And Lo!

At some point over the last couple of weeks, I forget quite when, I took the carpet brushy bit of the hoover to bits (you can see why the date isn't etched in my mind).

For quite a while the lever things on the back that push the brushy bits on the bottom up and down (just skip to the next paragraph if this is getting too technical) had been getting stiffer and stiffer and just not doing what it was supposed to do. It felt like there was something in there obstructing the motion of the levery thingies.

With reluctance I took the whole carpet head thing to bits. I say with reluctance because I know from past experience (and if you've been following my gripping adventures in housekeeping here you'll know too) that any task that involves any dismantling or repairing anything around here invariably ends up involving plumbing, a trip to the timber yard and the exessive use of power tools up scaffolding

I took the metal plate off the bottom of the thing, and carefully placed the screws in a safe place followed by some little springs that I discovered behind it. (Amazingly, they hadn't flown across the room and disappeared behind some heavy piece of furniture.) Inside was a heavy quite complex felt gasket. I lifted it out. There was nothing else in there. With the gasket removed the lever things moved freely.

I fitted the gasket back in and reassembled everything. I tried it. It was just as bad as it had been. I opened it up again and took a long look at the gasket.

It may say something about the state of my mind and my general tiredness but it was a good 10 minutes before it struck me that it was extremely unlikely that the Vacuum Cleaner Division of the mighty Panasonic Corporation would manufacture a felt gasket the exact shade as the average of my carpets. I had carefully reassembled the thing with a 10 year accumulation of compacted fluff. I threw the gasket away and the cleaner works a lot better now.

---

Holly decided she was God tonight.

She came in from her bath to the kitchen and said "Let's pretend this is a Church and someone is God!"

She then promoted herself to the post and processed around the kitchen with Daisy trailing along after her like an accolite* chanting: "Where are your wishes? Where are your wishes?"

Why do they have to grow up?

*New AccoLite!
50% less fat than your average disciple!

OK! OK! A Title! - Damn You! You Stupid Machine!

I sometimes wonder how people coped with having children before CBeebies, disposable nappies, and automatic dishwashers.  I would be buggered without any one of them.  As it is I'm buggered at the end of the day anyway.  I have been less tired after a day's work on a building site than I am looking after my daughters all day.  They just never stop - unless I plonk them in front of the television which is evil and fills me with such guilt that I finish whatever it is I have to do at breakneck speed and rescue them. 

Finally starting to make progress on the set I am building for Ilona's National Theatre of Scotland thing. 3 weeks to go and I've finally got my act together.  Between the kids and everything else I'm only managing to get an hour or so at this each night - but it's starting to take shape.  One of the things I was trying to get to do before I started on this was to clear out my workshop.  I have a 25 square meter workshop that is so cluttered it is impossible to work in it.  I haven't been able to get to the wood lathe in over a year and I have to stand out in the front porch to run things through the circular saw.  It's pathetic that I let it get into such a guddle but I have, and it is, and life is exremely everso more complicated because of it.

I'm building the set in the porch which is also full of junk - including a 1950s electric cooker (functional) and a late 20th century photcopier (totally dead).

I need to get a grip.

I invented a new branch of science the other day:

Arhythmatics - the only known equation for which is:

A1, A2 + A123

I know: "Don't call us..."

My Blogging Tool Requires That I supply a Title; Who Am I to Disappoint a Machine?

It's Tuesday.

How do people have the time to update their blog every day? (Avoiding having children and not living in a building site would be good places to start).  Here it is Tuesday and I'm making my first entry this week.

Not that I have a lot to tell. So far this week my deepest thought has been:

"Subversive".  I know that 'sub means 'below' as in submarine and submerge, so what's a "versive" and how would you get under it?

I think having read two Perry Rhodan Novels, and watched both Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and the Eurovision Song Contest (and voted for the winner) this week has totally fucked whatever brain I had.  Please kids, don't attempt this at home.  I have had years of experience watching bad movies and reading drek SF.  I know what I am doing.  This could have been a near fatal overdose in the hands of less hardened dross addict.

Smell my Bum!

It's Friday. The kitchen worksuface is in and stinking the house out as I liberaly slopped it over with polyeurethane last thing. Tomorrow Sue and len are taking the kids all day and my Mum and Dad are taking them all night. 24 hours (- ish) without the children. Gasp! What are we going to do with ourselves - apart from sleep a lot and indulge in the annual crapfest that is Eurovision!

So sad, so sad.

Still hint waiting hint for hint Phoebe to hint tell the hint world via her blog.

I want to, but it's not my news!

Hint Hint!

Because You Are Not A Mysterious Fish - or - What Can You See Through A Tomato?

Rewiring of Kitchen Done! Hoo-Bloody-Ray! Yet again I have ended up lying flat on my back under my floor boards in the pitch black with the torch turned off (to save the battery) while people poke bits of wire at me through gaps in floorboards. Anyone would think I like this sort of thing.

Mind you, it was interesting down there.

It turns out, despite my strongly held belief that whatever I do to this pile involves me getting under the floor at some point, that I haven't been crawling around down there for about 3 years. I spent an awful lot of time under there before that - making the underfloor supports, that hold up the pillars, that hold up the new upstairs but I haven't been down there since the central heating was installed. I had no idea there were so many new pipes! God knows what they all do, and why I have so many stopcocks down there, and what I'm supposed to do with them, is an utter mystery.

Plumbing is weird.

...

From fellow palimpsest.org.uker Kumquat's Blog:


1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Ok, done that:

'The cable is wrapped up in its own little package as well.'

Not sure why I did that. I don't usualy go in for these chainy maily things. I have this idea that someone somewhere, the person who started this, is waiting for X amount of time to pass before Googleing all the results and assemble a novel out of the (semi-) random sentences.

If they don't, I will. The lawsuits for plagiarism alone will keep me busy for the rest of my life.

Ceiling of kitchen taped today. I hate taping. I'm totally crap at it. It's a cyclical feedback thing: I hate it because I'm crap at it and I'm crap at it because I hate it. Halfway through I ran out of tape which was a bit of a bugger but luckily Sue came to my rescue with a couple of till rolls she just happened to have in the caravan. It's weird but it worked.

Wednesday. Holly's school was closed for the day to let the teachers attend a seminar on paperwork. Lucky people. I took the kids and Sue to Oban for the day. It was a lovely sunny day the first time I had been out in the 'big town' when it hasn't been tipping it down or about to rain for ages. Quite a few people about all dressed as badly as only the British can be when the sun comes out. Pink flesh bulging out over the tops of too tight trousers, grubby grey bras as the bottom layer of that strange thing women do in warm weather of wearing 3 or 4 things with thin shoulder straps. Living in a small village I forget about things like this.

The kitchen is edging towards - something. Between the kids and this and that and the other (which this week including digging a drainage ditch for the parents) I have been averaging about 2 hours a day on this job. Tonight I got the plasterboarding finished. At last. Taping and sanding still to do, then make the work surfaces, do the rewire... I should be finished by Christmas.

No news from the Solicitors about the vergey thing but on Saturday one of the agrieved parties in the parking dispute started to work on the planters the Community Council have decided would be a good idea. They stopped when we pointed out that we might own it and we're all just twiddling our thumbs now.

I stocked up on long French movies yesterday; there were a pile of them in a Charity shop in the Fort at £1.50 each - anything to break this bad movie loop I seem to have got myself stuck in. While I was there I also bought a video compilation of classical ballet highlights for Holly who, when she isn't being a mermaid, is "going to be a Ballerina when she grows up". Last night we watched it. I'm not a ballet fan. I just don't get it, don't understand why they are doing it. I like some of the music - though according to Holly, only The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is "Real Ballet Music" - and I can admire the athletisism, skill and dedication of the performers but I just don't get storytelling through dance. Apart from the ocassional "Wow!" moment, which I equally ocassionaly get watching ice-skating, or gymnastics, or the opening stunt of a James Bond movie. I just just don't get it.

I'm waffling.

So there we are sitting watching skinny women and well muscled men gracefully prancing about the stage. The "Balcony Pas-de-deux" from Romeo and Juliet comes on. Juliet swoons on the balcony. Romeo sweeps onto the stage. Their eyes meet. Juliet sweeps down the stairs. They run to each other, they part, they tentatively embrace. They part again. Hesitantly Romeo kisses her hand. She acquiesces to his entreaties. He leaps across the stage in a series of impressive bounds. Holly says: "He wants to kiss her hand. Why doesn't he just stop dancing and kiss her?" I don't think Holly really gets it either - but then she is only 4.

Fish Tennis

For weeks now I have been avoiding getting involved in (or even hearing about) a long simmering row that has been going on up the street from where we live. A near neighbour has been parking his car on the verge of the road alongside our house much to the annoyance of other neighbours who have complained to the council about the possible congestion etc. etc.

Today the neighbour arrived on our doorstep asking my permission to park just where he has been for weeks.

"Why are you asking me?" I said, "It's nothing to do with me, it's the Council's land. Part of the public Highway."

