One (strange) Direction

Thursday 15th August. 23:32

We've had a much quieter day today. We did in the end go for a short cycle ride in the evening, for about half an hour - just to find a post box really.

I do find it easier to go out, to get outside and enjoy the fresh air when I'm on holiday. I can no longer claim that this is because there are less distractions or reasons I can use to side track me into staying indoors. I've brought them all with me. Well, with the exception of the cleaning or doing my laundry I guess. I've brought my ipad, Chromebook, Blackberry and Kindle with me.

That's right folks, one mobile internet connection wasn't enough, so I brought another along, just to be on the safe side.

I uploaded some more photos today, from our marathon bike ride, and some new ones taken today from Rye Harbour, which we stopped off at on our little cycle out today.

We did find a post box. We did post the obligatory post cards. There's only one person that will receive one that hasn't been kept up to date with what we're doing by other means already. All the others will have had the chance to see the pictures, or seen the facebook updates.

Do we ever really get away ? Well, not if you take all your technology crap with you, no.

Chloe and I watched some TV this evening, after tucking in to a ready meal lasagne (Chloe's first Lasagne, and she deemed it 'lush' - so that's a success then. Something we will have to try and make when we get home). We watched a program on Channel 4 about the fans (or stalkers) of One Direction. They're this boy band that were formed out of one of the reality TV shows where people vote for which most popular, tuneless wannabe stars they'd like to thrust into the not entirely unforgiving glare of the worlds media and public eye.

The program focussed on the exploits of what have to be said are very determined and single minded fans. It has to be said that these fans all seem to be girls between the ages of 13 and 19. Fans with too much time and money to waste it would appear on chasing this poor group of boys around the country in the hope that they will meet, talk to, fall in love with and then marry (and live happily every after) one of the 'band'.

One man's determined and single minded is another man's stalker.

I can't understand where the parents of these girls are, why are they allowing or encouraging such utter mania. It's one thing to be a fan, and consumed by wanting to know about whatever your star is doing, when they are next releasing a single or whatever, but this ?

They seem to organise themselves on Twitter. Another thing for Twitter to be blamed for. My god there's a whole stadium full of crying, screaming teenage girls ready to be taken advantage of by some unscrupulous pop band manager, or anyone else for that matter. I find it quite scary that there seems to be no one in their lives imploring or enforcing restraint.

Some of them even have tattoos about the band. Sending messages via Twitter to the poor unfortunate boys in the band, threatening all sorts of emotional blackmail in order to illicit a response or 'follow' from them. It's sad and frightening.

I don't envy those boys one bit. How the hell can you possibly live anything like a normal life, meet friends, meet girl/boy friends when anyone you interact with is zeroed in by an army of demented teenage girls ? Anyone that is a 'threat' to their perceived ownership of the boys finds themselves the recipient of even nastier threats.

Thinking back, I am sure that fans have always been this... extreme, or at least some of them have been. It's just that with modern technology and social media, they get to share how they feel, and provide validation to their own fantasies.

It's a crazy situation, and it's a miracle someone hasn't been seriously hurt or had something bad happen to them.

Some of the fans have taken to writing fan fiction. Giving literary voice to their fantasies (I guess at least it's creative and constructive.... maybe). Some of these fantasies explore the idea that two members of the boy band are actually secretly in a gay relationship. The logic of this being that at least if the two guys concerned are in love with each other, then they at least aren't going out with any OTHER girls. (other than the fans).

Hang on.. erotic gay fiction, written by teenage girls ? That's not at all mixed up is it.

Benjamin Cook, what was it that you did ?

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.

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

... 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.

2nd day and going well

2nd day of my holiday away, but not very far (about 10 feet as it happens), and I'm feeling good.

I got up Monday about 8:30, and was at the desk, tapping away at the keyboard by 9. With the odd break or two, working the majority of the day until about 4, when I peeled myself away from a 98% completed 'The Adventures Of Stephen Brown' script, and went and had a bath.

