Away!

Packing for holidays is fairly rubbish, isn't it?

There's a point where careful micro-planning and minimalist best intentions suddenly get abandoned for the build-a-jumble-sale-bonfire approach.

How Casualty works

Okay - here's a brief praisee.

An episode of Casualty contains 60 scenes.

It also contains 3 Plots-of-the-Week (a,b,c), plus 4 Arc-Plots-About-The-Regular-Cast.

A,B, and C will get about 10 scenes each. C, the funny one, will normally have less.

Regular plots 1-4 will get about five scenes each.

You have ten scenes left over to zip the show together.

On a good week, Plots A,B,and C will resonate with a central character - eg allowing an aspect of Charlie's character/current situation to be shown/echoed.

So, if a regular is pregnant, they should somehow resonate with an A,B or C plot.

For each A,B, or C plot, there should be a maximum of two scenes set-up (eg Knives! Blood! Arg!), four scenes of medical trauma, and then revelation through conflict (in this week's episode, a gay bashed Christian earns the disgust of his vicar and the love of his boyfriend).

Train joy

Best train journey home to my parents ever.

Roared down on a crowded train. Ended up with an artist who was also a cycle courier sat next to me, chatting away. Further down the carriage, a group were having a small party, and ended up whipping out a guitar and having a really good Beatles sing-a-long all the way to Taunton.

Unbeatably cheery journey, which put me in a great mood for watching Poirot and reading the papers all weekend.

I'm not in the Union

Finally, a whole week after the Greg Dyke - Hutton Crisis, our the BBC unions have lumbered into action.

Industrial Action? Strike? Er, no - just a lunch hour protest. Lasting obviously two hours to fit in with people who take their lunch at different times. So as not to cause a fuss.

If that strikes you as feeble, you'll snicker when you realise that they don't even want Greg back - instead their agenda is "Freedom and Transparency and Integrity". Guff.

Here's the "Call to arms" email:

There will be demonstration on Thursday 5th February outside every BBC building at 12 noon. This demonstration will be organised jointly with NUJ and the demonstration will last from 12.00 noon until 2.00 p.m. to allow people working on the lunchtime news to attend. This is not industrial action but it is an opportunity to show your support for a campaign to protect the BBC from further government interference.


Dear The Weird Union,

Thanks for being a week late with your spontaneous show of protest.

PS. You'll find the bandwagon's over there. Quite a long way over there.
PPS. Where were you last week?
PPPS. Bring back Greg.
PPPPS: No one cares about your mad political agenda.
PPPPPS: Except for those weird Socialist Worker saddoes outside White City tube station. Perhaps they'll come along.

Nicely unexpected things

Clayton Hickman, the evergreen editor of Doctor Who Magazine (and, officially, The Most Important Person In Doctor Who) was standing outside my office when I biked in to work this morning.

He was having a quick cigarette before going into An Important Meeting. He was with Gareth Roberts (officialy, The Cleverest Person In Doctor Who Fandom).

It's unusual to have witty and urbane conversation before nine in the morning, but there we are.

And then, I went and chained up my bike, and had fun giving the eye to one of the Very Cute And Important Runners we have hurryng around the building. He gave me the eye back. Twice. Hoorah!

E-bay

Sold my Department S boxset on ebay. This is a moment for me. A milestone.

I sold it because... it was rubbish.

I was seduced in an Australian department store by the amazing packaging. I even watched a few episodes, marvelling at the gorgeous DVD design, the kooky music, the flagrant use of stock footage... but then... but then...

Well, the actual programme is dreadful. It starts off brilliantly with wonderful opening sequences (a girl wakes up in an abandoned village... a man is found sobbing in a beautiful room that's been built in a warehouse... all the passengers on a tube train die... a man in a space suit dies in SoHo...) but then, whereas the Avengers would take that and open it up and make it splendid, with Department S, by about ten minutes in it's all about bank robbers, blackmail, forgery and blah blah blah.

It's a very boring cake indeed covered in an impossibly frothy sugary icing called Jason King.

So anyway. I sold it. On ebay. For a vast profit. To a woman who's now sending me 10 emails a day.

State of Play

Finishe watching this clever BBC Political Conspiracy Thriller last night. Well, it seemed a good moment.

There's little to say about it, beyond it is As Good As People Say It Is, Bill Nighy is brilliant in it... and it also contains the best ever awkward meeting between two gay ex-shags ("oh... hiya!").

In the office Ann and Dan came up with the perfect description of Middle Class Drama - "lots of red wine being drunk from very large glasses". And yes, there is a certain amount of it in State of Play - but that's okay. The merest glimpse of a bottle on the sideboard is a sure sign you can fast forward through the next scene.

Lesbian Deathwish

I think I may have won a long standing bet with two lesbians.

I am owed £10.

Unfortunately, I can't discuss how exactly I won the bet, which boy was used, and how a concrete moulding of part of Tim Vincent's anatomy was involved.

If I did, I could lose my job. But, as I said, £10 is £10.

The Kitchen of Silence

In our vast open plan soulless office, people decide to go to the kitchen for secret little shared moments of gossip and personal pain.

This is terrible when you're trying to nip in and make a quick pot of coffee. People either....

a) stop blubbing, grab kleenexes, smile brightly, sniff a little, and try and make awkwardly cheery smalltalk while spent tears plop into their herbal tea.

or

b) carry on regardless, saying things like "so, you're saying that she did this without even telling you she was pregnant?"

It's most disconcerting. I have no idea how to react.

Fash/Bash

I've been wearing my pyjamas at work all day.

And nobody's noticed.

Discuss.