"Not according to the Council," he said. "They say it belongs to you." He produced a letter from the council saying just that.

Bugger! I'm involved.

The whole of the grass verge up the roadside, between my garden wall and the road may be ours. We apparently own 120 square meters more of Scotland than we thought we did. 120 square meters with a streetlamp, a telegraph pole, 2 roadsigns, and a mains sewer running the length of it.

I sort of kind of wish this isn't true. If it isn't true, and the land does belong to the Council (or someone else) the long simmering row will go on simmering without us being involved. I've only lived in this village 15 years; I haven't been here long enough to take sides in any rows not of my own making.

On the other hand. If it is true and we do own it, are we then suddenly responsible for the upkeep of the roadside? Do I have to mow the grass? Pay the Council to mow the grass as they have been doing? What happens if someone hurts themselves there? Can they sue me?

I will have to talk to my lawyer about this.

How the hell does this happen? Every time I do anything on this house it ends up taking fifteen times longer than I planned and always becomes three hundred and thirty two times more complicated than I could have ever imagined. Tonight, as a direct consequence of putting a skylight into the kitchen two weeks ago, I have decided to move the cooker - which means completely rewiring the kitchen.

The blocking up of the wall continues. Pa and I are managing a course a day and we are now over half way up. We're getting to the point where those rocks technically known as "The Big Buggers" are too big to get up into place without stupid and complicated amounts of work so we are using "The Little Buggers". This takes a lot more fiddling about to get them to fit but it's less likely to knacker our backs.

What's the most stupid thing you did this week? I ran out of heating fuel just as oil prices are at their highest point for years. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! A delivery of dyed Deisel is coming tomorrow - at which point I will realise I have absolutly no idea how to relight the boiler and no idea where the manual is.

Still, you gotta laugh ain't cha?

Scribble Scribble

In complete contrast to yesterday's stone whacking adventures, most of today was spent as far away from being a Neanderthal as I can imagine. Mike and I spent the entire day finishing the 30ish minute play we have been pecking away at for the last few weeks. It's hardly Oscar Wilde but it makes us laugh. Actually it's nothing like Oscar Wilde at all, it's more like an attempt to see how many times we could use the word 'arse' on each page. The word 'arse' being the funniest word in the English Language - next to 'Wankel Rotary Engine', of course, but Wankel was German, and a proper noun; so it doesn't count.

It was amazing how quickly we fell into working together. Both of us quite happy to loose things if they obviously didn't work, and quick to suggest new ideas. I had fun. And it was amazing how quickly we fell into the cliched stereotype habits of all those bad 40s movies we both must have seen over the years. Two writers at work hammering out the screenplay, one pacing, cigarette in hand, outlining the action, the other, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, hat pushed back on his head, pounding the keys of a battered upright Dell. Hoagy Charmichael over the way tinkling a melancholy tune, Joan Blondell wise-cracking as she delivered the latest in an enless stream of urgent memos from the front office and putting another pot of coffee on the stove.

"How do you want it, guys?"

"Like I like my music baby, Hot and Black."

Hoagy lets out a muffled sob and plays three bum notes.

"What's the matter, Hoagy? What's that you playing?"

"Nothing boss, just a little something of my own."

"What do you call it?"

"I dunno - I guess I'll call it Jazz."

Mike snaps his fingers:

"Hey! That gives me a swell idea for the opening number..."

Cut To:
Close up of Cab Calloway in white Tux, baton in hand.

"A one two, a one two three... "

Something like that.

Grunt Grunt

Most of today has been spent moving chunks of granite around my garden and trying to figure out how to jigsaw them into the hole where the door was. We're having to trim some which is bloody messy work involving grinding slots into the bits we don't want and hitting them with big hammers till they fall off. Very dusty and messy. Dead Neolithic. Pa knapped a small rock to make it fit a space. Held it in his hand and whacked its edge with a hammer till it was the right size for what he wanted. As I watched him I thought "That's one of the first things people ever did that made them human. Someone held a rock and hit it to make it a different shape. 4 million years of evolution later and we're still doing the same thing. Still hitting rocks." This isn't an original thought. I have it quite often - but it's still a true source of wonderment to me.

I also rediscovered today the heather smells nice. I was raiding the rockery for a triangular bit about "that big" when I became aware of a wonderful, very nostalgic smell. I was scrabbling about under on of the heathers which are in flower at the moment and the aroma was wonderful.

At the end of the day we have one row of blocks in. The doorway has been filled to a hight of 8 inches! (We are working in Imperial this week not Metric 'cos Pa is doing the 'working out what we need to do next' and he "doesn't do Metric" unless forced to. And sometimes it's just easier, though I don't admit that to him. This building was built in Imperial measurements and all the spare rocks and slates we have been using were all cut to Imperial measurements and well, let's face it 8" is a lot easier to remember than 203mm.)

Tomorrow we are going to put another row in. I unearthed a HUGE piece of dressed granite in the pile that ill do almost an entire course by itself. If we don't use it tomorrow there is no way we are going to be able to safely lift it high enough to use. I've been gathering every bit of dressed and semi-dressed granite I have found for years now and dumping them in my garden on the off chance that one day I would need them. Over the years I have collected quite a pile, all overgrown now with couchgrass and moss. Well, the day to use them has finally arrived. The first thing I did today was roll over one of the largest rocks in the collection to measure the face on the other side. I rolled it over onto a tussock of grass that wasn't a tussock of grass at all but another bloody great lump of granite with grass growing over the top of it. A fact that became painfully apparent as I mashed my left pinky between the two . Blood, swearing, and severe pain. Great way to start the day.

Oh God - I'm OLD!

I have just found out, obscurely, via FriendsReunited, that one of my classmates, Tony, is a Grandfather! A Grandfather! I'm not old enough to be a Grandfather - am I? No way! No way! No way! Lalala! Fingers in my ears and up my nostrils Lalalala!

"But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near; "

No, I can't hear you! I can't hear you! La la la la laaaaa !

Oh Fuck! I'm going to have to go lie down...

Economics. Me No Understand It.

The stuff for the new kitchen is ordered. For this (and a couple of other jobs) we need some sand. About half a tonne. The builders suppliers don't sell sand by the half tonne. They sell tonne bags and 25 kg bags:

Me:
"How much is a tonne?"


The Man at The Builder's Suppliers:
Forty-three pounds - plus VAT.


Me:
How much is half a tonne in 25 kg bags?


The Man at The Builder's Suppliers:
Erm... Hang on. I'll have to work it out...
(muttering and muffled stabbing at a pocket calculator)
That comes to... er Forty-two pounds. Plus VAT.

Me:
So if I order a full tonne, I'll be getting
twice as much for only a quid more?


The Man at The Builder's Suppliers:
...plus VAT, yes.

Me:
I'll take the full tonne then.

Anyone want to buy some sand?

My Life Has Come True - That is the Name of the Shop Where You Wash Ducks

Easter Sunday 2006. All over the world people are going to church, eating copious amounts of expensivly-wrapped, cheap chocolate Easter eggs and the manufacturors of novelty Bunny Ears are going on expensive holidays. Nuclear families are joyously rolling two point four brightly coloured, hand-painted eggs down grassy hills in pre-Christian fertility rituals. A happy time.

In our house it was the day I ripped out the kitchen.

With the new velux flooding the place with light it became horribly obvious what a ramshackle bogging shithole it really was. I decided I would have to do something about it - so I ripped it all out before I could change my mind. For good measure I didn't stop till I had also ripped out the unused door that led from the kitchen to the outside world. Unused because about 5 years ago I put shelving and a worksurface in front of it rendering it pretty damn useles as a door and pretty ineffectual as a wall. The wind used to howl in round the edges and water drove in underneath it. The space where the door used to be is now filled with a sheet of polyethalene stretched around a frame made from some old 3x4s. It's more weatherproof than the door was . One of these days I will have this place finished.

2

Window number two is in! Merriol took before and after pictures. Fraser and I had the thing in and watertight by 3.30 pm. That's three hours faster than Tuesday. It rained nearly all day so now I have an empty, wet kitchen with no ceiling and two dehumidifyers whirring away trying to soak up some of the sog.

It also smells like "the attic" according to Holly, though how she knows what an attic smells like is a mystery to me.

The window in our upstairs bathroom is in! Well, when I say 'bathroom' I mean the space where our upstairs bathroom will be one day - when we can afford it. We are sneaking up on it slowly. When we put the upstairs into this building we laid all the pipework ready behind the wall, placed the radiator and the lighting and light switch as if the wall was there but ran out of money before we got to putting all the expensive bits in. Putting the Velux in brings it another step closer.

The Veluxs were salvaged from a demolition site. I got five of them for 150 quid. Three of them got fitted three years ago when we did the last major works to the house; the other two, the two we are fitting this week, have been sat in a shed ever since waiting for this moment to arrive.

