I've got a Special Thing to to see your Wobbly Teeth

or Rock and Roll Lifestyle Lite 2 - on the road with Theater in Education.

The second week of the tour was better than the first - apart from the car breaking down and having to go to Wick.

Kingston upon Hull was, a couple of years ago, awarded the dubious accolade of being the shittiest place to live in Britain Having lived in Hull for 10 years before I moved up to Scotland. I can honestly say that the only thing I would go back for would be a Skelton's Eccles cake which were the best and stickiest Eccles cakes in the history of everything. Hull is in my mind (and obviously that of many others) a total shithole.

But then I had never been to Wick.

Wick is in the North of Scotland about a hell of a long way from anywhere. It is, apparently (and totally bewilderingly), the first place bombed by the German Air Force in WW2. I'm sure once it was once a beautiful and prosperous town - some of the older buildings are pretty impressive - but these days it is a depressing dump which seems to be populated by Neanderthals - if the school population is anything to go by. During our 4 hours in the school we saw 2 fights between pupils - one of which one of us broke up - and during the workshop the ONLY responce we got to the question "what are you wanting to do when you leave school?" was "Join the Army and Kill Iraqis". Everyone else just sat there with thin lines of drool trickling from corners of their mouths.
I have not been so glad to get out of a school since the last time I was in Wick last year.

Wick was also the site of the shittiest B&B of the tour so far. I knew we were in trouble the moment I saw the "The family that prays together" bumper sticker on the owner's car. Said owners were Seventh Day Mormons or some other bunch of weirdnesses and their beds were thin, lumpy, and creaky. Probably very good for the soul, but bloody awful to sleep on. Every slight move was the cause of a long series of groans, creaks, and twangs from within the bed. At 4am, woken up again by the simple act of moving in my sleep I nearly got out of thee damn thing and rearranged the furniture so I could put the matress on the floor. Unfortunately I was sharing the room with Chris and re arranging the furniture would have woken him up and he would have wanted to get his matress on the floor as well - his bed being even noisier than mine, if that was possible. The thought of piling furniture on topof other furniture at that time in the morning was too much so I read a book for a while and tried not to breath to heavily.
Breakfast was shared with a bloody awful, chocolate box painting of Jesus staring down at us from the dining room wall - actually he was looking away to some distant horizon, which was probably even worse. I mean being stared at by Jesus first thing in the morning is bad enough - being stared at by the back of his head is just plain weird.

On the journey south down th A9 the car threw a wobbly. Displayed a huge warning light on the dashboard and decided the Accelerator pedal was for ornimental use only. Putting your foot down actualy made the car go slower. We phoned the hire company and they've replaced it. The new car doesn't have a CD player, only a cassette player. Being the sad old fart that I am, I am probably the only one of the group who owns any cassette tapes.

Poor buggers.

In contrast to the Pergatory B&B in Wick the next night we stayed in the best place we have landed up in so far: The Granite Villa in Golspie. If you're ever travelling in that part of the world and need a B&B you would have to go a long way to find a better place to spend the night. Friendly warm and everything you hope a B&B to be. Damn good coffee too. All 4 of us just sat around in front of a wonderful open fire drinking, talking & playing silly word games till late into the night.

A good night.

Drove the new tour car home and dropped Emma the actress off on the way and stopped to see John, Julia and baby Emma in Aviemore. Got massivly broody again as soon as I held her. She is 2 months old now. I want more babies! I am going to have to get that vasectomy! Oh God I need my head examined!

Tonight Merriol and I were supposed to be shopping on the web for a new washing machine but due to Merriol going out to a primary school social evening last night and then not returning till some unknown hour of this morning (she doesn't remember coming home) and feeling a wee bit delicate all day we haven't got round to it.


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On The Road - Rock and Roll Lifestyle Lite

Week one of the tour is over. A week that involved a lot of Ferry trips, two flights in Otters, a visit to a Glasgow Gay Club, and an awful lot of rescuing each other, on stage, out of huge acting Black Holes.

Well we survived, though only just. Quite how, after two whole weeks of rehearsal and one week on the road, the most experienced of the four actors in this show still doesn't know her lines is a mystery to me. I am so glad that I am not involved in the scene she REALLY doesn't know at all, Chris is the lucky guy who has to share the stage with her then. The scene is only 2 pages long but can just go looping around and around in small circles for ages as she searches for a way to get to the end of it. Chris (who knows the script upside down and back to front) tries to steer her through it but it is obviously very hard work for him.
There is nothing quiet so scary as standing up in front of a huge bunch of people expecting, knowing that the person you are acting with is about to screw up in some new, and totally unexpected manner.


For example.

Last show this week, half way through a scene which has run faultlessly for over a week, she just stopped and stared at me - for ages. It was her line next. She had to say:

"If only you had been there, you could have helped"

She stared at me.
I stared back.
She opened her mouth.
She shut it again.
I raised my eyebrows in a vain attempt to communicate the fact that I was waiting for her to say something.
She opened her mouth again and said something.
What she said was my opening line for the next scene.
I thought "Oh fuck it!" and said:

"If only I had been there I could have helped!"

And marched into my next position.

I doubt if the audience noticed. In real, outside observer, time it was probably only a couple of seconds and went past in the blink of an eye but to both of us stood there, knowing that something had gone very wrong, it seemed like an agonising age.
All week, all 3 of us have been propping her up like that. I hope she gets her fucking act together, because if she doesn't, after another couple of months of this I will be ready to commit murder.

We had a night in Glasgow on Wednesday, and, after a huge nonstop chinese buffet meal (in which Emma proved it was possible to eat Jelly with chopsticks) we headed into town to find a bar called Moda for no other reason than Franz Ferdinand used to drink there.
It turns out that Moda is a pretty cool Gay establishment and after bumping into some people we ended up going to another bar then another. I ended up trailing along after a huge bunch of people and three pissed tourists to a Gay Night Club.
One of my pissed tourists then made total embarrasing arsehole of himself - like only a straight person pretending to be Gay in a Gay Club can. I should have left them to it and gone back to the car and waited for them. But we had a flight to catch in the morning and as not getting fired is still pretty high on my wish list I stuck with them.
Sometimes I am so tempted to start drinking again. Five hours sitting around in various Gay and Gayish Bars watching people getting drunker and drunker and making twats of themselves while stone cold sober is not fun. More than anything though, I think I am totally and utterly pissed off that no one tried to hit on me all evening.
No one!
Not a sausage!
Not only am I sober but apparently I'm fucking ugly as well!

High on my all time bad nights out list that one. (Ingrid, if you ever read this, I apologise for not seeing where the evening was going and getting them back to the hotel.)

The Last show of the week was on Tiree is a small island which sits like a cow pat in the middle of the Atlantic. There is bugger-all there. A couple of nice beaches, lots of very isolated farms, No hills and about three stunted trees. There are cattle grids on the roads around the 'Airport' to keep the livestock from wandering onto the runways. There are enough people up there having sex (not a lot else to do on the long winter evenings I guess) to fill up a school with kids but even so we did the show to a total audience of about twelve. The day before there had been 130 bums on seats.

During the workshop after the show we ask the kids "What are you prepared to give up in order to get a good job?". We get all the sensible answers you would expect: "Time", "Going out with my friends", "Lie-ins in the morning" etc. and some weird and surreal ones too: "Kevin's Mum" being the oddest so far.

On Tiree nearly all of the kids immediatly said they would give up living on the island without a moments hesitation. I fully sympathise. It is an utterly God-forsaken place (I suspect the Devil gave up on the place pretty quickly as well; probably took one look and said "Fuck this for a game of soldiers" and went off to pervert somewhere warmer with fewer Presbyterians).