What a skank, I hear you say. Soddit.

Anyhow. Even the curve ball that was thrown my way, which was that two of the principle guest characters in this story can't make any filming days together had been catered for. I just needed to throw in some reference to what was going to be happening in the next story, and I was done. I just didn't want it to look like I had just 'thrown it in'.

Helen came round Monday evening, and after what seems to have become the customary takeaway (last week was Pizza, this week was curry) - both of us stuffed to the gills with Korma (despite ordering Passanda - but that's another story entirely) we got to being creative. We came up with loads of ideas. Some we could film, some we could not. We gave up waiting for anyone else to arrive... we are a filming group of two at the moment. Which is intimate, and rather nice, as Helen and I get on so well together, but the idea of a club is that there is, well, some people in it. Anyway.

We threw our artistic sensibilities out of the window, and filmed me eating a poppadom, and then edited it to show... well, oh just watch the film it'd be easier... www.youtube.com/m27online

We got that edited and uploaded, as well as making some progress in getting last week's effort edited. I've noticed that the last few things have seen me in front of the camera, which had actually been some time. It's nice, for me to 'act' (or is that 'act up' ?). Helen is really good on the camera, and is so much the better of the two of us at 'going handheld'.

Chris came down today to work on our script for 'The 9th Man'. We were a little disheartened at first that we had not got further than we had previously. We spent the time reminding ourselves what we had talked about before, and fleshing that out into a scene by scene, just breaking the synopsis down into Excel and putting some more detail in. Looks like there's going to be some really interesting drama in those episodes, if only we can get the time to sit down and write the damn thing. I'm sure in this age of technology (Celtx being the preferred script writing software of choice) progress can be made, even when we can't be in the same room together.

By far though, the thing that really put me in a very good mood, was utterly unexpected. The best things always are. When I went to bed (just after arriving at my holiday residence on Sunday night), I wrote a blog entry, and then after that I checked up on my twitter page. It was at that point that I discovered that my daughter had, at some point during the day craftily updated my status a couple of times. One of the things she wrote was 'my dad is awesome, in a utterly weird kind of way'. That did bring a tear to my eye (and not because of the grammatical errors). It was so nice of her, and so unexpected. It doesn't matter what else the world throws at me. My daughter thinks I'm awesome (in an utterly weird kind of way). It's I think the greatest compliment I've ever received.

Today, after 4 failed attempts, my merchandising purchases from 'Script Frenzy' arrived. Two travel coffee mugs, with Script Frenzy iconography and 'Stop watching. Start writing. Script Frenzy. April' on them. So appropriate I thought, as it is the TV that sucks me in and swallows all my time in a manner a kin to the appetite of a black hole. I also brought a book 'No plot ? No problem !' - by Chris Baty.

Write here. Write now !! Do it !!! Sounds like a motivational speech given by Peggy Butcher. (get out of my pub, you're - the - bard).

1 script submitted. 1 film shot, edited and uploaded. Other projects moving forward. I should be on holiday more often. I'd get more done.

Have typewriter WONT travel.