So, Tuesday; after several hours choppping a hole in the roof, stripping away slates and cutting away roof timbers we had the frame in place and instead of being inside passing tools out to Fraser, who was on the scaffolding, it was easier for me to work outside on the scaffolding with him. I climbed up. I looked at the velux we were fitting. I looked over at the one we had fitted three years ago and realised we were missing the metalwork that keeps the window waterproof. I had no idea if we had it or where it was if we did.

Total blank.

We had spent several hours making a, very neat, hole in my roof and I had no idea if we had all the stuff to fill it up again. And it was raining.

I found the stuff eventually but it was a real "How the Fuck could I be so stupid!?" moments.

Today, Wednesday, I spent the almost the entire day taking everything out of the small kitchen. Half an hour ripping down the ceiling and two hours shoveling up the mess. At least it was a plasterboard ceiling and I will only have black snot for a couple of days. If it had been a lath and plaster ceiling my snotters would have been black for a week. No idea how this works but even with a mask on ripping down ceilings always has this affect on me

The day and a half spent at Ilona's was great.

I slept.

Merriol threw me out of the house on Friday. She'd borrowed Ilona's house keys, Ilona and Andy being away for the weekend, and told me to go and get some sleep and do fuck all for a day or two. I went. I slept for 12 hours, got up did my eMail and a couple of other bits and bobs on Ilona's computer, ate then went back to bed for another 24 hours. I didn't sleep all the time. Slept, woke up, watched a crappy movie, slept, woke up, watched a crappy movie etc. I feel so much better now. Caught up on my sleep at last. Caught up on my craapy movies too.

As I arrived home on Sunday night Fraser came over and said he could start the roof windows on Tuesday! Which meant totally rearranging the week but as we have been waiting for him to get round to doing this for about 6 months now we were not going to put him off in anyway. Daisy is no longer sleeping on the balcony but Holly's room. A situation they both took in their stride.

I Love my Kids!

I'm on Holiday

Merriol has packed me off to sunny Kinlochleven to Ilona and Andy's house for the weekend. They are away somewhere else so I have been sent to sleep for a couple of days. A couple of kid free days.

Sleep.

Sounds so good.

Then what hell am I doing typing this?

'Night world.

I'm Pushing it Down Hardly

Nothing exciting happened yesterday, so I drew a cartoon...

I know, I know

I still think 'Blogging' Sounds Like Something Rude in Welsh

Don't you? Come on, admit it:

Start humming Men of Harlech to yourself and then read the following:

"Well it was like this see, Hew Davies, Dai the Flab and I were blogging Bronwen Jones up the alley when we hears this noise, see."

I rest my case.

---

Holly has been a monster all day, took herself off to bed this afternoon for a long nap and just howled and kicked and screamed all evening when we got her up for her tea. After a very short, very splashy bathtime; she and Daisy kept waking each other up all evening. We just got one sorted and settled - and the other would start howling. It took both of us three hours to get them both off to sleep simultaniously; that's getting on for an entire working day just to get two kids to sleep.... Christ! No wonder I'm knackered.

And that's about it. That's the most exciting thing that has happened to me all day.

Mike and I have started writing this stupid 30 minute play idea for a festival in Glasgow. It gives us a deadline which I think we both need. he rang this morning to cancel today's scribbling session because his eldest, Finn, has succumbed to a sudden bout of projectile vomiting. I can now fully understand why I see the lines "XX took up writing after her children had left home" on so many Author Biogs. Because it is neigh on fucking impossible to get anything done when they are still around. Mike and I must be crazy to try and do this.

Damn all this technology!

Tonight I was going to finally sit down and write a long entry. All About all the humourous and jolly things Phoebe, Tyler, Merriol and I got up to when they were here but what happened? I sit down in front of the computer and someone presses my Auto-Distract Button - ooooooh! shiny....

... before you know it 3 hours have passed and I have signed up to four new, free, online services which I will never use but, by virtue of my having signed up, have become just that tiny bit more sellable to Google. ("Hell yeah Mr Google sir, we signed up Nifty-three* brazillion new customers in the last three days alone!"). But dammit, I will use their servers for something. So here is a link to this blog's brand new, shiny, out the box Frappr group!. Frappr is an interactive map thingie that uses Google maps and lets you stick a little pin in and say "I am here! - Hello, can anyone see me?" - I'm sure it does a lot of other stuff as well but I will find all that later - or you could find it. Click the link, add youself to the map and have a poke about and see what is to be done there. If it's any good let me know.


Mike and I started work on a new play today. We had so much fun writing the Panto that we're going to see if we can come up with something of our own. There's a new writing festival in Glasgow in June that's asking for submissions, so we have a deadline to work to and a limit on time, cast, and budget. We already have a workable idea, a rough idea of what the set looks like, and have a few jokes written - why do I suspect that we are never going to write anything serious. We have 20 days to get it finished and posted.

There's no money in it if it ever gets put on but it will be something else for the CV and we'll have had some fun. Hmmmm, I wonder if there are any (paid) acting jobs going at this thing....

*Nifty n. maths N times 10

Honk!

Phoebe and Tyler are away off back to London and then back to the USA (Tyler is due back at work on Monday). I'm going to miss them. After a week of concentrated Hanging Out and catching up with the last season of Dr Who and introducing them toThe Mighty Booshand breeding new strains of the common cold from samples gathered from around the world using only our bodies and that of our children as test subjects. A week wasn't long enough!

Test of the new Blogging Tool

Performancing add on for Firefox

I Caught Your Fart and Put It In My Interesting Fish Bag

I love bathtimes.

My interesting fart was later taken out of the Interesting Fish Bag* and "a man put it through an interesting sorter" after which it went down the plughole and "ended up in the sewage".



*or, more correctly, "the Interesting Interesting Interesting Interesting Interesting Interesting - (pause) - Fish BAG!"

There's a Piglet Sticker in My Shoe

Phoebe and Tyler arrive tomorrow! We got a phone call last night to say that they would be coming up on the Sleeper on Tuesday Night. This gives me exactly 24 hours to get this place looking like it has been tidied up at least once in the three years since they were last here.

I'm too tired to tidy up. 90% of my time is spent wiping snot off Daisy's face. I have no idea how small children can produce so much snot. It's incredible. More comes out than goes in. Astronomers have been long puzzled by the thiness of matter in the universe. If current comsological thinking is correct there should just be more stuff in the Universe than we can see. Nobody knows where this missing stuff is, this so called "Dark Matter".

I know.

It's up babies' noses waiting to come out.

Phoebe and Tyler are both here! Phoebe is wondering the streets of London mugging Drunken Irishmen for hats and I guess Tyler is just wondering what day it is! Merrio and I have been mailing, texting, and phoning between the two of them.

Phoebe is arriving in the UK on Friday! Tyler the day after.

OMG!

This will be the first time I have seen them since the weddingish, over three years ago, and only the second time we will have met for real since Phoebe and I collided somewhere on the wonderful worldwide interweb (beta).

I hope they are not disappointed by the domestic chaos that my life seems to have become. Did I once have dreams about doing something important with my life? I can't remember. I just know that being here and looking after the kids and Merriol is all I want to do at the moment. I am doing something important with my life.

Having said that; I am getting this terrible itch to write again...

More baaaaad SF coming soon.

The previously unconcidered hazards of having children Number 432:

I have forgotten how to run a hot bath. After 3 and a half years of running baths of a suitable temperature for kids I have lost the abilility to make myself a hot bath. I set one running then nip off to to X, Y, and Z; timing my tasks nicely so that I return in time to find a full bath. A full tepid bath. Again! Cold tap running full pelt. Every fucking time. And if there are two facts everyone knows about luke-warm baths they are:

1. They're no fun
2. It's impossible to add enough hot water to get it comfortable. (The whole boiling a frog slowly thing.)

Bugger Bugger Bugger.

Air Is Just Very Dry Water

Busy busy week doing house stuff. Merriol is signed off work for two weeks and is abed, ordered to stay there for as long as possible doing as little as possible. This means I am doing as much of everything else as possible, which means I am neglecting the blog something chronic. Sorry about that, blog.

Meanwhile Holly has discovered a rich seam of random surreality which has, so far this week, manifested itself in the very strange "Snail Dance", and something called "Fish Pumping". Neither of which bear repeating in polite company.

There are moments though when I wish I had a video camera permanently strapped to my head, or maybe not:

Holly:
There are two Boys in my nursery called Lewis, aren't there?

Me:
Really? What's the other one called?

Holly:
(Long, long pause as she stares at me and wonders if this
idiot she calls 'Daddy' is really related to her) - Lewis?

Me:
Duh!

...and That is How You do the Broccoli Dance

More Later...

Yesterday, lured into action by the fact that it was not raining and we might actually finish something we started, Len and I hauled half my half-finished kitchen worksurface out into the yard and relentlessly sanded it with a big belt sander for a couple of hours. The work surface is made from thick thick tongue and groove pine floorboarding and in the year or so it has been sat, unfinished in my kitchen it has slowly warped into something resembling a ploughed field. Ridge and furrow ridge and furrow. Yesterday we got the bugger flat again.