The flights were fun. We travelled in something closely resembling an aeroplane called a Twin Otter. The Twin Otter is, I'm sure, a well-constructed, reliable, robust and supremely safe flying machine but to me it looks like a slightly streamlined cornflakes packet with wings. It's unpressurised, cold and drafty. It rattles and bangs and shakes like 15 badly loaded washing machines all strapped together and stuck on the spin cycle. For a unfrequent flyer like me it looks like a scary way to die with wheels on.

The highlight of the trip for me was looking up to see, through the open door between the passenger compartment and the the pilot's seats, that the co-pilot was sitting reading a newspaper.
It wouldn't have been so bad if he had been reading something small like a a tabloid paper, at least then he could have seen the windscreen of the plane but he was reading The Telegraph, a huge broadsheet. It must have filled his entire field of vision! Everytime he turned a page he had to stretch his arms way out wide. I was scared that he would clout the pilot, who I couldn't see from where I was sitting, on the side of the head and (assuming he wasn't doing a So Duko or something) make the plane crash into the vast, but very pretty, stretches of open water we were crossing.

I am not a good flyer.

In Tiree School Staff toilets there is a notice that reads:

Please do not remove toilet materials from toilets for classroom use
If you require this facility please contact the janitor

I'm so glad I never went to that school. It is now my Birthday and I am going to bed. Happy 46th to me!

I'm back for the weekend. The washing machine has died again - this time is is making nasty burning smells and grinding noises and I'm shitting bricks about the show.

I really am shitting bricks. There are 4 of us in this thing: Chris has an impacted wisdom tooth which peridicaly gives him the extreme agonies, Lorna has been flattened by the flu, Emma is 17, and I have an awful tendency to say thing like "There's more to being a vet than just fisting cows you know!" during the improvisation scene. Not the sort of thing you can say before an audience of school kids trying to plan their futures. (Not if you want to stay employed for long anyway).

I feel we are so under-rehearsed. We have had 2 weeks to rehearse a 1 hour show. Sheer luxury! I feel we haven't done enough work.

I drove the car we hired for the tour around the block yesterday. It seems rediculously low and wee after the Berlingo. I couldn't see the front of the bonnet of the thing.

I like the Berlingo. It may look like a housebrick on wheels but at least you can see the damn road in front of you, and if you do hit something at speed and are thrown through the windscreen, you stand a chance of flying right over the top of whatever you hit and landing in a bush or something. Oh God I don't want to do this. This is why I avoided driving for so long. I don't want the responsibility! At least the tour car is a deisel. I'm used to deisels. I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago (?) in a cold sweat having dreamt that I had filled up the tour car with deisel when it really had a petrol engine.


Coming home last night was wonderful. I just sat looking out of the bus window as we came down Loch Lihnne. The sun had just set and there was a clear pink and yellow sky. No stars were showing but a huge yellow half moon sat low on the horizon. It was unreal. I know the moon isn't really bigger when it is low down, I know that it's just an optical illusion, but trust me, last night the moon was enormous; it was easily three or four times its normal size. The whole scene looked totally unreal. The sky, the mountains, the moon. It all looked so overblown and fake, like the cover of some vastly overlong Fantasy novel. All that was missing was a lone rider clad in light armour with an unfeasibly long sword strapped to his back. I suppose if I had taken a step backwards I could have put myself in the picture:

Liam Rides Home on the Bus
Volume one of a stunning new Fantasy Trilogy!

Maybe not.

PS
I got so fed up with getting comments along the lines of: "Great Blog dude! Wanna buy some cheap aluminum siding? I got shitloads - come see my site ShitloadsofCheapAluminumsiding.com" . I got even more fed up with then having to delete them so I have just turned on the word verification anti-spam thingy on in my settings.

My apologies.

What is "Aluminum siding" anyway?

Now I'm Not Sure If I'm Confused Or Not...

Well, we did the show for the people who paid for it today (Careers Scotland) and they didn't throw things, or fire us all which is a good thing. (Any day when I don't get fired is a good day). We have two more days of rehersal to get the show and the workshop tighter and then we are on the road. Whoopee! Still not sure what all the tour dates are yet and it looks like we may have the odd long weekend and day off in the middle of the week.

The workshop which comes after the play needs most work. I spent a chunk of this afternoon improvising a scene in which my pretend daughter had unrealistic ambitions to be a lama farmer (as opposed to normal perfectly reasonable ambitions to be a lama farmer) which left both of us floundering around on stage like freshly caught fish with the hysterical giggles - this in front of the people who are paying. As I said any day I don't get fired from this job is a bonus. I really feel like I'm here under false pretences. I just can't act. I don't know why people think I can. But they seem to able to convince themselves I can so I get away with it.

I've just snuck into the office here to read my mail - I just can't face the insanely complex cueing system in the library again - and it turns out I can't get to my mail because Wanadoo (the people who run my Freeserve address) have "improved" the web access to mail to such a point that poor cash-strapped susbsidised theater company's Windows 98 running clockwork computers can't read the damn thing any more.

So, Ilona, if you are reading this - I can't work on the Panto script (which Mike probably hasn't even mailed to me yet) because I can't read it! I promise to be hillariously fruitful and batter out 20 odd pages of Good Clean Family Fun (with the odd knob joke) on Saturday night ready for the rehersal on Sunday. Unless something shiny happens to distract me first - ooooooooooooo! shiny......

BackinInvernessforthesecondweek'srehersal. andwonderingwhythe space bar on this soddinglibrary computerisn't workingvery well.* but time is of the essence here and I don't have much timeso I'll pound on andifit doesn't workevery now and then, you'll have to pick it out your self.

I still can't get the drunk scenein my head. I'm supposed to be draggedoff to bed (ior towards bed) by Emma who is 17 and supoposed to be completely smashed and lurching against me and tryingto get into my pants - somehow the lines I know off byheart just seem to vanish from my headwhen we are on stage.

Soanother fun filled night for me eating bread and cheesein the cupboard and muttering out loud to myselfas Igooverthescript forthe seventyfifth bejillion time. I feelsorry for anyone in the nextroom as me

Ok there's my " you are aboutto run outoftime alert - bye!


*I guess becauseit has been pounded flat bymillionsof touristical typists. I'll mention iton theway out.

Let's Have the Coconut And Watch TV!

I am a sad git.

Presented with a rare few minutes in which to to do nothing today, what do I do? I go look at the counter on the blog. That's what I do. This is Grade A sad behaviour. Sad Sad Sad.

Curiously though after my wee wafflings about the "Other" continents the other day I notice that Atlantis, or Lumuria, or Mu, or wherever it was has sunk again because the "others" listed on the pie chart have vanished - taking Africa along with it...

Today has been an orgy of having fun with the kids, shopping, finding out that fresh cocoanuts aren't as nice as we remember them, shopping - fed up with Holly climbing into her duvet cover all the time we gave in and bought her a sleeping bag - a pink sleeping bag, with a picture of a fairy on it. My daughters are being turned into girls! My whole life is turning pink. I bought some pencils when I was in Inverness to make notes and keep track of the blocking and script changes and t was only when remarks were made that I noticed that I had bought nice pink pencils with pretty little flowers on. OK, they were the cheapest ones in the shop but I honestly hadn't noticed how bloody girly they were.

I've missed the kids. Holly seems so grown up only after a week away. I think the happiest moment of the day for me was walking around Tesco's in Oban with Daisy. I am not normally at my happiest in Tesco's (or for that matter any other supermarket) but this afternoon with Daisy holding onto my index finger and walking me from one interesting bright thing to another it was, for a few moments, the greatest most wonderful place on earth.

Long soaky bath tonight. I have been dreaming of a bath all week. Everytime I stepped into the Broom Cupboard that I have been sleeping in's shower cubicle I thought "I want a bath!!!!!!" So I had a bath.

