat round their television sets last may pontificating about the likelihood of a coalition government being formed in the UK, and what that would mean for them.

I'm not an isolationist, I do think we should be out there and engaging with the other countries of the world, but this presumption that we have a part to play in the political history of other countries is at best misguided interference. At worst, arrogant meddling.

After all, didn't the Egyptians have a working society a good deal before the formation of the 'mother of parliaments' ?

Do we always get what we expected ?

2011-02-02T22:24:00.004Z

Today was the day of my annual review. Somehow whenever I have these things, I expect them to be basically a torrent of abuse. Of course, I should know better. It's been an awful long while since I had a boss that actually did that. (pretty much, since I left Tesco really).

Really, it didn't go all that bad. It didn't go as well as I could have hoped either, but at the same time, there was progress over my score from last year.

Is it that I have never gotten an increment, so have never expected it leading me to feel apathetic about it ? Strangely. No. Although I can point to lots of things that are better this year, over last year, I see the progress that's been made this year as the foundation, building blocks if you like.. for the stronger performance and success that is to follow.

Hope you're going to have a better year, month, week or day ? No. MAKE it a better year, month, week or day.

2011-02-02T00:09:00.000Z

Spent so long waiting for the bus after work today that I felt that there was little point in the end, my going home, I might as well stay there. As I am back in work at 8am, any delay in getting home, after an 8pm finish makes me feel that the time, energy and trouble getting home from work, and then back again is time wasted.

I spend so much time going places, to I every truly arrive ? Destination or journey ?

Which is more relevant.....

I have Helen coming round tomorrow, to get some more work done on the play. We need to get some more writing done. We spent last week sorting out some of the organisational stuff about meeting up with people. We still do not have a confirmed date and venue. We've put up a facebook event for the meetup, but can't fix the location until I can get hold of someone at the pub we've contacted that can make a decision.

Clock is ticking. If they can't do it for the price we like (free) then we will hold it here. Won't be that much of a problem, and actually would be quite nice to have people here and read through the show. We have to stop all this moving back of dates. It's what's killing our motivation and focus. All the time the pressure of the looming deadline is absent we won't feel the burn, and the desire to make things happen. Helen and I have realised that all the time there is date we have to work to, that's set in stone, that we can't get out of, we are able to achieve so much. The rapidly disappearing days, weeks and months brings us to focus. When we know that the 'immovable' date actually isn't, IE, we can keep moving it, then we just loose all drive and attention, and we waste so much time. As indeed we have.

We had originally aimed to have the show completed by the end of December 2010, and have it good to go, ready to start workshops he first week in January. Where the hell has all that time gone ? We've had about two months where we haven't even looked at the script. That means that it's even harder to get back into the swing of things. We had to read through the work so far the other week, which probably isn't a bad thing.

Fallible Fella

... and they're off ! ... well almost.

smile, and the world smiles with you...

kindletastic

Slap myself around the face

Find me somebody to love, find me somebody to love..... somebody... anybody....

Tell Me Why (I Don't Like Mondays)

Sunny Saturday... ooooh loook. Grass !

Out of the depths of despair...

too tired to write..

Thank that day's over

Here's something I wrote earlier...

It's October, Damit !

Here comes the sun...

They were taking the piss... because we bloodywell werent

New toy for the cats

Monday Monday... (text version)

my blog is boring

Saturday

SOLD

I'm Dan the digger....

Windy walk

The Magical Mystery Tour

I am still here...

T minus 1

Poker face

Guess what ?

... and where was it you spent your Wednesday evening Simon ?

Deflated. Mk II

deflated / re-inflated

Plummeting towards Bank Holiday..

Leopard escapes...

It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

ok, so I've blatantly been reading the news....

No dish. No Glee ?

Grumpy old man

Things can only get better ?

Tyred.. but ready for another week

Here's something I wrote earlier...

I should be in bed...

Kindle joy

What price democracy ?

workaholic ?

Kindle ist kaputt

To Vlog, or not, to Vlog. That is the question.

Script Frenzy - FAIL

Resolutions seem to break like...

iPhone tracks movements. Shock horror. NOT !

The show must go on..

Like a house with all the children gone...

I've been busy...

...and so the hard work begins

If you see a Blackberry flying past you.... an angry me may be nearby....

wooooosh ! And the weekend is gone !

It's on ! It's on ! It's on !

One script finished (almost)... another starts

Act II is done

Same *bleep* different day

Just when you think things can only get worse....

Standing outside

Glorious cold sunshine

There's always someone worse off.....

Write here, write now...

Benjamin Cook, what was it that you did ?

And you thought your day was bad ?

1001101101010

The Eagle has landed

Here comes the rain again. (Is IT here yet ?)

Day Two...

1st day back.. and I survived..

Back to work we go....

Wednesday cannot come too soon...

T - 30

Are Women Better (Drivers) Than Men ?

That was the weekend that was

The iMac cometh

Takers, please, and takers ?

Hold the front page ?

How late finishing work ?

Sunday, Sunday.

Same bleep different day