We bought it inside and using copious amounts of glue (most of which went where we wanted) and a couple of sash cramps and every large G cramp I have we got glued together and flat. We left the glue to harden overnight.

Today too was bright and sunny. We freed it from its clamps, hauled it back outside again onto the tressles and sanded it once more with the belt sander but with a finer grit paper this time. Then we sanded it by hand with an even finer grit paper. It's not perfect by any means but has a nice smooth finish now. I brushed it down, then wiped it with a damp cloth to get rid of the last of the fine saw dust. Then I gave it a good coat of clear polyeurethane.

Then a bird shat on it.

I survived the teaching gig and got paid. Merriol's Mum and Dad arrived last night and Holly is not feeling too well. That pretty much sums up the last couple of days.

Oh, we went to a car boot sale today and I bought 23 CDs when Merriol wasn't looking. I have to get a grip, I have to get a grip. I wonder if there is such a thing as CD buyers anonymous...

She's a Normal Person, Her Name Is Invisible And She's Not Feeling Very Well Today

Another Blog entry within two days? - The man must be indulging in online displacement behaviour. Correct! Give yourself a pat on the back, a cocoanut, or a Kewpie Doll depending on how you are feeling today.

The truth is that tomorrow, as part of a day long reading day at the local High School, I’m supposed to be teaching three classes of 11/12 year olds the joys of reading. Another job I owe to my pimp Ilona. Thanks Ilona.

My lesson plan at the moment (with less than 12 hours till I actually have to face the first load of the little darlings) is to run into the room throw some books at them and run out again shouting “Read more books, you little buggers!” .

I’m supposed to be introducing them to the joys of reading Movie scripts on the tenuous basis that I worked in Post Production on a couple of movies and know which way up to hold one. Oh God. Why do I do this sort of thing? (If you didn’t say “Money” hand back the cocoanut now!). Oh crap! I’m running out of things to footer with. Last night I actually managed to convince myself that watching Thunderbirds are GO was a sensible thing to do.

THEN! I had to write a review of it for the IMDb….

I was about six when it came out and I remember a friend of mine having a huge plastic “Zero X", The Spaceship from the movie. I was so jealous. It was the sexiest thing I had ever seen (this was long before I knew what sex was or what 'sexy' meant).

I loved the TV show (I was six I was a boy!) but I never saw the film and when Merriol bought me a DVD copy at a garage sale, I was awash with nostalgia. A feeling of warm happiness that lasted for at least 7 minutes into the film... my god, it's so incredibly boring! After a while the only entertainment value I could drag out of it was spotting new ways the filmmakers avoided having to have their characters walk anywhere. During the TV shows walking was suggested by having the character puppets jog up and down as they moved forward. Fine within the limited frame of a TV screen (especially the scritty little fuzzy Black and White things we peered at back then) but a similar motion on the big screen would, at best, look ludicrous and, at worst, induce motion sickness. In a film where supersonic aircraft stay rigidly in the centre of the frame having the "actors" bounce around like ping pong balls causing pre-teen moviegoers to vomit over their neighbours would be distressing.

Tonight I find myself edging towards a Polish film M from Palimpsest sent me as a swapsie for a William Gibson book she couldn’t get in Poland. I love knowing nothing about a film before I watch it. This one I can’t even read the title, let alone the blurb. All I know about it is which way up the DVD goes in the machine… and it’s in Polish - with English subtitles. That’s the only bit of the box I could read: “English Subtitles”.

OK, It’s now getting LATE and I HAVE to do this thing…

I can't get that fucking image out of my head! It's the shoes - the little girl is wearing wellies for chrissakes! and the suits wrinkle up below the knees - so either they aren't their suits - they've just borrowed them for the weekend from some other equally weird (but taller) family - or they weren't meant to be worn with any footwear. So where could you wear them barefoot? In the house? Then why go outside to have the photo taken?
On the beach? You'd roast! Maybe not in a cold climate. Maybe these are suits for southern nudists to wear while visiting their friends in the north.
"Come on Pedro let's take the kids for a brisk walk along the nudist beach."
"But Sven! it is freezing outside."
"No it isn't. It's hardly snowing at all. Tell you what - I'll lend you lot the fuzzy suits..."

That works for me.


I spent this afternoon in the Fort watching Markens grøde - Norwegian silent movie with live orchestrial accompaniment. Lovely way to spend a wet Sunday afternoon(and I get to pop the cherry of another movie on IMDb.com)

I was going to write a long, informed, and interesting blog entry tonight but I saw this photo and I have totally forgotten what I have spent the last 12 hours doing. Be warned: this is very disturbing on all sorts of levels...

http://fantasygoat.livejournal.com/424.html

Mummy, Did You Wear These Slippers When You Were a Dinosaur?

OMG! It a whole week since I posted anything here, where does all the time go? The schools are giving themselves a few days off this weekend so I get to spend even more quality time with my darling daughters - and take that note of irony out the way you just read that.

Tonight I sat down and watched: Maciste e la regina di Samar (1964) which sounds very impressive and interlechual, I mean, foreign films and that! But when I tell you it's English title is Hercules Against the Moon Men and consisted mostly of bad fighting between a well-oiled and hugely muscled italian bloke with a bouffant and about 7 stuntmen who swapped mustaches between shots you will understand where my brain is at the moment.
As I wrote somewhere else, this sort of movie is great for when you are too tired to think and you don't want to - even by accident.

Though, having said that, any movie that contains the line:

"Hurry! To the Mountain of Death! Hercules is already on his way! Let's go!"

Has got to be worth watching once.

We're Having A Conversation About Literature And Music - And You're Eating Foam!

Mike came round this morning with his boys, Holly, Daisy and Finn went upstairs and had a picnic and Mike and I drank vast amounts of coffee and talked about Music, and Movies, and Literature while Jude ate chunks of a foam toy while we weren't looking. A really good morning.

Merriol came home for lunch took one look at Holly and said "What are you still doing here?" - I had forgotten to take her to nursery!

Daisy spent the afternoon filling her welly-boots with crayons, then taking them all out again.

A typical day; though I did discover during the course of it that if, when asked the question "What are you doing?", a three year old answers "I don't know", it's a bloody good idea to go and investigate.

Testosterone Day!

For some reason I woke up this morning with Man Juice® flowing through my veins. I spent the day using real Grrrr! POWER TOOLS! and sawing wood and wearing plaid shirts! Grrrr!

Strictly speaking the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, and the dishwasher are power tools too but they didn't count today - girly power tools. Anything you have to put soap in was out. Whirring, pointy, dangerous, and messy were in. I spent most of the day in the kitchen turning half an old door and some bits of the original ceiling of the house into the bottom half of an antique church pew. Wouldn't fool anyone it's old for an instant but it does help stop the kids' toys from skiting about all over the place.

I feel great!

Tomorrow it's back to Mom Mode. Not Grrrrr!

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It is three years to the day since I had a drink.

Hurray for me!

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Spent last night in the Ballachulish Hotel in one of the posh rooms (just above the kitchens) using up one of Merriol's vouchers and having a night away from the kids. (Thanks Mum!) It was great. I slept like a log and Merriol stared at the ceiling. Or rather she stared at the light fitting which looked like a gilded dog turd and cursed me out for snoring.

Goodman VCR Problem shooting:

Problem:

The VCR no longer accepts tapes.

Solution:

1

Peer inside through the slot and get depressed about not being able to watch crappy old SF movies.

2

Unscrew VCR casing with the depressing thought that you are going to spend the next three hours trying to figure out exactly which of the three hundred and seventy-two moving parts involved in moving the cassette three inches that way and then down a bit needs bending back into shape.

3

Curse yourself for not keeping detailed notes the last time you had to do this.

4

Remove VCR cover.

5

Removed audio CD from inside VCR.

6

Replace VCR casing.

7

Watch crappy old SF film with sense of achievement.

I love having kids - at least it wasn't a cheese sandwhich.

Sometimes I have Bad Dreams. I Will Tell my Head: "Head, No More Bad Dreams!"

It's Merriol's birthday on Friday!

Only bought 5 CDs today from the Oban charity shops on my lightening dash to buy Merriol a birthday present today: 3 Placebo, a Morcheeba and a Foo Fighters and NO BOOKS! this is a record. I have will power!

We both liked the Placebo, the Morcheeba is going on the shelves to add to the huge pile of music I don't listen too (even, in the case of bands like Morcheeba, when it is playing) and The Foo Fighters is on its way to eBay 'cos neither of us liked it.

And I actually managed to buy her a present (not I hasten to add from a charity shop. I'm cheap but not THAT cheap) to replace the present I had bought last week but managed to loose a few days ago. At least I presume I lost it because the last time I remember having it it was in my coat pocket and when I went to hide it yesterday it wasn't there. I can only think it must have fallen out of my pocket when I ran to get help for an old lady who had collapsed on the road in the village. Someone was with her and a neighbour had called an ambulance but I had an inkling she was a resident of the care home round the corner so belted off there to get someone who knew her.