Several times during the week I also thought "I never want to read another sentence that Patricia Cornwell wrote" but I always resisted. Backstory: somehow,in a fit of insomnia, I managed to read the 400 page SF book that was going to keep me company all week on the first night away and the only other book I could find in the B&B was Trace one of her Kay Scarpetta novels. It is and without doubt one of thew worst pieces of writing I have read for years. It was crap. So awful I just had to keep reading it to wallow in the sheer misery of the experience. I was going to wite down some of the choicer bits of agony to share but my brain imploded somewhere around chapter 12.


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Jiggidy Jig!

Home again, Home Again! for the weekend... This is what I tried to send to the blog yesterday from Inverness Library but due to me still not being able to read my own typing and mistaking a . for a _ has vanished into the aether.

Libraries are f**king great - apart from not letting you send out mails with the word f**king in them). Free internet access! I'm sitting here surrounded by baffled tourists acceseing Chaudmail (El Poste-Caliente!) and the like hunting and pecking mails to their best beloveds on, to them, weirdly laid out keyboards totally lacking all the useful umlauts and accents that they need to write properly.

It's day 4 of the rehersals and, apart from my room in the B&B being the size of a large wardrobe with no windows, everything is starting to come together. The play is slightly less pants than it looked on the page. Partialy due to us chopping great chunks out and rewriting other great chunks and hamming otherbits up like crazy. I guess I've got half of it memorised by now but it is a bugger. It would have been easier if there had been an actual story. But we can't have everything.

It's been great getting a full nights sleep without having to get up in the middle of the night to see to Daisy. I don't know how Merriol is coping without me but I guess I'm on duty ALL weekend. I miss the kids. I'm missing Daisy learning to walk and talk. But we need the money!. I've been very good in that I have only bought 3 books this week and NO CDs. This is some kind of record.

Bugger my 30 minutes are up....

To be continued after I have done all that "I'm home!" stuff...

just emaild an gripping instalment to the blog and it's vanished. Bugger!

A few days a go a book I bought from someone in the USA on eBay arrived. It was nicely and neatly packaged in a padded envelope and had a home made, but professional looking, label on the front.

I'm glad the contents were enclosed. Maybe I'm missing something here but I thought that was the whole point of envelopes. Still, it's better than having an envelope that tells me the contents aren't enclosed, or even one that tells me that what ever is in it are not its contents. I'm baffled as to what he was trying to say.

Mind you I'm still puzzling over a piece of paper I picked up in the street some 30 years ago (and still have somewhere) that is totally blank apart from the words:

"Please destroy this blank page"

Apart from the paradoxical non-blankness of the page in question. (The words describing its blankess negate the very blankness they attempt to describe*) I still haven't worked out why anyone would go to the trouble of making a page, the sole purpose of which was to be destroyed.

Actually someone did come up with a perfectly logical and satisfactory answer to this question a few years ago, a feat which so annoyed me (because it destroyed the nice cosy corner of mystery I had wrapped around the idea) that I have forgotten both the explanation and who gave it to me.

When I was in LA there was someone putting up notices on power poles and fences that just said

"Ignore this Notice"

I never worked that one out either.




* I'm sure there is a dead posh philosphical or philological word to describe this but I'm buggered if I know what it is. I leave that sort of thing to people who know what 'philology' actually is and can spell it correctly without using a dictionary to look it up like I just had to.

coldplay test

Daddy, You Tell A Story; Mummy, You Come And Lay An Egg

An insanely busy day in which not a lot got done. However, at some point during my day-long frantic blue-arsed fly impression, I did find a moment to look at the counter at the bottom of this blog and noticed that I could see the people who had visited broken down by continent.

Cool!

I took a look, and next to a huge multi-coloured pie chart was this legend:

America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Other... other? What Others? Those are the continents! The lost continents of Lemuria and Mu? Maybe the Man From Atlantis was reading my blog! Hey! Bobby Ewing is reading my Blog! Uber Fucking Double SuperCool and Groovy!

Then I realised that South America and Antarctica were missing off the list. So 'Others' covers 371,754,813 or so people and a fuck of a lot of penguins.

So 'Hola!' South America and 'Eek Squeek Flapflap fish-smell flap flap EEk!' Antarctica.

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OK, I'm off on my travels soon, and I'm not sure how often I will be updating my Blog. I can, and will, do it via email when I get the chance. But to save everyone (all 3 of you) checking every day in breathless anticipation of the next thrilling episode of my life and being disappointed when there is nothing new, I have signed up with these people NotifyList.com and can send you a mail when I do add anything new. Come on, let me Spam you. You know you want me to!

Bung your email address in here >

This will, of course, only work if I remember to take my passwords with me... and if I can get the thing set up right... The first test was not a sucess. I'll come back to this tomorrow. Don't sign up yet!


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Holly was a darling today - for the short time I saw her. I slept in late this morning having been up untill 2.30 am script wrestling, and then up again at 4.30 (Daisy having woken up not feeling too good decided to howl the place down) and I only saw Holly a for a short while this evening while we did the bath and bed routine. A lot happier than yesterday.

Tonight we had a read through of the script with Mike , Ilona, Ilene and a few other bods whose names I didn't catch - or immediatly forgot. I am so bad with names. If anyone out there is doing research on bad name memory I would love to have my head scanned to see if the name bit of my brain is actualy there - this total inability to remember names only extends to people I have actualy met. I can remember names of all sorts of people as long as I have never met them. Helps if they have unusual names of course. What made The Usual Suspects a truly enjoyable and memorable film for me was the fact that a member of the special makeup team was called Yolanda Squatpump

If ever I change my name again I want to be called Squatpump. Liam Squatpump. I like it. Liam and Merriol Squatpump and their children Holly, Daisy, and Potato Squatpump.

Looks like Mike and I will have to add two more scenes to the Panto.

Bum!

Dan moves into his new place tomorrow. Leathermen survived their trip through the dishwasher. Mmmmm shiny Leathermen.

Holly was VERY hard work today. Somedays she is just possessed by some demon spawn child and everything she says either starts with "NO!" or "I don't want..." Today was one of those days. I am exhausted.

Flopped tonight and watched "Spirited Away" which is a total treat. Bloody ravishingly lovely to look at, and knowing nothing about Japanese mythology, totally baffling but intriguing and funny. Go rent it.

Tomorrow Mike and I have to finish the script. Hmmmm Currently we are trying to get the obvious villain defeated before revealing the true villain who has been pulling his strings. I'm writing this blogentry as a way of avoiding redoing this bit where, to explain what the hell our characters are doing wandering around a palace in China, I have concocted this piece of nonsence by channeling Henny Youngman (but not very well). For some unknown reason I have Puss suddenly turning into a private eye: (though it has just occurred to me there's a Private Dick joke trying to get out here). "The Wanabee" it should be explained is a bit part player who in the previous scene managed to finagle herself a part in the show - as a coffee table...

Puss	(Sam Spade voice) It was Friday. I was working the late shift. I went to China Town - but in China, Chinatown is really big so I went to Scottishtown instead. All the time I kept my ear to the ground…
Dick	…and?
Puss	I got dirty ears; but then I had a break.
Trubadour	Go anywhere nice?
Puss	The Maldives - there I got on the trail of Mister Big. I pulled a few strings (that’s the last time they’ll let me into that puppet theatre) and I got a lead - all I needed now was a dog and somewhere to walk it. Finally the case began to bust wide open, which serves me right for buying cheap luggage from Argos… I got back to headquarters. They had a couple of The King’s lousy henchrats in the cells. I went to talk to them…
Blackout. Puss switches on the practical table lamp and shines it onto the two glove puppet rats from the kitchen scene. They are wearing orange overalls. The Wanabee is manipulating the puppets.
Puss	OK, you dirty rats, spill the beans.
They empty a tin of Heinz Beans on the floor
Puss	Cute.
1st Rat	(Pre-recorded helium voice) You’ll never make me squeal copper!
Puss slaps the rats left, right, left. They snap back and forth as he does so and continue to do so when he has stopped - (which Naked Gun Movie is this gag from? Answers on a postcard please to the usual address).
Other Rat	Yeah, you’ll never get us to tell you the Boss took the necklace to the palace of the Terribly Mysterious Multi Millionaire and has hidden it in on the top shelf of the third cupboard from the left in the master bedroom.
1st rat	Yeah, you’ll never get us to tell you that - Where’s my lawyer?