After spending the first day of my holiday, not being on holiday (by
going into work) and having my daughter to stay overnight Saturday, I
guess I now start my holiday proper.
Everyone I speak to, that I tell that I'm going on holiday, will ask me,
'are you going anywhere'. No. I reply. I'm going to stay at home.
Sometimes I elaborate a little. Sometimes I don't. See the thing is, I
tell myself that the reason why I don't do as much writing as I would
like, is because I'm too stressed out from work to sit down and look at
a computer. Which we all know is rubbish, because anyone that knows me
will tell you that I spend my evenings with the computer, sometimes more
than one computer on. Just not doing anything useful with it.
Easy for me to blame work, but as I am now on holiday, I don't have that
excuse do I ? I've had some good days lately, where I've been due to be
at work late, so wouldn't normally get up until 10am. I've actually
gotten up much earlier and given myself a couple of hours first thing in
the morning to get some writing done. This indeed has worked, and I did
manage to get some pages done. Also the other week when I had a day off
midweek, likewise I got up stupidly early, for what was my day off, and
told myself I was going to be writing from 9am. And I was. The 'I've got
to be in the office by...' mentality seems to work for me. If I do the
writing at the other end of the day, then I find it very very easy to
come in from work, and a) put the TV on. That evil, evil thing in the
corner of the room that sucks away all my time. or, b) I sit down, and
think, 'I'll just give myself half an hour and then I'll start'. Well
that half an hour turns into an hour, turns into two, turns into three,
and then I tell myself 'oh, it's too late to start anything now, I'll
have a look tomorrow'. Tomorrow never comes. There's much
procrastination in my head. I find it very easy to talk myself out of
doing things, and that I can do them later on. It's funny, because I'd
never behave that way at work. At work, I'm always much more focussed
and driven by the power of the moment, and the yearn to 'just get things
done'.
I get too comfortable. I laze about.
When I have 'good writing days' I just get up, and get on with it. There
is no other common denominator than that. I love to read how other
people that write, have their methods, have their 'rituals'. I'm looking
for that 'eureka' moment, that revelation that when put into practice
will create this stream of fantastic and wonderful prose that emanates
from my brain, travels down my arms, into my fingers, where it is
skilfully and rapidly converted into text.
That's all rubbish of course. (or crubbish, as my daughter would say). I
forget who it was that said that the only way to write is to put in the
desk time. I paraphrase, badly. I'm so lazy, I can't be bothered to fire
up firefox, and go have a google to find out who the quote came from,
and actually quote it correctly. My only defence is, that if I fire up
firefox, I will be drawn inexorably into facebook, or twitter, or some
such other distraction. How many times a day can I hit refresh on the
BBC news website. Surely the world isn't going to end without me knowing
about it ?
So. To try and break the pattern. I am not staying at home. I am not
going away. I am going on a writing holiday, but not one of those ones
that cost you loads of money to go sit in some beautiful countryside
with a load of other people that also don't know how to write. (I have
no idea that's what those things are like, I've never been on one..
perhaps I should... but I'm too tight to do it. Too tight, and too
cynical. I digress). I mean I am going on holiday into the spare room.
I type this from my bed, and like the bed you sleep in on holiday, it's
unfamiliar to me. I've never slept in it before. I don't use this room a
lot, and infact, have never stayed in it. Even though, I am still in the
same flat, everything sounds different. The amount of darkness outside
the window is different. It's strange enough to me to not be
comfortable.
It's just that its cheaper than actually going away for the week. I have
my trusty netbook, my office chair (I wouldn't normally take that on
holiday somewhere with me, that would be wildly impractical). Wow, I'm
using up my whole years' quota of parenthesis in this entry. And I only
wanted to say a few short words. I don't know how many words this is,
because I'm on my netbook, and there is a limit to what it can be called
upon to do.
I am actually going to still get up in the mornings, just hopefully much
earlier than I have on previous 'stay at home' holidays. Sometimes I
haven't dragged myself out of bed much before midday.
This all does beg the question, how the hell do you continue to motivate
yourself to get up every day, if you, well, don't have a reason to get
up. If you're unemployed, or a kept woman, kept man for that matter. (I
live in hope). It must actually be hard to do that, and not descend into
an absolutely apathetically lazy, self serving ever decreasing spiral of
diminishing effort and returns.
After all, there's 'Jeremy Kyle' to get up for. I'd count that as a
reason to stay in bed until well after it's over. There's always 'Loose
Women'. I do love loose women, as much as the next man. You can take
that more than one way. A bit like the..... never mind.
Anyhoo. I will be, not hopefully, but am certain that I will be making a
difference this week.
Considering I want to write, I have a strange emotional attachment to
the idea of writing, and the elation that I get when I complete
something. The idea of starting something, when there's a blank page in
my pad, a blank screen on the computer and a blank head from whence the
ideas should flow to fill all the above is actually quite daunting. 'The
trick is, to stare at a blank piece of paper until your head bleeds' - I
believe is another badly remembered and uncredited quote. Uncredited
here. It is actually credited to someone. I just can't remember who.
When I'm actually in the throws of working out how to get a
character/story from plot/place/situation A to plot/place/situation B, I
don't think of the writing, I'm thinking of the problem at hand, which
is to get from A to B. Much in the same way you would think about
finding a route through a city you know, when you have the map memorised
in your head.
Like that, except, with this, you get to decide not just the route, but
also the layout of the city, the design of the buildings, the reason for
the journey and indeed the destination. Because there are so many
variables, and it's such an open field, its sometimes (I find) difficult
to know where to start.
Well, as Mary Poppins said, 'lets start at the very beginning, what a
very nice place to start'. Let's not confuse things by saying that when
writing you don't have to start at the beginning at all. That's just
going to get confusing, isn't it ? After all, even if you start at the
middle, it's still the start isn't it ?