Hello much neglected Blog. Where does all the time go? If anyone has some spare time knocking about please send it to me - about another hour a day, that's what I need...

...

One of the great things about being a parent - well, one of the great things about being a human being, this isn’t just restricted to those of us with sprogs, though they do act as a hell of a catalyst - is that you find yourself saying, or rather hearing yourself saying things, that, if you had but a couple of years before been told you would at some point say such a thing, you would have instantly dismissed the notion as an absurdity.

(I apologise for that last sentence. I have been reading too much Victorian literature recently and it has started to affect me most profoundly.)

Thus it was today, when seated at the dining table with my beloved wife and my two darling children, I heard myself utter the words:

“Holly, don’t put cheese in your belly-button.”

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The rest of the weekend paled into insignifcance ...

The Girls went back

The Girls went back to “school” this week after the Christmassy Holidays and I was alone on Wednesday for the first time in what seems like ages. The house suddenly seemed incredibly huge. So I filled it with VERY LOUD music - which I am not allowed to do when the girls are around:

“Daddy Daddy! Turn your music down, it’s too loud!”

- I will remind her of this when she is 15 and playing whatever crappy boyband cloned pop drivel she is listening to too loudly for my aging ears.

What to do? What to do? The whole house to myself...

Several hours later half way through mopping the kitchen floor (it took me all morning to find the kitchen floor underneath the 34 tons of toys, Play-dough, dried-up felt pens, glued-on Cornflakes - and I suspect some of them were, literally, glued to the floor. Holly is none to tidy when she is “doing sticking”) so... there I was half way through mopping the kitchen floor, trying to work out what I was going to feed Merriol and the kids when they came home, when it struck me - I am so incredibly happy at the moment.

I love being a Mum.

Spent yesterday similarly alone for the day pounding crap into eBay to take advantage of one of their infrequent cheapo listing days. We have so much stuff I need to get rid of just to keep my sanity and to make room for all the other stuff that just appears. I don’t know where it all comes from. It seems to ooze out of the woodwork or something.

Kipple! It’s bloody Kipple!

From Wikipedia:

Kipple is a term coined by science fiction author from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It refers to unwanted or useless junk that tends to reproduce itself.
Some of Dick's descriptions of it suggest an analogy to entropy. According to two characters from the book, John Isidore stated that the first law of "kipple" is that "kipple" drives out "nonkipple."; Buster Friendly liked to declare, "Earth would die under a layer — not of radioactive dust — but of kipple."

Other forms of the word used in the novel: "kipple-ized", "kipple-factor", and "kippleization". People can turn into "living kipple". An apartment can become "kipple-infested".

Save ME! Buy my Kipple! - please!

After I post this I'm off to leave someone Bad feedback on eBay.

A Hint: If you are going to tell someone you "will post the parcel tomorrow" and don't get round to it until a week later, make sure you stick stamps on the parcel and not one of those sticky printed lables they make behind the the counter. Because with a sticky printed label one of the things that is printed nice and clearly is the posting date.

With real stamps they have to frank them by hand with a smudgey rubber, inkstained and illegible blob.

Idiots! It's taken 3 weeks to get something I was seriously expecting to get before Christmas.

Spent hours last night crashing the pooter, and tearing my hair out, and eating vast quantities of pointy food (more El Cheepo brand tortilla chips) in a struggle to OCR a handbook for Merriol just to save her the effort of typing all 33 pages of it.

It would have been easier to type all 33 pages of it

- but I know how to do it for next time!

I finally worked out how to do it at about midnight (the thing had to be ready for the morning). I must remember to write it down some where where I can find it again before I forget.

(Expect a really boring Blog entry in the next few days...)

Rapunzel! Rapunzel! - I've got you some yoghurt!

Living with my kids is like living with a couple of weird, bonzaid Surrealists. Just before delivering the impassioned cry of "Rapunzel! Rapunzel! - I've got you some yoghurt!" Holly sang us a song at the dinner table. She often sings weird little songs but this one just creased us up:

I wish for a fish in the shape of a house

I wish for a fish in the shape of a house

I wish for a fish in the shape of a house

No No! it was a fish that had been made as a biscuit

It probably looks total pants cold on the screen but trust me, the moment was one of sublime hillarity. Especially when she started telling us it wasn't funny:

"It's not funny. It's not funny. Stop laughing and don't put your head on the table like that!"


And people wonder why I don't watch the television...

Finally got the last bit of my Ma and Da's Zmas pressy to the girls assembled this afternoon, after a lot of swearing and dropping of teeny-weeny washers they now have a swing in the garden - something else for me to worry myself sick about. Why do we pick the coldest days of the year to do this sort of thing? my fingers were numb after 3 minutes.

Went for a walk today up at the Hospital Lochan in Glencoe where the kids had a picnic and Holly rode her bike and Merriol and I had great fun judging the Miserable Bastard Competition that seemed to be happening around us.

Of the people who went past (99% tourists) most of them didn't even acknowledge Holly's cheery "Hello"s let alone raise a smile. I suppose they were all too fucking uncomfortable in their crinkly, hot, expensive Helly Henson and Patagonia hill-walking gear to deign to notice a knited-poncho, Tweenie welly-booted, 3 year old trundling around on her bike - or maybe it was the 18 month old pushing the Shrek2 rucksack on the toy pram behind her that was putting them off their stride - whatever, there they were, all kitted out for the Great Outdoors, and there we were having a Sunday stroll (a day late) around the park.

It's not as if it was really raining that much either.

"Come To Scotland And Be A Miserable Bastard" - I think the Scottish Tourist Board is missing a trick somewhere.

No doubt they will all be back in their hotels tonight, congratulating themselves at having survived the rigours of nature while sipping 30 year old MacCallan's (because it's the only label in the bar they can pronounce) and tut-tutting over those reckless feckless parents who took their children out on the hill without the 'right equipment'.

Screw them all - apart from the tall baldy bloke and his missus who gave us a cheery hello and the couple who passed us and had a wee blether. Their gear looked like it had seen a few hills and hadn't come out the packet last week. Cheers guys!

Happy New Year World.

New year got off to a flying stop for me as, full of snot and pain, I retired to bed at about 10pm having foolishly taken some patent snot dryer-upper recommended by a friend. A bizarre and intermittently sleepless night followed with me at one point being woken up by this God-almighty Whoooooooshhhhhhh! from the garden. I opened my eyes and looked up through the skylight above out bed to see a bright red light hanging above me swaying gently then slowly drifting off. It was very pretty. It Looked like a UFO. No, it didn't look like a UFO.... UFOs don't have parachutes... It took my sleep beffuddled brain a few moments to work out that Merriol had sneaked downstairs and had set off one of the 30,000 candlepower signal flares some anonymous person (thanks Billy!) had left in our hallway that afternoon.

(Look forward to more photos of Morag and I hitting explosives with hammers soon - though this batch are less out of date than the previous bunch and, at least one of them has worked! which is more than could be said for the last lot.)

For the rest of the night I tossed turned and read Day of the Locust a couple of pages at a time waking up with my thumb still in the book reading another couple of pages then waking up again. I love reading books like this. I do some of my best reading when I'm ill. I seem to get much more involved somehow.

How to set up a Treo 600 on o2 Pay As You Go...

Go to Home > Prefs > Network

Make Service: O2 Mobile Web GPRS Copy
Make Connection GPRS
Make Password: password
Make APN address: payandgo.o2.co.uk

Click [Details]

Make Fallback: None

Click [Advanced...]

Make IP address: Automatic
Uncheck Query DNS [_]
Make Primary DNS: 193.113.200.200
Make Primary DNS: 193.113.200.201

[OK] [OK]

Click the Home Button

Go to Web then select Options

Make Home Page: http://payandgo.o2.co.uk

Click [Advanced] Click [Set Proxy] Check Use Proxy[_]

Make Proxy Server: 193.113.200.195

Make Port: 8080

[OK] [OK] [OK]

Make sure you write this all down and keep it somewhere safe - like on your Blog.

Switch off the expensive Christmas present - then switch it back on. Hurray!!!!!!!! The web in my pocket - or at least a cut down streamlined version of it...

Guess what I have just spent the best part of 2 days doing... A lot of head banging frustration and phone calls to nice chaps in India and poking and prying on the web and I finally got it sorted.

Oh, final thing. Remember to have more than 60p in credit on the phone... That last bit took me about 3 hours to work out. It's been a long day.

Merry Christmas

Just taking a moments break from the Christmassy doings to wish the world a Merry Christmas!

We a currently trimming the artificial Christmas tree Merriol bought the other day - apparently my 2 foot tall brown artificial Christmas tree is just “horrible” and was once likened to a collection of badly wired together used toilet brushes - so after 9 years living with it Merriol has finally put her foot down and bought a new one. The new one is six foot, cerise and the gayest damn thing you ever saw. It was instantly christened Pricilla Queen of the Forest.

Merry Christmas, World.

One of the unconcidered joys of having Holly at two nursery schools is that we get to go to two Christmas concerts.