Look A Snail, My Lady!

At some point today, somewhere between mopping the kitchen floor and putting both my leathermen in the dish-washer, it occurred to me that all the SF films I had ever seen were wrong.

When the robots do take over they won't speak with a well modulated deep menacing (but slightly modified to give it a metalic resonance) american voice like they do in the movies. No, when they finally march up the high streets of the world and make their demands of the world's leaders "Resistance is futile - Mwahahahahaha!" going to sound like this.

Terrifying isn't it? Maybe that's the only thing stopping them taking over already; the lack of a decent evil-laugh synthesiser.

This was the only possibly original thought I had all day.

My kitchen floor is nice and clean though.

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RIP Oban 1991-2005

RIP Oban 1991-2005
Bon Nuit, Video Chat
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...

Audio Blog



Holly is a Dragon,

At the risk of turning this into a "Cute things my kid did today" type Blog, Holly was wandering around the living room this afternoon - then announced she was a dragon, licked a piece of paper and stuck it on her nose.
"That's the fire from my nose." she said. She then stuck another piece on her chin, "That's smoke." Then she got serious: "I'm a serious Dragon." she said and walked around frowning a lot. Luckily, for once, I had the camera to hand.

There is a picture of the serious dragon here.


I have got rid of the sodding fridge freezer that has been cluttering up my hallway for the past 6 months. It is finally on its way to Dan's place tomorrow. I had to unbolt the seats from the back of the car to get it in but it's in. My hall is huge again! - well it will be for about 25 minutes till all the crap finds out there is a space and sends something to fill it.

Not looking forward to tomorrow. I'm taking Oban to the vet in the morning, he's getting very old and wobbly and has gone down hill a lot over the last week or so. I am so not looking forward to this.

It's To Stop People Being Sick On Half The Room

Highlight of my day today: falling asleep on the sofa while watching "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini".

One thing good did come of it though. I have decided what the world needs is a online database detailing the time that elapses between the first appearance of a swimming pool in any given movie and the time someone falls into, or is dicovered floating face down in it (depending on the type of movie).

I will start work on this massive task as soon as I have finished my exhaustive and definitive episode by episode guide to the number of times characters say "Omigod" in Friends (the resulting site to be called www.theonewheretheysayomigodalot.com)
and my detailed survey of the extras in Babylon 5 pinpointing (with screencaps) the appearance of a particular hat which seems to be in every episode of at least the first 3 seasons.
These are both long cherished projects of mine and one day (possibly when the kids are grown up) I will get round to these monumentaly sad undertakings.

It's been a good couple of days for total crap. In addition to "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini" (Starring Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, and... Nancy Sinatra?!!!) last night I read a totally utterly fucking awful SF story by Wernher von Braun (Nazi inventor of the ballistic missile) which I took as confirmation of the creaky old Horror SF movie line "There are some things we scientists are not meant to meddle in!". In this case writing fiction.


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After a stunningly interesting day doing stunningly interesting things like cleaning the kitchen sink and emptying the garbage, Mike and I bashed a few more jokes into submission this afternoon. Which was great fun but not what we supposed to be doing. We were supposed to be adding the story.
We did add a bit of story and we think we know where we are going with the rest of it. Currently the plot revolves around the search for the 'Lost Kitchen Roll of the Incas' which, in a classic Hitchockian plot twist is in the hands of a hapless innocent instead of the hands of the ruthless megalomaniac who needs it to put his plans for world domination into effect.

(Thinks: are there any non-ruthless meglomaniacs? I guess they may well be but we don't hear about them. I guess they aren't very sucessful.)

I'm asleep on my feet here - except I'm sitting down but you know what I mean Gzzzzzzznk! thud! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I didn't cry! Holly and I arrived early - I thought that as it was the first time in her life she was going to school she could at least be early for that one day. If she is anything like me this will be the last time ever. Being so early we were the first ones there and I was worried that no one else would turn up and I would have to rethink this whole thing. I love my daughter and having her as the only kid in the class was going to be weird.

As it was others turned up and she had a great time - though it does disturb me that as we have enough problems keeping track of what she is going on about half the time at the moment how are we going to cope when she starts blethering in Gaelic?

OK, I didn't cry when I left her at the school but I did have a bit of a snivel when I wrote her name inside her shoes for the other school she is going to tomorrow.

A great chunk of the evening was spent trying to sort out the childcare arrangements for when I'm off acting my little cotton socks off around the Highlands. Having kids is a logistical nightmare!

Today's entry downloadable as a texted to speeched MP3 Here (I'm experimenting with Software Dan may find useful. - OK! OK! I'm fannying about with stuff! Not sure why I picked a female voice - It sounds like Stephen Hawkins in drag and it has chopped off the end - ooer Missus! More things to fiddle with; but not tonight.)

I Don't Like Monday, My Finger is Still Stuck in This Donut!

If Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus then 3 year olds are from a small potato shaped asteroid with a highly eccentric orbit.

I really cannot fathom out what is driving Holly. At times she gets involved in these huge elaborate games which are totally real to her and hillarious to take part in. Tonight's involved getting dressed for a football match. That appeared to be it. Just getting dressed for a football match but it took ages and was incredibly entertaining.

Holly goes to school for the first time tomorrow. She's been looking forward to it for ages. Every time we mention Nursery or Playgroup she says she wants to go to the "Big Nursery". She's going to love it. It just for the afternoons. I've told her it's Gaelic medium but I have no idea if she undersatnds what I am talking about. (Not suprising as I don't understand what I am saying half the time but on this particular subject I understand even less than usual). It's going to be hard to see my little girl going through the school gates for the first time. - I will not cry I will not cry I will not cry. I am a big boy - I will not cry.

Dan's flat is finished at last- or at least it is finished enough for me to say I'm not doing any more. Details and bits and pieces to do but nothing major.

First FREE track on the FREE easy-to-assemble (some adult supervision may be required) FREE CD is FREE to Download HERE

early morning birthday party (22)

Daisy Smurf

Woke up this morning to find Daisy had been Smurfed. She was covered in blue felt pen. It was everywhere. Holly and she had had a great time. (Holly paying particular attention to colouring in Daisy's tummy button - and a damn fine job she did of it too. It'll take days till Daisy is all pink and baby-coloured again).

...

We had a script read through today and the Panto is not as finished as we thought it was (apparently there is something called a 'story' we have to insert somewhere. 90 minutes stream of conciousness type surreal smut just won't do - dammit).

On the upside people laughed where we were expecting them to (which is always gratifying) and the nice people over at eclectech.co.uk said it was OK to use the song. Thank you Claire.

Final day's painting at Dan's tomorrow (I hope).

The Fox Might Bite Me But I Would Do An Exploding Poo On Him

Today

Shopping + 2 kids + 90% tourist density in small coastal town = not a living hell. I mean compared with working on the Burma railway, or cleaning out toilets at the Glastonbury Festival it's pretty easy but it got off to a bogging stupid start when, after crawling into Oban at anything up to 3 miles an hour behind all the tourists, I turned left a street too early, and, instead of arriving in the little known and untouristy car park I was aiming for, we ended up stuck in the Smallest One Way System in the World* which fed me back to the outskirts of town where we had been 20 minutes before.

Do not pass Go do not collect £200 Pounds,Dollars, or Eurogroats.

...

Added another joke to the Panto and stole this:Funniest thing I have seen for ages to help fill in the bit where Bling The Merciless is overpowered by the girl.

* This is a lie (but not much of one).