Atheism is the new religion

While the world fights over itself to say how stupid, irrational, bigoted and down right idiotic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, amongst the postulating, and postering.. and general 'we're tougher than you are' stuff, has anyone considered what a curious situation it is where the thought of bombing a place where nuclear material is produced is considered to be a 'good' idea?

When I say curious, I mean 'dangerous', or perhaps 'frightening'. When I say 'good' idea.... well, let's be thankful that George Bush isn't still in residence at The White House, as he probably would have already bombed the shit out of the place.

You've got to like the 'dammit we got caught' reaction from the Iranians, realising that their secret nuclear base had been discovered, was to admit to having it to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Not even worth trying for a minute to say that it's someting else ? Well, that's progress. Now they're almost admitting to stuff after they've been caught.

Let's just hope that the 'intelligence' on this occassion is a little more robust than some grad student armed with nothing more than a furtile imagination and Google.

But still, hey, it's ok, because the most trustworthy countries in the world, (USA, UK, France and Israel) have all said that they're sure the Iranians are 'up to no good'. The Iranians say that they aren't. It gets more and more like when teacher tries to figure out who really started the playground fight. 'He pushed me first', 'He said I was a .....', etc. etc. Usually in that scenario, they all end up getting detention. Not quite sure I like how the punishment stacks up on this one though.

Don't get me wrong, If I was Iran, I'd hardly want to believe their neighbours' promises that they don't really need such powerful weapons. Think I'd stop an awful way short of such mindless bigotry (like there's any other kind) about the hollocaust, and how wiping an entire race of people out would be a good idea. Mad. Scary mad.

The people I really feel sorry for, in all of this, are the Iranians. Because either way, they're the ones that are going to end up suffering, and I don't think any amount of tweeting is going to save them from that.

It's the civilians that are going to get hurt by the bombs, it's the ordinary people that are really going to pay the price of any further sanctions. What can we do ?

Sometimes, you have to think that it's easier and cheaper to quietly give money to the people who want to overthrow the government you hate in their own country. (Wonder if anyone's paying to do that here). It was a policy that worked so well before, right ? When I say worked..... That stupid and shortsighted idea that the enemies of our enemies are our friends is, was and still is.. well shortsighted, and stupid. I mean that lead to such fantastic ideas as the west training the resistance fighters in Afghanistan, helping them get rid of the Soviet invasion. Giving money, weapons and training to such regular stand up fellows as Osama Bin Laden. There was an awful lot of money shoved the way of a certain Saddam Hussein and his rather brutal regime, because the alternatives, or his enemies seemed like a worse bet.

It's true that sometimes there just are NO GOOD CHOICES, and only bad or terrible ones. Lesser of two evils. I wonder if 'keeping your ore out' and leaving it to the people that actually live there to figure out what they want is a strategy worth trying.