On Tuesday we got to see our little darling singing in Gaelic and today she was the "Fairy" Gabriel in the nativity play. She made a good Fairy Gabriel. Needs a few lessons in stage craft - I mean facing the audience at some point would have been a good idea - but she was right in onto the stage, on cue (with a helpful shove from one of the teachers), and said her lines good and loud. I sttod there the whole time feeling dead proud and videoed the whole thing. I love being a dad.

Rotted what's left of my brain last night by watching a TERRIBLE 1951 movie called Unknown World. And I still can't work out why I do this. Why do I watch this drek?

Answers on a postcard please. I really would like to know.

OK... Nearly Resumed

I didn't get the job. It was a fun day though; I don't suppose all professional auditions are like that, but it was a good intro. Basicaly we played some games, did some improv, did a bit of singing... (now I wonder WHY I didn't get the job...?) and they were good enough to tell us on the spot who got it. I could see why they chose the people they did, the three who were chosen (there were 8 of us at the audition) worked well together - and they could all sing.

It would have been nice to have got the job but at least I won't be running around the country when Phoebe and Tyler are over in the spring.

The last few days have been trying to beat the mess moster that is our house into submission and doing Christmas shopping. The highlight of which happened yesterday in Oban. We were in Ottakar's bookshop when Holly spotted a book about the Nativity. She is playing "The Fairy Gabriel" in her nursery nativity play this week so all we have heard for the past week or two is "Baby Jesus this and Baby Jesus that...". So she sat down with this book and became engrossed in the pictures then suddenly she started singing Away in a Manger. When she finished a couple of people applauded! It was a... I don't know quite how to put it.. it was one of those moments that if I had seen it in a movie I would have reached for the sick bag, but because it was real and because it was my child it made me so proud.

I'm so glad I have kids.

Other stuff:

I'm thinking of becoming a school govenor. The Primary school here has an elected board of Parent Govenors - exept it doesn't because no one stood to be elected this year. So they've had to call another election and I 've stuck my head up and said that if no one else wants to do it then I will. I'm not sure what I'm letting myself in for, but if someone else stands then I will run away and let them do it.

I hate joining things.

Recent dialogue between Holly and me:

Me:
(pointing at the tabletop next to her computer)
Holly, where's the credit card that was there?

Holly:
I haven't seen it ...

(pause)

... it's in there.

And this is how I discovered that credit cards are just under 3.5 inches long. Just wide enough to fit sideways into the floppy drive of a PC ...

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I have an audition tomorrow.

I have to have an audition piece.

I have just picked it up and am starting to learn it ...

I am an idiot.

Do sexually frustrated Flower Fairies get the bluebells?

This "joke" will not be appearing in next year's panto

Normal Service is Resumed

Normal service is resumed. Thank you for your patience.

The Panto went well despite all the forgivings and qualms. All four shows were well attended. The biggest disappointment for me was that Holly burst into tears as soon as I came on stage and was inconsolable. She insisted on going home and missed all of it. Next time we do one (in two years), I guess she might be old enough to join in the fun. I hope so.

The other highlight of the week for me was realising one night, just before I went on as King Rat for the first time, that half my costume was in the wings over on the other side of the stage where I had left it the night before.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Ballachulish village hall was not really built as a theatre. It is more of a Badminton court with this square hole in the wall at one end. There is no way to get from one side of the stage to the other as in a real theatre unless you build a set you can crawl behind. If you exit stage left, you have to stay there, lurking in the tiny wings, in the cramped space between scenery stored over that side and the other three actors who walked off with you, until the end of the scene. We did not have a set I could crawl behind. I did not have a costume. I did have about 45 seconds to improvise something from whatever was lying around in the dressing rooms.

I improvised. Wrapped a chunk of material round my neck and went on. No one noticed. Apart from Kath who was in the dressing room as I burst in shouting “OmiFuck! Mycostumeisontheothersideofthe fuckingstagewhatamignnado????”

Oh yeah, there was also that moment when I had just struggled into the Fat Elvis suit for the start of act 2 when Bill came into the dressing room and said:

”You’re on!”

I looked at him. I looked at the stage monitor (a baby alarm gaffer-taped to the wall) I looked at him again.

“On?” I said.

He looked at me. We both looked at the baby alarm (why we looked at something that was only relaying sound I have no idea but we did).

“Yes,” he said, “at the end of this song.”

“Oh FUCK!!!!”

You have never seen anyone change from a Fat Elvis costume into a Rat King costume in as short a time as I did it. (Actually, you’ve never seen anyone change from a Fat Elvis costume into a Rat King costume at all, have you?) I got into the wings just as they were delivering the 2 lines of dialogue that follow the song:

“Oh Dick”
“Oh Rose”
Enter King Rat

I never want to be that close again.

Spent Sunday tidying the place up and hoovering the 15 pounds of glitter Merriol scattered around the place and then my body said:

“MY turn now, remember that cold you have deliberately not being having for the past 2 weeks? Well guess what... ?” at which point something turned a tap on inside my sinuses and something else whacked me one in all the major joints of my body with a baseball bat.

OW!

Ok, Ok, maybe I was a wee bitty hasty with the billboard sized ARGH! yesterday.

We had another rehearsal tonight and worked on Act 2. It's coming together. We did a run from start to finish with only the occasional break for techie stuff and it ran well. I think the thing is actually going to work. Towards the end of the evening I was beginning to enjoy myself and starting to have fun, trying to do some acting as opposed to merely doing 'Remembering Of Words' which is what I was desperately failing to do yesterday. I wish we had a few more days. But we don't; tomorrow is it.

There is an old theatrical tradition I just made up that says that the greatness of a first night is in direct inverse proprtion to the crapness of a dress rehearsal. If this holds true then judging by this evening's dress rehearsal we are going to be up for Tonies, Baftas, Oliviers, Ralphs, Freds and induction into the Panto Hall of Fame...

There is only one word in English that can sum up this evening. It's 34 letters long and consists of the letters A R G and H in variable quantities. (Though to get the true flavour of the evening reading it in 12 foot high lettering would just about do it.)

I blanked on stage not once - but twice! Total and utter 'what the fuck do I say now?' blank. I know the lines. They are in my head. I wrote the damn things! It's just that we have had so little real rehearsal time on this show spread over such a long time that, yes I know my lines when I'm sitting down or lying in bed, but stand me up and have people standing around me in places different to where I imagined them standing and I'm utterly lost. We have all day tomorrow to bash this thing into my head- and a great deal of Thursday.

And now the last few paragraphs rewritten for the ticket buying population of Lochaber and any potential employers who may be reading:

The Rehearsal went swimmingly. Everyone was on top form. There were a couple of easily solved technical glitches but we ad-libbed out of them brilliantly. We had a few post rehearsal drinkipos in the Eau De Nile Room (I think 'The Green Room' sounds so common, don't you?) and I said to Sir Ralph. "Jolly little number isn't it?" Unfortunatly he thought I was talking about Pinky Warburton who was had just passed the door. As Sir Ralph and he had had a bit of a spat the day before Sir Ralph though I was making a 'certain kind of remark' and dashed his Pimms into my face before bursting into tears. We laughed about it afterwards but I could tell he was upset.

Oh God where is this going? No idea. Bed sounds like an idea. I usually find that's a good place to go when I start typing rubbish.

'Night.

There is something fundamentaly weird with my life at the moment - or even fundaweirdly mental.

I spent most of this evening glueing the words to Donald Where's your Troosers onto the back of a roll of wallpaper. (It's a Panto thing.)

Not a long entry tonight. I'm just switching off the pooter and going to bed having set the mouse traps for the night. It's freezing here and that always heralds a sudden influx of the little buggers. Merriol and Sue bought some (useless) 'humane' traps while I was away - and didn't catch a sodding thing.

Now I'm back the real traps have come out. The ones that kill the little shits, then post their heads back to their grieving relatives with a stiff note.

Grrrr! I get all Rambo and macho when it comes to rodents in my house. I'm normaly a pretty placid and gentle soul but rodents chewing my wiring and pooing on my worksurfaces? Out comes the Bambi hunter in me. Current bait is slices of Twix Bars, it comes highly recomended as a bait by a fellow mousehunter. I will let you know how it works... that reminds me, I need to file down the trigger mechanism on the number 2 trap it's just not sensative enough...

6 hour rehearsal / costume fittings / photo shoot for local newspapers and radio etc. today. Not total chaos but edging on it from time to time. We have 3 days to get this thing together. I feel like Mickey Rooney putting on a show in the barn - Oh Christ no! Not Mickey Rooney! If I have to feel like someone putting on a show in a hurry, let it be James Cagney as Chester Kent in Footlight Parade!

Charlie Bowers:
Is there, is there anything I can do?

Chester Kent:
Yeah. See that window over there?

Charlie Bowers:
Yeah.

Chester Kent:
Take a running jump and I think you can make it.