Today's Great Truth About Modern Housekeeping:

It's very hard to sweep up wet spaghetti.



...

It's been 5 hours, I wonder if it's dried out enough yet?


.

You Can't Drink Mayonnaise

A Rant

I am sick to death of the second world war.

It was the last great 'Us and Them war', the last war in which the enemy was clearly and unambigously evil. (though that fact does seem to have by passed some memembers of the British Royal Family at the time). And I am sick to death of it. I'm not saying the war was not a great and terrible thing; I'm saying I'm fed up with what has happened since.

All my life I have grown up with 'The War' in my background. War movies, (John Wayne, and John Mills leading their men to certain death and glory), War comics (lone Tommy takes out nest of jerries single handed "Gut in Himmel! Englander! Atchung!", "Take that Fritz!" Rattatatata! Aeeeiiii! "Well done Jones, now on to Berlin!") increasingly aged men and women reminising about how the War was the "best time of their life". The Kraut bashing headlines in the arsewipe tabloids everytime we had any trouble with the European Union (real or imaginary or just made up to sell papers) or every time England played Germany in a football match, all those unfunny Perry and Croft sitcoms: Dad's Army, 'Ello 'Ello, It Ain't 'Alf 'Ot Mum, itwas endless and I hated it.

Nowadays the relentless stream of cardboard characters thrashing the 'Bosh' (or the bucktoothed bespecticled 'Nips' - lone Tommy takes out 'slant eye' machine gun nest single handed "Banzai!", "Take that Tojo!" Rattatatata! Aeeeiiii! "Well done Jones, now on to Tokyo!") seems to have abated but now, instead, we get The Anniveraries. This month is the 60th Aniverary of the ending of the war. But there are so many others: The anniversary of the Start of the war. Dunkirk, The D Day landing, The Arheim Raid, The Liberation of Auschwitz, The Liberation of Berlin, VE Day, VJ Day, it never stops.

WW2 was fought between 1939 and 1945

WW1 was fought between 1914 and 1917.

This means, that between them, every year (apart from those ending in 8) is the 60th 70th 80th etc. anniversary of something!

I don't know what I'm ranting for - at least I'm not the Chancellor of Germany who is expected to turn up at least once a year to some god-forsaken field somewhere in Europe to look contrite before the world's cameras for things that happened before he was even born.

And I don't supose for one second this is unique in the history of mankind. I have visions of people sitting around in Athens rolling their eyeballs in despair as the 120th aniversary of some event in the seige of Troy came around " Oh Gods! Not the anniverasy of that bloody fight with Ajax again!"

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest.

Coming soon: a 25,000 word rant on 'Why Star Trek is Total and Utter Pants' (I've been working on this one for years).

No Near-Death Experiences with Tourists to report today. It was Merriol's turn to meet one of the silly buggers driving down the wrong side of the road. She came round a bend and had to drive onto the verge to avoid slamming head on into the stupid sod pootlingalong without a care in the world.

WE DRIVE ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD IN BRITAIN!

I know that because our roads round here are littered with (aparently invisible) little signs in many languages reminding people to drive on the left.

Listening to: DJ Food

Chocolate Chip Sausage Rolls!

I fell asleep during the day today. I'm not sure for how long but I flopped down for a moment on the sofa with Holly and Daisy, blinked and the room was suddenly twice as messy. Spent the rest of the day gulping coffee by the bucket.

The Panto script is coming on slowly, which is a bit of a pity as Ilona is wanting a finished(ish) script by Sunday. Mike came over today and we filled in a few gaps and measured the ones that still remained. I spent most of the evening hard at work in front of the pooter and after about 3 hours, in a flurry of highly focused and well diciplined displacement behavior, I had spaced everything very neatly and got rid of 99% of the little squiggly underlining that Word shoves under things Bill Gates doesn't like. Then, as an afterthought, I added about 5 jokes - 3 and a half of them Ilona will want to take out - (the other one and a half I will want to take out) then Merriol sat and poked me with a stick until I did some real work.

Current Listening - The Hokey Pockey Disco (I may be developing some sort of self-inflicted brain damage listening to this stuff)

In My Africa There Are No Crocodiles Only Pink Ones With No Teeth

Shit! Just Typed a HUGE blog for today but my browser crashed taking all my hard work to oblivion (or somewhere even further away) Knob! Knob! Knob!

To precis (it's late)

Tried to finish the online Tax Return - I got it all finished and when I tried to submit it I got some very strange error messages "The Government is broken please try later" so I don't know if I've submitted it or not. This happened once before and I had to phone them up.
"Did you get it?" I asked.
"Yes we did, "said the nice lady from the tax office after she had pulled up my details on her screen,"we got it at at 9:15 pm, 9.18 pm, 9.19, 9.21... - you're persistant, aren't you?"

Near death experiences with tourist drivers so far this week Part 1 (it's only Tuesday)
Twat of the week French driver cut across me at a roundabout then, totaly freaked at the prospect of a left turn, managed to forget we drive on the left and manouvered himself into the path of two lanes of oncoming traffic before cutting back across onto the correct side of the road - right in front of me again. It's scary - I mean this car had French plates so unless they had it parachuted into Scotland they must have driven this thing on British roads for several hundred miles already. Dover must be fun.


Current Listening - The incomperable Wooshie Spkamoto!

I Can Smell Something Smelly

New theory about people who drive at a constant and exact 40 mph (and there are a lot of them about).

For years my Dad has had this theory that someone (probably The Reader's Digest) published a statistic that showed that 50% of accidents occurred above 40mph, 50% happened below 40mph.
"Aha!" Thought a whole generation of flat-cap wearing, middle-aged Morris Minor drivers," No accidents happen at exactly 40mph!"

Having been stuck behind several of this type of driver recently I have made the observation that they often have small dogs in the car with them. Small, yappy dogs. You know the kind, the colour of used dishcloths with poo-stained bum-holes.
I'm convinced these people think their dog will explode if they drive to fast.

Merriol says she hates it when I work alone for too long. ApparentlyI have too much time to think about stuff like this.

I came up with conclusive proof that the lost tribes of Israel are Peruvians as well today, but it's essentialy a visual proof. Remind me and I'll get back to this...

Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals

I've started working on this year's panto script again! So far I have two long skits but no story to hang them on.

I'm not getting anywhere fast.

Today I have translated 'Auld Lang Syne' into pigeon Yiddish (now there's a concept!) as a payoff for a lame joke, and I am about to cut out the poem below for obvious reasons...

(Or maybe they aren't obvious reasons - to explain: Jimmy Savile is a TV personage / celeb. He got big(ish) by presenting a show called Jim'll Fix It a BBC show that ran from the mid 1970s through to the early 1990s.

Jim'll Fix It became a fixture of Saturday evening television viewing, often sandwiched between Dr Who and The Generation Game and was more horrible and horrifying than either of them.

Sir Jimmy as he became, now lives - for some of the year at least- in a remote cottage half way up Glen Coe and is seen occasionaly in the local tea shop - a cue for all the locals to hide as he embarrasses everyone by trying to jump the cue by "Being Famous" - a ploy which fails miserably when the place is full of foreign tourists who don't have a foggist who he is.)

Act Something Scene 2

"(A choir of angelic cherubs, each wearing a “Jim Fixiteth For Me” badge appears – or we con Eileen into doing another solo. If she can manage in the style of John Cooper Clarke, so much the better.)

Super Jimmy Savile,
What is he like?
He's got more horrible track suits
Than David Icke

If you want something opening, he'll be there
in a ton of cheap jewellery and snow white hair
No secret alter-ego, it's plain to see
It's bigger than him - and twice as big as me

He used to run marathons before they were 'Snickers'
No one ever accused him of getting in her knickers
He lives up the Glen just near the bend and
Everyone who lives up there calls him their friend

He's loud and he's gaudy, his voice grates your ear
He's the only celeb we got living round here
Youngsters and foregners look at him in awe
And ask each other "what exactly is he for?"

He isn't for anything - exept for himself
Another has-been celebrity, sitting on the shelf
The last of his kind - the last we have
He's Jimmy Savile - the Superchav"

Yep, it's got to go... it's crap, but at least I got to post one of my poems in my blog. Now where is the one about slashing my eyballs because no won luvz mi?

.

What's that on your head? A Wig!!!!!!

Long lost and forgotten photo of the girls wearing wigs (for some reason or other) found on a long lost and forgotten Flickr account.

Meanwhile it is now Thursday! I started to go to bed when there was about 4 hours of Wednesday left. I have to knock this 5 hour bedtime routine on the head and soon. It's killing me...

Tonight's movie: Carnival of Souls
It gave me the real creeps. No body parts flying through the windows, no serial Killers lurking in the dorm just honest to goodness creepy filmaking. I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight. God, I'm such a wuss!

You've just got great super-hero teeth

I was followed all the way home by a 2CV tonight - now I'm really paranoid.

Tickle tickle tickle!

Paint Paint Paint. That's all I've been doing all day. I hate painting. It's not what Tiggers do best. It's my least favourite thing in entire universe (apart from stripping wallpaper, anything involving large quantities of human waste, and whatever else it was I said a few days ago that I hated doing more than anything else in the entire universe)

What is it with my family? Why has everything has got to be white? My Parent's house is white and now I'm painting Dan's entire house white. White walls, white ceilings, white woodwork. I'm going snowblind!

In addition to yesterday's rantette (about the imposibility of the standards of touristical driving around here at the moment) I came across a cracker this morning. The road between here and Kinlochleven is a windy twisty uppy downy kind of road - most of it is pretty easy driving though if you aren't too gung-ho.

Knowing the road as I do I can tell you the narrowest part of it is the bridge at Invercoe. I'm not sure how old the bridge is but it wasn't really built with modern traffic in mind. If you were a tourist and driving a mobile home the size of a small branch of Tesco's Supermarket where would you stop to look at the scenery?

If you said "on the bridge" give yourself a coconut and go to the top of the class.

There is some sort of World 2CV rally in Edinburgh soon (or last week - or even in a parallel universe) and there seem to be several bejillion 2CVs trundling around the Highlands at the moment. All of them seem to be driven by careful conciderate drivers going in the oposite direction from me. It's bizzare. Whichever way I'm going they all seem to be coming towards me. I never seem to be stuck behind any or see any up the road ahead of me. I'm getting a little paranoid about this.

Too pooped to watch even the crappest of movies this evening, though I did catch the end of The Trollenberg Terror on the box last night. " ... and the The Award for Crappest Alien Monsters Ever in a British SF Film goes to ..."

I wish I had seen it from the start but the best line of what I saw had our podgey American Lead grabbing a Molotov Cocktail and say:

"I'll go outside and throw a bomb at it and see what happens - don't open this door again until I knock."

Nearly had a Mozartlike child genius revealing herself moment today...

Daisy reached out and picked up a Sudoku puzzle, then picked up a
pencil (the right way round) looked at the puzzle intently for a few
moments then dropped it and got interested in something else. She
didn't fill out the puzzle, roll it into a ball and shove it up her
nose or do anything cute at all which shows a disappointing lack of
mathematical genius and, more alarmingly, a total lack of comic timing.

Where did I go wrong!

I mean she's 13 months old for christ's sake!

I just love stripping wallpaper... (Hmm... I forget how well ironic understatement comes over when written down*.)

I just hate stripping wallpaper...

I spent the whole day today stripping the wallpaper off Dan's new house. As I arrived at his place I realised that, although I remembered to take a couple CDs, I had forgotten to pick up the radio/CD player I use to keep myself company on jobs like this.

Big mistake.

My main trouble with stripping wallpaper is the world's most annoying advertising jingle - ever! - which starts going round and round in my head as soon as I start. Alfred Bester once wrote an SF novel in which a murderer kept himself from having his mind read by the police telepaths by filling his head full of the most irritating, compulsive advertizing jingle - I think this is it.

If I tell you this fucking jingle has been lodged in my brain for over 20 years, and is even more annoying and hateful than the "Tasty - Tasty, they're very very tasty" Bran Flakes jingle which used to have me scream and leap across the room to turn it down - I used to get exercise before we had a TV with a remote - or even, God help us, "Do the Shake 'n' Vac and put the freshness back..." (ditto) I think you'll understand my state of mind after 6 hours without any music to keeping the thing at bay. Now it's out of its cage the sodding thing is going to be buzzing round my conciousness for weeks now.

To the tune of Blood Sweat and Tears' Spinning Wheel

'What goes up,
must come down,
Super Fresco is so easy,
It's by Graham & Brown...'

That's it.
That's all of it.
Over and over again.
Round and round my fucking head like a painted pony... Argggghhhhh!

It was an advert for wallpaper that was easy to remove. Why easy removal was a selling point I can't imagine. I mean wallpaper is not something you change that often is it? "It's Tuesday, it must be time to re-paper the living-room darling!" No, if I have stuck something to the wall with buckets full of glue I want it to bloody stay there not come off in vast swathes every time some horrible child picks at a corner.

The CD player is in the back of the car already. I'm not going through that again tomorrow.

Dan is being discharged from Hospital on Tuesday. About 2 weeks earlier than we were expecting and about 2 weeks before his house will be ready to live in. I'll just have to pull out all the stops and get it painted as fast as possible before the carpets are laid. Not that they have even been ordered yet. Damn. There goes my weekend.

...

To the arsehole in the metalic turquoise Merc who cut me up at the roundabout coming out of the Fort, then bombed it off at 40+ in a 30 mile zone (Reg Number R619 HRP, officer) - It's going to take more than a pissy Jesus Fish bumper sticker to save you if you try that in front of someone who can't stop as fast as I can, like an HGV for instance. 'I'm rich, I'm a tourist, and I believe in God' does not make you bombproof. Twat. But thank you for getting that damn jingle out of my head for a few interesting seconds.


* - twice!

.

I've cancelled everything in my diary - including Australia Day and the Jewish New Year

I've been reading a lot of blogs recently as you would imagine and I was today going to submit to the will of the masses and try and write a typical blog entry. This would have been a right justified, free verse poem without punctuation detailing a second by second account of my coming to terms with my hamster's herpes infection, a pevish rant by some lone Democrat upset that his bunch of white billionairs aren't running his Government, or something totally incomprehesible (to me at least) acompanied by pictures of 'cute' wide eyed animals that make the Care Bears look like the Four Oarsmen of the Apocalypse.

Luckily I decided against it.

Merriol's best friend ever, ever since they were that high, Julia, had her baby last night. Please put your hands together and welcome Emma Bethan Jones to the world stage.

7lb 02 ounces.

I have no idea what that is in metric. I suspect that long after everything else has gone metric babies will still come in pounds. Because the gap between generations is so long it's going to take centuries before the need to compare birthweights with the previous generation will make the switch to the metric system. 16+ years is a long lag between measurements.

Re: 'World War II Movies With Nudity?'

Zombied in front of the telly tonight and tried to find something to watch that didn't involve auctions, house improvements, or a bunch of arsewholes (sic) involved in some 'experiment' (ie stuffed together in a totaly artificial environment as supposedly invisible camera crews capture every tedious detail of every pointless little squabble). I failed.

Next week on Channel 4, "The Real Experiment" 15 highly paid TV execs are locked in the Big Brother house with 15 of Britain's most annoying non-celebs (draw your own list, but that Day-Glo orange twat who presents "Bargain Hunt" has to go in).

The first one to come up with an original idea gets to live.

...

The Glitter Chronicles.