Footlight Parade is, in my humble opinion, one of the best movies of the 20th century. The final reels are just pure cinema. 3 enormously lavish Busby Berkeley numbers bang bang bang one after the other. It's just the best musical ever. Stop reading this and go watch it. It conveys the sort of desperate panic I'm feeling about all of this a lot better than I can. (Great editing too)

How did I get onto this?

I dunno. I'm tired. 3 days to go and we have only just started on the scenery...

After the rehearsal I asked Ilona (director/producer/half of comedy double-act and remover of most of the obvious knob jokes from the script) how she thought it was going.

"On a scale from 'O mi god' to 'We are so utterly screwed'", I said "Where exactly are we?"
"We're fine." She said,"It's always like this; don't you remember the last time?"

No I don't. I don't remember it being this close to the wire at all.

And I do want whatever medication she is on because it is obviously working...

How Are We Going To Stop Daddy Singing?

I have an audition for the TIE job in March.

I have to sing.

I forgot to put a stamp on the application letter.

I am not going to get the job.



.

Dikke Whittingtone, A Historical Overview.

(An extract from a conversation on the South Bank Show between Hieronymus Fartwrangler, Emeritus Professor of Medeaval Post-modernist Irony at the University of the Highlands in Onich, and Melvyn Bragg )

Prof. Fartwrangler:

"Class is part of the rubicon of reality," says Lyotard Cameron suggesting, without any meaning, that the works of Baldwin, Pitt et al are postmodern. It could be said therefore that if dialectic precapitalist theory holds, we have to choose between Lyotardist narrative and constructive capitalism which states, like Satre:"Consciousness is fundamentally a legal fiction," However, according to Prinn, it is not so much consciousness that is fundamentally a legal fiction, but rather the defining characteristic, and some would say the futility, of consciousness. The example of Batailleist `powerful communication' depicted in Ballachulish's Dick Whittington is also evident in the act of tying one's own shoe laces in a public place, although in a more mytho-poetical sense. And, in a sense, It leads to the implication that we have to choose between cultural capitalism and precapitalist desituationism."

Melvyn Bragg:
Oh No it isn't!



Prof. Fartwrangler:
Oh yes it is!


Melvyn Bragg:
Oh No it isn't!


Prof. Fartwrangler:
Oh yes it is! And Neo-cartusian pre-raphelistism says I'm right!


Melvyn Bragg:
Well, we don't believe you, do we boys and girls?


Germain Greer, Mark Lawson, and Brian Sewell:
No! Booo! I don't like him, he's nasty! etc.


Melvyn Bragg:
Thank you Professor Fartwrangler - it's nice to see
our ALL our tax money isn't being wasted... Goodnight.

---

That's it! I'm off to bed; my brain just can't cope with any more of this ...

Prof. Fartwrangler gratefully acknowledges the help of Elswhere.org's Postmodernist Generator in formulating some of his theories.

I sang.

Today I called round to Paul's and recorded the songs for the Panto. I had tried to convince the powers that be (Ilona) to let me mime the things as I am such a shite singer. We agreed on this compromise: I can sing along with my pre-recorded self.

This evening was spent trying to get everyone's surnames correct on the programme before I mail it off to Debs who has (foolish woman) agreed to do all the layout and typography and that.

Done that.

Bugger.

I'm running out of displacement activities.

If I don't find any more very soon I'm going to have to learn my lines.

Only a week to go!

It's Hard To Belly Dance On One Leg

This time in two weeks time the Panto will be over and done with. This is a scary thought as we have no scenery, only a few finished costumes, and hardly anyone knows all their lines yet. Even worse - I now have to sing...

How does this happen?

Every year I say:

"I'm not singing. I refuse to sing. There is no way on God's green earth are you going to get me to sing..."

Every time I end up singing.

This time I get to murder four Elvis songs in cold blood in front of witnesses. Sorry Elvis.

---

This morning I took a long look at the arse end of a Renault Megane regarded by most people as the ugliest arse end of a car of this, or any other century. The megane is almost passable from the front but walk round the back of it and looks like someone did origami with the original drawings before they went into production. It's awful. Ugly Ugly Ugly.

As I was looking at this thing (the one I was looking at had a strange angular two-tone paint job which made it look even more awful than the one in this picture) it occurred to me that the recent riots and unrest in Paris were nothing to do with social deprevation. What was the major target for the rioters? Cars, that's what. They firebombed every vehicle they could find - and if they were all Meganes I don't blame them.

"To 'ell wiz ze social deprevation it eez ze ugly ferking cars we canno stand no more! A bas les voitures de merde Francais*!"

• Current Listening to Random Breakbeat streaming from here

*Berlingos not included.

I'm home! I'm home! I'm home!

At long last the tour is finished and I can get on with something aproaching real life. If dressing up as a Giant Rat and Fat Elvis counts as real life - but more of that later.

The last few days of the tour was a bit of a bore. The whole thing was a week too long and ended up with me mooching around Inverness, kicking my heels, trying not to spend money. The last show was in Grantown on Spey. Nice little town about an hour and a half from here.

It took me 5 hours to get back home.

First we had to take the hire car back to Inverness (which was, naturaly enough, in the other direction) then I had a long wait for my bus in Inverness, a long trip down the Great Glen, then another long wait for the next bus - which was late etc etc. All of this on the coldest night of the year so far. I was not a happy bunny when I got home.

A very cold, not very happy bunny.

I got to the panto rehearsal about 2 hours after everyone else and didn't get to do a lot but I did try on the Fat Elvis costume Ilona bought for the act 2 opening. It's a cheap, thin nylon, white jump suit with bits of gold trim and a rubber forehead/wig thing. It doesn't look like a lot for what we paid for it. There aren't any mirrors in the hall so I didn't get to see the full effect but, judging from everyone's reaction when I walked into the room, the suit may just turn out to have been worth the money.

I have never had people laughing so hard they are literaly rolling around on the floor just by walking into a room before.

(Actually, now I come to think of it, I haven't really had people rolling around on the floor for real by doing anything before. Not really rolling around on the floor, not lying on the floor in uncontrolable, tears and snot everywhere, laugh till it hurts type rolling around on the floor I mean. People happily text and type LOL and ROTF* when they mean they found something slightly amusing so it was a bit alarming to see people ROTFing in the flesh. I just hope I never see anyone "piss themselves laughing".)

It is now gone 2am and I am going to phone Pheobe and wish her a Happy Birthday and go to bed.

Most of this evening having been spent trying to find the piece of paper I last saw two weeks ago, over there somewhere ------> It's got all the details of who has done what and when and whyfor the Panto. I need it for the program. When I wasn't digging through huge heaps of bills and things that need urgent attention 3 weeks ago I was fixing Firefox after I broke it by crashing the pooter immediatly after telling it it wasn't Firefox at all but that it was Internet Explorer 6 (I forget why). After that it didn't launch at all. A lot of twatting about later it came down to editing one line in a .js file in a folder I'd never seen before. (Doesn't it always?)

• Currently Listening to: Random CD purchaces from the last 2 weeks of mooching around charity shops with nothing to do. Including 1940s Texas Swing music, Japanese drumming and various Q magazine coverdiscs
  

• Currently Reading: The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood

* Laughing Out Loud and Rolling On The Floor (as if I really needed to explain...)

Argh! That Tree is Looking at Me!

Too pooped to Blog.

Up till late last night at Nicky and Phil’s wedding dance in the Fort, a long rehearsal for the Panto this afternoon / evening followed by another attempt to apply for another job…

Off on the last leg of the tour tomorrow, so more next week.

• Currently Listening to: Non-Stop Streaming Techno Trance Tosh from Epitonic.com

• Currently Reading: Some Collection of Ancient Awful SF (the name of which escapes me for the moment). “Eat Ray! You Beatelgusian pond slime!” snarled square jawed Dirk, his nostril quivering with righteous anger, as he blasted the hideous slug-thing to atoms. ‘

Just a couple of photos of Bonfire Night:

One-woman, ground-based, aeronautical display team Morag Calder does impressive fly-by with smoke

Me whacking the base of a 12 year out of date, 15,000 candlepower signal flare just to see what happened. (What happened was Merriol took this picture with a flash the exact moment the hammer hit and scared the crap out of me.)

Unboringness

Back in the bosom (and other bits) of my family at last. I am getting so bored with sitting in bus stations, and on buses and in bus stations again…

It is late I’m tired, so not a huge long entry. Highlights of the week included arriving in Gairloch. A town a long way from anywhere (apart from a few other, equally remote-from-anywherelse, villages).