Merriol's obsession with glitter is well known. Everything in this house has a thin scattering of teeny tiny, very shiny specks (and that goes for a 5Km radius around it too - like Chenobil but pretty).

Daisy was less than an hour old before I spotted the first speck of glitter on her, and we were in a hospital 80 miles away from home! Just now I started to run myself a bath and thought I would treat myself with some bubbles* - there's sodding glitter in the bubble bath!

Why?

What earthly reason ever could there be for putting glitter in bubble bath? All it's going to do is go down the plughole, and then eventualy into the sea where it is going to confuse fish who will eat it thinking they are getting a meal - very small fish I admit, but even very small fish fish have enough problems without great washes of tempting pseudo-food drifting around in front of their noses.




*no candles though - I'm not that much of a Mum yet.

All that glitters is not Merriol

Today's Gem of Childish Spookiness

Daisy (aged one) is sitting in her high chair eating her tea while I listen to the News on Radio 4.

There is an item on the programme about the funeral of Edward Heath (Britain's last socialist Prime Minister) in which a snatch of The Last Post is played...

Daisy looks up from her pasta as the lone trumpet sounds. She listens for a moment, then turns to the radio, and waves.

"Bye Bye"

Creepy!

Never a Dull Moment of Truth is a Two Edged Sword of Damocles

I have the script of the show! 36 pages long - single spaced (Grrrr! no room to write notes and directions to myself in between the lines. Scripts should be double spaced so we actors - pretentious? Moi?? - can write notes to ourself like 'sardonic', 'whistful glance', and 'wipe cat sick off trousers'.) I'm nearly on every page (oh God!) and though the dialogue is not up to the stunning standards of the Starlost writers (see under Kier Dullea's Big Gay Moustache down below) it is not good.

The 'moral' of the play, which I deliver on the last page, reads:"There is no point in worrying about what might have been. The thing is it's never too late. And anyone can visit a careers adviser nowadays; it's not just for young people."

At which point I am going to be hard pressed not to turn to the audience and say in my best Pat Boone voice "Yes kids, and just say no to drugs too."

The tour takes us to Tiree.

"Sept 15th AM Fly to Tiree PM Tiree, Sept 16th Fly back from Tiree".

My first thought was to look up Tiree and see if it had an airstrip. It does. A real one. So we won't be landing on a beach which is what I was scared of. I didn't think to look where we would be flying from, I guess Inverness, which means we will be practicaly flying over the house. Twice. In a small aeroplane over all these big jaggy mountains. I am going off the idea of this whole thing. I seem to remember the planes on this run are called "Otters" I can't see it; me flying over big pointy mountains in something called an Otter to deliver patronising messages to High School kids in the middle of the fucking Atlantic.

Oh Crap. What have I let myself in for?

What do I want for Christmas? - A large extended family with money

Lying in bed this morning trying to read Horry Patter and the Telephone Directory From Hell over Merriol's shoulder without letting her know I was reading it, I suddenly realised that there weren't that many lines on the page (there are 35, I counted. I am a sad sad man) it looks like it's double spaced when compared to other hardbacks. Henry Porter and the Encyclopedea Brittanica isn't that big a book really and if Dumbledore had been called something shorter like Fred ("Grand Arch-wizard Fred"- I like it!) it would have been even shorter.

Bit of a party for Daisy this afternoon which, due to our usual careful planning - I mean who else would have their babies in the middle of the holiday season and expect anyone to be around to come to the birthday party? - ended up being a quiet affair with not a lot of people and lots of food. Nice hot sunny day. The kids had fun, Holly and Naomi ate gallons of jelly which, when all is said and done, is what being 3 is all about really.

Pooed off this evening to find a movie I just bought on DVD, Carnival of Souls, is on the Telly tomorrow night. Poo!

Are Those Your Lemons, Madam?

I failed. Failed Failed Failed. 83 Bejillion good movies I need to watch before I die and last night I addled what's left of my brain with The Starlost: Deception a stinkingly bad SF "movie" made by glueing two episodes of a 1973 TV series together and running away before anyone noticed.

Canada's second greatest contribution to crap SF TV (first place goes to William Shatner) the Starlost is one of those SF shows where the automatic sliding doors make more noise GBZZZZZZZZshup! - than the ray guns pew! The Starlost only ran for 16 episodes before it was taken outside and shot.

And with stunning dialogue like this, between silver hot panted Space Bimbo and Kier Dullea as "Devon" trying to hide behind his moustache, you can see why

"I'll do the show but only if I can have a huge
Gay Moustache so no one knows it's me."

Space Bimbo:
You've never tasted food like this before...

Devon:
I've never seen statues that change before or people
who appear and disappear before my eyes before either

Just try saying that out loud - it's bollocks! a few moment later:

Space Bimbo:
Is the Ark in any immediate danger?

Devon:
It could be, we just don't know when!

Maybe Canadian dictionaries of the 70s defined "immediate" differently - I dunno - but after that line I switched off and went and did something else meaning to come back and watch the rest of it later. Luckily Holly somehow managed to tape CBeebies over the second half of the tape the next morning so I was spared! Hurrah!


.

Two Ice Lollies and a Packet of Crisps

Tonight I watched The Killer Shews. Tomorrow I may ask myself: "Why, when I have 83 bejillion really GREAT movies I could be watching, am I rotting my brain with total drek like this?"

Bloody good question. It's the same reason that people slow down when they pass car wrecks and try not to peek at the carnage I guess. I like Car Crash Movies.

Finished my Playing with Kids for Money job today - 2 hours trying to engage a room full or 6 -11 year olds. All the boys wanted to do was hit each other and roll around on the floor together (I just DO not understand boys). One of the 6 year old girls stood and cried the whole time I was there, and some of the smaller boys had the attention spans of lower order invertibrates (I guess that's why they all had short names like 'Joe' and 'Jim'. If they didn't they would forget who they were).

I don't often get paid 20 pounds an hour but I felt I earned it today. Still, I now have a nice looking Advanced Disclosure certificate from the police which means I'm officialy not a pervert - which is nice to know. I look at it from time to time to reassure myself. "Yep, I'm still officially not a pervert."

Tomorrow I do my Tax and get all the paperwork sorted out for the Insanely Complex Working Families Tax Credit thing. I don't even claim to understand what the Insanely Complex Working Families Tax Credit thing about or how it works but I think we end up getting money from the Government for having reproduced recently.

Which is nice, but a bit scary.

Tomorrow I will watch a good movie. I promise. One without rubber monsters or large breasted women getting wet for no apparent reason, or even large rubber breasted women getting wet for very good reasons. Something with a bit of class (something with a plot!). I can do this...

What's the singular of spaghetti?

Daisy is one year old today! She is in single figures!

Spent a chunk of the day hanging the bedroom door that has been leaning leaning against a wall ever since I made it several weeks ago (the door that is - the wall has been there for about 140 years) suprisingly it went remarkably easily. I wasn't looking forward to it at all. I hate hanging doors. It is my least favourite job ever - apart from those involving large quantities of human shit, but luckily I haven't had one of those for a long time - It's just one of those jobs that ALWAYS takes far longer than I think it's going to and I can never remember how to do it until I have finished and will have forgotten by the next time. This time however it worked first time. I console myself with the fact that I will only have to go through this living hell 4 more times over the next few years to get this place finished.

This evening Daisy opened her pressies and had a cake and gave a virtuoso demonstration of nose picking. If rhinotillexomania was an Olympic event I think we would have a new Gold Medalist in the making here

Daisy Reaming Her Nostrils for Scotland

Tomorrow (and the day after) I do my last stint as a Temp Arts worker for the summer and get to put in my invoice. Yipee! Money! Then back to normal life being a Male Mum again!

Merriol, like most of the world has bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Whatsit of Whatever Telephone Directory sized tombe yesterday and so, I guess, will lost to the world for however long it takes...

I'm a Harry Potter Widower.

The VHS is dead - dammit.