It’s a long way to Gairloch from wherever the hell we were were during the day. (My short-term memory is shot to hell; I have no idea where I was yesterday, let alone the day before that. It has all become one great long blur, get up, do the show, drive to another school, do the show, drive to another town, find the B&B, get some sleep, get up, do the show…etc.) So, after a long night time drive along windy single-track roads that meandered all over the place through a landscape houching with suicidal deer just waiting to wander across the road as we hurtled towards them. We finally arrived at the Highland Lodge (or whatever it was called) only to find the place was shut. A couple of lights on a couple of cars outside but everything was locked and bolted. We pounded we hollered we walked round and found other doors and pounded and hollered at them. Nothing. Before long someone mentioned The Shining and that was it. We were off. We got back in the car and drove towards the only lights we could see. Suddenly the whole episode started looking more and more like the opening sequence of every other cheap bad Horror film you have ever seen. We eventually found our way after a few false turns and backing down dark tree lined dirt tracks to find an inn. As we drew up our headlights picked out a shape, a tall blurry outline off in the near distance. A motionless figure beneath a tree.
“Is that a person?” someone asked.
“Yes.”
“No, it’s dummy!”
“No, it’s a real person!”
“Look!”

The figure moved.

All four of us screamed like 12-year-old girls.

The hotel chef flicked his cigarette end into the dark and went back into the inn.

---

This afternoon, being Friday, things got extremely stupid.

There is a part of the workshop in which Emma plays a girl who has “Unrealistic” ambitions to be a vet. I play her Dad. Then, in a sort of bastardised forum theatre, the kids make suggestions as to how she should change her behaviour and attitude so her plans become more “realistic”. This afternoon the kids were full of TFIF and Chris ended up sadistically lumbering Emma with “Becoming a Jedi Knight” as a possible way to becoming a vet.
She entered going doing light sabre noises, and I came in on my knees doing the worst Yoda Impression the world has ever seen. For the next few minutes, Emma and I tried not to fall into giggling heaps but, as usual, I lost.

I am just so crap at Improv. I laugh at my own jokes and just lose the plot.

• Currently listening to: http://www.epitonic.com/files/reg/songs/mp3/386DX-Anarchy_In_The_UK.mp3 and other weird and groovy stuff at epitomic.com


• Currently Reading: Nothing. I finally finished Kinflicks and liberated it in a B&B in Grantown-on-Spey. Enjoy!

Yet again I am sitting in Inverness Library trying to resist the temptation to smash the keyboard into a million pieces. I mean what is the f*cking point of having a public access internet system that doesn't allow you to access even your own email without putting up pissy little "forbidden" pages all over the place. Surely there should be some way of having an "I am an adult I promise not to be offended by words like bugger and bollocks let me in you bunch of censoring c*nts!"

The asterixes are there because it won't even allow you to send naughty words. Jesus! Grow up people!

OK Rant over.

Another week of fun and games over, and another 2 hour wait in Inverness before the bus. The wind is howling around scarily. There are things banging and crashing about on the library roof. Doesn't sound very safe. The ride over is going to be wild.

More when I get home, whenever that will be cos it looks like I’ll have to sit around in Ft William for an hour waiting for the next bus.

Oh an actor's life for me...

Damn!

Ok I give up, I can't find it.

I'm still working on the CV and a couple of years ago I did a bit on a kid's TV show. The one and only time I have been paid to act on British television. I need a few details and I've been searching Google for the last hour or so and I can't find what the show was called or who produced it! This is so annoying.

If I don't find it soon I will just have to go downstairs and watch the bloody thing!

Displacement Behaviour

Displacement Behaviour.

I am supposed to be working on my CV (resume). There is a job I want apply for, another TIE acting job and they want a CV. Never done a CV before and, well, I’m not really doing it now either…

After the big firework display in the quarry on Friday, our display in the schoolyard was less than impressive. A few months ago, I got given a whole pile of stuff from someone who was moving out of the village and was fully aware of my inability to say “No!” when asked the question:

“I am throwing this out. Do you want it?”

So, in addition to all the tools and weird chunks of “this may come in useful one day” stuff, I found a carrier bag with a bundle of Smoke Bombs, Signal Flares, and Distress Flares which had come off his boat.
“Yipee!” said Morag. “Let’s set them off now!” (Which made me wonder is this the sort of thing you really want to hear from your doctor? “Cool! Out of date explosives. Let’s set them off!”).

Anyway, we decided that Saturday night was going to be the best night to do this given that the sky was going to be full of fireworks anyway and the chances of us accidentally sparking off an air sea rescue with a 15,000 candlepower parachute flare were therefore at a minimum. Even then, I succumbed to an attack of the wussiness and phoned the police to warn them to ignore any reports of boats in distress. Especially if these boats in distress were reported to be inland, or in the middle of the village…

So there we were reading the instructions for these things by torchlight… “Aha! I see… Pull this off!...Then twist that… Line up the arrows and strike the base firmly… “
(How the hell anyone was supposed to work out how to do all that in the dark, on a sinking ship, at sea is beyond me - but I guess you learn fast under such circumstances)

Nothing happened.

“What was that last bit again?”
“Strike the base firmly…”
“I wonder how firmly ‘firmly’ is?... I’ll go get a hammer…”

I am delivering the third mighty whack to the base of this thing (I am holding it in my left hand and hitting the bottom of it with a hammer) when it occurs to me that I am heading towards a potential Darwin Award at speed. Anyway, nothing happened and it didn’t stop me doing exactly the same thing with 3 others. None of the flares went off but we did have great fun with the smoke.

---

• Current listening: Philip Glass’ Dancepieces and the 90mph winds ripping the leaves and smaller branches off the trees outside…


• Current Reading: Still reading Kinflicks. I manage about 3 pages then fall asleep. It’s not boring, I’m just knackered.

---

Another week on the road out of the way.

Monday was a day of re-rehearsal. Trying to remember what the hell it was we were doing 3 weeks ago. We got there pretty quickly. Then, it was back out to the schools...

The low point of the week for me was on Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday, I should write all this down as I go along not try to remember it days later). During one of the shows Emma and I both woke up in the middle of a scene knowing that one of us had just said something and one of us should now say something else but neither of us knew what the hell it was supposed to be.

When I say "woke up" I don't mean that literally but after 4 weeks of doing the show we sometimes, inevitably, slip into autopilot and forget to do any acting. It's a weird experience doing a performance and not really being aware that you are doing it. What's even weirder is when someone says "You were good" when you have just sleepwalked your way through it. (Brian Eno famously decided it was time to quit Roxy Music when he realised he was thinking about his laundry halfway through a show) but (as normal) I am digressing...

Where was I?

Oh yes,

Emma and I were stood there staring at each other doing our now world famous Educationally Challenged Goldfish impersonations while time went all weird and slow around us. The eighty or so people staring at us ceased to exist. The room we were standing in ceased to exist. All thoughts of anything other than "What do I do?????" ceased to exist. All I could see was Emma's face looking at me with well-disguised terror on her face. The same, I hope well-disguised, terror that I was feeling.

One of us had to do something but what?

If I was making a film of that moment - he said digressing yet again, I would have used a "Push in Zoom out" shot (aka the "Jaws Shot") at this point. It's the shot that gets that strange distended background thing going on. It's usualy used, as in Jaws, for a moment of horrified realisation. A character sits or slumps, his eyes widen, a look of sudden revelation spreads across his face and suddenly the background behind him does this THING, it moves outwards from his head in a very unatural way - you can't quite work out what just happened, but you know it is very unsettling.

Anyway, after about 20 of so minutes of helpless piscatorial gasping Emma had the wit to grab the front of my shirt and drag me off the stage. This was how the scene is supposed to end. We had lost a couple of good jokes but at least we knew where we were. Thanks Emma.

Talking to Lorna and Chris afterwards it turned out that the whole time-dilated 20 minutes actually only lasted about 2 seconds in real time.

---

I'm spending a lot of time in strange toilets around the country at the moment. (I think I should rephrase that last sentence but it's late so I won't.)

In a pub in Inverness I saw a notice on the door to the men's toilet:

Please Do Not Write on the Walls

This is a Family Pub

Children Can Read!

Inside the toilet of this children-friendly family pub is a vending machine selling (and I kid you not) not only condoms in various flavours but vibrators, inflatable sheep "with orifice" (This is Scotland after all) and handcuffs - amongst other delights.

Some not very joined-up thinking going on there I think.

---

I got off the bus in Ballachulish just in time to meet the entire family walking down to the local fireworks display held, for the first time, in the quarry. It was terrific. Loved it. Holly was dressed up, and wrapped up, and had a balaclava, and earmuffs. The first time she saw a fireworks display she screamed and shook and was terrified. She is still is very wary of them and doesn't like the bangs at all so all the wrapping up and padding was more of a comfort and security thing that any pretection against what is a reletivly mild night.

Daisy, on the other hand, gurgled pointed and clapped all the way through it. She loved every second of it. This was her first firework display. I still can't figure out how they are so different.

When we got home Holly had a lolly for being so brave and good at the display. Daisy saw the lolly and wanted it too - but instead of screaming and shouting, or trying to grab it she carefully and deliberatly dressed herself up in Holly's, now discarded, street clothes and, I guess, became Holly and was therefore entitled to have the lolly. Only when she had Holly's coat and boots on did she try to get the lolly off her big sister (who by then, just to confuse things, was wearing Daisy's cast off outer coat and was "Being Daisy") .

We dug out another lolly.

18 months old and she's into method acting...

And so to bed...