Blockbuster in the UK - well my bit of it at least - no longer trade VHS tapes. This is a bit of a shit as it was a great way for me to:

1. Find realy bad SF movies that no one would ever consider releasing on DVD (even if they were paid oodles of money) for only a quid per movie.
   
2. Get rid of them again for 40p per tape.

Net result? I got indefinate rental of tape for 60 pence. Now the buggers have declared the VHS too much trouble and, as of tomorrow, will only be dealing with DVDs.

I wonder what they are going to do with all the copies of Robocop? Everytime I went in there seemed to be more and more copies of Robocops 1, 2, & 3. The thing was taking over. Everyone was selling it no-one was buying.

There were a lot of copies of Lost in Space too...

Woke up at 6 AM this morning to Daisy wailing the place down. I got out of bed to change her nappy, dropped it in the bin, put Daisy back in her cot, turned on the TV to the CBeeBies children's channel, waited till she was hypnotised enough for me to sneak away without noticing and then I snuck away without her noticing whilst supressing huge waves of EVIL PARENT GUILT for leaving my one year old glued to the telly just because I am so selfish as to need sleep. Then fell back into bed again.

Just before my head hit the pillow I heard my inner joke writer say:

"You think you got problems! I know an orphan with an Oedipus complex!"

Now where the hell do thoughts like that come from? I wish I knew and I could tap into it. I mean that's a funny line. Not a great all time belly-buster of a funny but it made me giggle. (It also made my mother laugh and my Dad want to kill me - but that's another story).

Finished Catch 22 the other day and was prompted by the coincidence of a reference to Raskolnikov's Dream in the last but one chapter to plough on and read Crime and Punishment. See Reading

Not as hard work as I thought it was going to be but (like most 19th Century books) about twice as long as it should be.

The Sby Who Came In With a Cold

Sat down to a great meal tonight. A HUGE risotto cooked by Sue, and a mixed pile of salads which I threw together in my usual last minute rush. The best of which was cold, cooked brocolli with vinegrette and black pepper. The brocolli was supposed to go into the Risotto but as there wasn't enough room in the pan, or Sue forgot (one or the other) it got left on the side and, just so it didn't turn into yet another pile of brocolli we watched rot, I made it into a salad. Merriol, Dan, and Sue had a glass of red wine. Holly finaly got over her fear of fizzy drinks ("They are for Grown ups!") and had a glass of Tonic Water with me which she said she liked, then did one of the loudest burps in the history of burping and giggled.

Fruit for pud, though after the gargantuan Risotto (Sue had an attack of the "It Won't be Enough!" fear and kept piling stuff in) we were stuffed and didn't actually felt like anything else.

A lovely family meal that fed right into my delusions of extended family and tribal living but I'm getting incredibly fed up with the way people just launch into their food around here. As soon as it is on the table people start shoveling it onto their own plate and eating. Sometimes as I'm usualy the one running around getting things from the kitchen I sit down to find the meal that I have been cooking half over before I get to join in. It must be nice to have a ritual at the start of a meal, like Christians say grace, to start it off. But not being Christians, Muslims or of any other religiosity I may just have to invent one. No one eats a mouthful until they have helped everyone else to something maybe, or even simpler! everyone has to raise their glass of water, wine, juice, or whatever and make a toast. "To Bifours!"

At least I got everything off the table this time. We weren't eating around a pile of all the other, non mealtime, stuff that usually just gets shoved to one side. Progress

Been twiddling my thumbs waiting for this but I got offered the acting job! Hurrah! 10 weeks work! Merriol is spending the money already - mostly on child care (to cover the fact that I am not going to be here to look after the kids) and on the new bathroom. Co incidentaly Fraser who built most of the insides of our house came round tonight to borrow my scaffold tower and we talked him into doing it for us.

Finally got to flop on the sofa and watch a movie for the first time in weeks: Orson Welles' Confidential Report.

Someone I knew a few years ago and I haven't seen for a long time, got killed in a car crash last week and I found out today. He was a nice bloke. I remembered he used to be good friends with Jeannie W (girlfriend before Merriol) and tracked her down and gave her the news - well, I gave her husband the news and ran away without leaving my phone number. She later phoned back having tracked me down via the same website I used to find her http://www.192.com/

July 4? - why does that date ring a bell?

Oh, Happy Birthday America!

Sunday night

Spent most of the day re-arranging all the garbage around here and
discovered 3 dead computers that I had forgotten about under a pile
of boxes. This is pathetic! The pooters are
going to Ben who may salvage useful bits (leads etc.) from them -
There is a huge pile of books to crappy even to be
sold on ebay (I've tried) downstairs waiting for the Car Boot sale in
the Fort in a couple of weeks (25 pence each - 3 for a pound!) and we
are piling up another mountain of babystuff for Julia.
Slowly under this frenzied onslaught there seems to be some space
opening up. Phoebe and Tyler aren't coming for 9 months
and already I'm panicking about the state of the place!

Tomorrow I have to take Holly to nursery in the morning and see if I
can pick Merriol's pass so she can get into work. The Queen (God
bless her!) is opening the building next to where she works on
Tuesday (an event that has stirred up unparalleled amounts of apathy
around here - I knew I liked this place) and she needs a pass to get
to work. It will be interesting to see if they will let me pick it
up for here. I wonder if I can sell the story to one of the Tabloids
if I do. I can just see it now, "Shaven Headed Anarchist Breaches
Royal Security!"

Maybe not.

No work this week but I have to get things sorted for the Summer
Playscheme job thingie. I think I know what I am doing but I will
have to get my act together and do some preparation for this one. I
can't just walk in at the last minute and busk it like I normally do.
Dammit! (Is this what working for a living is like?) so between
sorting out last year's tax (arghhhh!) breaching royal security and
finding out if the floor is still there under all this garbage it
looks like I'm going to have a busy week.

Thick as Pigshit!

Because I can't tell the fucking difference between a space and an underscore. Dumb dumb dumb. Mind you I am the man who spent 2 hours not noticing the mailer I was trying to set up for a friend was pointing at STMP.whatever.net and getting VERY frustrated and het up.

Sod this! After finaly managing to get in I'm too tired to remember what I was going to say... so I will go write some bad poetry instead which seems to be de rigeur for blogs though I will be hard-pressed to beat daughter No 1 Holly (3 yrs 2 months) who asked me today:
"When I'm dead will you play music on my bones?"
Scary

GRrrrr! or even GRRRRR!

How is it I'm able to post to this Blog by mail but can't log in? I
may have to take this machine out and shoot it to death... after I
got all the useful stuff off it first.

Glurk!

Tzar Nicholas II - for no other reason than it was the first (clean) picture I could find to test the picy uploading thingie

Down to the doc's this morning with my eye (and the rest of me) turns out I have conjuctivitis in the right eye and have to squirt evil gunge in it every day for a week.

"Don't be suprised if it gets into your left eye too." he said.
"I'll be careful not to rub the infected eye and then the other one." I said.
"No, it's not that. It might just go down your tears ducts, into your nasal cavity, and up the other side again."

I don't like this. I have illnesses wandering around my body looking for places to camp out!
"Hey guys, this is a nice place. Lets make some pus here!"

Called down at the Tourist Information Center this afternoon and bumped into Ilona and Andy who were supoosed to be away camping somewhere (weird people). Turns out they had heard a grinding noise from the front left wheel of their car and stopped to get it checked at the garage. The whole wheel bearing was fucked so they were sitting around waiting to get it fixed. I drove them to the garage after a while. The garage had got a new bearing but when they tried to fit it the whole assembly it's supposed to fit onto crumbled. Ilona only bought the car 6 weeks ago after her last one was turning into an expensive repair job on wheels.

Saturday tomorrow. A exciting day shopping with Merriol, both the kids, and the mother-in-law in tourist packed Oban. My life is so much FUN!